Ships in the campaign world

To fit with the age of sail technological timeframe I'm needing to create ships from scratch to create a basic library of ships and come up with a basic idea on the rules regarding how ships are built. After my last post about the cannons (very good suggestions from people on some of those things), people gave me some good directions on what to check out as far as Pathfinder is concerned.

As usual Pathfinder has done a great job taking rules that were needlessly complicated, vague and/or unplayable and streamlined them into something nice. Attacks with a massive numbers of siege engines (cannons in my case) have a simple system for resolution, ships are consistently statted which makes reverse engineering their building easier, etc.

I've been able to make the appropriate adjustments to my custom ship lists to finally start statting the ships. There are still somethings to work out but I have my starting point.

My anachronism senses are tingling though with some of this though. The rules on masts, rigging and sailing speeds are off and might need to be tweaked on the individual ships. (There's no way the Constitution and Victory would have the same speed as a brig let alone each other. The Victory also didn't have 7 separate masts. It doesn't make sense!) These are fixable from a design perspective though without any real rules changes.

I am creating 6 categories of ships with 3 baseline versions each. A Light, Standard and Heavy version. The categories are Frigates, Ships of the Line, Brigs, Indiamen, Sloops, and Galleons.
Each category will be built using the standard models. The light versions will be quicker, but smaller vessels with less space/armaments. The Heavy version will obviously be the opposite.

I am also going to use/create some ship modifications that will allow customization of every ship if the captain (or DM) so desire. Pathfinder has a good list to start with, I'll be building on that with a few others.
It looks like I'm going to have to design each type of ship with a standard set of gun mounts/ports. Each one will be of a specific size. I think I'll make carronades downgrade the size of a cannon to fit the next size down for historical accuracy (eg a ship like the Constitution couldn't carry 32-lb cannons unless they were carronades).

I think I'm also going to make a generic set of nautical hirelings for this setting now, since as soon as PCs get bigger ships, they're going to need crews to man them.

As soon as I work out the ship stats I'll post them. I'm also finishing up several modifications to the cannons I posted earlier so expect that to show up too.

Naming the world

So people may have noticed my Facebook rant today (and instuted the standard "Ignore the crazed political/economic rant of Epithail's" procedure). I need something to distract and calm me down so I thought about things that are relatively easy to deal with when I don't have books on hand (work tends to look down on you having a shelf of role playing books in your cubicle for some reason). So what I realized I'm missing is names for the various nations/islands/continents of this world as well as an overall name for it.
I started to write some stuff down and the names are coming slowly but I'm not sure how much I'm going to be able to do right now. Forcing it is only going to make things sound too forced. Naming just somehow seems far more important than what it is.

Naming truly sets the feel for what you feel you want to have in your world. A name can create a sense of mystery and raise questions if used properly. It can also break the setting by being extraordinarily too complicated or too simple. If the name doesn't fit it can ruin the immersion.

So with me being the perfectionist that I am, I'll probably end up overthinking this and people won't even really notice the effort. That's okay though, it makes me feel better about myself and that's what's important right?

I'm going to write up a list of what I have so far with a little bit more detail of the general culture of an area and use my map references from my earlier entry about the setting. Not everything has a name yet and this list will be updated over time as I figure more out.

Now most of the information about these lands is kept vague on purpose for right now because I want players to help me form the background of the world they're in. I don't want to finalize a history until players have put their mark on the world with their fantastic ideas about what culture their characters came from was like. Some of this will be predefined, but only to act as a spring board. For example, the primarily desert like continent contains Middle Eastern and Australian style cultures upon it generally lead by monarchies, while the two large jungle/rainforest islands controlled by the Orcs are ruled by Orcs with an Aztec/Mayan like culture.

And I let this entry sit and get too long and lost my motivation to put the list in here right now, but the good news is that I'm making a little progress. Probably sitting somewhere around 15% complete now instead of where I was.

