Mechanics Cross-Pollination Thread

[Osrnoob]

'Thanks you all! I also found a blogger called Deltas Book of War. Would be cool to have ACKS Domains at War or Rollmasters/1e mass combat on an application that ran the numbers. You could have them listed over time and maybe stop when narrating to say you want to run away now or later a couple times (if they run away they risk getting attacked in the back).

Good way to have all the results and still introduce risk reward. Hummmm

 

[squeen]

I have Delta's Book too (it's nice) and have used it for some small scale stuff. Ultimately, the conversions to that or ACKS (which I think is a wonderfully elegant system---helped me plan out my city garrisons and vassal-troops...while also letting the PCs act individually as heroes....covers spells, etc) is a bit laborious so I am targeting a program that just let's you enter the raw D&D stat's unconverted and hoping I can make that work.

Note: the ACKS Domainas at War comes in two flavors --- conceptual domain play, and detailed mass combat. I have only run the latter (once).

I also think the program should be turn-based. The players issues commands (which may be ignored by troops?) once per turn and the program then calculates the result of 10-rounds of movement/combat...including morale. It would be a bit like Risk (which some of my players ALSO don't enjoy playing). A graphical interface will show the units/groupings move about and fight and list available commands for the commanders.

 

[The1True]

Why not run mass combat like a node-based dungeon? Like think of the battle as a dungeon with a bunch of encounters and challenges in it. Connect them up like dungeon corridors (so one encounter leads to x other encounters) all leading toward a time limit or final encounter. Victories lead to a final victory encounter/defeats lead inexorably towards a final defeat encounter OR points earned in each encounter/challenge go toward a final victory/defeat condition.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

I quite like An Echo Resounding's mass combat system, tho' it focuses on units being led by heroic PCs and NPCs.

 

[squeen]

Link? --- I got lost on the web.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

An Echo Resounding DTRPG seems to be setting its default interface language to French for me all of a sudden, so apologies if it does the same to you through this link.

 

[squeen]

"The hexcrawl system is still optimized for exploration, not travel," which I think is the issue. Although I'm not sure I agree that a hexmap needs to key every hex, which would be a lot of work. After all, you don't key ever square on a dungeon map, usually you only key the rooms. If your average dungeon level is a map 10" x 8" with 4 squares to the inch, and had perhaps 20-40 rooms, that works about to maybe one keyed entry per 30-60 squares.

If you instead had a hex map that was 36 hexes by 36 inches, like the one below, you would have about the same number of hexes as you have squares in a dungeon map. You could then give each hex a 1 in 50 chance of containing content, allow the content to spill into a few adjoining hexes (to form a "room", or territory for the creatures found there), and away you go. I actually just now made a spreadsheet that will indicate which hexes in a 36x36 map have content (with a 1 in 45 chance); PM me and I will send you a link.

For exploration purposes, you could calculate whatever time it takes to travel 12 hexes if you are unencumbered and call that a "turn", and base your wandering monster checks on the number of turns you spend. And if you have a bigger distance to cover, you use the same number of hexes, but the hexes get bigger, the turns get longer, the population centers get larger, and the random encounters change in size and/or character.

I am responding to this very old post in this thread with a note that Delta has a related post on his blog.

Rescaling Wilderness Encounters

What's the best way to rescale the armies of monster that appear in the OD&D wilderness?

deltasdnd.blogspot.com

An excerpt:

In particular with the Arneson FFC system, I've tossed this for a long time, and I've made myself something of a pariah in some circle for finding it simply infeasible on its face (his suggested system there is to actually pre-populate every hex of the campaign map with multiple encounters and play out interactions between them every campaign year)....

 

[Beoric]

So, the next time you consider (or argue) the question of how hit points relate to the game, consider this quote from my new favourite blog:

The modern reader, for instance, may be puzzled by the repeated framing in ancient texts of units in combat being ‘wearied by wounds’ since generally speaking a soldier wounded in combat with modern weapons is typically a lot more than ‘wearied’ by the experience. But pre-gunpowder weapons aren’t that lethal, especially with blows land against the limbs instead of the head or the chest (which might be better armored in any case). When you view, for instance, tests of pre-modern weapons, remember that real targets would be armored and often moving to try to minimize the damage of the hit (on this see S. James, “The Point of the Sword: What Roman-era weapons could to do bodies – and why they often didn’t” in Waffen in Aktion, ed. A.W. Busch and H.J. Schalles (2010)). Which is how you have M. Servilius covered in scars and yet still very much alive in his 70s to brag about them.

