Steppe Warrior Class

I feel like I should put this link here too-

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/144238/Steppe-Warrior-Class

This is a newly edited version of the class I presented here a couple of years ago, and the inaugural "product" for Great Khan Games. I have plans for more stuff, that is not older content, in the near future.

Steppe Warrior Class

The Steppe Warrior is a hardy nomad from one of the tribes that range across the steppes from the taiga in the north to the deserts and mountains of the south, they are the bane of more settled, civilized lands when they are united and a scourge to each other when they are not. They live by following their herds, hunting wild game, gathering wild fruits and vegetables and by raiding their neighbors. I introduce this class as the warrior elite of their society. I might have picked the Scythians, the Turks, or the Huns as my model, and there are a great many similarities among steppe peoples, but I chose the Mongols, because it's Mongol Month. Feel free to give me feedback and/or use this class as you will- I present it as a gift to the OSR community in baroque AD&D 1st edition format; absolutely unplaytested because I have been beating my head against a brick wall with this class for the better part of a month.

Enjoy!

The Steppe Warrior is a sub-class of Fighter. Steppe Warriors have no Prime Requisite and therefore receive no bonuses for high Ability Scores. In order to become a Steppe Warrior a character must have 12 Strength, 12 Wisdom, 15 Dexterity and 14 Constitution. Steppe Warriors are born horsemen, as such they receive no penalties for shooting from horseback and have a number of advantages to being mounted as they level up. They may be of any Alignment, but only Humans, Half-Elves and Half-Orcs may become Steppe Warriors. Half-Elves are limited to 8th level as a Steppe Warrior, Half-Orcs are limited to level 10. The Steppe Warrior receives 1d10 per level gained for hit points plus 2 hit points for every point of Constitution they have above 14. Steppe Warriors make Saving Throws as a Fighter of the same level.

A single classed Steppe Warrior may Specialize in one of the following weapons-

Composite Short Bow

Scimitar

Horseman's Mace

Light Lance

Experience                              Level               Hit Dice                       Title

0-3000                                      1                        1                            Khazak

3001-6000                                2                        2                            Nokhor

6001-12000                              3                        3                            Ba'atur

12001- 20000                           4                        4                            Noyen

20001-40000                            5                        5                            Orlok

40001-80000                            6                        6                            Darugha

80001-145000                          7                        7                            Taishi

145001-225000                        8                        8                            Gurkhan

225001-310000                        9                        9                            Khan

310001-625000                       10                     9+3                   Khan (10th Level)

625001-950000                       11                     9+6                   Khan (11th Level)

950001-1250000                     12                     9+9                   Khan (12th Level)

All Steppe Warriors are virtually born in the saddle; riding and mounted combat are their birthright, as such attacks made from the saddle are made as though they were one level higher. They are unlikely to ever be thrown from their mount (85%) and if they are they are equally unlikely to be injured, this percentage increases every level by 1%. Furthermore, as mounted archery is integral to their mode of warfare, they suffer no penalties for firing while mounted, even while moving, and may fire at any point during their move in any direction.

All Steppe Warriors also have the following abilities-

-Hide in Natural Surroundings: with the same percentage chance as a Thief of the same level using his Hide in Shadows ability.

-Surprise: In Natural Surroundings a Steppe Warrior can Surprise an opponent on a 3 in 6 and is only surprised 10% of the time. This only applies in natural surroundings.

-Leadership: When dealing with other Steppe Warriors a Steppe Warrior adds his experience level to his Charisma score to get an effective Charisma with other Steppe Warriors.

-Survival: a Steppe Warrior can effectively survive in the wild by hunting and gathering, he can build shelter and make fire.

Tracking- A Steppe Warrior can track as a Ranger of equivalent level, but only outdoors.

The Steppe Warrior only continues to improve in horsemanship throughout his career-

-At 3rd level they can vault into the saddle, regardless of how heavily armored they are, and have their mount underway in a single segment.

-At 4th level a Good Aligned female Steppe Warrior may handle and ride a Unicorn as a steed.