Cannons and Some Ship Stuff

With research into the nature of Age of Sail cannons and ships I think I’m starting to get a good feel for what is a good baseline as far as gameplay is concerned for a DnD campaign built around swashbuckling adventures. Taking a primarily Wikipedia based crash course in Age of sail ship armament and ship design while comparing it to the existing rules out of the Stormwrack book, I think I’ve developed a good starting point for this setting’s complex equipment requirements. There are still some bugs to work out and the system will be in flux for a while, but I’m pretty satisfied with this base line.

Cannon Type	Damage	Rang Increment	Load Time	Cost	Crew	Weight
Falcon/Falconet (Light, 5’x5’)	2D10, x3	200’	2 Rounds	~500 GP	2	¼ Ton
Minion (Light, 5’x5’)	3D10, x3	160’	4 Rounds	~1000 GP	4	½ Ton
Saker (Medium, 5’x10’)	3D10, x3	200’	4 Rounds	~1500 GP	4	1 Ton
Demi-Culverin (Medium, 5’x10’)	4D10, x3	180’	6 Rounds	~2000 GP	6	1.5 Tons
Culverin (Heavy, 5’x10’)	5D10, x3	180’	6 Rounds	~3000 GP	6	2 Tons
Demi-Cannon (Heavy, 5’x10’)	6D10, x3	160’	8 Rounds	~4000 GP	8	3 Tons
“Basilisk” (Super Heavy, 10’x 15+’)	+1D10 per X GP spent	~180’	+2 Rounds per 2D10	~2000 GP/ 1D10	2/2D10	1 Ton/2D10
Carronade (Template for L, M, and H Cannon)	Same as Base	½ Base	Same	+50%(?)	2/3(?)	½ Base
Banded Iron Cannon	Reduce to next lower Die (D10=>D8)	¾ Base	Same	75% Base	Same	Same
Increased Caliber	Increase to next higher Die (D10=>D12)	Same	Same	+50%	Same	Same
Mortar	*	*	*	*	*	*
Howitzer (Template?)	*	*	*	*	*	*

There are two cannons in each of the three main categories, Light, Medium, and Heavy. I tried my best to use historically accurate representations of each level of cannon. I used the “Light Bombard” as the baseline for the “Minion” and modified it for a more advanced age of sail. The funny thing is that each of these cannon types have their basic shot caliber equal to their number of damage dice. It worked out really well. Basically for every full inch of cannon ball size there is an equal number of damage dice.

I have full descriptions of all of these different types of cannons and will be writing it all out in a full guide for ship outfitting in this setting, but for now I’m just going to explain the basics of the philosophies I’m following for this. Each of the cannon types is pretty accurate as far as anachronisms are concerned. They have historically accurate effective ranges and minimum crew numbers. The costs for them are completely arbitrary right now and are only there as a guide. The Loading times are based off of the bombard timelines from Stormwrack.

The Basilisk is me just screwing around with a conceptual “build your own mega cannon” thing and might not actually be kept. Carronades are based off of a real thing and are there to allow smaller ships to carry bigger guns. The cannons are all built assuming they are cast bronze cannons, the option to have the cheaper, out of date Banded Iron type is there to offer more options and flavor. The Increased caliber is there for the same reason.

Mortars and Howitzers are still something I’m trying to work on. I think the Howitzer will be turned into a template for the 3 base types of cannons that turn them into indirect fire weapons with some type of penalty so you can’t just replace all your cannons with them to exploit the indirect fire rules. Mortars are a different story, they’ll be indirect fire, but I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with their power level yet. They should be allowed special alchemical types of ammunition though, I know that much is going to happen. They will also be prohibitively large to cut down on their shipboard usage, just like in real life.

I’m working on the ammunition types right now. I think I’ll have 3 versions of each of the major shot types for cost purposes. Not sure on the specifics yet of course, but I’m coming up with something.

I think the “Shotgun” style canister shots will be something along the lines of a spray attack of varying distances that can only damage crew members with different damage values with a reflex save required by those caught in it (Probably 10+damage rolled). The Chain shot style of ammunition will get bonuses to hit Rigging sections, maybe even some type of hardness bypassing or something while having either damage or hardness penalties against Hull sections. The regular shot will have something too, I think I know what, but I’m not quite sure yet.