Firearms – even fairly early firearms – are substantially more lethal (a point W.E. Lee makes in Empires and Indigines (2011) in explaining why even slow-firing muskets so radically raised the lethality of ranged fire exchanges as compared to bows as to force Native North Americans to give up such pitched battles entirely). They inflict very different sorts of wounds, which often require the removal of limbs. It is striking that, prior to gunpowder, the image of the disabled veteran seems to have been a scarred fellow, with all of his limbs, but perhaps a limp or a missing eye (both Philip II of Macedon and Antigonus Monopthalmus, one of his generals, managed each to lose an eye in combat) or requiring a crutch (note Debby Sneed’s piece above for a few pictures; Matthew, A Storm of Spears (2012) also has a relevant discussion of wounds in hoplite combat).

 

[squeen]

Good stuff! (well bad if it happens to you. )

 

[Beoric]

So I have been thinking about mechanics for moving about cities and the DM side of mapping them. This is because there are a lot of city maps in Eberron (well, most modules and setting I have seen, really) that obviously aren't an accurate scale for their size, generally having far too few streets and buildings for the alleged population. I don't want to redraw the maps, and I certainly don't want to spend a bunch of time drawing maps for cities that don't have any map (and I find surfing the net for existing maps suitable for the terrain to be almost as time consuming). So I have been looking for a way to be able to use crappy city maps effectively, and to generate new city maps, without a lot of extra mapping and prep work.

For existing maps of cities, I have settled on putting a numbered hex overlay over the map, and navigating it like it is a hex crawl. When the PCs are in a given hex, I don't treat the street and building layout in that hex like an accurate map. I treat the hex like a series of blocks, and use the street layout on the map to inspire my descriptions of the area. I also divide the city into neighbourhoods with different characters, and riff or that as well. So it's not a literal street-by-street description of where they travel, it's more a description of the general area they are travelling through. For a new city, I don't even really need to map anything, I can start with a hex map and just assign the hexes to neighbourhood types.

And since it's a numbered hex, if I need to randomly place something in the city, I roll two dice of whatever size to find the coordinates for it.

So I'm looking at making a generator for procedurally generating content, because who knows whether the party will be in and out of staying a while, right?. I'm doing it for Sharn, because of course my first projects needs to be the most massive one I can think of, but also because Sharn presents particular problems in mapping and traversing. But I will be looking at generators for more mundane cities soon. Does anyone have any ideas where I might look? I feel like some of the Judges Guild stuff might be helpful.

 

[squeen]

All I got: https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator

 

[Beoric]

All I got: https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator

Yes I know that site, it is a good resource, thanks. But I don't need procedural generation of the map of the city, I need procedural generation of the neighbourhoods and significant buildings in the city.

 

[The1True]

I just dl'd Infinigrad but I havn't had a chance to look at it yet. I built a ruined city hex crawl a while ago. There's a rough document for it which I refined more in the printed version, but it might give you some tables to rip out and mess around with? I was actually meaning to present it on another thread, but...vacation

 

[Beoric]

I just dl'd Infinigrad but I havn't had a chance to look at it yet. I built a ruined city hex crawl a while ago. There's a rough document for it which I refined more in the printed version, but it might give you some tables to rip out and mess around with? I was actually meaning to present it on another thread, but...vacation

Thanks. I was going to do a mashup of Cityscape and Appendix C's city encounter tables, with a bit of info from Ludus Lodorum's population engine and the odd helping of Chaotic Shiny, but I may add your city occupation tables to the mix.

 

[Two orcs]

So I have been thinking about mechanics for moving about cities and the DM side of mapping them.

Vornheim has an interesting way to generate street layout. Roll 1d8 and the main street in that segment of town is shaped like the number that comes up. Then other buildings are lined along the main street with alleys between them. Repeat as necessary.

 

[Beoric]

Vornheim has an interesting way to generate street layout. Roll 1d8 and the main street in that segment of town is shaped like the number that comes up. Then other buildings are lined along the main street with alleys between them. Repeat as necessary.

