Scale

Over a decade ago I wrote a post about using Heroic/Homeric/Bronze Age/Mycenaean Greece as a setting for Barbarians of Lemuria.  Well, I was thinking about Ancient Greece again this morning and I got to wondering how big a map hex map of equivalent size would be.  If you total up the area of the Peloponnese, Attica, Boeotia and Euboea it comes out to around 11,340 sq/m¹.  If you put that in terms of a 6 mile hex map, that is an 18x18 hex map!  That's not a large map compared to some hexcrawls and sandboxes.  Someone, I'm not quite sure who, also did a 6 mile hex map of Greece, the Aegean and Western Turkey.  The entire map is 99x81 hexes.  Smaller if you shave off some of the sea hexes on the western and southern edges of the map.

There is soooo much history and mythology crammed into this area that it boggles my mind.  It could be a giant playground for a game.  A GM could take just a portion of it, such as one of the four areas I mentioned above, because it's still crammed with potential.

In Classical times this area contained Athens and Sparta and the consequences of their rivalry and machinations.  There was also the important cities of Corinth and Thebes to round out the four biggies.  Olympia and its games were located there.  Many battles were fought in this area and much diplomacy was conducted.  If you go back to the Bronze Age/Mythological era you can add so much more.  Mycenae, Argos, Pylos and Megara.  Many of the mythical beasts roamed its wilds, too.

This changes my perspective on how big a map has to be to be effective.  I've always liked the idea of Chicagowiz's "Just Three Hexes" campaign starter and this, in a way, reinforces that.

¹ All numbers are approximate and for demonstration purposes only

White Box Cyclopedia

I finally had a chance to sit down and take a closer look at James Spahn's White Box Cyclopedia.  I haven't done a thorough read through yet but I did do a serious perusal.  And as I thought, what I saw made me excited.

The White Box Cyclopedia is the Swords & Wizardry White Box rules with all of the extra trimmings. 

The PDF comes in at around 290 pages.  And it has a lot!  It has the entirety of the White Box rules plus many extras and options to choose from. 

It covers the four usual races.  Here called heritages.  It also has 10 optional heritages, such as gnome, half-orc and shadow elf.  It also includes five heritage-as-class options.

The WBC offers the original three classes:  cleric, fighter and magic-user as well as 18 optional classes.  Some of the optional heritages and classes were developed by Mr. Spahn years ago.  It's nice to have them consolidated in one place though.

Much of the rest of the book is taken up with the usual.  Combat rules, equipment, travel, magic, treasure, etc.  It does include seafaring and naval combat as well. This is all to be expected.  What I really like, in addition to the extra heritages and classes, is all of the other additions.

For example, there is a section on reputation, knighthood and chivalry.  According to these rules, any character can become a knight.  Of course, some have a greater chance than others but everyone has some chance.  If you are brave and heroic, you might be able to do it.  There are guidelines on how to achieve knighthood, reputation, being knighted, maintaining your standing.  And it's all an add-on system you can layer on if you want.

The combat section contains options, some that I have seen elsewhere as house rules, to add variety to combat.  Including one of my favorites, Splintered Shields.  You can add none, some or all to tune combat to your taste.

There is a section that discusses setting up campaigns. It also briefly describes four different campaign settings and how to tune the rules and options to make WBC work optimally for the settings. This includes which classes and heritages would work best, how to tune magic for the setting and other modifications and options that might help.  The settings are called City of Thieves, Fairy Land, Gothic Horror and a sword & sorcery setting, Riddle of Steel.

I think the campaign section sums up best what I like about WBC.  WBC has the basic game but it is also a toolbox.  A toolbox that allows you to take the solid foundation of S&W WB and turn it into exactly the game you want it to be.  I know many good GMs can do this themselves but there are others, like me, who can use help when doing so.  With this toolbox, I am much more confident I can tune basic White Box to run any of the settings I have running around in my mind.

 

My Incomplete Appendix N

I've occasionally talked about books and movies that have influenced my gaming but I have never listed my personal Appendix N.  

My list includes fantasy, science fiction and some historical fiction.  It also include a few non-fiction titles, particularly from my youth.  It includes things that I read or viewed through my life, from childhood until now.  Most probably look familiar but there may be a few surprises.

• Agent of Byzantium by Harry Turtledove

• Barbarian Lord (Graphic Novel) by Matt Smith

• Beowulf: Dragonslayer by Rosemary Sutcliffe

• The Conan Stories and Novel by Robert E. Howard

• The Dark Knight Returns (Graphic Novel) by Frank Miller

• Firefly

• The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

• Goat Song and The Walled Orchard by Tom Holt

• The Greek Armies by Peter Connolly

• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein

• I, Claudius by Robert Graves

• Island of Ghosts by Gillian Bradshaw 

• Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague De Camp

• The Mote in God's Eye by Jerry Pournelle and David Niven

• Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss

• Revolt on Alpha C by Robert Silverberg

• "The Road Not Taken" by Harry Turtledove

• The Roman Army by Peter Connolly

• The Sand-Reckoner by Gillian Bradshaw 

• Space Viking by H. Beam Piper

• Star Trek (TOS)

• Star Wars (the original trilogy)

• Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein

• Thundarr the Barbarian

• Watchmen (Graphic Novel) by Alan Moore

Doratas & Philosophia

 Another thing I did during my quiet time was create a game...kinda.

