A Player Map for Dolmenwood

I’ve fallen in love with the setting of Dolmenwood as described in the zine Wormskin.

I’ve been wanting to take the Original Dungeons & Dragons rules out for a spin for a while.

I’ve put all this together by starting up an online game using video chat on Discord to keep connected with people and kit-bashing the rules of Delving Deeper and Whitebox: Fantasy Medieval Adventure Game. (PDFs of each game are free.)

A full Kickstarter for Dolmenwood is on the way, but won’t be here for months. There is a lovely Game Master map of Dolmenwood that has been available for a couple of years, and while the Player Book for the Kickstarter will include a map designed for the players, until then I’m on my own.

So I went to the map application Inkarnate and built myself a couple of maps to set up the area closest to Castle Brackenwold to set up the campaign

Here are the results!

Without Hexes:

With Hexes:

I’m giving the map without hexes to the players.

The hexes on the map match the hexes of the official Dolmenwood map linked to above.

In this map you’ll find that I have added little blue dots. These match the inns along the roads as described in issues of Wormskin. I’ve also removed the village of Orbswallow as found on the map because most humans don’t know much about the Moss Dwarves and know nothing about Orbswallow. And these maps are ostensibly maps they found have acquired in the city of Castle Brackenwold and are human-centric in their design and point of view.

The area mapped is very much a part of the Duchy of Brackenwold. The Duke rules it. The Dolmenwood map labels this part of the forest as “Brackenwold.” It is close to Castle Brackenwold. Travel routes are still in use between Castle Brackenwold to Lankshorn and Castle Brackenwold to Prigwort.

So it makes sense to me that this portion of the woods, at least in terms of human settlements and trade, is marked well enough.

However! Because the toxic, tainted magic has been sweeping across the woods for the last 300 years, one must always assume that what was true a year ago or even a month ago might not be true now. So though the roads and human settlesments are marked. (And the Abby is marked not only because everyone knows where the ruins are, but also the trade road from Prigwort to Fort Vulgar passes it) anything off the roads is fair game for all sorts of unknown weirdness.

While the map above is there to help orient the players, there will be much to add to the map as they proceed.

And when they travel beyond the areas shown the map, they will be on their own. In my view, once you travel beyond Prigwort or Lakeshorn you are heading into lands that most people in Brackenwold hear rumors of and hear tales of… but most folks have not ventured into those lands at all.

Pendragon Character Creation Booklet

I have updated the King Arthur Pendragon Character Creation Booklet I posted over a year ago. (How did a year go by!!!)

The character creation rules are straight from the King Arthur Pendragon core rules with three exceptions from Book of Knights & Ladies:

1. I have added the Regional Trait modifiers from Book of Knights & Ladies, because I like them and I want to emphasize for the players how different regions will influence a Knight’s Traits. (Even if they are all from Salisbury, such modifiers will make them aware different places have different modifiers.)
2. I used the Cymric Luck Table from Book of Knights & Ladies to replace the Heirlooms table from the King Arthur Pendragon core rules. (The Cymric Luck Table is stranger and more evocative.)
3. Finally, I incorporated the Culture Skills from Book of Knights & Ladies. For Cymric knights this means that all the starting knights have “Spear Expertise.” Spear Expertise combines the skills of Lance, Spear, and Great Spear under one skill, allowing Cymric knights to advance faster in those three skills.

I also added page of simple ordinaries for the players to use as models for their knight’s coat of arms.

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We will still need to refer to the King Arthur Pendragon core rules when making a character. (For example, we’ll be using the Family History rules.)

But I wanted a document that would offer the players easy reference to details they would need when making their characters. Character creation is one of those places where things can really bog down and I want it to go as smoothly has possible at the table.

King Arthur Pendragon Pitch Doc

My Monday Night Group is wrapping Silent Titans using the Into the Odd rules in the Monday Night Group. Soon we will be fishing around for something new to play. Several options are available. (As always!)

(For those who have been following this blog: we finished up my Lamentations of the Flame Princess campaign to great success. I have put the Traveller game on ice because I wasn’t happy with it. Notes coming on both of these items some day!)

