Encumbrance and Campaigning

I love my characters, but a lot of times they come up with some odd choices. Backpacks are one of my favorite sources of amusement.

I really don't mind overburdened players, but somethings are beyond the pale. The people walking around with stakes and hammers and a small fry pan aren't the problem.

I have a very ad hoc encumbrance rule, one which secretly hides one of those never named zeroth laws. My ad hoc encumbrance rule is armor OR a backpack plus two items in your hands means you are totally encumbered. It may or may not slow you down, but you certainly can't carry more. You can also be encumbered by having stuff (or an opponent) wrapped around your legs.

Romans would pack a lot of stuff on their soldiers. Gaius Marius demanded that the soldiers carry most of the load themselves. That earned them the nickname Marius' Mules. The Romans didn't wear backpacks, but carried a sacrina.

Not a link to Gander Outdoors

The sacrina held a cloak bag, a pot, a satchel, a Patera or mess tin, food, a waterskin and a net for loose items, all on a big forked stick. Notice the rectangular satchel on the back and the net on the front. When they dropped these, they landed on that satchel with the stick projecting upwards for easy recovery and unpacking. The bonus of the sacrina was that it made armor a benefit to carrying one as the armor distributed the weight of the stick on their shoulder. This is probably a better tool for carrying stuff than a backpack over armor or a backpack full of armor.

Here is where my zeroth law comes in. You drop your stuff and I will almost never have someone mess with it. If you leave it behind, that is one thing, but I really don't want to annoy my players with cheap shots like stealing all of their gear. Stealing money, sure. But not a backpack.

In my most recent campaign, my players have made an art of being unencumbered at all times. They have 2 wagons, oxen and a bunch of NPCs in tow. When they say they have a pack, it's pretty much a purse: a snack, some useful items and some water. I'm vaguely annoyed because they should have purchased a boat, but instead got the wagons because I left that word, "ship" out by accident.

Oh, well.

How do you handle encumbrance in your campaign? Let me know in the comments below.

Hot Products - Dishonored, City of Nexus and The Halls of Arden Vul

It looks like the hot product tool for Affiliates is a little broken on DriveThru. For the last week, the site has been telling me that City of Nexus is the hottest new book, while logging in displays Dishonored as number one.

Hottest New Book City of Nexus | 20x30 Battlemaps [BUNDLE]

How annoying. The other day I decided to make up my own links to products I like. They are over on the left hand column. If you want to read how I was able to get a neat little box for a website from data on DriveThruRPG, click here for the tutorial.

What seems to be a truly hot product is The Halls of Arden Vul, in many different forms. Below is a picture and a link to the complete set PDF, all 1,100+ pages.

The Halls of Arden Vul Complete The Halls of Arden Vul Completer

As a dungeon goes, it doesn't get any more mega than that. If 1,100+ pages at one go is too much for you, it comes in 5 volumes. Volume I to IV are $30 for the PDF and $55 for the printed book. Volume V is different, it's the map (well, 33 maps) and sells for only $5.00 digital.

I'm probably going to order the maps for now (Volume V). I love my artwork and the artists on this product are incredible.

Here are links to the whole series:

Volume I
Volume II
Volume III
Volume IV
Volume V
and Complete.

In looking up this information, I found a bundle pack for $275.00. I don't know... it's almost like they gave me a MEGA-amount of information to process.

The bundle pack is a PDF of 1,100+ pages and a physical copy of Volumes I-V. The "complete" PDF is the aforementioned PDF from the bundle pack. If those entry points of $109 and $275 are too steep, ordering the first four volumes individually, entitles you to a copy of that 1,100 page PDF. Additionally, if your order the $109 Complete PDF, you can receive a 33% on print copies of the individual books at a later time.

Wow... just the description is MEGA all on it's own. That is a lot of information to process. 

Digging Deeper into Star Smuggler - Surprises in the Events Booklet - Battleship (e081)

Star Smuggler was a set of rules with two small booklets. The rule set was a 24 page booklet which included everything you needed to play. It was seamlessly integrated with a 20 page event booklet. In doing some careful analysis, I have yet to find a mistake not covered by the short errata sheet.

One of the fascinating things about the rule set is how well it plays off the event booklet. One of the complaints about this game is the number of "game breaking" events that can end your game via a single die roll. Well, those are flaws, those are features of a choose your own adventure style book.

Within the events booklet are hidden 30+ new items for the player to enjoy or be challenged by. They range from axes to battleships and when such items are stat'ed out, they never break the system laid out in the rules booklet.

