Monday, March 25, 2013

Project update

100 Ways to Skin a Kobold is on hold. Creativity not flowing in that area.

I can't stop thinking about the Sandbox setting. I have a map of the 5-mile hex that castle is in. I'm also working on an adventure/dungeon for it. That's what I've been putting most of my effort into. Well, that and find-your-own adventure porn.

Friday, March 22, 2013

A to Z Blog challenge

I've decided that I'd like to try the A to Z Blog challenge. This means blogging every day but Sunday with each day devoted to a letter of the alphabet.

I'm sure I can blog daily, and I'm sure I can find A to Z topics to write about, just in Tekumel let alone the whole of the OSR.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

I love when it all works out

I've been thinking about the starter campaign I want to write, either for my d100 OSR game, or for one of the retro-clones. I posted the intro fiction a couple months ago. So, a castle gets picked up and dropped somewhere else.

I wanted this to be a small castle. Looking at the wonderful "Fortress Construction" rules from C&S, a Castle I, a castle built up from a shell keep or fortified manor house, seems to fit the bill. A Castle I consists of a keep (40'-50' high, 40'-50' in diameter with 10' thick walls), four 40'-50' towers with 6'-8' walls, 400'-800' of curtain wall with battlements (30'-40' high and 6'-8' thick), a gate with two 40'-50' towers, a portcullis, a drawbridge, and 2 small postern gates, a paved bailey with a small manor house and stables for 30-50 horses, and a moat 20' wide and 10'-20' deep.

That's perfect.

A few weeks ago I drew this map:

Now, if you say the keep is 50 feet across, the outer wall ends up being about 600 feet. (I love GIMP, which gives you a measuring tool.)

Now for the simple Castle I, there are too many gates and towers, as well as more than 200 feet of additional wall. It's also much better protected, requiring an attacker to breach two walls and two gates to get to the keep.

Following the minimal requirements of a Castle I, it would look more like this:

So, the size of the first drawing is correct for a Castle I; it's just a more expensive castle than the minimum.

The C&S chapter "Designing a Feudal Nation" has you decide between an interior or a frontier holding. I decided that I'd use the interior holding numbers, because that would give a little bit more tension to being thrown out into the hinterland of the frontier in a completely unknown place. In a castle of this size,  C&S gives the manpower as follows: a baron, 6 knights, 7 squires (one for the baron), 25 sergeants, 50 men-at-arms, 3 blacksmiths, 2 armorers, 1 scribe, 1 chaplain, 10 mercenaries, 32 petite sergeants, 100 yeomen, and 300 serfs. That's 537 able-bodied men. To get the total population of the fief, multiply by 10 for women, children, and the elderly, for a grand total of 5370.

The next thing I wanted to know is how much farm land does it take to feed that many people. I googled around and found several sources that said in medieval times, it took two acres to feed one person. So, let's see what we need. 5370*2 = 10,740 acres or 16.78 square miles. Let's double that for those areas that aren't being farmed, like forests, rocky hills, ravines, swamps, etc., so 33.5 square miles. That happens to be a circle 3.27 miles in radius, 6.54 miles in diameter.

Wait a minute. How many square miles are in a "6-mile hex"? Finding the formula for the area of a hexagon, I get a 6-mile hex having 31.2 square miles. That's less than 10% off of what we need. So, for my purposes, one 6-mile hex will be the area needed to support my castle!

I really love when it all works out!

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

I won! I won!

David Lewis Johnson started a monthly art lottery on his blog and I won this month! Lookie what he made me:


The idea I gave him was: "Think of the outlandish costumes and scenery of the planetary romance novels and movies of the 19-Teens and the 1920s as seen through the lens of daVinci's Florence. This setting is what I call daVinci-punk, and it basically asks the question, 'What if the genius of daVinci met a magical artisan equal to his talents, and then Galileo showed them his telescope?' They of course make a space ship."

His description of the above image: "So I put some mages inside the Duomo of Florence, imagined that a considerable volume of gearing would be necessary to prop up all the parts of the rocketship, and decided to send a young court-sanctioned explorer out to visit the Moon."

