Remember When I Said I Wanted To Get Some Magnets?

I found a place with reasonable prices and ordered some today. Here's what they look like-

Refrigerator Magnet.

Bumper Sticker Magnet.

What do you all think? Who wants one? I was thinking contest. Since this blog is "Powered by OSR", I was thinking of showcasing the talent of the OSR for everyone I play D&D with; so how about a One-Page Dungeon contest? Viking themed, since that's what I am running now, and either stand alone or able to be plugged in as a part of my mega-dungeon as a sub-level. Sound good?

Now, everyone who enters will get the refrigerator magnet, the top 3, chosen by me and whoever else volunteers to be a judge will get the cool bumper sticker magnet.

More Viking Stuff

I decided it would be easiest to go with the 2nd edition AD&D Vikings Campaign Sourcebook as written and add to it than it would be to convert from 2nd edition back to something earlier, mostly because I am a little pressed for time now, but also because I remember it being one of the better of the HR series. So it looks like I'll be DMing 2nd edition AD&D for the first time this decade tomorrow, good thing I saved my stuff. I am going to opt out of non-weapon proficiencies though, since they are an optional rule.

Now, on with the campaign premise: There is an island in the north Atlantic between the Faroes and Iceland. The year is 860 AD, Iceland has been discovered, but not settled. This island, called Dvergrholm, is the home of a band of actual, honest to goodness Dwarves who are fighting to regain control of their homeland from some evil Jotun-kind, Dokkalfar and their minions. Brave heroes are attracted to this island because of it's mystical nature, magic is strong here, and because of the opportunity for wealth and renown to be won in these battles. The island itself is roughly 15 miles north to south by about 10 at it's widest point east to west, it is dominated by hills and mountainous terrain in the center with new human settlements in the good, flat lands at the north and south ends. There is a second island called Sudrey to the south of the main island, it has no good places to land a ship and no human settlement.

There are Dwarven ruins on both islands in their interiors and those ruins often lead to mines, which often lead to a mega-dungeon complex beneath the island, think D-series, it's huge. The human settlements are like wild west mining boom towns, only with Viking adventurers. They are filled with traders looking to trade with the Dwarves for their exotic goods and with the adventurers for whatever they can haul out of the numerous caves and mines; Adventurers looking to score big and make themselves a name; people that realized they might not have what it takes to be top dog, but they can ride coat-tails and be lackeys and hirelings, shifty grifter types looking to fleece the foolish; and other sundry bits of the very best and worst that Norse society has to offer.

Now, I also plan on running this Pendragon style, so we run a few sessions and then everyone goes home for the rest of the year and comes back in the Spring, maybe have a few random events that crop up in the interim. I don't see a lot of PCs wintering here on Dvergrholm, presumably they'll have some responsibilities to their families and stuff to take care of and then there is always the need to build on your family line, so marriages will have to be arranged and all that goes with that too.

Given the "No Clerics" restriction, magical healing is going to be at a minimum, so I plan on having each player make three characters, a primary, a secondary and a tertiary PC. The primary PC and the secondary PC will travel together, the primary as the "Hero", the secondary as the "Sidekick", the tertiary being left behind in camp or in town as a member of the crew until the primary or secondary PC dies or is incapacitated for a lengthy period, he's "on deck", ready to go. In the event of an actual PC death, the tertiary gets promoted to secondary and another character gets rolled up to be the tertiary, sound good? Now, the death and dying rule I am putting into effect is going to alleviate some PC death, but will add a bunch of PCs with lengthy recovery times, so I thought this was better than retiring them because they were going to be out of action for 8-10 weeks at a clip sometimes.

I have come up with a simple table to help the players determine where their characters are from - if they need help, since none of us are actually from Scandinavia. I suppose they could also just look at it and pick a homeland, I just like randomness.