The Saker and Minion cannons are giving me trouble too. Both are historically accurate, but I need to figure out a way to make both desirable without screwing the other cannon types surrounding them. Saker cannons are the standard type of cannon you would see on merchant ships throughout the age of sail. It was one of the most common cannon types in the world, mostly because of what Henry the 8^th did with them. He basically went through almost all of Europe’s Tin supply at the time to outfit his entire navy with these things. They were easy to produce, relatively powerful, light, accurate and very long distance (easily a 2000’ effective range with the ability to shoot out to a 9000’ range with the proper angling). I’m just not sure how to do that with these stats right now. I think the Falcons and Demi-Culverins are at their appropriate power levels so I don’t want to touch them so I need to adjust the Saker and Minion in such a way that they both are desirable for different reasons. Any opinions on this would be greatly appreciated.

Next up we have the base line for creating ships. This one took some creative engineering on my part to figure out what system they used to figure things out but I did it and the information it showed me was enlightening to say the least. Basically in order to figure out how many Hull sections a ship has you find out the Area a ship takes up using overall Length multiplied by Width and Depth (Deck to keel at centerline). You then divide that total by 1000 and round down. Cargo space still needs some work because I can’t make heads or tails of all of their system. There doesn’t seem to be much consistency but I’ll figure it out somehow.

Hull section hit points are very easy to figure out and seem surprisingly accurate for the real world examples I’ve been screwing around with. (The HMS Victory and the USS Constitution are disgustingly powerful by the way, I’ll post those another time) War ships tend to have about 1 to 2 foot thick hulls depending on their size and role. Merchant ships measure in at anywhere between 2 and 12 inches depending on size of ship and expected seas. The core rules state that wood has a Hardness of 5 and has HP equal to 10 HP per inch of thickness. Comparing this with the power of the cannons and their average damage outputs makes this disturbingly accurate.

One of the next things to figure out is how to determine how many and what type of gun mounts are available on a ship among many other modifications a ship could have and what these modifications can be. I need to come up with some type of customization thing for the players to be allowed to use that I can also use for creating other ships in the world, especially important for establishing a baseline for standard classes of ship. Plus having that type of customization available allows the players to eventually create their own ships and potentially their own fleet of custom ships built around their own desires and needs if they so desired.

I need to also figure out how Damage Control works in relation to damage sustained. I think there’s a section in Stormwrack about it but I’ve got the feeling it isn’t very comprehensive which means I’ll need to add more.

There is also the problem of the number of cannons that are going to be showing up in sea battles as time goes on. As more challenging ships begin to show their broadsides we’re going to start seeing 100+ individual attack and damage rolls for a single ship at a time going at another ship that has tens of thousands of hit points spread out among several hundred hull sections. I need to find a way to streamline this if I’m ever going to have real Line of Battle style naval combat. If anyone has ideas or a direction they can point me in I’d greatly appreciate it. I think I’m going to start in Heroes of Battle, but I’m not sure if that’s going to be enough.

It is seriously a big problem though. When you get 2 big ships up against each other for a broadsides you are going to have so many shots flying that it’ll take an hour to sort through it all. My two real life ship examples I’m using as a baseline, the HMS Victory and the USS Constitution, each have dozens of cannons that they’re able to fire in a single broadside with varying sizes and ranges. The Victory alone is a 104-gun ship with a potential 52-56 shots she can fire in a single round from one side. The Constitution has around 25 she can fire on one side (rated as a 44-gun, but typically carried around 56 anti-ship cannons).

The Victory has 337 hull sections (84 must be destroyed to sink her) with a 2 foot think hull which gives each hull section 240 HP. The Constitution has 225 Hull sections (56 of them destroyed sinks her) with a 21 inch thick hull giving each section 210 HP. (For comparison a Pinnace, a basic ship from Stormwrack, has 4 hull sections with 50 HP each, historically speaking that is almost a perfectly accurate comparison). Both ships have cannons of varying sizes so there’s no consistent amount of damage and both sets are firing at around the same time so you’ll see an attack and damage roll for each one. Each cannon must also be aimed at a single section because they’re all direct fire weapons.