I'll be taking a look some of these items, as this system can easily be fleshed out into a full rpg, complete with a campaign setting.

The first surprise I would like to look at is a ship described in one of the events - The Battleship. This is a TL-2 ship with 12 turrets and 120 hits. It's a beast. I took the time to stat it up in the normal parlance of the game. To say it's OP is an understatement, but Duke can be victorious over this beast with careful game play.

Using the basic ship, the Antelope, I extrapolated what a battleship might look like. I'm not happy with the re-skin of the Buffalo Transport, so I will be revisiting this ship's layout soon.

The first conclusion that I came to was the fact that this might be a Pocket Battleship. The limitation comes from the description of the ship itself. It's TL-2 ship, which is pretty weak.

Even so, it is a massive ship. The Pocket Battleship is 410 CU in size and it's the largest ship in this image. The Antelope is the smallest ship.

Let me know what you think. I'll be continuing this series on a weekly basis.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 113 to 118 – April 8th.

The Buffalo with cleaned up spaces
so we can take on more cargo

I want to resync the calendar to the days in game, so we are spending 6 days in the Ruins. Here is my game plan. Duke and Emily will form teams for alternating days. Any day that Engineers aren’t repairing found junk, they will be doing maintenance.

When an engineer does this, it causes a +2 on breakdown rolls for the first day and a +1 on the next two days. Breakdown occurs when a 2d6 roll is equal to or less than the tech level of the item in question. This is why TL-1 items are valuable. They never breakdown. Since the start, I’ve been tracking breakdown, but not really mentioning it. The reason is two-fold, for every item I had that could breakdown, I had a spare, which makes this a boring exercise. The breakdown roll on those healing tanks are kind of important, so I will be looking at that.

Since Lucy and Ratchet have been assigned skills first, they has reported an accounting error in yesterday’s activities. No one got their cut when we sold the guns. Duke and Emily confer with the crew and decide that the best plan of action is to apologize profusely and hand out some bonuses. 100 secs. each. This costs us 1,100 total. The crew seems happy and Duke breaths a sigh of relief. Emily cusses about Duke’s lackadaisical record keeping.

None of this in the game mechanics, I just happened to notice that glitch and thought this would be fun and easy way to fix it.

We are starting with 20 repair units and 14 fuel units. I’m not tracking Life Support as Nipna has good air. My scouts won’t be wearing U-suits, either but will have their PS bot on hand in case they are knocked to zero wound points.

Duke is out with David and Lefty. Emily will lead Deadeye and Audrey on opposite days.

Day: 113 – We find two skimmers. One is intact and the other needs repair. Lucy and
Day: 114 – Emily finds 30 secs. in coins then blunders into a building collapse. We roll very low and Emily takes 1 hit, Audrey takes one and Deadeye takes 3. Lucy begins repairs on the skimmer while Ratchet and Doc ready the tank for Deadeye. We are down to 19 repair units.
Day: 115 – Emily and Audrey heal up. Deadeye is fully healed in the tanlk and it doesnt' break down. The skimmer is now repaired. Duke’s team finds a single repair unit and a very large bed (e088). We have 20 RU.
Day: 116 – Emily finds a damaged GM-Bot and another damaged skimmer.
Day: 117 – Ratchet and Lucy have repaired the GM-bot and skimmer. The GM-bot starts doing maintenance. We are down to 18 repair units. Duke’s team finds a single U-suit and a set of books (e088).
Day: 118 – Last day. We find a pair of intact skimmers.

Based on what we have found, we need to go to New Karma and Imperia. We have a bed, 5 skimmers, a GM-Bot which we are keeping and a set of books.

The Buffalo packed full of found items. 

We have 185,546 in cash, have 8 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 111 and 112 – April 7th.

We blast off for the space station, because that is the only place you can sell starship guns apparently. We spend an hour moving to orbit, another to get to other planet’s space station.

We make a contact on the way in and purchase 3 vials of pheromones for 720 secs. Good deal.

Our first roll is nearly as fruitful. We get repair, life support and fuel units. For some reason, you can’t sell life support units here. We can sell fuel and repair units for 10 and 5 each. It turns out that we can’t really sell any fuel units and still have a reserve, so we purchase one for 20 secs. We take in 75 for this transaction.

We spend the whole rest of the day rolling to no effect. 95 secs isn’t very much so it’s distributed among the crew.