Roll 1d12

1-3: Norway

4-6: Denmark

7-8: Sweden

9-10: Ireland, Scotland or the Hebrides (roll a d6 or pick)

11: Russia

12: Orkney or Faroes (roll a die for even/odd or pick)

The table favors places that are either close by Dvergrholm or heavily populated. I considered adding a possibility of being a foreigner to the list, but foreigners don't have any rights in Norse lands unless they have a Norseman as a protector/sponsor, so I didn't want to encourage anyone to start down that road.

Viking Equipment II: The Non-Lethal Stuff

The comment on my last post from Ogotai made me think I might be doing part of the heavy lifting for his impending "Saga Heroes" campaign, but I don't really care since I'll be playing in it and I like Viking stuff anyway. I am not going to do a bibliography here or anything, but I'd like to point out that I am using other game books as sources for my prices- I didn't just make this stuff up myself and I don't know that they are accurate at all, but they do seem reflective of the Viking Age distribution of items. I have AD&D 2nd Edition HR 1 Vikings Campaign Sourcebook, GURPS Vikings, Runequest Vikings, Runequest II Vikings and Rolemaster Vikings that I have been using as inspirational reading while I cobble together the campaign, the simplified money and prices are mostly from GURPS although I have extrapolated prices for some items not present in the GURPS Vikings book, from the AD&D book particularly, by comparing the listed prices of similar items when available, or translating the prices from one system to the other directly when an item appears in one book but not the other and the price makes sense, or just making an educated guess when it doesn't. So, thanks Steve Jackson Games and Graeme Davis for doing the heavy lifting for me and making my D&D game run a little smoother; I am using a modified version of your stuff here without your permission, so I hope you all don't mind. You guys seem pretty cool, so I figure it'll be OK.

Clothing-

Breeches, Wool 5 SP

Breeches, Linen 8 SP

Breeches, Leather 15 SP

Boots 80 SP

Shoes 40 SP

Tunic, Wool 5 SP

Tunic, Brocade 20+ SP

Cloak, Wool 8 SP

Cloak, Fine Cloth 20+ SP

Cloak, Fur 100+ SP

Undershirt, Linen 5 SP

Underdress, Linen 7 SP

Dress, Linen 12 SP

Dress, Fine Cloth 25+ Sp

Hat, Wool 2 SP

Hat, Leather 4 SP

Silk Jacket 1,600+ SP

Food, Provisions, and Lodging-

Snack 1 SP

Meal, Average 2 SP

Beer, Barrel (25 Gallons) 50 SP

Wine, Keg (4 Gallons) 100+ SP

Mead, Keg (4 Gallons) 100 SP

Figs (per pound) 160 SP

Raisins (per pound) 160 SP

Salted Herring (per 100) 6 SP

Lodging (per night)* 1 SP

*Ordinarily the Norse code of hospitality makes this free, but in a larger settlement you might find yourself having to pay for a room.

Livestock-

Dog 10 SP

Dog, Hunting 170 SP

Dog, Guard 250 SP

Dog, War 200 SP

Heifer 200 SP

Milking Cow 250 SP

Ox or Bull 1,500 SP

Horse, Riding 1,200 SP

Hawk 100+ SP

Ewe 100 SP

Ram 250 SP

Goat 150 SP

Sow 200 SP

Boar 400 SP

Miscellaneous Equipment-

Chess Set 30 SP

Hnefetafl Set 25 SP

Silver Arm Ring 50+/- SP

Gold Arm Ring 200+/- SP

Brooch, etc. 50+ SP

Bone or Antler Comb 1 SP

Small Knife 1 SP

Small Casket (6"x9") 5 SP

Sea Chest (2-3 cubic foot capacity) 15 SP

Door Lock 5 SP

Bone Skates 2 SP

Bearing Dial 1 SP

Cauldron and Tripod 20 SP

Transport-

Ox Cart 1,600 SP

Horse Sleigh 2,400 SP

Faering (Boat, 20') 800 SP

Sexaering (Fishing Boat, 40') 1,600 SP

Knarr, Small (Cargo Ship, 50') 10,000 SP

Knarr, Large (Cargo Ship, 75') 16,000 SP

Longship, Small (Warship, 60') 16,000 SP

Longship, Large (Warship, 75') 24,000 SP

Drakkar (Warship, 100') 240,000 SP

That's about all for today. My sister is still in the hospital, going on three weeks now. She was home for a little over a day last week before she had to be rushed back due to complications for an emergency surgery. So that is kind of a bummer, but she seems to be doing OK now and they are planning on transferring her to a better hospital in NYC as soon as she's good enough to go.