One game I want to run for my players is King Arthur Pendragon using Greg Stafford’s amazing The Great Pendragon Campaign.

When I floated the idea of playing an RPG set with the mythic time of King Arthur one of my players gave me–well, not quite an eye-roll–but certainly nothing like strong interest. He added, when I asked him about this, “But if you like it, I’m down with doing it, because we always have a good time.”

I said, “Yeah, but this is kind of specific. Pendragon is about about digging into Arthurian legend. You don’t have be a scholar, but I you have no interest in Arthurian stuff you’re not going to have a good time.”

It occurred to me a few days later that when I think of “King Arthur” I might be thinking of one thing, and my fellow player might be thinking of something else. After all King Arthur is represented in so many ways, with so many different styles, tone, and over all effect. Le Morte D’Arthur, the musical Camelot, The Mists of Avalon, and more all are about “King Arthur”–but they are all very different!

So I followed up with another question. I asked, “When I say ‘King Arthur’ what are you thinking? What are your references?”

He replied: “The only thing I really know about King Arthur is this cartoon I watched as a kid where this team of high school football players go back in time and become Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and fight Moran   Fey.”

And I was like, “I have no idea what that is. But that’s not at all what I’m thinking about when I think ‘King Arthur.'”

To make clear what King Arthur Pendragon means to me I made a pitch document of five pages laying out the core concepts of what play is about, including recent history for the setting, a copy of character sheet, the core mechanics, and a desertion of the core conflicts that play is about in King Arthur Pendragon.

I wanted to emphasis the invasions and military conflict, internal family fighting, the fact that knights can be both good and bad, and that what kind of knight you are is what the game is about.

In short, I think many people might think that Arthurian literature is all about moral simplicity and that everyone is “good.” They might love a show like Game of Thrones and assume that Arthurian literate is the opposite of that series. But Game of Thrones is built from the on the same kinds conflicts that Thomas Malory used in Le Morte D’Arthur: hard choices, split loyalties, and dynastic struggles.

Why Only Two Religions in my King Arthur Pendragon Character Creation Booklet

Or… why do I only have one type of Christianity in my King Arthur Pendragon Character Creation Booklet?

There are two broad parts to my answer: one is Setting, and the other is Mechanics.

But first, some historical context:

• KAP 1st ed. had virtues for Christian, Pagan, and Wotan faiths.
• There was no 2nd ed.
• KAP 3rd edition had Christian and Pagan Virtues. The 3rd edition supplement Knights Adventurous added Wotanic and Judaism as faiths with virtues.
• KAP 4th edition stapled together the pages from the KAP 3rd core rule book and Knights Adventurous, so the religious virtues found in the book are identical to those two books.
• King Arthur Pendragon 5x is the first edition to introduce British Christianity as a set of Virtues and bonus distinct from Roman Christianity.

The Christianity in the 1st, 3rd, and 4th editions used the virtues that KAP 5.x uses to Roman Christianity.

I bring this up to point out that the introduction of British Christianity is a new notion, and I believe has a mechanical bump as described further down in this post.

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SETTING
For a game of King Arthur Pendragon I simply don’t care about tensions in the Church and which Christianity might be right or not right. I understand it may be historically interesting to some people… and in another game I might find it compelling. But for I want to focus on, the nitty-gritty theological tensions of Christianity in a game about Knights is something honestly wouldn’t know what to do with.

Will my game’s Player Knights really care about the distinctions between British Christianity and Roman Christianity? I can’t imagine so. Exactly how is it interesting beyond theological concerns or people very versed in the nitty-gritty details of history? And since I won’t be introducing theological infighting as a theme or concern in the game, and I am working from the literary concerns of Le Morte D’Arthur (not historical research), I can’t see a need to add the extra version of Christianity.

Besides the lack of interest, there is also this: The text of KAP has always been at pains to point out that the split between Christian and Pagan Knights is not there to provide fodder for religious feuding. It can devolve into violence between Knights for the very bland and repetitive reasons.