-At 5th level a Steppe Warrior can urge his mount to greater speeds than normal, adding 2" to the movement rate for up to 6 turns. This causes no damage to the mount.

-At 7th level a Steppe Warrior can urge his mount to jump further than normal.

-At 9th level the Steppe Warrior can ride Pegasi, Hippogriffs, Griffons or other flying horselike creatures at the DM's discretion.

Summon Horde- Starting at 8th level the Steppe Warrior gains the ability to summon a Horde of his people, he is a recognized leader among them. Take his experience point total and divide it by five to get the size of the horde. Therefore an 8th level Steppe Warrior could summon between 290-550 men to his side, while a 12th level Steppe Warrior could summon between 1900-2500 men, this horde is in addition to their normal followers.

The Horde must have a stated purpose for gathering, (plunder the wealthy city of Kashgar, rescue the Great Khan's Daughter, etc) and it will take a week to gather in the Steppe Warrior's home territory. A Horde will disband after a number of weeks equal to the summoner's level. A Horde may be held together for an additional 1-2 weeks if there are exceptional circumstances (23 or higher effective Charisma, massive plunder distributed to the Horde, stated goal within easy reach, etc), but never longer and if a Steppe Warrior has a Horde disband under him, he is disgraced in his homeland and may never raise another Horde.

The Horde will also have two aides equal to 1/2 the level (rounded down) of the character summoning it and those aides will each have two assistants each equal to half their level (rounded down), thus a 9th level Steppe Warrior summoning a horde will have two 4th level Steppe Warrior Aides and four 2nd level Steppe Warrior assistants. Clerics, Shamans or Witch-Doctors (depending on the nature of the Steppe Warrior's tribal religion) may also be present at the DM's discretion.

Multiclassing- Steppe Warrior/Cleric 1/2E, 1/2O; Steppe Warrior/Druid- 1/2E; Steppe Warrior/Magic-User 1/2E; Steppe Warrior/Thief 1/2E, 1/2O; Steppe Warrior/Assassin 1/2E, 1/2O; Cleric/Steppe Warrior/Magic-User 1/2E; Cleric/Steppe Warrior/Assassin 1/2O

Optional Starting Money Table-

To show just how cash poor the steppe is and to reflect the normal equipment found there I came up with this-

Roll 1d6x10 for starting gold- buy anything with that. For interesting, exotic fun let them buy stuff from the Oriental Adventures book too. Currency exchange rates are on page 38.

New items-

Dried Meat- 1GP/Week

Koumiss- 1SP/Gallon

Ger, Small- 150GP

Dried meat could be mutton, beef, camel, horse or some variety of wild game, it is typically placed under the saddle when riding so the horse sweat and crushing action can soften it enough to eat. Koumiss is a drink made from fermented mare's milk. A Ger, also known as a Yurt, is either a very sophisticated tent or an easily dismantled and moved cloth covered house used by nomadic and semi-nomadic people throughout Eurasia, depending on who you ask.

Roll 1d6 on this table for an armor, weapon and horses package.

Assume everyone starts with one set of clothes which includes a furry hat, if they have a bow, it is a Composite Shortbow and that they have a quiver for the arrows. They also start with a saddle, bit and bridle.

1- Leather Armor, Light Lance, Dagger, 1d4 Steppe Ponies*

2- Padded Armor, Bow, 12 Arrows, Hand Axe, 2d4 Steppe Ponies

3- Shield, Light Lance, Scimitar, Bow, 12 Arrows, 2d4 Steppe Ponies

4-Leather Armor, Shield, Dagger, Hand Axe, Bow, 12 arrows, 2d4 Steppe Ponies

5-Chainmail, Shield, Scimitar, Bow, 12+2d6 Arrows, 4+2d4 Steppe Ponies

6- Lamellar**, Hand Axe, Light Lance, Bow, 12+2d6 Arrows, 4+2d4 Steppe Ponies

DM's should, of course, feel free to adjust this table to their needs, there are way more combinations of armor, weapons and horses that I could have done, I just wanted to keep it simple. The Steppe Ponies are pretty essential though, even a poor Steppe Warrior should have at least one horse.