Viking Equipment and Money

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

Three Play Reports Behind and Then Some

I have been busy playing some RPGs with Big Darryl, Darryl Jr., Dalton and a couple of times with Big Darryl's wife Joann.

I'll start at the beginning - We played the second session of 43 AD, and we fought those battles and it didn't go well due to some extraordinarily bad luck on the part of the players rolling dice for the Romans. We also had to retcon a couple of things from the earlier session because we'd missed a couple of minor points in the rules in the first session. David wasn't there, so we all kind of missed him, but we knew it was kind of a long shot getting the kid back to game regularly anyway, he lives like 50+ miles away from his grandparents, and summer's almost over. Big Darryl was really not pleased with the character he had rolled and was starting to really show it in a big way after the Romans started losing battles big against the Germans, he actually wanted his character to desert at one point and had to be talked out of it, which was good because he ended up rallying the survivors in the end. The session was a meat grinder for the Romans though and we really stress tested the rules, we're putting the campaign on hold until after the designer gets back from vacationing in Australia so we can discuss a few points with him.

So, to keep the roleplaying going on, I dug out my Legend of the Five Rings 1st edition stuff and had everyone make characters for that. I figured it was a longshot for campaign play, but Dalton was into L5R and so was I. Darryl Jr. was always cool with AD&D OA back in the day, although he hates D&D now (3e killed the love), so I figured a fantasy samurai setting that wasn't D&D would be cool. Big Darryl might be a hard sell, since he's 70 years old and not really into Asian fantasy. I had that stuff with me because I anticipated ending early and I thought we might want to try out another game, and I wanted to push it on my group truth be told, since I had bought all the stuff for it, and continue to buy stuff for it. I bought an L5R Disk Wars starter on EBay because I'd never seen one before and it was super cheap, but I digress. We actually didn't finish character generation that evening, as it turns out, even when you have two (semi-)experienced players who are (quasi-) familiar with character generation, teaching it to others is still time consuming. So I gave each of them a book to keep and went home for the better part of a week.

My prediction about who would welcome the game turned out to be dead wrong. Big Darryl loved the setting, although his grasp of the rules is still a little shaky; and Darryl Jr. hated the bulky rulebook with it's immensity of stuff to read. Big Darryl liked it so much he talked his wife Joann into playing, and she hasn't played an RPG since the 1980s. So we ended up with Joann playing a Crane Bushi, Big Darryl playing a Unicorn Bushi, Darryl Jr. playing a Unicorn Bushi (he hadn't read a lot of the setting stuff and decided based on the fact that they are about 1/2 Mongol 1/2 Japanese, he figured he could roleplay that - he is a former Khakhan of the Steppe Warriors after all and a veteran OA player) and Dalton playing a Crab Shugenja. The father and son Unicorns are actually playing cousins.

I started them out with the adventure in the back of the book - "Ceremony of the Samurai" where they compete in the Topaz Championship. Dalton had played through the first day of this before with my family, but since the game didn't apparently stick with them, I decided it was OK for him to play it again. He's a good enough roleplayer to not ruin the surprises he knows about for the other players and not act on player knowledge; and he did just that. Roughly 3/4s of the way through the first day of the tournament I got a phone call from my wife that my sister was in the hospital and things were looking pretty dire, this was almost two weeks ago now and she's still in the hospital and things are still looking pretty dire. She's 300 miles away though and my parents went down to see her, there's nothing anyone can do at this point except hope, and pray if you are a person of faith. Still, her condition weighs heavily on my mind, and it's the main reason I've not blogged much for the last couple of weeks.