For me, the fact there were two religions in the core (3rd and 4th) rules were to provide variety for the Player Knights and the Traits. That’s it. I literally have no interest in religious conflict in my game.

Instead, I am very much interested in the Religious Virtues as ideals that provide tension within the Player Knight. How do you live by Christian Virtues (Chaste, Forgiving, Merciful, Modest, Temperate) when your job is fight and kill, to watch your friends die by your enemy’s hands, and have a sword at your side that you can always draw to resolve your anger or jealousy when someone wrongs you?

The text of the game has always made explicit the notion that the game is about how hard it is to live by the ideals of the setting (whether Religious or Chivalrous), and that is the notion I want to mine with the game’s religions.

Having two versions of Christianity muddies the waters and begs the question, “Which one is right?” and removes us from the internal struggles of the knights and puts the focus on theological debates and religious war… which isn’t in Le Morte D’Arthur and has little interest for me in this setting.

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MECHANICS

The British Christianity makes it easy to hit both the British Christian Virtues and get the Chivalrous bonus.

Chivalry requires high values in the following (a sum total of 80):

• Energetic
• Generous
• Just
• Merciful
• Modest
• Valorous

Keep in mind that most Knights are going to have Valorous Traits of 15 or higher, so they really only need 65 or so points. With five more Traits to go to reach 80 points, each remaining Trait only needs an average of 12.5 points for the Knight to get the Chivalry Bonus.

So here is how the three Religious Bonuses break down:

Christian (earlier editions of KAP) / Roman Christian (KAP5.x) Virtues are:

• Chaste
• Forgiving
• Merciful
• Modest
• Temperate

Which only lines up with two of the Chivalry ideals (Merciful and Modest)

Pagan Virtues (all editions of KAP) are:

• Energetic
• Generous
• Honest
• Lustful
• Proud

Which only lines up with two of the Chivalry ideals (Energetic and Generous)

British Christianity (KAP 5x) Virtues are:

• Chaste
• Energetic
• Generous
• Modest
• Temperate

Which lines up with three of the Chivalry ideals. (Energetic, Generous, Modest)

Sustaining both the Religious virtues and the Chivalric ideals should be difficult, in my opinion. Not impossible, but difficult.

While getting 80 points isn’t impossible, those points are going to come at the cost of raising Religious virtues to 16+. Remember that it takes to raise points either through checks or spending Winter Phase experience. Significantly, there are only so many points a Player can distribute each Winter Phase. At some point a Player will have to make decisions about what areas his or her Knight where his Knight is going to really excel.

However, I suggest that the nature of the British Christian virtues cuts down on this tension far too much. By having three of five religious virtues line up with three of six chivalric virtues, the mechanics make it much easier for a British Christian to sustain being a Chivalric Knight.

I understand there are a lot of reasons one might want to have distinct British Christians in the game, and I understand the logic of having some faiths having an easier time of sustaining Chivalry at the same time… but giving my first set of points about Setting above, for me it simply is a no brainer: If the Players, and the Player Knights, and myself as the GM do not care about religious tension between two types of Christianity, then there is no reason not to be a British Christian, and thus Roman Christianity falls by the wayside, so why have two types of Christianity?

Further, I want it to be difficult to sustain religious ideals alongside Chivalric ideals. I think that is very much a part of the structure and purpose of the game. Life is hard, ideals are hard, and mixing them all together is really hard.

I believe the addition of British Christianity might have had something to do with why Greg thought he had to make Chivalry harder in recent years. (He was toying around with raising the number of Trait totals above 80.) But the fact is if you take British Christianity out of the mix, it actually is a lot of work to get all those points high enough for both bonuses.

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So, that’s my thinking on the matter.

I’m not dictating it to anyone, or expecting anyone to come along on my ride. But it is thought out, with actual reasons. And that’s why I returned to the Religious Virtues found in the earlier editions of the game.

King Arthur Pendragon Character Creation Booklet

Here is my first draft of a King Arthur Pendragon Character Creation Booklet.