*Steppe Ponies should be treated as Light Warhorses, but with better morale and AC 6, they also forage on their own and thus do not require fodder and are hardier than most horses with better endurance, they almost never come up lame.

**Treat as Scale armor, I threw it in for flavor and accuracy. Truth be told they had leather lamellar too, but I didn't want to be confusing.

Roll 1d6 on this table for extra stuff.

1. Horseman's Mace, Winter Blanket, Small Iron Pot

2. Guard Dog, bone whistle, Large Sack

3. Pack Camel, Pack Saddle made for said Camel, 25lb sack of rice flour

4. 1d6+2 Sheep, Sheep Dog, Iron Shears

5. 1d4 Yaks, Wagon, Small Ger (12')

6. Helmet, Horseman's Mace, Dagger

Obviously, this was just off the top of my head and DM's should feel completely free to adjust the "extra stuff" as they see fit. My intention here was to throw the Horseman's mace into some starting kits and add some more culturally fitting, but not necessarily of obvious immediate use, items into the mix. "What am I going to do with 4 Sheep?" a player might ask, I say think outside the usual box. Sheep are walking provisions, trade goods and a bit of an early warning system, although the dog that comes with them is better at that.

Common Medieval Mongol Names-

Mongol Female-

Altani, Bargujin, Borte, Chabi, Chagur, Chakha, Checheyigen, Chotan, Doregene, Ebegei, Gurbesu, Ibakha, Khadagan, Khogaghchin, Khojin, Khorijin, Khugurjin, Khulan, Nomolun, Onggur, Sokhatai, Sorghaghatani, Tekine, Temulun, Yesugun, Yesui

Mongol Male-

Abagha, Aguchu, Ajinai, Akutai, Alagh, Alchi, Altan, Bögen, Babür, Bagaridai, Bala, Barlas, Bartan, Batu, Baykara, Begter, Berke, Chagatai, Chanai, Chigu, Chilagun, Chiledu, Dagun, Daritai, Djebe, Dodai, Esen-Buga, Günkan, Ghazan, Gughlug, Harghasun, Horkhudagh, Hulegu, Husun, Inalchi, Inancha, Iturgen, Jurchedei, Khachi, Khachigun, Khagatai, Khogaghchin, Khudu, Khuyildar, Kokochu, Koksegu, Kubilai, Megetu, Morokha, Mungke, Munglig, Nakhu, Nayaga, Nogay, Noyan, Ogodei, Okhotur, Oljaitu, Oronartai, Sahruh, Sencer, Shiragul, Shirgugetu, Soyurgatmis, Subotei, Suyiketu, Taghai, Tamachi, Temuge, Temujin, Temur, Toghoril, Toghtoga, Toktamis, Tolui, Torolchi, Turgay, Ukhuna, Ulugh, Utudai, Yegu, Yesunge, Yokhunan

OK, so, I pretty much adapted this from the Unearthed Arcana Cavalier and Barbarian classes and toned their abilities down for the most part, so they wouldn't be overpowering, but like I stated above, this is all completely untested. I had a bunch of other ideas for them and I really wanted to include some stuff I cut, but when I thought about it I kept thinking that "This is like the Cavalier's whatever" or the "Barbarian's Horde summoning ability is important"; and it is, the English word "horde" comes from the Mongolian "ordu". So in the end I decided to default to Gygax and mix and match and alter most of the stuff I wanted from those two classes with a few of my own ideas and cut a bunch of stuff out. I guess in the end you know it's done when you can't cut anything else, right?

Questions, comments and criticisms are welcomed, particularly if there is something glaringly obvious that I left out.

As Requested, My Curriculum Vitae-

Pictured - Mona and I at our big SCA wedding with the kids, Ash was had turned 12 then and Em had just turned 7 earlier in the month, John was still 9.