Anyway, that call kind of threw me off my game, but I got us through to the end of the first day. Since I need to keep myself occupied I've kept on playing games, although I haven't really been on my game all that much. I've missed stuff in the adventure and skipped some stuff, done some stuff just flat out wrong. I can't decide if it's because I am still really new with this system or I am too distracted to think straight. Anyway, last time Darryl Jr.'s son Dylan joined us and played one of the NPCs, Hida Fujizaka; so we had three generations of gamers at the table while I GMed. I wish the game had gone better, but maybe next time. I only have to finish up with day three and then Darryl Jr. has volunteered to take the reigns as GM to give me a break, since he "had to learn all the damned rules anyway"; and I'll actually get to play. I think I am going to be a Lion Bushi or maybe a Crab, although if Dylan sticks to the group I don't want to steal his thunder.

Here's some more stuff I got in the mail -

I needed this, I gave away three copies

Several of these were doubles for me, some were not. They were extremely cheap as a lot though $40.00 for the bunch, that was the minimum bid. I was a little surprised to win.

Banners on the Cheap!

Like several other OSR bloggers I was contacted by a representative of this company and given the opportunity to test out their product. I am just going to cut to the chase and tell you I am very impressed. My project was to make a double sided 2'x3' - 1” hex/1”square battlemat for miniatures while I game. I know a lot of people are doing their mega-dungeons and all, but I figured these are vinyl and a good battlemat is always a worthwhile investment. I ended up making two different mats because the website design process doesn't support printing a different image on each side, no biggie though, most of my battlemats have been single-sided

The design process was not easy for someone with as little graphics design skill as myself, I had to figure out scaling and measured things with a ruler at 100% size on my monitor and hoped that was right. I had some help in this in the form of the hex grid file that I got from Joseph Bloch at GreyhawkGrognard, I knew it's actual dimensions and could resize it according to my project. I suggested to the nice people at Banners on the Cheap that they might want to have some hex and square grid templates on file there if they are serious about the gamer market. I also suggested that it might be nice to be able to print two different images on the same banner, so you could have the “gaming standard” hexes on one side, squares on the other. Those are the only caveats and they are minor quibbles at worst.

Here are the pictures of the two battlemats I had made by them:

They aren't kidding when they call themselves Banners on the Cheap, my gift certificate easily covered the production of both battlemats and left enough to print this too:

“God in Heaven, on Earth the Khakhan. Ruler of all mankind.” Yes, I printed a Genghis Khan banner, he is the inspiration for so much of what I do after all, and the spiritual father of this blog.

Now, on to the good stuff. They lie flat, they never have the rolled up corners of Chessex or Crystal Caste mats, where you have to either tape them down or put heavy stuff on them. I have read other reviews, but have not had the opportunity to test yet myself, that they take marker well and do not stain. When I actually get a chance to use these for a game I'll certainly add a comment here. They are cheap, these two mats and the Genghis Khan banner (2'x2') came in at what I would have paid for a comparably sized single-sided Chessex mat, plus I can get them on demand in any color I want.

Just to state it again I am well pleased with these mats, and any gamer would be wise to run over to Banners on the Cheap to make a similar purchase- I'll even provide you their link:

Banners

They have sister sites for signs and magnets too, I'd imagine they have the same high quality and low price and I am thinking about getting some magnets printed as a give away for my blog, just because I'd like to throw some business their way.

I'll be gaming today...

So I thought I'd share some stuff I got in the mail this week and never got around to showing you all-

I never bought this back in the day because I had the first edition version and it worked fine, but this was a good deal.

This is one of damned few female Mongol miniatures out there.

Still shrink-wrapped Clan War Oni. 

And the miniatures with the worst packing job I have ever seen, they were in a box, in a zip-lock bag with a few styrofoam packing peanuts surrounding the bag. These are the EBay pictures, one of the spearmen is pictured with a broken spear shaft. When they arrived here four were broken and all of them were bent badly.

I got something else too, but it has to wait until I get pictures of it to show you, so there's a cool surprise coming up! If you all ask nicely in the comments maybe my lovely wife Mona will dig out the digital camera and take the pictures while I am gone today.