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Primitive Talent Magic

In the continuing effort to model the Chivalry and Sorcery magic system in GURPS, I return to another Natural magic user, the Primitive Talent mage. Please comment, especially in the area of cost and details. (Also look at my post on Drug Trance Magery.)

(Substantial modifications have been included. Beast Soother was replaced with Master, because it more closely models the original C&S spell Hold Animals. I also added that the spells chosen are limited to those with three spell prerequisites or less, and that those prereqs are ignored. This change models the limit in C&S to 3rd Circle spells. I've added back Necromancy, since the lower levels spells in the college aren't unbalancing. I added no limit to elemental college spells, as long as spell prerequisites are satisfied. This is the way Primitive Talents in C&S use Basic Magic. I've named the limitations and enhancements, as well as added a couple. I've also written up Elves and High Elves/Great Fey using this system, as C&S defines those races.)

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At the dawn of mankind, life was a struggle to survive. Humans had several natural advantages, intelligence, tools, and the ability to organize. They also had magic as one of those tools. But in the mists of time, there were no teachers nor books from which to learn spellcraft -- a magically gifted person might be the only one in the tribe. Those who could manipulate mana gained new talents because of their interactions with the world, not because someone told them how to do it. These were the Primitive Talent Mages. Their heritage remains in the human population.


Primitive Talent Magery 3 points for Magery 0, 6 points / level


Primitive Talent Magery gives a character the ability to cast spells, but they cannot learn spells from teachers or books, nor can they create magic items. Primitive mages use no focus, but they can use magic items made by other magic users. Primitive mages gain spells as they gain experience. The initial list of spells a character can select from is based on survival instincts: Find Direction, Persuasion, Master, Sense Danger, Pentagram. At character creation, for every 20 points the character is based on, they can learn one of the spells from the list. For example, a 50-point primitive mage can learn two of the spells, while a 100-point character could learn all five. If they don’t buy them all, they may buy the others whenever they have an extra experience points.


After the character is at 100 points, for every 20 experience points the character earns, the player may add a spell of their choice to their spell list. Spells that have up to three spell prerequisites may be chosen, ignoring those requirements, but Magery and attribute prerequisites are still checked. Be sure to count all spells in the prerequisite chain. The Enchantment college is off-limits to primitive mages. Any spell in the elemental colleges (Air, Earth, Fire, Water) may be taken, if the spell prerequisites are satisfied.

When a new spell becomes available, the character has a series of very vivid dreams about the new spell.

Limitations:
GM’s Choice: The GM selects the spells to add to the character’s spell list, instead of the player (-30%).

Enhancements:
Quick Learning (+50%): The character gains a spell every 10 experience points. This means a 100-point starting character would have the basic five spells, plus five more chosen by the player.
Ignore Prerequisites (+30%/level): for each level of Ignore Prerequisites, the mage can choose spells with 2 more prerequisites. For instance, 1 level of Ignore Prerequisites lets Primitive mages ignore 5 prerequisites, and with 3 levels they can ignore 9 required spells.
Enchantment Allowed (+20%): the Primitive mage can make magic items, including a focus.
Book Learning (+30%): the Primitive mage can learn from books, scrolls, and teachers.

Elves are primitive mages with the Quick Learning, one level of Ignore Prerequisites, and Enchantment Allowed enhancements. Elves make a +2 bow and +2 arrows as their focus. The starting spell list for elves has the same five spells listed above, plus Measurement, Tell Position, Detect Magic, Sense Observation, and See Secrets. Magery 0 costs 6 points, plus 12 points per level.

High Elves/Great Fey are primitive mages, too. Treat as Elves, plus they have 3 levels of Ignore Prerequisites and the Book Learning enhancements. Their magical focus is a +3 bow and +3 arrows. Magery 0 costs 11, plus 23 points per level.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Magic System

I'm thinking about a magic system or systems for my daVinci-punk setting. Just thinking, but using GURPS Thaumatology (PDF) to help ask the important questions, like where does magic come from and what powers it.

This book is invaluable, regardless of what RPG you are working with. The text references GURPS rules as examples, but the majority of the text is systemless. I strongly recommend this book for anyone who is wrestling with designing a magic system.