My name is William Dowie. I am a 43 year old white man from the rural northern edge of central New York state, on Lake Ontario. I am a giant history nerd, in college I majored in history with a focus on Classical Antiquity and the European Middle Ages, I minored in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. I also took a bunch of Anthropology courses, but not enough to count as a second major. I am 6'6" tall and I have worked as a substitute teacher, short order cook, bouncer, machinist and convenience store clerk, just to name a few. I speak French passably well, Spanish slightly less so, and can usually guess my way through written Italian or Latin. I have tried to teach myself Scots Gaelic, much less successfully, but can pick out a number of written words on sight and sometimes recognize words when I hear them. Oddly enough I can pick out Welsh words now just as easily when they are cognates to the Scots Gaelic words I know, I see patterns in language easily.

I am married to a wonderful woman named Mona and we have three children; Ashli (19), John (17) and Ember (14), who were literally left on our doorstep when they were 11, 9 and 6 respectively. We live on a small, mostly forested plot of land in New Haven, New York - which is north of Syracuse and east of Rochester, nearest to the smaller city of Oswego, NY - where I continue to scheme ways to homestead and get off the grid, mostly because I hate the high cost of electricity in a county with three nuclear power plants, and I want healthier food than I can buy from the store, with the bonus that it'll be cheaper too. I have been frustrated in my attempts to clear my land because it's a lot harder to do than you would think, I have a lot more respect for pioneers now, especially since they did it with no power tools at all. I also have some valuable lumber that I can't seem to get anyone to harvest because my lot is too small and the presence of my house and the power lines along the edge of the road make it too difficult to be worth it, so apparently I need the price of Cherry to rise back to the level it was before our economic collapse to attract loggers.

I have been playing board wargames and D&D since 1980, when my friend Chris introduced me to both the week that we went to see Excalibur together with my dad. We played SPI's Sorcerer that weekend, because he had brought it over to my house and played D&D with him DMing before the week was out using the Holmes Basic rules. I went out and bought a set as soon as I could save up the money, maybe a month later. For a long time after that pretty much all of my money went into my D&D habit in some way or another, books, modules, Dragon Magazine, "official" Grenadier miniatures.

I found the SCA while the local group was doing a demo at the Sterling Renaissance Festival in Sterling, NY back in 1983 when I was 14, I have drifted in and out of the SCA ever since. I am currently missing Pennsic for my 41st time in a row. Something always comes up. Not that it matters anymore, I have passed my fighting prime and I don't think it's coming back no matter how hard I try. I keep resolving to make it to fighter practice more often and get back into my "Crown Tourney" rhythm, but that just isn't going to happen at my age anymore. I don't heal quick enough to fight six days a week anymore. That and I can't afford the gas money for the hundreds of extra miles per week I'd be putting on my minivan to go to all of the extra fighter practices and events. Still, I have made a lot of good friends in the SCA over the years and some great memories, I am happy to have been there for what I did and I wish I could do more still.

1985 was the year of the release of the 1st edition AD&D Oriental Adventures book, it's one of those books that you either love despite it's warts or you hate because of them. I love that book and it's probably because it's the only AD&D book I ever pre-ordered at Twilight Book & Game Emporium in Syracuse, NY - a sadly long gone FLGS. Despite the fact that the glue cracked on the binding causing several pages to become loose literally the first time I opened it, I was determined to get my money's worth out of it. Before my friend Tim left for Basic training in the US army the next year I took over DMing duties from him, which I had only rarely done before, and we played an epic OA campaign. I have played in one pretty epic OA campaign, as a Steppe Barbarian named Chanar Ilkhan, and DMed a few more since. One of my current projects is rewriting the OA book as I think it should have been.

As a side note, I was really anti-Rokugan because they changed the default setting in the 3e version of the Oriental Adventures book to Rokugan from Kara-Tur, and that made me, by default, anti-Legend of the Five Rings. I had been strongly attracted to the setting through AEG's Clan War miniature battle game prior to that, but hadn't bought into it at the time because I could not find at least one other person that was willing to also jump on board with me and had been burned by miniature games that way in the past. Now I am happy to say I have come full circle because I started buying old Clan War miniatures on EBay for my OA campaign and ended up getting the rules, which made me interested in the setting, which made me interested in the RPG, which got me to buy the new board game, which led me to buy some CCG cards too. I have even read through some of the published fiction, and, until it was shut down recently, was playing in a Facebook app version of the RPG called Emerald Empire. I really hated the 3e version of Oriental Adventures.