Breaking News

Hackmaster Basic is now free.

Download it here.

I failed to announce the awesome sale they had to get rid of the stock of HM Basic books a while back, so to make up for it I hope I am quick enough to be a news source here.

Between the Erol Otus cover art and the feel of the rules, it's a new old school game. It's a little heavier on the rules than I am looking for these days, but it is a good game and it was the first game my daughter GMed and everything worked out fine. Your PCs are definitely not superheroes, they work for their coin.

Only 10 RPG books and a few other things

I have been meaning to jump on the OSR bandwagon meme of picking out which 10 RPG books I would take with me to a desert isle, presumably with a group of fellow gamers, and I realized that if I am limited to hard copies of books I actually own, while I have an extensive collection, it's going to be mostly, if not all, TSR (A)D&D books; and thus, a pretty boring list. Essentially it's the books on my desk- 1st edition AD&D DMG, PH, MM, OA and module OA1 Swords of the Daimyo, Holmes Basic, Moldvay Basic, Cook/Marsh Expert and modules B2 Keep on the Borderlands and X1 Isle of Dread. Now, if I get to assume that the last 2 modules are part of the boxed sets they come with, I'll pick James Pacek's "The Wilderness Alphabet" and the D&D Cyclopedia. I'll also have an extra copy of B2, unless I am allowed to switch out and put my copy of B1 in the Holmes box. There's only one non-TSR product on the list, and it's an alternate; it is an excellent book and I picked it over every other OSR product because of my preference for DMing wilderness adventures. More people should buy it.

Next, I have been doing a lot of reading. Legend of the Five Rings 1st edition RPG stuff, because I am GMing a campaign of that now apparently. I didn't think this one would take off as more than a one-shot, but everyone seems pretty into it. Roman & Celtic history and historical fiction because I am GMing a 43 AD campaign too, and I like to be both well informed and able to steal ideas from real history and from good authors. This game is off to a good start, even if some of the rules range from a bit to extremely unclear. Anyway, I have got more long days and nights of reading ahead of me, I just got these books over the last couple of days-

The First Man in Rome is actually a replacement of a replacement copy, it's one of those books I keep lending out and not getting back.

I liked Pompeii, so I am giving this one a chance too.

Miranda Green is just a great scholar when it comes to the Celts. 

Obviously the Yurt book and the book on Khubilai Khan are not for the 2 currently running RPG campaigns, they are for my Yurt building project and my long standing love of Mongol history respectively; I just felt that I should add them for completeness' sake.

I have also been working on my Garnia campaign world, I have two different areas that I am detailing right now. One area, I am waiting on art for from my wife, I forget from time to time that I usually fall to the bottom of her priority list for art projects. I want to strike while the iron is hot for me, while I am inspired to write about a particular topic, she needs to wait for the inspiration to strike her to illustrate that same topic. When we are in sync, things are great, when we aren't it is an agonizing wait for me; because it's always me waiting on art, I can't ever remember a time when she was waiting for my writing. The other area I want her art for too, because I want to move away from using public domain art or just pictures I found on the net; I figure if I ever get around to publishing any of this stuff it should have it's own illustrations and she's a great illustrator. She just doesn't appear to prioritize my projects over her own, which annoys me.

So while I have been cooling my heels and NOT working on those projects and NOT reading for 24 hours a day, I have fallen off the wagon and indulged in a few games of Civilization. I say a few games because I haven't played in a couple of years now and I apparently am not the Civilization powerhouse I used to be, that's a humbling experience. I had to drop down two levels of difficulty while I get my Civilization bearings back again and I am still not doing great, just not getting trounced. I used to play the game all the time heavily modded, I tried that and couldn't remember what all the mods did, other than make the game harder. I had to switch back to vanilla Civilization IV + Warlords + Beyond the Sword. I used to create mods for this game, I made an awesome Scotland Civilization, now if I make it to the modern age I am likely to be a 3rd rate power.  