When these guns hit there must also be some way to cause some type of other thing to happen after the shot. Losing some guns, some crew members, some supplies, or some other type of thing must be something that can happen to simulate what types of terrible things happen to a ship once it takes hits. The base damage system cannot work practically for this setting. Something else must be created, but what?

Play testing my Campaign

How I play test my D20 based campaigns and adventures is something you probably wonder if you’ve ever heard me talk about it. It’s pretty easy. It is also a vital thing to do because of the way I tend to design dungeons/encounters/scenarios, which can be brutal sometimes. Without the testing I can’t really tell if a scenario is too difficult for players and because it is a heavily stat based combat system, it’s harder to do the DM fudge here and there to ensure the players aren’t being brutally overwhelmed. So here’s my way of testing the scenario out in order to make sure it is possibly survivable.

I start out with a generic set of “Player Characters.” These are 3-6 generic PC builds for important party rules built using the same rules as what I expect the players will have and appropriately leveled/geared. There’s nothing spectacular about any of them, they’re what you expect from a generic adventuring party using only the core rules. I don’t have anything weird in here nor do I have the broken combos that one might expect a player to make.

This group can be adapted to generic versions of what the players are running so that I can get a better feel for how the particular group is going to fair against the scenario.

Now that’s all well and good, but we’re talking about a game that involves dice, which means of course that luck can be fickle and cruel. So depending on the challenge I want to give I use 3 die values for determining the challenge level. Those numbers are 5, 10, and 15. The number chosen as the representative of a die roll depends upon how much of a challenge I want a particular thing to be.

When you get into combat though you can’t just select things like that arbitrarily though. There is far more going on than is possible to conclude with only those 3 numbers. So I rotate each character through a cycle of those numbers with every 20 th “roll” designated as a critical success or failure (determined by flipping a coin). Damage is determined with the half die value method I learned to use when playing Warmachine/Hordes. Each die is going to roll an average equal to one half of its highest number plus 0.5. So a D6 is worth 3.5 damage while a D12 is worth 6.5. For odd numbers of dice, say 3D6, you round down to the nearest whole number, because your dice will always screw you more than help you. So 3D6 = 10.5, rounded down to 10.

It gives the combat a sense of randomness and helps to make sure that it isn’t too easy or too hard. So when I say I’m playtesting my campaign and tweaking it, this is what I’m doing. It is typically an exercise performed entirely on paper. This enables me to not have to worry about figures being moved by children or animals and goes much quicker.

Which reminds me that I really need to go through this stuff again as soon as I finalize my latest system tweaks. Some of these modules I’ve designed haven’t been tested since I started tweaking the way magic works, that could be bad…

When I say I’m running the numbers on something, this is also how I’m typically going to do it. While working on the cannons and ships I’m running these types of numbers through my head with generic assumptions along each phase of development. Right now I’m working on damage scaling vs hull section Hit Points/Hardness. So a Pinnace, a small sailing ship, has 4 hull sections and sinks when a single section is destroyed. Each section has 5 inch thick wood which gives it a Hardness of 5 and 50 HP (10 HP/inch of thickness). A single Demi-Culverin, a type of medium cannon, does 4D10 damage. At a value of 5.5 damage per die it is dealing 22 points of damage (17 after hardness is applied) per hit.

That means that it will take about 3 hits on average from one of these types of cannons in order to sink one of these small ships (51 points of damage after Hardness). Is that about right?I’m not quite sure yet because I haven’t finished coming up with stats on other ships yet, but this struggle is another story for another blog post.

Oh man, converting real world ships into D20 system ships is bringing up a whole new host of problems and is a wonderful challenge. This is gonna be a lot more effort than I originally thought. Ever try to figure out how to make a 50+ cannon broadside against a ship that has 337 hull sections (destroy 84 to sink it, each section has 240 HP) work with the narrative naval combat rules and not make you insane while trying to keep track of each shot? (By the way, it’s the HMS Victory I’m converting as an example, this example is all based off of real world statistics. The freaking thing is a 104+ gun, triple decked ship designed with a crew of 850+ people on board.)

Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy and gaming

I recently finished watching the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy and its attempt to launch a sequel trilogy based off of the book On Stranger Tides. The movie series has always struck me as an odd one for Disney to do because it was truly so much grittier than most of the things you’d expect to be put out by them. 

I’m glad they did, because it really brought fantasy piracy back into mainstream thought. Which depending on who you ask may or may not be a good thing. (Oh, by the way, since these movies are so “old” and popular, I’m not going to worry about putting in spoilers warnings. If you haven’t seen them and don’t want them spoiled, don’t read this post)

The movie series at least showed that a well done movie about pirates could be done and actually do well at the box office. It might be the exception to the rule though because of the unique niche the first movie filled when it came out.

The first movie is without a doubt the best one. We all know, and quite possibly love it. The movie was original, well paced, well acted, well directed, well scored, easily quoted, and was full of fun, adventure and excitement. The special effects were very well done at the time and helped immerse you in the world they had created. 

It was quite possibly a perfect example of how well any potential fantasy series could be done if given a large budget and a good casting department (side note: after reading the nightmares that took place behind the scenes on this movie via IMDB, it could have been quite easily an awful movie and a massive box office disaster).

The second movie isn’t as good as the first one, but it’s still a very enjoyable movie with good casting with an enjoyable and unique story. There are some parts that are just too silly that break the pacing and mood but they don’t ruin it. Keira Knightley’s character Elizabeth Swan is insufferable and annoying to me, too much of the clichéd Warrior Princess with modern values thing going on there, it’s one of my pet peeves so maybe it didn’t bother too many other people. 

Some of the action scenes go out of their way to be over-the-top affairs (Water wheel I’m looking at you) and somewhat detract from the mood, but despite all of this it left you wanting more at the end when it leaves off with the cliffhanger ending. This wasn’t a masterpiece movie by any means, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t fun to watch. It served the purpose of entertaining me and was worth my time and money.

Did it bother anyone else that in the second and third movies the nameless crew members should have been wearing Star Trek: TOS style red shirts with how guaranteed they were to die?

The third movie is a different story though. Clocking in at 2 hours and 49 minutes long, you expect this movie to be an epic and potentially satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. Unfortunately it wasn’t. Between random bits of goofiness (which reek of Disney suits getting involved in the process) and an apparent literal interpretation of fan cries for “more Jack Sparrow!!!” you get a movie that has a good story with tons of potential getting bogged down by a colossal amount of stupidity and unnecessary scenes. There is at least 30 minutes you can just throw away from this movie and not feel bad about it. (Actually I would love to see someone I know who is good at editing remove that footage so we can see what it could have been.) 

Remove all of the scenes of Jack talking with himself and various scenes of stupid and yu have yourself a movie at just over 2 hours in length that is actually something worth watching. Seriously, take away the scenes with multiple Jack Sparrows and the various other scenes that are just all kinds of stupid and you have a movie that could have been great. The concept and scripting outside of that half hour were solid and enjoyable. 

Think about the early part of the movie where they go to Davy Jones’ Locker to find Jack. You end up with a 10+ minute scene where nothing important or even interesting happens. You just get to see a bunch of Johnny Depp playing a crews worth of Jack Sparrows and playing around with a rock crab (which I will admit was a pretty neat visual effect). 

Following this scene you cut to the crew fresh from crashing down into the Locker showing up on the beach getting ready to track down Jack, who they have no idea where he is or what he’s doing. Suddenly he comes crashing over the sand dunes sailing on the sand using the rock crabs. It’s a very interesting scene, but totally expected and unsatisfying because of the 10 minutes we sat there watching nothing but Jack on screen. It ruined a scene with potential mystery and visual impact with a worthless scene that bored you out of your mind so by the time the scene rolls around you don’t even care anymore. 

Pretty much any scene where Jack is alone and talking to himself needed to be removed and hidden in a deep dark pit. There are better ways to go about what they were going for, and I’m convinced the director took “suggestions” from Disney suits literally just to be a defiant ass.