I've always wanted to write/create a roleplaying game.  I've never had the discipline nor the imagination to do so.  I've had thoughts on how to heavily house rule something like White Box to fit a certain vision but I haven't got around to it for the reasons above.  So I cheated.  I hacked Lasers & Feelings.

Lasers & Feelings is an ultra-lite game that has been hacked in nearly every way you can think.  It is very easy to modify and change to whatever genre you want.  Heck, there's actually a template where you can just fill in the blanks to make your version of the game.  So I did it.  See, cheating.  But at least I did something.  And it might help spur me on to other things.

Thus, I present a draft of Doratas & Philosophia (Spears & Philosophy).  It is a mashup of Mythical and Archaic Greece for the players and GM to use as their playground.

Click Here

I used several inspirations and resources.  Lasers & Feelings, of course.  I used used Template Hack for L&F and {{Blanks}} & [[Spaces]] to help me organize the document and make sure I didn't miss anything. I also looked to the L&F hack Glory & Gold and good old Mazes & Minotaurs to spark my imagination (i.e. plunder shamelessly.)

Outdoor Survival, Tolkien Style

 John Salway mentioned in a post that it would be interesting to see the Outdoor Survival map done in the style of a Middle Earth Tolkien map.  I did some poking around and it turns out that Ray Otus has created one.  Ray Otus is the author of one of my favorite RPG related blog posts, 1937 Hobbit as a Setting, and the nifty little game that resulted, There and Back Again.  His post and game inspired me to start muddling around with my Hobbit inspired setting.

Anyway, Gary Gygax suggested using the game board/map from Outdoor Survival be used in conjunction with the original version of D&D.  So it has a long connection with RPGs.  Ray posted the map and wrote about how he created it here.  And this is what he came up with:

 

Mini Six: Bare Knuckle Edition

I'm often oblivious to things happening in the gaming world.  I'll get focused on one or a small handful of games to the exclusion of all others, even favorites.  Well, that has happened again.  AntiPaladin Games came out with a new version of Mini Six.  Eight months ago!  And Ray Nolan, the author, has been working on it and talking about it for at least a year!  Talk about head in the sand.

So what's different?  Mini Six: BKE is non-OGL.  It is not a complete game.  It is intended to be used as the basis for others to build their games on.  Thus, there is a lot left out like the mini settings.  And there is some changes.  I haven't read it yet so I'm not sure what has changed.  I'm still surprised there is a new version.

You can find it free at the AntiPaladin Games website.

Perilous Shores Hexcrawl Campaign

It's been quite a while since I've written anything here.  But there's always something going on in my head.  (Be afraid.  Be very afraid!)  Here's one of the things I've been pondering.

I've mentioned the online map generator Perilous Shores before.  It is a really useful tool then and I really like it.  Well, it keeps getting better.  Watabou, it's creator, keeps adding features that improve it and make it more flexible.  He also has several different generators including a village generator, a city generator and a one page dungeon generator.  All of which have options to customize and/or modify the output.

One of the really cool improvements to Perilous Shores is that Watabou connected the other generators to the map maker.  So, if you want to instantly create a village that is on the map, you right click the village and you have the option to have the village generator create it.  The same for adventure sites and the One Page Dungeon generator.

This got me to thinking.  If you wanted to create a hexcrawl but were feeling lazy you could use the generators to get a head start.  In fact, if you combine it with other generators for NPCs and monsters you could create an entire hexcrawl pretty quickly.

Here's a short example:

This is the bare-bone beginnings for the Island of Storms hexcrawl using Watabou's generators.

First, I generate a map.  I'm going to make this a small map just for sake of example.

This entire map was created by the map maker, including names.  I did modify it.  As generated, it had a city but no adventure sites.  Being a small, isolated island, I didn't want it to have a city so I deleted it, leaving only the village of Crimson Gate.  I also added the two adventure sites so there would be places for characters to explore.  This is all menu driven so it's simple to do.

Next I created a players map.  I would only do this if I wanted the players to know the geography of the area.  The generator makes it easy to modify the map to hide the adventure sites and other features.

Second, I'll create the map of the village.

Then on to the adventure sites.

The information is automatically generated with the dungeon.  And it can be formatted in a couple of different ways.  This is just the default style.  However, if you want complete control over stocking the dungeon or want to use a different generator you can hide the descriptions and just have numbers.

Now the second dungeon.

The integration of the generators isn't perfect as you can tell by the description of the Haunted Vault.  It does not lie in the bend of a river.

It took me about ten minutes to put all of this together.  Now, I'll need to come up with some NPCs, stock the dungeons, create a wandering monster table for the island and I'm set to go.  Or as I mentioned, find generators to do this for me.  They are out there.