43 AD Begins at Last -

I didn't want to mention starting the 43 AD campaign for fear that I'd bring down the curse upon it again, but we started it yesterday. Since this is a mini-review of the game system as well as a play report, I'll try and remember to mention what was good and bad about the game system as opposed to just what was good and bad about playing it.

Right out of the gate Murphy's Law struck and I didn't have access to a full copy of the rules, which I brought with me on a flash drive, because Dalton didn't bring his laptop, which he ordinarily brings with him everywhere. That was no big deal though because I had printed out four player packets and a GM packet, which included all of the stuff from the player packets and some extra stuff that I thought might be useful, but never actually came into play. Printing out the entire action and encounters section would have been more useful for me as a GM, but when I was printing those sections out three weeks ago or more I just added one more copy to the ones I was printing for the players without really considering that I might need access to the entire section, as opposed to what was probably prudent for the players to see.

Then one player, my son John, was already committed to working over at my parent's house yesterday, so he wasn't going to be there. Then Darryl was late getting to his dad's house. Then Big Darryl's grandson David was invited into the game, which I didn't really mind, but I did have to tone down the gritty military tone and watch my language because he's only ten years old; that said this was his introduction to RPGs and he had a great time. Then one of the player packs just disappeared, before Darryl Jr. even got there and I had to hand out part of my GM pack. Damn that Murphy and his laws.

I also made the foolish assumption that character generation and the "basic training" exercises I had planned for them would take longer than they did. Character generation went by quick and easy, although not everyone was thrilled with their random rolls - Big Darryl ended up with a Syrian Freedman who was a cursed coward, not really the type of character that suits his personality at all. David and Darryl Jr. both got characters from Hispania, David's a craftsman and Darryl's a farmer; Dalton ended up with a hulking Gaulish craftsman with dreams of heroism, dreams he can fulfill.

David got kind of short-shrift on character generation and from me, I had Dalton overseeing him while I caught Darryl Jr. up to where the rest of the players were at, so I was not as aware of how to weave him into the story; plus, it being his first time, I wasn't really sure how much I should push him to role play. I shouldn't have worried, because as soon as the dice started rolling he was all about the game, he didn't even seem to mind when his shots got blocked by armor, but I'll get to that in a bit.

For the "Basic Training" bit, to bring everyone up to speed on how the game works, I worked in Dalton's character's enemy the unit's Centurion, who has decided to make his life hell because he can, but is doing it in a way that is legal; he is forcing them to take extra weapons and unarmed combat training because he thinks that their unit has been looking pretty lackluster. I decided that they were an ad hoc unit of scouts for the Century, because it kind of fits the campaign I have in mind and I had three out of four PCs pick the Archer gear, the 4th wanted to too, but realized that his burly Gaul would "be a better tank", and picked the Assault Trooper gear.

The combat system itself is simple and fast playing and very similar to one that Darryl and I designed back in the mid 1990's when we were looking for a better system than 2nd edition AD&D. It runs pretty smooth and is pretty realistic, while maintaining an abstract nature; which means that it is deadly. Characters are never going to be superheroes in this game. Armor works in a way that you are either going to really like or really hate, because for each point of armor you have you get 1d6 to try and save versus the damage that a given attack causes, you save on a 6. I like it, Darryl hates it, but he has his reasons that I'll get to.

Now, before I go any further, I'll address a couple of issues with the character sections of the book that we were dealing with. There are two different prices for slings, one on the "Spending Money on Kit" page and one on the very next page. I am assuming that the spending money on kit is something that can only be done with your starting money at character creation, and that it then becomes part of your kit, but it's not explicitly stated. Also, the quiver for Javelins is stated as having a capacity of 5, but Skirmishers are only issued 3; is one of these numbers a typo? The "Hard to Kill" trait states that it gives on point of natural Armor Value to a PC, but also states that they need to roll a 1 on a d6 instead of a 6 on a d6, which can be interpreted as getting a second saving throw for that trait versus damage; I assume that's a typo and it merely adds the extra point of armor, but that did become a minor point of contention. It is also stated that all characters start with their native language at 1, which is described as "basic understanding", rather than fluent and foreign (non-Italian) characters have to spend their one free Learning point on Latin, which is OK, I just think you should start out fluent in your mother tongue. Having found a few issues in just one session's worth of play I think it likely that we'll find more along the way.