It assumes that the Players will first generate their Player Knight’s family history, as a group, with the Game Master. The Booklet contains reference information and tables for all the steps after that, allowing each Player to see the options and details of character creation in front of him as the group goes through the steps.

The rules are primarily taken from King Arthur Pendragon 5th edition, with a few variations taken from the Uther Phase alterations found in the Book of Knights & Ladies.

The biggest changes from the Book of Knights & Ladies are slightly different base skills due to the time period, and Spear Expertise for Cymric Knights.

Spear Expertise combines Spear, Great Spear, and  Lance skills all under the name Spear Expertise at a starting skill of 10. This not only makes the spear more flexible as a weapon, but allows them to start with an additional 6 points in Weapon Skills to distribute as they see fit.

Normally a Knight begins with Lance 10 and Spear 6. 10 points are now set for Spear Expertise, and the balance of 6 points is redistributed by the player.

This essentially makes Cymric Knights badasses with Spears. They can charge with them, defend with on foot the as if they are using a Great Spear when a horseman charges them, and use them equally well in melee combat. It also offers them additional combat points out of the gate–which is fitting for the chaotic and turbulent times of Uther’s reign.

(If you want to to play with the Skill Points from the KAP core rules, simply assign Lance 10 and Spear 6, and remove the distribution of the final 6 points for weapons found in the Character Creation Booklet.)

If you have a chance to take a look, let me know how this works for you and if there any typos or suggestions!

Revised Player Character Pregens for the RuneQuest Glorantha Quickstart

You can find the RuneQuest QuickStart Adventure here.

I’ve changed up the list of Rune Magic spells to match the spells found in the RQG Core Book. I’ve also altered the spell notion terms from those found in the Quickstart to those found in the Core Book (so, now a spell might have the notation, [1, Touch, Instant, Nonstackable], as opposed to the notation from the quickstart).

Each booklet contains the information you would find on a character sheet. But also contains brief descriptions of the the character’s cult and god, descriptions of the Runes of Glorantha, and brief descriptions of the character’s Spirit and Rune spells.

I hope this is useful for people. I’m still plowing through the rules. But I’ve found that making tools like this lets me get a grasp on new rules. And I believe it will help my players in a couple of weeks have a quick reference for both rules and some of the texture of Glorantha as they sink into the setting and the game for the first time.

Click on the image of each character to link to the Player Character Booklet:

YANIOTH

 

VOSTOR

 

VASANA

 

SORALA

 

HARMAST

 

Pregen Player Character Booklets for the RuneQuest Glorantha Quickstart

In celebration of Runequest Gloranatha: Quickstart Rules and Adventure coming home with ENnie Gold, and because RuneQuest Glorantha is now available in PDF and soon to be available in print, and because I’ll be running the Quickstart at a local convention at the end of the month I decided to take the Pregenerated Player Characters and build little booklets for each PC.

Each booklet contains the relevant Rune Descriptions, Rune Spells, Spirit Magic Spells, and short descriptions of the respective PC’s cult, as well as all the other information contained on each of the PC’s character sheet from the Quickstart.

My design goal was to build a little booklet which would allow a Player to flip through the booklet and find the relevant information for a specific rule or topic on a given page.

I’m a big fan of the A5/8.5×5.5 format at the gaming table. They take up less space, you can hold them in your hands easily when flipping through them. The PDF is in a A5 format. You can print the PDFs using “booklet” formatting and get a 20 page doc on five sheets of paper. (There’s a short table of contents after the coverer page. The whole idea is to make an easy to use, easy to access document for someone sitting down to play RuneQuest Glorantha for the first time.)

The pages were built in A5 format. But you can easily print them in 8.5×5.5 format with only the slightest shrinkage to the text and no real effect on presentation.

These is a format that i came up with for myself, of course. Which reflects my own thinking and design principles. But I hope people might find them helpful for getting new demonstrations of the game up and running.

I haven’t done a final proof on these yet, so if you notice anything askew, please let me know!

Thanks!