Yes I am familiar with it. I prefer geomorphs, though, if I actually need to know street layout. Or I take a piece of a map of a historic city, but that doesn't help with Sharn.

 

[The1True]

You could also try The Alexandrian's street crawl generator.

There's also the handy generators at Megacosm

And the city crawling path generator at Last Gasp Grimoire.

Aaaand here are some more city generator links from my poorly organized link library:

city map generators:

http://citygen.crystalballsoft.com/

http://inkwellideas.com/free-tools/random-city-map-generator/

http://www.lastgaspgrimoire.com/in-corpathium/

https://www.myth-weavers.com/generate_town.php?do=town

http://oskarstalberg.com/game/CityGenerator/

https://davesmapper.com/

 

[Osrnoob]

100 last gasp

Maximalist Weird Fiction City-State and Cultural Creation Tables

Summary : Maximalist dreampunk weird fiction city-state creator for enculturating your character. Please feel free to add your own ideas and...

grandcommodore.blogspot.com

A System for Creating Fantasy Hamlets, Villages, Towns, Cities, Metropolises…

This system is designed to help you create interesting, detailed, and memorable fantasy settlements on the fly. Overview Creating Simple Settlements If you just need to create a rough sketch of the…

thecollaborativegamer.wordpress.com

The Collected Infinigrad and Guild Dogs Posts Collection

What follows is an indexed collection of extant Infinigrad and Guild Dogs Blog Posts. Enjoy! This has been compiled in celebration (?) o...

lizardmandiaries.blogspot.com

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/4jl3xq
Finch city encounters

Gabor Nocturnal table

D30 sandbox

That itch generator above

 

[Beoric]

The project is actually coming along nicely; it will probably never get finished, but I will probably post an incomplete version so we can talk about it.

In the meantime, re-reading The Alexandrian's series on city crawls got me thinking about knowledge checks. It occurs to me that there are basically two knowledge checks in 1e. One is the use of the "Read Languages" skill; I think what distinguishes that from many modern checks is that it is used for an activity that can't really be resolved narratively by player/PC interaction with the environment.

By contrast, there is the sage's check to answer a question. The interesting thing about this it that the knowledge check if not made by the PC, but rather by an NPC. The PC discovers the information by interacting with the environment to first find an NPC with the knowledge skill, and secondly convince the NPC to help.

I still think there is a role for PC knowledge checks if a PC has invested in a particular knowledge skill and the information is something the PC might know given her background. That is, where the PC either knows or does not know, but is not assumed to be doing something to find out as part of the check. But I really dislike checks that assume a PC spends time researching or making inquiries without any active choices being made by the player. If the PC is snooping around the criminal underworld to make a Gather Information check, I think the player should be making decisions that involve talking to criminal NPCs, and trying to pry information out of them.

I'm thinking about adding to my city mapping project a section about gathering information, to support me when I need to decide who has information, and who knows that the person might have information, and what obstacles the PCs will have to overcome to extract the information. I will let you know if I come up with a framework. In the meantime, your thoughts are welcome.

 

[The1True]

I'm thinking about adding to my city mapping project a section about gathering information

Yeah, that's the endgame to my 'megadungeon' project is a MASSIVE index of locations and items that I can then easily feed into a Gather Information or Research or Investigation check made by PC's during their downtime. Maybe a low-level rumours/found books/found clues list for players who just want to gloss over it like you objected to above (I spend the night barhopping and Gathering Info/I spend the day at the library/I stakeout the docks kind of thing) and more tailored results for players who go to the trouble to play it out and ask specific questions. It's a good way to fish for sidequest hooks.

I'm trying to come up with a more inclusive system that doesn't just favour Rogue and Wizard skills during city downtime. Oldschool is one up in that department in that anyone could help find a secret door/ask around town etc. Just writing it into your character at creation (within reasonable bounds) would set you up for a nominal bonus at the table (if the DM even wanted a dice roll in the first place). I'm also frustrated with the blind use of diplomacy in later editions. My not particularly charismatic engineer is making investigations on his own little side quest and I've got to go roust the party cleric to help me whenever I need to interact with anybody. ridiculous.