I played (A)D&D, tried out some other RPGs and wargamed a lot through the 1980s and into the 1990s. Wargaming kind of died in the 1990s (except on the PC, it boomed there), and I concentrated on just RPGs, then just D&D. Sometime after 3rd edition D&D came out, after the novelty wore off for me, I realized I disliked DMing it rather intensely. I was a little late coming to the 3rd edition party, because my D&D group was happy with 2nd edition and we didn't switch over until that campaign died. At the time, I had grown bored with 2nd edition AD&D and welcomed the change, although several things bothered me from the beginning; the faster rate of rising in level was a big one and I missed real multi-classing. I took me a while though, and DMing for several different groups, to realize the worst part was that it neutered the DM. My original AD&D groups, who were familiar with my fast and loose, shoot from the hip DMing style were OK with me making rules calls on the fly when none of us had any idea how something was supposed to work in the new system; we'd keep the game moving and I could look it up later. We might even like my way better. The other groups had people who STUDIED the rules though; at first, every time I made a ruling I'd see disapproving looks, eventually they got brave enough to start offering suggestions as to the right way to handle the situation.

So I quit DMing and let one of them DM in each group. Neither group lasted much longer. One started a new campaign and it was just too railroad-ey, I actually started stress testing that campaign to see what would happen if my character deliberately did things that were contrary to the predestined storyline. My character got punished, he made minor alterations to his storyline, but nothing seriously bad could ever happen to us, so, eventually, as a group we got bored and quit. The other guy just took over my game where I left off and had me make a character that would take his place. He had been unlucky in my game and died several times, but I assume that was because he kept making wuss characters, Rogues and Bards. I made a Barbarian, it was fun while it lasted, we went from 8th to 11th level with him at the helm, then he TPKed the party.

I took a break for a while, despaired over playing D&D again, then picked up Hackmaster. I ran a pretty fun Hackmaster game for a while and that was what led me to realize that I should just go back to playing 1st edition AD&D. That was the year we got the kids though, so I wasn't done with 3rd edition - when they decided they were interested in learning to play D&D, they wanted to play the newest version, 3.5 at the time. I gritted my teeth and went with it, anything to get kids into gaming. I have been walking them back in home games for years now, and have only recently discovered the Moldvay Basic half of B/X myself. Back in the day I bought the Expert Boxed Set when it came out, but I never got the Moldvay Basic Set that matched it because I already had a Basic Set, the Holmes Basic Set. So we've been playing that a bit lately, but my home games are pretty much at a stand-still right now, almost everyone that doesn't live here is too busy to come over and play, and everyone that does live here doesn't want to play with just their mom and dad, brother and/or sister. John is still gaming this summer, he's in a regular 4th edition D&D game with some guys he goes to school with and I am playing Dawn Patrol semi-regularly with Darryl & his dad, John and Dalton. We also recently tried out the Legend of the Five Rings 1st edition RPG here at the house. I am trying to start a game of 43 AD and it's supplement Warband, but the start has been plagued by bad luck and poor coordination of schedules.

I have always run my D&D games in my own "World of Garnia" fantasy setting as a default. It's my Greyhawk, my buddy Darryl and I have been working on this on and off for decades, we're doing a serious reboot of the entire setting and discussing it on my other blog. The primary idea for the campaign is that a group of Celts fled the Roman onslaught to this new world, the world of the Sidhe (Elves) where magic works. The main campaign area is one where their culture has flourished. I designed it originally using the core 1st edition AD&D rules, so there are a lot of 1st edition AD&D assumptions in the setting, but I am trying to make the setting system neutral so that it can be played with any FRPG system. When we have finished the maps and gazetteers they'll be released for use. Currently we're working on the whole world, then we plan to "drill down" and do specific regions. I will also most likely release the adventures that I have written for the setting over the years, it's just finding and transcribing all of the stuff, then updating it to match the current standard is going to be a chore.