The fourth movie is interesting. From what I can gather, they took at least part of the script for the book On Stranger Tides and shoehorned a few PotC characters into it. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I think I can understand why it was done (money and brand recognition), but it doesn’t quite feel right. I never read the book (I really should from what I hear, it’s supposed to be brilliant) but it just seems like Sparrow, Barbosa, and Mr. Gibbs weren’t part of the same world as everyone else. 

Like the events were happening around them regardless of what they did or how they were involved. Just like the third movie there was some great potential in this story and setting but it got wasted by silly/stupid/out of place scenes and characters. The casting and acting were well picked. The characters were believable. The setting was entertaining and interesting. The plot was interesting and enjoyable. There were just some terrible decisions made based upon forcing the PotC characters into it. (Still irritated by that coconuts scene…)

I like the action and setting of the series. It really was the inspiration for what I’ve designed my campaign setting around. I’ve always wanted to play an RPG where it’s high seas adventuring and swashbuckling in a relatively low magic environment. How many things are more appealing than that type of setting? 

Everyone who’s a gamer has always wanted on some level to do a swashbuckling adventure, if for no reason other than to just have an excuse to talk like a pirate.

And because I watched the trilogy again partially as a point of research for my setting, I was taking note of various things that struck me as game mechanics. For example, in the first movie the characters are approximately 6^th or 7^th level DnD characters by the time they start recruiting a crew for the interceptor. 

I say that range because Jack clearly has the Leadership feat with Mr. Gibbs as his cohort and the usual named subjects. Jack is a Rogue/Swashbuckler, Barbosa is a Swashbuckler/Legendary Captain with maybe another prestige class, and Will is a Fighter with a level or two of Swashbuckler. I would try to speculate Elizabeth’s classes out but I don’t want to because after the first movie her character just bothers me too much to want to think about it.

The trilogy has probably the best example set I’ve ever seen for how the Leadership feat can/is supposed to work. Jack is always trying to find followers and hirelings to crew his ship, but only his trusted cohort and higher level crew members survive everything. It’s plenty hard for him trying to recruit new people and it takes time to do so. The 1^st level extras that he recruits are pretty much useful only for taking hits and crewing the ship. It’s probably the best cinematic example of the feat in existence.

I really like the way combat is done in these movies too. There’s just something wonderful when you’re seeing ship to ship combat during the age of sail. Something indescribably satisfying about it. It’s something that I have had such a massive desire to participate in no matter the style of it. I’ve played quite a few styles of this type of combat. 

Everything ranging from the various video games (which there hasn’t been a good one that is truly satisfying in ages, best I’ve got right now are the Total War series) to the Pirates collectible miniatures game (Which I loved, it’s modeled after CCGs though so it got expensive fast and next to no one played it). I want to play an RPG in that world, but no one really made a setting or supplement that I was satisfied with. They were always too high magic for my taste, it really distracted from the themes of the age of sail.

[An aside: This excites me now: Assassins' Creed 3 Shipboard Gameplay I want a game entirely built around this!!! Seriously, please. I have money and organs, what will it take?]

I want the feel of the age of sail without the stupid magic system killing off the things I love about the time period. That’s why I’ve never been able to play in a DnD style setting like that. Have any of you read through the Stormwrack book? Any ship that has a crew of a dozen or more is going to have a ship’s mage. The mages can absolutely wreck anything they come across. 

DnD also has very poor rules regarding black powder cannons and such because they didn’t design the rules around that type of technology level. On top of that the vehicle rules are rough and clumsy. The alternate Narrative Style of vehicle combat is interesting and may work better, but not everyone knows how those rules work.

I’m having to design almost everything from scratch on this. Anything not covered by a book I’m having to hunt down or build a stat for. I’m going through my historical references and creating ships and their stats based on that. I’m having to stat out weaponry and ship armor along with trying to get it to be compatible and enjoyable with the system. It’s a rough and slow process. It’s also frustrating sometimes.

There I go, getting distracted by a random tangent again. The point is, I want the game to feel like the good parts of those movies and the system isn’t setup for it so I’m looking for solutions. I’m positive that using the Narrative Naval Combat system for battle with custom ships and weapons for the setting will work and bring together the right feel for the combat that you’d see in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but it requires careful research and balancing so that I don’t accidentally make a 6-gun sloop capable of leveling a 44-gun frigate with little effort.