On the plus side, since Zozer has only released this as a pdf so far, they have the ability to edit the master pdf and update it, then everyone who bought it can download it again for free from drivethrurpg.

Pictured- Legio II Augusta

OK, I then decided, despite the fact that my adventure plan was only half baked and wholly stolen from Simon Scarrow, right down to the fact that I put the players in the Legio II Augusta; and I didn't have my battlemat or any of my miniatures that we would start the real campaign, since we had so much time left in the day. I had them go from their camp on the Rhine to a rebellious German village that had mutilated a Roman tax-collector. I departed from Scarrow quite a bit in the size of the town and the forces there, because only four scouts were leading the Century. I issued the scouts horses so they could ride on ahead of the rest of the Century and report back. Big Darryl's character Lucius was in command of the detachment. They got to the edge of the woods and got a look at the village, it was on a hill overlooking the Rhine to the east with gates to the north and south and a wooden palisade around the rest of the village. Both gates were open, but guarded by a pair of young Spearmen each.

Lucius considered a stealthy approach, but the daylight and couple of hundred yards of cleared fields around the village made him decide to have the men ride together to hailing distance and be the voice of Rome come seeking retribution for their wronged official. I reasoned that these German boys, being from a hostile village, probably weren't Latin speakers to any degree; so one of them ran inside and started calling for their leader and the other stood there and spit on the ground when Roma got mentioned one too many times. Darryl Jr.'s character Gaius Marcellus Cicero, the poor Hispanian farmer with the fancy name, decided that this indicated that the tribe was in fact in open revolt against Rome and charged the poor lad.

Lucius fired his bow at the boy and dropped him before Gaius could get to him, but Dalton's war mad Gaul Vergix had backed Gaius and charged too. Lucius ordered Titus to ride back to the Century and tell them what was going on. Gaius and Vergix followed the other boy through the gate at a charge and Vergix ended him and his German caterwauling by shattering his skull with his sword. They stopped short though when they saw a force of Germans assembling in the village center, some armed with javelins and one a fairly richly appointed warrior. Lucius rode up within bow shot, but Gaius took over negotiations. I am guessing that after two easy kills and seeing only thirteen other warriors, half of whom were unarmored Spearmen, he figured this would be an easy fight and he did mention wanting a chance to loot this village some before the rest of the Century got there. This was well within character because he had a starving family back home in Hispania. He goaded the richly appointed warrior into saying that it was German land and he was the King there, so then he was legally in open revolt against Rome.

The German King issued a challenge for personal combat to Gaius and stepped forward, but Gaius decided that fighting fair was for suckers and charged him on horseback, Vergix and Lucius followed his lead and attacked too, Vergix with a charge into the unprepared German Spearmen and Lucius firing an arrow into the mass of Germans. I don't remember all of the details of the fighting, it was fast and furious, I think Gaius took down the King with a tremendous blow to the head that left him unconscious, then I know he died the next round when he was struck by two javelins thrown from the back rank of Germans. Titus decided to turn around when he reached the edge of the woods and saw that his friends were inside the German town and heard the sounds of battle. Vergix danced his horse around and kept the Germans engaged on the street while Lucius and, eventually, Titus shot them up with arrows; not that he wasn't an effective killer too. His might of 6 while mounted was a huge advantage and his Assault Trooper armor kept him virtually unwounded, a couple of nicks made it through is all.

Pictured-Germanic Tribesmen, probably the very boxed set I would have used for this game.

Eventually a German made it past Vergix though and charged the Archers, and while both archers concentrated fire on him for two rounds, his helmet and shield saved him from death. He then managed to deal a serious leg wound to Lucius, then Lucius cut him open pretty bad and ordered a retreat from the village. The Germans initially charged the retreating horsemen, but after a round of getting peppered by arrows realized they could never catch them and ran back towards their village, the Romans charged them and finished them off just inside the gate.