By now you are probably wondering where all this "Great Khan" stuff comes from, right? Well back in 1996 my buddy Darryl and I were living most of a continent apart and wanted to play some D&D together. He had played a lot of the SSI Gold Box D&D games starting with "Pool of Radiance" when it came out and we were both new to the internet and on AOL at the time where they had a game called "Neverwinter Nights" that ran using the same engine, but was multi-player, up to 300 I think it was. I guess that makes it the first MMORPG, it was great fun anyway. Darryl was more savvy than me and figured out the best way to advance in the game was through guild membership, so we duly joined a guild together. ERS, the Explorers of the Rising Sun, who made us create new Screen Names, because that was your character's name in the game, and everyone in the guild was named ERS something. I was ERS Garn, Darryl was ERS Frodal, we were named after deities I had created for my Garnia campaign world.

But then we realized, being ambitious adventurers, that ERS was there to help newbies find their bearings and, in general, be nice; and we wanted to move up the food chain in NWN. So we decided to create our own guild, which would, even though it was a gamble, make us guild leaders and let us take charge of our destinies and how we wanted to play the game. We needed a hook though, and that's where our collective history nerdity took over, we decided to play as Mongols, because we wanted to send out a strong challenge to the status quo in all of the guilds and it was unique in NWN to play a culturally oriented guild, unless that culture was a fantasy one. Mostly I think we chose the Mongols though because I was playing them at the time in Civilization. Partly I think we picked them because we both loved the NES game Genghis Khan*, Darryl and I used to spend weekends playing that game together. We also both liked the Mongol reputation for ass-kickery and conquest. Then we studied and studied some more, at this point I think that our kids could hold their own at a conference of Mongol Medieval History scholars.

Anyway, the Steppe Warriors were born. Technically, since NWN is in the Forgotten Realms, we were members of the, at the time, recently defeated Tuigan Horde that decided to march west rather than return east. Darryl was our first Khakhan with his character SW Ogotai, named after one of the sons of Genghis Khan, the reasoning was that he could afford to be online more often (remember this was when you paid/minute of use) because I was in school at the time, and he was a better recruiter. My character was named SW Jagatai, also after a son of Genghis Khan. Ultimately Darryl resigned the position of Khakhan and I was elected to fill it. We've had our highs and lows as a group, and we're pretty dormant now, but I have been Jagatai, Khakhan of the Steppe Warriors since 1997 on the internet, so when I named the blog and when I created my initial Blogger account, I just naturally went with the same motif. My Yahoo email address is still SWJagatai at yahoo dot com, created in the same era. Back when I was sure we were going to leap from AOL's NWN into the expanding universe of MMOs I registered three domain names, steppewarriors.com, steppewarriors.org and steppewarriors.net; I used to joke that they would soon be followed by steppewarriors.edu and steppewarriors.gov. Clearly things didn't turn out as well for the Steppe Warriors as I had anticipated in the late 1990s.

Ultimately, I am pretty pleased with my alternate persona. In doing the research to properly play a Mongol character I have learned a great many things about the Mongols and other steppe peoples. I have eaten a bunch of Mongol food, drank Kumiss, shot arrows from a composite bow (not while mounted though), been in a yurt and made friends with a bunch of people that I otherwise probably never would have met. When I think about how it could have gone another way, if I'd been playing a different Civilization that day when Darryl and I were talking on the phone, or if he and I hadn't played so much of Koei's Genghis Khan together and he hadn't been as receptive to the idea, or maybe it was the fact that he had played in one of my epic Oriental Adventures campaigns that made him cool with the idea. If Darryl hadn't signed on for Mongols, we might have been a Samurai guild or a Viking guild or a Celt guild, they were all infinitely more familiar to both of us at the time; or maybe we'd have gone with something lame like a Dark Elf Ranger guild, who knows?