It's fun to stat out these ships though. It let's me put my knowledge of history, warfare, and gaming into the same effort and enjoy myself while doing so. There's something nice about being able to let my creativity fly freely like this. 

We’ll see how it goes. I'm enjoying the creation process for the most part but that doesn't mean everyone is going to like the results. Here’s to hoping I don’t screw it up too badly!

Again with the anti-magic posts

Yeah, I know, I'm obsessed with this new toy I've been dreaming up for my campaign. Ever since writing up that last post regarding it I've been talking with whoever will listen and running options through my head of what I can do with it.

It looks like I'm starting to get the final form of it together though. I'm going to bounce the ideas off of some trusted sources and then I'll post the final form up here.

Dear god, I'm going to end up with most of a campaign book by the time I'm ready to run this thing...
Some very good ideas have been brought to my attention regarding replacment of magic weapons and items and a system needs to be developed for it, but it's a step in the right direction.

The setting needs more specifics added to it and posted for people to peruse. I don't want to fill in or create most of the specifics though so that the players can help shape the world to fit their visions of their origins.

I should also have a new description of the character creation information for this setting, which have changed from what I talked about earlier because I'm fickle and sometimes have far too much time on my hands.

Bounty Boards

Hooray, more stuff for this campaign I’ve been working on for way too long.

Over time I’ve been transitioning the original concept for this campaign from a very structured, traditional storyline into a more Mass Effect or Borderlands style almost sandbox progression. Due to a series of brainstorming sessions that popped up after finally getting to game again I’ve been contemplating turning the system into a more Elder Scrolls style of gameplay with a few hand rails to guide the players to the storyline.
This causes me an issue though. I like to make sure my encounters are well planned out in advance and appropriate to the setting/party. This obsession is what usually has caused my campaigns to break down into worthless heaps of garbage thrown together with a poor narrative structure. I don’t want that to happen anymore, but a sandbox style makes it far more difficult to maintain the level of organization I want for gaming sessions.

This dilemma has led me to think about it long and hard. The current game I get to play around in is a sandbox style campaign where we the players have completely derailed any of the plans the DM had in the beginning because we basically decided we would rather start our own feudal kingdom/colony. With that happening it makes it increasingly difficult for our DM to spontaneously create new content to set before us.
The DM does a good job at it, but we only play maybe once a month and take care of all of our Major role playing outside of the actual gaming sessions via email. (This game is really showing the great advantages of modern technology applied to tabletop gaming, which is making me hopeful for having a more robust gaming life again. More about that another time though.) My problem is that if I tried to do what he’s doing I know I’d be lazy and screw it up for my players if I didn’t plan it out. No one wants that. So I’ve figured out a few ways to get around this inherent lazy streak I have by developing a Bounty Board system that allows me to randomly generate encounters appropriate for the PCs. Add it in with the concept of the “Five Room Dungeon” (5RD) and you can infinitely generate new adventures for players on the fly with minimal effort expended.

I’m still working on the percentile charts for this but that’s the easy part of the system. The challenge is coming up with a way to generate these things while maintaining variety and not creating the same problems introduced by the core system’s random encounters tables (can you guess how I feel about DnD’s random encounters system? I’m known to whine about these types of things), namely the chance that you’ll make something out of character for the game you’re running. Either the encounter will be wildly outside of your ideal challenge rating, you’ll see something that doesn’t fit with your flavor showing up, or you’ll end up with things that just don’t feel right being shoehorned into your game.

For some people that works, but I don’t like it personally. So I worked out a way to randomly create missions for a bounty board type system for any new area that you would end up in. You start off with a randomly generated encounter level ranging from two levels below to two levels above current average party level. That’s easy enough to give you an idea of what you should be seeing the party fighting against. This of course will also help you more easily generate rewards appropriate for the encounter.

The next step is to determine the type of quest/bounty you’re after. Since this is a generic bounty board type quest I can be lazy with the general category of the quest you will be going after. In addition to storyline missions being on these boards there will also be randomly generated quests in the following categories; Monster (Notorious), Monster (group), NPC (Individual), NPC (Group), Fetch/Rescue, Escort.

