The Movement Game

In AD&D, movement is not real clear. On page 39, of the PHB distance is covered. 1" is 10 yards outside or 10 feet inside. Ah, easy. Next it says: "Your referee will have information which will enable him or her to adjust the movement rate to the applicable time scale for any situation".

Actually, that's not true. The information is on 101 and 102 of the PHB. Characters move 12" per round or 120 feet per minute. Outside, the rate changes to 12" = 12 miles per half day of travel, where "day" is defined as "daylight hours". Encumbered characters move less.

It is all very reasonable, so long as one doesn't ask "how fast can I move?". If you can run an 8 and half minute mile, you're moving at 62" in game terms or 621 feet per minute. An Olympic runner would be much faster. That is totally nuts.

But why break the math like this? This is AD&D, not a running simulator.

Last session, my players got in a dice heavy combat that came dangerously close to killing several of them and as the DM, I didn't realize how bad it was. 8 NPCs were actually killed, in some cases over-killed.

In this session, I wanted that fun without the element of danger and without railroading the characters with imaginary danger. The players realized the scenario was good fun without too much danger.

Here are the rules:

1. A character can move 12" per segment, or 6 seconds. Encumbered characters move less fast.   
2. At these speeds, no weapons can be used. 
3. Turning 45 degrees costs 1" of forward movement. 


1. Diagonal movement on the ground has no penalty other than the loss of distance covered, as the character moving parkour style. 
2. Diagonal movement for flying creatures is doubled. One unit at a 45 degree angle counts double as they need to avoid things to stay airborne. 
3. Turning 90 degrees costs 3" of forward movement.
4. To stop, one must roll a 1d4 to see how many inches they will travel before stopping. 
4. You can hit people with things in the environment, such as tree limbs, baskets, boxes, etc. 
5. Everyone is AC 10 to these attacks, less Dex bonus and magical item bonus.
6. These attacks don't do damage, they change the target's facing. 
7. Roll to hit vs. AC 10, then roll a 6 sided die for effect. Consult the following table: 
1. Turned 90 degrees to the left for free, but returning to your previous course costs 3".
2.  As above, but to the right. 
3. Turned 45 degrees to the right for free, but returning to your previous course costs 1". 
4. As above, except to the left. 
5. You hurtled the object and moved one 1" forward for free. 
6. You are knocked down. You are motionless for the remainder of the segment. 
8. Repeat as long as the fun allows. 

What is great about this system, is everyone can participate with little danger of death. Of course, wiley characters will invent ways to kill each other like this.

As near as I can tell, there is no good way to implement normal combat with this set of mini rules. Some rules of thumb. Bow fire could come once every 5 segments, twice per round and always comes last in the order above. Crossbows can fire immediately on segment 1, but then have to reload over the next ten segments. The interesting effect of bow fire and crossbow fire, is the environment itself. In a crowded city street, even a slow character can step around a corner preventing a shot from landing or even being fired.

As far as melee weapons go, even a lowly magic user or urchin should be able to stay one jump ahead...

Meet The New Antagonists - The Coven of Ash

For tonight's session, I added a few more problems for the players. These three self-styled witches are dangerous magic users. 

Looking at the pre-generated character lists, I am missing druids, illusionists and assassins. Druids and Illusionist are coming soon, but assassins will only appear as a historical footnote. In this campaign, the Praetorian Guard was made up of regular soldiers under the leadership and guidance of assassins. The Coven of Ash is a collection of magic users that believe they can do the Guard's job better with magic. 

About 3 years ago, all of the assassins were eliminated by the Coven. The city of Nace recorded 37 dead in just 7 days. Exactly how this happened was a mystery. The main headquarters was the focal point of these attacks, but the last several bodies were found in the Temple to Jupiter. These witches know no bounds. 