RQG Yanioth QuickStart

RQG Vostor QuickStart

RQG Vasana QuickStart

RQG Sorala QuickStart

RQG Harmast QuickStart

More On Pointcrawls — and Thoughts on Pointcrawls for Traveller

A few weeks ago I posted a link to a very smart post about pointcrawls from Anne at DIY & Dragons.

As Anne explained in her first post on the matter:

At its most basic, pointcrawling is a way of depicting space that maps a set of known locations as “nodes” that are connected by a limited number of “paths.” Depending on a judge’s time and artistic talent, this diagram could consist of little more than numbered circles connected by straight lines (something similar to the early Scorpion Swamp pointcrawl introduced in the Fighting Fantasy books, seen in Figure 1 below.)

Figure 1. Scorpion Swamp from Fighting Fantasy 8

Alternatively, it could be much more detailed, either an artistic rendering or an information-encoding scheme to visually depict the location at each “node,” and likewise some method of giving more information about each “path.” In Figures 2 and 3 below, Hill Cantons shows a scheme for color-coding and labeling square nodes to show information about each location at a glance, while using different kinds of lines to instantly communicate information about the types of paths. (Really, his whole series of articles on this is an excellent read.)

Fig. 2 – Horizontal Undercity from Hill Cantons

Fig. 3 – Vertical Undercity from Hill Cantons

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The post goes into a lot more detail. But I think the value of pointcrawls might not be immediately obvious because we are trained to expect full terrain maps and full deck plans.

But the fact is, a full deck plan of a starship might not be required for an evening of play for Traveller. Consider this: a pointcrawl could be made of a starship, showing all the chambers on board and the routes might be able to take from one chamber to another. There’s really no need to draw up full deck plans. And if one is focused on a “theater of the mind” presentation of the ship and onboard action to the Player rather than miniatures, a pointcrawl might actually make a lot more sense. One need only glance down at the nodes and connections to see where the Player Character is in relation to other elements of the ship. Notes can be marked up next to the nodes (or within them) or however you want to roll.

The point being that sometimes we get so caught up in “the way things are supposed to be done” we don’t think through, “What exactly is the most useful way to record and impart this information?” or “What do I really need to run the encounter on this starship?”

Here’s the pointcrawl of a 200 ton Type A Free Trader I just whipped up for this post.

Notice that it tells me almost anything I’m going to need to describe what is happening on a ship. Most rooms are not going to be more than 8 meters across, which means that most combats will be at Close or Short range and sometimes stretch to Medium if the combats really make sure they’re firing at each other from one end of a longer room to another. Notice that cargo hold, even from end to end, falls within Medium range. (Notice too, that at certain points, where I thought it might matter, I noted the length or dimension of a room or corridor. One could do that with every room if one wanted to.

Now, listen. We all have access to the deck plans of a 200 ton Free Trader. This illustration isn’t that big a deal, in part because we all have those plans and in part because the lower deck of a Free Trader isn’t really that complicated or big.

But let’s say you needed to whip up a Corsair or any other kind of ship. The question is how much work do you really need to put into whipping up a new ship? Do you really need detailed deck plans to scale? Will your players ever notice if you don’t?

But let’s think about bigger locations:

• space stations
• underground mining operations
• cities of a billion people
• the continent of an alien world
• and so on…

Do you really need a details map of all the locations?

My guess is no, you really don’t. You do need to know major locations. You do need to know how one place connects to another. (Is there a monorail between the two locations? Or do you have to walk? Use different colors for each type of movement and name travel times and your pointcrawl becomes both useful and efficient!) Entire continents can be mapped out this way, with key points of interested written down as nodes and notes about traversing the distances between the nodes right on the sheet. (Here’s a link to a post at Hill Cantons about replacing wilderness hex-maps with wilderness pointcrawls. Really worth checking out!)

Traveller is a tricky game in that the Player Characters can (and should) travel from world to world to world. This is, I think, one of the reasons the game can seem daunting to Referees (or would be Referees). If you’ve been raised on RPGs thinking you need full color maps of cities and continents draw to scale, the thought of having to create, say, 20 planets, along with all the cities, colonies, bases, and ancient ruins might seem overwhelming. And let’s be clear–IT IS OVERWHELMING!!! A given subector might have 20 planets. The idea that you, as the Referee will have all the details of those worlds mapped out and ready to go because the Players decide to have their characters pick up stakes and light out for another planet on a whim would drive anyone mad. This is supposed to be a fun hobby… not a full time job!