Now, what I liked about this skirmish: It was pretty fast, despite the fact that we had never tried archery and we were all new to the system, so it's only going to get quicker. I just have to figure out how to remember my total "add" to my 2d6 roll, and to roll for armor every time an NPC gets hit, also that they have Fate too. The King could have spent 2 Fate points to "shrug off" the knock out effect of his head wound and stay in the battle, and another 1 to "shrug off" the incapacitation, then he'd have just been down 10 Hits, a bad wound, but he'd have still been in the game and their best fighter. I also liked that most of the downed enemy weren't dead, merely incapacitated or unconscious or both, that's far more realistic than D&D's flood of corpses. A lot of these Germans could survive, they're in their own village with their own women and healers to tend them, now that the three surviving Romans are firmly in charge they don't want them dead. They are probably going to crucify the King, but they're waiting for the Centurion for that decision.

What I didn't like: Arrows. Holy crap are they deadly. This seems anachronistic to the setting really. One arrow every round is a pretty good rate of fire, and you are going to run out pretty quick, since you only get twelve shots a piece, but Slingers were more common as Auxiliary troops than Archers, so I just assumed that the bows of the era weren't as good or something; but these guys were pin-cushioning my poor bloody Germans; and the rule about fighting with an arrow stuck in you means that if you stop to pull the arrow out, you cause a further 2 Hits on yourself, but if you don't you suffer a combat penalty equal to the damage that the arrow caused 1d6+2. So if you are hit by an arrow and pull it out so you can keep fighting, you suffer a minimum of 5 Hits and a maximum of 10 Hits, given that I was using an average guy template based on the Legionary Character Creation Example - Tiberius - for the bulk of my Germans, since I hadn't printed out the NPC portion of the book and Dalton didn't bring his laptop, that guy has 12 Hits. The Archers kept rolling 5s and 6s for damage, when you drop to 3 Hits (or less) you are incapacitated, dead at 0 Hits, I had a bunch of battle mad Germans take themselves out of the fight trying to pull arrows, it was either that or fight at -7 or worse, which is a real killer. This may just be sour grapes on my part though, I don't know.

What the players and the characters don't know yet: They failed a fate check on the road and missed a blocking force waiting to ambush their main column, also there is a reserve force of allied Germans moving in from the north. I did this so I could stress test the battle rules that came in the Warband supplement, but we had to leave because Ashli needed her medication. That's the real reason there were so few men in the village.

Pros about the game- Doesn't need miniatures, simple and fast paced. Could be played as a miniature skirmish game, if you were so inclined.

Cons about the game- Some poor editing, and a few unclear spots in the rules require interpretation.

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.

Some New Stuff

I still haven't had a chance to start 43 AD, because my wife is still sick, but I got this gaming stuff in the mail recently-

I was actually thinking of Mona when I bid on this Dragon Army Expansion, because that's the clan she got when she took the Clan test on the AEG website. The test appears to be gone now, but it's been an amusing point of contention between us because her Clan and mine, the Lion, were at war in the online L5R RPG I was playing on Facebook - Emerald Empire - until Facebook shut down all the games that didn't meet certain criteria. Her clan actually burned my clan's stronghold to the ground with magical fire. Anyway, this and the next one were both still in the shrink wrap, sweet deal.

I always figured that as a Mongol enthusiast I'd end up being a Unicorn Clan player in L5R,  since they are the most Mongol like. They even have a Khan, but apparently they don't match my personality. Still, with this set I can make four different clan armies to field once they get painted up.

I don't think I have anything else from the Last Unicorn Games Star Trek game system, but I figured since it was going cheap and I was getting the two boxes of Clan War miniatures (probably, you never know when you might get sniped), I'd save on shipping anyway; so I gave it a shot. I thought it would be more of a "Rogues Gallery" for this system, but it's actually a detailed system for playing non-Star Fleet characters. It's got some stuff I can use in it and I got it cheap.