Each of these quests is pretty straight forward in how they’re going to play out for the PCs, but I’ll lay them out below for clarity.

The Monster (Notorious) category will have an individual monster of some type that is either a bigger/meaner version of a local beasty (like an advanced Dire wolf, a vampire gorilla, or gargantuan spider, something you’d normally encounter, but advanced per the rules or that has a template applied) or a big unique monster that isn’t normally encountered in an area (like a Hydra, or a Medusa. Some type of mythical and mean thing that will give the players a challenge outside of the norm).

The Monster (Group) category will have the PCs hunting down a group/collection of monsters that are harassing an area. Pretty standard MMORPG fare at this point (kill these 10 gnolls/spiders/were-dire wombat ettins). Kill the monsters and/or remove their nest/base of operations. The monsters will be common ones for the area.

The NPC (Individual) is your typical bounty hunter operation. You hunt down a criminal or whatever using their wanted poster. They’ll usually have a small entourage but most of the EL rating is from the NPC you’re hunting. The character will be a PC class to ensure maximum challenge level.

The NPC (Group) is going to be NPC/PC classes acting as brigands or something similar.

Fetch/Rescue quests will be hunting down items from the nearby area or rescuing people who’ve been kidnapped.

Escort quests aren’t going to be your video game ones with retarded NPCs walking face first into enemy bullets. These are going to be some type of convoy or NPC escort into an nearby area where you’re either going to be fighting off waves of enemies or you’ll be ambushed along the way.

As I mentioned before I will be using the 5RD format for these bounty board quests. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a 5RD is a formula for making easy to run adventures that are likely to engage every member of your Player’s party. They consist of 5 “Rooms” (duh) that each have their own unique, single challenge for the characters to deal with. I use “rooms” in quotes because this isn’t about literally making a typical dungeon with only 5 rooms all in a row. Each room is just a concept for a new area with a single challenge in it. It could be those 5 literal rooms or it could be 5 different parts to a chase scene.

Room 1 is the entrance/guardian. You can make it a puzzle, a skill check of some type, or a combat encounter. Room 2 is a puzzle or Role Playing challenge. Room 3 is a trick and/or set back. Room 4 is the climax/big battle. Room 5 is the reward/revelation/twist.

So using a dungeon, you could have a Puzzle Door or a minotaur for room 1. Room 2 could be a statue on a floor switch type puzzle or an enchanted statue that requires you to solve a riddle to proceed. Room 3 could be the dungeon’s boss monster causing a cave-in that the players have to figure a way around. Room 4 would be facing the boss down while his minions swarm you. Room 5 would be raiding their hoard after finishing them all off.

Using the Chase example, room 1 would be encountering the fugitive you’re after and tracking him to the outskirts of the city you’re in. Room 2 would be convincing an NPC to point you in the direction they saw him go. Room 3 could be the NPC giving you bad info and leading you into an ambush, or the fugitive crossing a river and severing the only ferry across. Room 4 capture of the fugitive, whom you have to not kill. Room 5 would be bringing him back to the city for your reward.

So the things you can do with the 5RD are very diverse, but they allow you to use the format to give your players a very diverse set of challenges for a session without much extra effort. This makes them perfect for dealing with a random quest format like what I’m developing. The first 3 rooms also have the advantage of being interchangeable to fit with your particular format/feel in case you think something flows better when done in a different order than the standard format.

The challenge here is to make a random generation table for these 5RD formats that will allow for diverse options that reduce the chance of running the same things regularly. I think I’ll develop a table for each room type with sub tables for each condition. I’m not sure on the specifics, but that might be the best way. That’s if I even need to use a random content generator for these. Who knows, maybe the basics will be inspiring enough on their own.

Hopefully this entry isn’t as rambling as I think it is and you can make heads and tails of it. Let me know what you think. I need input otherwise I’m just in an echo chamber of my own self crapulence where all of my ideas are perfect. Which is a great world to live in until you try to actually apply it to reality.