And keep in mind: When I write all of this, I am assuming that the original Traveller rules were designed for improvised play… not railroaded plots. The Player Characters should be able to pick up stakes and head off to a new world on a whim, and new troubles should arrive on a whim as well. That’s what the game is about.

Also keep in mind that the abstract range band system from the original Traveller rules. Marc Miller provided a solid, abstract system that could keep things moving along without getting bogged down in measuring every foot minutia. “Mapping” as we know it from early Dungeons & Dragons makes sense if you are underground, in an ill-lit environment, wondering if you’ll remember how to get out, while checking the map for empty gaps that might suggest there is a secret door you passed and missed earlier. You don’t need that level of mapping detail if you’re hangout out on a space station or taking a monorail from one city to another. The notion of pointcrawls fits right into the design philosophy of the original Traveller rules.

So, is it worth it to you to relive yourself of the responsibility of having to map out entire continents and space stations in order to give your players plenty of freedom, cut down on your prep time, and give yourself the confined to know you can handle whipping up whatever environment your players go to?

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Finally, Anne has promised to get to a post about “mini-crawls” very soon. But in the meantime she has a new post up with more examples of pointcrawling.

A Smart Blog Post from DIY & Dragons: Sub-Hex Crawling Mechanics – Part 1, Pointcrawling

I’m beginning to piece together the city of Xam in the Qelong Valley for when I pick up my Lamentations of the Flame Princess game. (A member of the group is currently running Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. Pew-Pew!)

For context:

Two barely conceivable beings have fought a war for a generation over Sajavedra. They wish to claim its rich harvests of souls and fields, its intricate networks of ley lines and temples, for their own. They use weapons of unspeakable magic, and sometimes their weapons target the province of the Qelong Valley. Xam was once the capital of Qelong. Missiles filled with magical energy called Aakom struck the city four generations ago. Because of the magical nature of the city the weapons not only did horrible damage, but raised the city onto a sheer mesa 1,000 feet high and corrupted it with all sorts of magical energies. (Think Area X from The Southern Reach Trilogy, if you’re into that sort of thing.)

My mind, however, has been somewhat boggled: How, exactly, do I map out a ruined city that is about 6 miles across and about 18 miles in length?

Not, “How do I make a map?” But what is the best procedure for building a useful diagram for my Players and I to interact with to produced the most fun. I want my Xam to be a mini-hex crawl of sorts, with each hex about 2 miles across. I want to have at least three interesting locations per hex (even if it just a magic fountain) and a few of these locations should be mini-dungeons or full dungeons. The place should be full of ruins covered in a strange jungle, with countless weird environmental issues as well as the ruins of survivors and the dead who harnessed the strange magical energies that have cut their city off from the rest of the world. (Some have succeeded, some have failed.)

I wasn’t satisfied with the hex crawl component of Qelong we played last year. It was fine… but I felt like I was missing some sort of fun that had lured me to the notion of hex crawling. (All my efforts to ask folks about hex crawls on forums had let to answers like: “It’s a hex crawl. You know… with hexes!” Which might be enough of an answer for some folks, but I’m always on the lookout for procedures and techniques that will help the game run smoothly and maximize the fun.)

I’ve been recently inspired by a recently released hex-crawl called Hot Springs Island. It, too, works at a scale of 2 miles per hex. A reviewer referred to it more as a “pointcrawl than a hexcrawl.” And in this technique I saw a way to help me map out Xam for best effect. That said, I wasn’t that sure of what a “pointcrawl” was either.