The next day (112) we get our roll for starship guns. We managed sell for 200 each. We also make another 600 secs interest payment. I have to be honest, I am only making sure we pay every ten days or better. I am pretty sure we are two weeks in advance but I’m not tracking that.

We have 186,646 in cash, have 8 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Art with Jeremy Hart

Jeremy Hart is a great artist over on MeWe, Facebook and Patreon. He has a whole series of items on DriveThruRPG (link to all of it), but I want to focus on his paper minis.

Jeremy Hart Solo Mini Eidolon A1 Solo Paper Mini]

So, I have dilemma. How do I post about paper minis without artwork? I mean as minis, a screen grab is essentially the product... so... you know, I don't want to do that.

The other day, I complained that I have no idea what I am doing with these colored pencils. It's not a format I normally work in. Rather than give up, I figured I'd just teach myself. It's a lot harder than it looks. Part of the issue is, I get a drawing done and want to get it colored, which will complete the work. Instead, I end up "ruining" it. Or at least not do it very well.

Sigh... artist's brain...

Here is where Jeremy Hart comes in. He makes these amazing drawings of monsters for whatever game you are playing. They are two sided little minis. A lot of them are black and white but some of them are in color. I am pretty sure he is using a computer and tablet combo, but this is an excellent opportunity to try out colored pencils. I don't have to trouble myself by drawing something to use the pencils. In fact, if you wanted to, you could run through his whole back catalog and print yourself a great coloring book.

The images below are close ups of his work, the green one is Jeremy's while the purplish one is my attempt with colored pencils.

This is a bad cell phone pix, actual images are
razor sharp and clear. 

The great thing about these Solo Minis are the price. Jeremy has them on sale for $0.10 each. That's a steal. I meant to download just one, but ended up with more than 12. Go give some these a try. You don't have to be a nut like me and use them for coloring sheets, you can incorporate them into your game.

These monsters are unique, so you'll either have to get his stat'ed products or make up some of your own stats. Don't forget, Jeremy has a patreon page which can score you monsters and stats starting at a dollar a month.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 110 – April 6th.

Duke, Emily, Deadeye, Audrey and David are out attempting to make contact with a buyer or seller of those high tech items we found yesterday. We get a few meaningless rolls, such as a repossession team before we get that offer. The repo team ignores you so long as you are current on your bills and not wanted.

We can purchase a regrowth tank, which will heal someone 1d6 a day. If it breaks down at the end of the day, it will cause 1d6 points of damage. I like it. They have a base price of 2000 times 2. So, I purchase 2 for 8,000.

We also purchase our hypercharges at 1,500.

We have 186,290 in cash, have 5 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

The Post About Fighters

Gurwinder as Keeper

Welcome back. I haven't posted much about D&D and AD&D lately.

Gurwinder as Warrior

Let's fix that with some thoughts on fighters. In B/X D&D fighters were characters who specialized in putting their weapon on someone and hard. Exactly what kind of guy or gal he was was totally in the theater of the mind. They could be any kind of fighting man or woman.

Not so in AD&D. Fighters gained sub-classes, the ranger and the paladin. For years, no decades, I always thought of paladins as being the guys with great armor and heavy weapons and rangers were archers due to the their outdoorsy nature and good dexterity. Plain old fighters were a mix of the two, using a short bow, sword and board. While fighters might have horses that they use and care for, the paladin has a horse built into their character but rangers often had dogs and wolves as companions. And these animals were not so friendly company.

However, the big thing that sets rangers and paladins apart from fighters is their use of magic. Paladins have spiritual magic while rangers have arcane spells.

Not Venus Genetrix,
but Venus Bellatrix. 

In the campaign I have been playing, there is a fighter, Gurwinder A’flumine. She is a small woman with a bow and knife. She wears a stola, palla and tunic at all times. She is reserved and calm, but the player has done her best to make her the leader of a band of misfit rangers, mages and daredevils. There was no declaration of intent, but she leads from the front.

While I rolled her up and foisted her off on the player, that player accepted her as she was designed, a fighter. But as she played, the character changed.

A slight change her stats to that of a paladin mechanically alters very little, except retainers. Gurwinder would have a modest boost in strength and constitution, which would not change her combat stats. Her charisma would climb by 7, which is huge but not out of character as with a 10, she was the de facto leader of this motley band. She retains no monies for herself, has not sought a horse or armor, or even better weapons. This player has redefined how I thought of fighters and their subclasses since I began playing.

What do you think? Let me know if I should offer to retroactively reclass this character as a paladin in the comment below.