In explanation I suppose I should
explain the shift in genres here, when I wrote last time I was GMing
a Legend of the Five Rings game and waiting on word back from the
designer of 43 AD before moving ahead with it. My son asked to play
AD&D at home again, and, serendipitously, I had just handed the
GMing reins over to Darryl in the L5R game. Autumn approaching, I
decided to pick up the aborted Viking campaign that we had barely
started with the pregens I made. The pregens weren't real popular
though, so I decided to let everyone make their own characters to
play and make this equipment list to print out for them. We're also
adding in a few house rules. No Clerics, Shields Shall Be Splintered,
D30 Rule, 0 Hit Point Rule, and maybe a critical hit table from Star
Wars Gamer. We're going to use the no Demi-Humans rule from the
Viking Campaign Sourcebook from 2nd edition as well as the new
classes and the "Gifts". I am also going to secretly track
Glory to see if they attract a God's attention or if they get to go
to Valhalla when they die, I got the idea from the Saga minigame from
TSR.
The simplified version-
I had written a much more complex
version of this and decided to just rewrite the whole bloody thing
rather than force my players to learn to wrap their tongues around
all the Old Norse words, weights and measures. I am also altering the
more complex coinages of the early medieval period down to, at least
for the present, three and they are all Silver, Silver Pennies are
equivalent to an AD&D Silver Piece (but weigh in at about 20 to
the ounce, rather than 10 to the pound; or about the weight of a
modern American dime); the Half-Penny, which is 1/2 the size and
value, and the Arab Dirhem, which is twice the size and value. Most
stuff is being repriced by me, because I like to make the equipment
list representative of the actual Viking Age, rather than some
generic fantasy version of it.
Armor-
Helmet, Plain (Spangenhelm)
100 SP
Helmet, Improved*
200 SP
Shield, Round (Medium) [Center-Grip]
45 SP
Jerkin (Leather)
50 SP
Byrnie (Chainmail)
750 SP
Scale/Lamellar**
1200 SP
*The "improved" part of the
helmet is Oculars, or Cheek-Guards, or an Aventail, perhaps even a
Full Face Mask- each improvement is going to add 100 SP to the cost
of the helmet and the protective value of improvements is only going
to come into play versus called shots or critical hits, so your
mileage may vary.
**Scale and Lamellar are not native
armors to the Norsemen and really are anachronistic to the early
period in which we are playing, but in the interest of keeping PCs
alive and having some more diversity of appearance, I am going to
allow them. They come from the east, Byzantium and the Saracens, the
steppes of Russia.
Weapons-
Great Axe (2-Handed Axe)
100 SP
Francisca (Throwing Axe)
40 SP
Bearded Axe (Battle Axe)
60 SP
Hand Axe
30 SP
Woodsman's Axe
50 SP
Throwing Spear
30 SP
Fighting Spear
40 SP
Broad Sword
500 SP
Short Bow
100 SP
Arrow
2 SP
Quiver (10 Arrow Capacity)
10 SP
Knife
30 SP
Scramasax (Cheaply made Short Sword)
150 SP
Dagger
60 SP
have you repriced the non weapons and armor lists? Once upon a time I created a D&D campaign setting loosely based on Waterworld, set on a future Earth that was being inundated due to vsarious breaches from the Elemental Plane of Water. There was very little land left, especially to the east of the Mississippi (which itself was basically an ocean trench far off the coast of Colorado.) I was using a new currency based upon food and eating meals called squares. 3 squares would be enough food to comfortably feed an adult for a day. There was little currency naturally. Steel items were sometimes acavanged from what had been higher elevation cities in the pre-flood America. A new sub raqce of human had developed with water breathing and webbing at hands and feet for better swimming. I quit development around p. 4 of repriceing candles and whatnot in squares. I did cull the OG list a lot, but the campaign was set at a major floating "city" (actually the abandoned hulk of an ancient oil rig) so there was more commerce than other places. It got boring though, and I was living somewhere else and had no players anyway...
ReplyDeleteI was actually still working on that, but I figured that the players were going to be mostly concerned with their armor and weapons. I mostly wanted to get this posted before I decided I needed to start over again, but yes, I can post the rest of the equipment list too.
DeleteYou could easily account for Byzantine armor through a Varangian Guard style mercenary company coming home from the East and trading with the native Danes and Norwegians. This would also, potentially, account for their cost!
ReplyDeleteRight, that was my thought. I had planned on setting this campaign at the dawn of the Viking Age, so I'd have more time to work with if it was popular, but I think I'll set it a little further in so I can expand the starting areas a bit and make contact with Byzantium already have happened. This actually makes sense because the campaign centers around a mystical island I have invented between the Faroes and Iceland, so I can make it a stepping stone on the way to the discovery of Iceland that was just forgotten to history; perhaps as a result of it's mystical nature?
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ReplyDeletewho made this helmet and where can I buy one? johnsonbrentlee@yahoo.com
ReplyDelete