At any given time I usually have more irons in the fire than is wise, so many of my projects get back-burnered until I get back around to them. Currently I have on hold an Oriental Adventures campaign that just kind of fizzled when it was starting to get good, I had converted the Temple of Elemental Evil for OA and made it the Black Temple from OA1. I have a B/X Viking campaign that stopped when two of my regular adult players got new jobs. I have a B/X conversion for WW II that I spent a lot of time working on last summer, but my regular group, which is mostly my wife and kids and family friends, was lukewarm about play-testing it. I'd say it's an early alpha level right now. I am working on a total rewrite of the 1st edition OA book, kind of recasting it in a form I find more desirable. I just started learning the L5R RPG, I am GMing and the party is about 1/2 way through the adventure in the back of the book, I still haven't found the fumble rule. I have announced several times, prematurely, the start of my 43 AD campaign, so while that should be starting soon, I am going to not say when just in case something happens again. Mostly though, right now, getting a lot of my time behind the scenes, is the reworking of my old Garnia campaign world. We've made some interesting progress on it. I also have a bunch of OSR stuff piling up on my to read list, making me wish I had bought hard copies rather than pdfs because I mostly hate reading off my monitor, but that's where my copies of "Lamentations of the Flame Princess", "Carcosa", "Vornheim", "Adventurer, Conqueror, King", and several other major releases are sitting waiting to be read.

*Out of all of Koei's strategy games for the NES, Genghis Khan had the best multi-player play, Nobunaga's Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms were too slow, and Nobunaga's Ambition II had the annoying "siege mode" in battle.

Dawn Patrol and Old School Battlestar Galactica

But first, this picture I randomly ran across on another blog of some Scythians, among the oldest school Steppe Warriors out there; so it's a shout out to my old Guildies from AOL's version of Neverwinter Nights and Yurt dwelling folk everywhere.

Next, I ran across these pics on another blog.

Now I am not generally a huge fan of Sci-Fi cross-overs, but seeing the Cylon on the Enterprise bridge was pretty cool. The second one just reminded me of how I didn't get my Gold Cylon when I sent away for it. Which reminded me of how I was similarly screwed out of this-

What is it with me NOT getting Battlestar Galactica stuff when I was a kid? Was it Karma because I was the only kid I knew that got the Colonial Viper for Christmas that year? Everyone else got stuck with the lame almost viper toys, or, if they were lucky like two of my friends, got the Cylon Raider.

What were they thinking there? Kids will love having a ship never seen on the show? A Viper-esque thing on wheels will be great! Don't toy company execs actually ever have kids look at their proposed toys? Because the Viper and the Raider were the only ones they produced that were necessary. A shuttle might have been nice, or anything in the action figure scale. Action figures with detail and articulation at least as nice as Kenner's Star Wars figures would have made it a competitive line too, as it was I got all of mine as gifts; despite being a HUGE BSG fan (at 9 years old I was apparently their demographic), I knew their action figures were crap. Oddly enough, I have the Muffitt figure sitting on my desk- top shelf, center, under the light, on top of my Cesare Borgia tobacco tin full of old coins, behind a bunch of old school D&D miniatures, mostly Heritage and Ral Partha, some Grenadier or others.

Now I guess that it is apropos to this discussion, in a roundabout way, of BSG that my new copy of Dawn Patrol came in the mail today. Here are the pictures:

It is pretty nearly complete, I didn't count the counters, but the rest of the contents are there except for two maneuver cards used for tailing/being tailed. There are three complete sets of maneuver cards and one set missing two. My wife Mona actually volunteered to make some more sets using her skills with art and graphics programs and I can then print them out onto heavy paper and she'll cut the new decks out. There was also this odd box of counters that doesn't actually go to Dawn Patrol. I've been a Wargamer for three decades and I don't recognize these guys, anyone know what game they're from?

My wife took this picture with our digital camera, because I am impaired at photography, so I thank her for that

Anyway, over the years I have built and rebuilt BSG RPGs, and never got anyone to play with me, even my buddies like Lance who LOVES the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica. How Dawn Patrol fits in to all of this is that in a couple of incarnations of my BSG RPG, I pretty much used Dawn Patrol as a chassis for the fighter combat. Obviously, it needs some modification to make it a space fighter combat game, but, in theory, it works all right. I say in theory, because I never playtested it against anyone but myself. I don't exactly know when I started "designing" games, it seems like I must have been in high school, but that seems kind of late for a BSG project. Probably earlier, I was always stuck chasing the Questing Beast that is the perfect RPG as Big Darryl's Squire, so modifying rules was in my gaming blood from the time I was in junior high I guess.