The Coven has the same purpose of the Praetorian Guard, except they answer to no one or no thing except the concept of Empire. The do not take orders from the Emperor, as he is only human. The Coven strives protect the Empire against all threats, foreign and domestic, with dark magic and terror.  

In reality, our plucky heroes didn't
 come close to landing a hit.

After a close call with the Coven and the Elven warband, the heroes knocked heads with the raiders failing to lay low in town. 

Session Updates - Level Up and Kit Up

The party is now in 4 groups. Felix, Felice, Gurwinder and Rona will arrive by wagon my lunch time. Melvin, Jim, Megen, Matilda and Jaime arrived by horse at the end of the last session. Melvin and Jim have gone off to acquire new equipment for Jim as he is now a 1st level ranger. Megen and Matilda are exploring the town while Jaime is getting lunch for the party. The plan is to meet up at Five Tree Hill at lunch time.

Megen, Matilda, Jim, and Rona have all leveled up last session. The players will check out their new character abilities and proceed from there. You can click the link to see the PDF file.

I have also created a reasonable list of provisions in the wagons, as record keeping became a nightmare last session. I believe the party somehow acquired an extra horse. Not sure, but it is now official, they have two wagons, 4 oxen, and 6 horses. The players don't seem to be abusing their character sheets, so I'm letting this one go. They don't need six horses and perhaps don't realize they have that many. It seems they gave Gurwinder a horse to search for the raiders last session, but now she's riding on the wagons like a captain of a fleet of ships.

They'll have a chance to obtain new horses and such in town. The players don't seem to be making a distinction between horses, but by my records, they have 3 riding horses, a medium war horse and 2 draft horses.

As a gag, I plan on firing up my old Mac and letting the players play a little bit of Oregon Trail. That should be fun.



If the numbers seem right, I'll let them obtain provisions like this. They need more Oxen and a few wheels. :)

I have to run. I need to generate some raiders and a couple of witches.

Worldobuilder By Inkwell Ideas for Maps

A few months ago, I picked up a whole suite of software for mapping and world building. I have to tell you, the Worldographer software is excellent. I use it for my books, my blogs and my campaign. It couldn't be more handy. They have a collection of software, but my favorite is Worldographer. It basically does everything I wish it to.

You can pick up new icon packs from Patreon, as monthly subscription. My campaign is Roman themed, so I haven't partaken in that yet. I did purchased the e1 Icon pack when I bough the software. It allows me to make maps that look a bit like the Greyhawk campaign map. I love it.

You can give it a try with very few limitations from the store section of their main site. The free version doesn't nag or limit you too much. It is mean to just give you a taste.

I can't help but tinker. My setting is a peninsula with a vast savanna, I needed acacia trees. The set of icons I had didn't have any, so I modified a regular tree into one using the GNU Image Manipulation Program.

It reminded me of modding Civilization Icons. You need a transparent background. Did you ever try that? I used to have great fun adding dinosaurs and Veritechs to the game.

Anyway, back to my campaign. I have a large Romanesque city. Romans lived in villas and apartments. The software had a half dozen choices, but I need to populate a massive area. Repetition stands out like a sore thumb, so I got modding.

In the first version of my city, the buildings looked very medieval. I decided to make the whole area more Roman by making most structures either ramshackle wooden or Spanish tile like.

  
You can see those Spanish like rooves from 35,000 feet. Nice.

Then I wanted new villas. Just two choices didn't give a lot of variety.

I now have 4 or five variations. Square or rectangular and so on. One thing I discovered while working is, if you leave the courtyard area transparent, you can trees and other structures to the yard. Nice touch. The other thing is you can use the software to flip, rotate and scale the same building so even a copy doesn't look exactly like the one next to it.

For my last trick, and this is completely outside of the scope of Worldographer, I decided to add my party.

It is completely useless for game play, but I thought it was a nice trick. I have two wagons and 5 horses, to match my party. If you zoom in too much, there is zero detail, so the trick loses it's charm. But I enjoyed giving it a shot.