Imagine my delight, then, in coming across this blog post by Anne at DIY & Dragons: Sub-Hex Crawling Mechanics – Part 1 from a few days ago. In it she does a deep dive into pointcrawls, using examples from many games and blogs. (The illustration above is one of the examples she uses. It is the city of Cörpathium from over at Last Gasp, built from a series of tables that you should really check out if you’re into this sort of thing. It’s already given me some ideas of how I want to build tables for Xam. Also, Last Gasp is great, and I suspect I’ll be using a lot of material from the site to flesh out Xam. It has the perfect mix of weird and usable.)

At the top of the blog Ann writes:

Beyond Formalhaut recently wrote about wilderness exploration, and it got me thinking about a pair of posts I’ve been wanting to write for awhile now, comparing the two major ways I know of to explore adventuring sites within the wilderness: pointcrawls and mini-hex-crawls.

By “adventuring sites” I mean spaces that call for a new scale for mapping. They’re larger than dungeons, too large for 10′ squares, but smaller than the overland wilderness, too small for 6 mile hexes. The ruined city is perhaps the archetypal “adventuring site” that seems to demand a new scale for mapping, but it could be any (probably outdoor) location that the characters can explore directly, rather than having the encounter hand-waved or abstracted – the exterior surrounding a dungeon, a cemetery or graveyard, a garden, a battleground, perhaps even the characters’ own campsite. Adventuring sites call for a new kind of mapping to put them on paper, and a new kind of procedure to bring them into play.

Pointcrawls and minicrawls are two different ways of mapping these new spaces, two different procedures for tracking and running the characters’ movement through the space.

These are referee-facing mechanics. For the most part, the only person who will be directly affected by the choice will be the judge running the game, not the players.

There may be some effect on the players. In my opinion, pointcrawls seem to lend themselves to running adventuring sites where all (or almost all) the sub-locations are known, the paths between those locations are limited, and travel along those paths is uneventful. Minicrawls seem to lend themselves to running adventuring sites where there are few (if any) scripted locations, where most content is procedurally generated, where movement is essentially unrestricted, and where travel and discovery are themselves the primary activities within the site. In short, I think pointcrawls work best for more dungeon-like locations (and locations with more keyed encounters), while minicrawls work best for more wilderness-like locations (and locations with more procedural generation.)

Part I of Ann’s posts is about pointcrawls. I’m looking forward to Part II about mini-hexcrawls.

Traveller Out of the Box: Weapon Cards, 1977 Edition

Some of you may know I made a set of weapon cards for the 1981 Classic Traveller. Each card lists a specific weapon, the +/-DMs for Strength or Dexterity, and a matrix that combines the DMs for range and armor from Book 1 into a single Throw number.

Here is an example of how the matrix works:

1. The DM for SMG against No Armor is +5.
2. The DM for SMG against the five ranges (as you note) are -4 +3 +3 -3 -9
3. When we combine these two DMs (which is what the Weapon Card matrix does) for No Armor at the five ranges, we get +1 +8 +8 +2 -4
4. We then applied these five DMs (which combine the DMs for range and armor) to the required hit roll of 8+
5. The final numbers printed on the card represent what the Player needs to roll or better on 2D6. So: No armor, close range is DM +1, meaning the PC needs to roll a 7+.

In this way, the Player only has to look down at the card and read the Throw number required.

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I now have a set of the cards for the 1977 edition of Traveller. The big difference is the damage values. In the 1981 edition of the game all damage values are whole dice (xD6). In the 1977 edition of the game some of the damage rolls are modified by a +/-DM (xD6 +/-y).

Here’s an example of the card in action:

The character needs to Throw the number in the matrix or higher to hit (excluding other DMs of course.)

In the notation above the character has a Blade-5 expertise and a DM +1 because of his Strength of 9+, and so he has a DM +6 when using blade. A character with melee weapon expertise can apply that expertise as a -DM to incoming melee attacks, thus the parry value of 5, for a DM -5 if someone attacks him with a melee weapon while he is defending with his Blade.

You can print the cards out, cut them pages into quarters, and hand a card to any Player with a PC carrying a given weapon. (I printed them on a heavier card stock, using pre-perforated sheets used for name tags. Each weapon card sheet divides neatly into equal quarters.)

As always, if you spot any errors let me know!