I don't know how many iterations my BSG RPG went through. I do know that every time some hot new game system came along down the pike I had to see what it had that I could use, modify or be inspired by. I rewrote the WEG D6 Star Wars game into a BSG RPG, that was dead simple, all you really have to do is remove the Jedi and change some terminology. I had an entire GURPS version once, and I didn't even own any GURPS books at the time. Having access to your friends and mentors gaming libraries is a good thing. I am pretty sure I quit trying to put together an original series BSG RPG sometime in the mid 1990s; I am going to guess that I figured if it hadn't happened by then, it just wasn't going to happen. I know I quit before the D20 craze, otherwise I'd probably have driven myself nuts trying to make it happen again and have everyone in my D&D group be all lukewarm on the idea.

Of Yurts, and Books

I have recently decided that my project for this summer is to build a Yurt for camping. Am I taking this Great Khan thing too far? I don't think so. I have been in the SCA for decades now and Yurts are kind of a pain in the ass to set up, but are the palaces of the tent world. I have actually been trying to get my wife Mona to agree to building Yurts for us to live in full time, year round, for about a decade or more, but she is reticent to live in what she refers to as a "glorified tent", despite the fact that there are actually people doing just this very thing in upstate NY. There is even a campground along the Salmon river that uses Yurts for lodges year round. So I figure a really kick-ass camping Yurt may change her mind. Plus they are ecologically sound, reducing our footprint significantly, and I think it would be cool to have each of my kids get their own Yurt, like having a more private bedroom; they're all teenagers now. Ashli will be twenty in October, while her condition currently precludes her from living on her own, I am pretty sure a Yurt of her own would be OK. So I bought these books to help me with my Yurt quest, I haven't had a chance to read them yet, but I imagine they'll be useful, they had good Amazon reviews.

I already had this one from years ago, back then it was simply referred to as the definitive Yurt book. I learned a lot from this book, but I figured more information is always better.

Otherwise I just would have stuck with this one. It's a do it yourself guide to everything Mongolian, including Yurt building, but also clothing and the Uighur alphabet, among other things. It's real hands on, written for SCA folk.

Now, I also mentioned I had been reading some Mongol history recently, this is the book, it apparently accompanied a BBC series I will most likely never get to see. I have read a lot of Mongol history in the past too, this was just something new for me. I have an entire shelf of books devoted to the Mongols actually, with a couple more books on the way soon, not counting the Yurt books of course. Are there any Mongol RPG books out there? Was there ever a GURPS Mongols? I mean, I have TSR's "The Horde" and "Forgotten Realms Horde Campaign" for 2nd edition AD&D, and I bought the companion novels "The Empires Trilogy- Horselords, Dragonwall and Crusade"; spoiler alert- so they can keep the Forgotten Realms at status quo ante bellum they might just as well have never introduced any of the main characters in "The Horde" boxed set, they're all dead or irrelevant by the end of the 3rd book.

As far as history goes, I also got this in the mail today, it was a seminal read for the formation of our Mongol online gaming guild- The Steppe Warriors

And, because I am a giant Mongol nerd, I also got this, but I haven't had a chance to start it yet. I am still finishing up the last series I was writing about.

This copy of the L5R RPG's Boxed set "City of Lies" came in the mail yesterday, funny story, I was bidding on three boxed sets, two of which I had never seen before. They were all from the same seller, so I figured if I won all three I'd just pass this along to Dalton since he has an interest in running the L5R RPG, but I'd save on shipping and all. I got super sniped at the end of the auction on the other two and only won the one I already had.

Lastly, this came in the mail today, another WotC D20 Star Wars Sourcebook. I really liked the New Jedi Order series of novels, so I wanted to see their take on all of it, and, of course, it was an excellent deal.