Domain Game 101: Horsebreeding Rules

Passing the holidays in Milan means, to me, playing a lot. In the past week I ran 5 sessions of 5-6 hours each and PCs gained land and title. There’s a lack of small scale OSR rules for domains so I started using Chris’s Feudal Anarchy rules. One of my players realized that horses are expensive and decided to start horsebreeding.

I made some rules to support it because I think it’s an interesting downtime activity, it’s appropriate for a knight bachelor and destriers are awesome, mean, have 4HD and fight with hooves and a big chip on their shoulder. By the way, I have zero experiences with horses. I have vague memories of riding a mule for about 10 meters when I was 5 though, so a casual wikipedia browsing gave me enough information to build some rules. I can only claim that these rules please us, but not any kind of realism or clue.

Most importantly horses in general allow characters in heavy armour to outrun opponents. Wearing heavy armour or not ought to be an important choice in fantasy RPGs and the whole “can’t outrun opponents in heavy armour” is a big, big problem. In AFG this usually means death for either fighters left behind as the rest of the group falls back or for the fighters’ unarmoured comrades that don’t flee when they can. Horses give you mobility.

The following rules use super-easy 5MORE mechanics. Furthermore all hit dice below are d6s: if you prefer using d8 increase all end-of-development thresholds accordingly. Note that “level 2 horse” means that the horse saves and fights as an animal or monster of level two.

Horsebreeding Rules

Mares are usually receptive in spring and summer (two seasons). If there is a stallion (adult male) available mares (adult females) can try to conceive, roll once per season a Conceiving roll, succeeding on a 5MORE.

Then, for each of the three following seasons, try a 5MORE Pregnancy roll with a +1: on a failure pregnancy results in a stillbirth. If all rolls so far have been successful 11 months after conception the mare will give birth to the cutest little foal ever.

The foal will start at 1HD. Roll the hits at birth: of course it won’t have all these hit points as soon as it gets out of the womb, but we’re going to use hits to track horse development until their fourth year, when development ends.

From the second year rules change depending on the two parents’ level. The types are Rouncey (lvl 2), Courser (lvl 3) and Destrier (lvl 4).

Rounceys: add 1 hit during the second year, then 1d6-1 hits during the third year. At the end if the third year if the horse has at least 11 hits it become a Courser, otherwise a Rouncey.

Coursers: add 1d6 during the second year and 1d6 during the third year. At the end if the third year if the horse has at least 15 hits it will become Destrier, if it has 6 or less a Rouncey, otherwise a Courser.

Destriers: add 1d6+1 during the second year and 2d6-1 during the third year. At the end if the third year if the horse has 11 hits or less it will become a Courser, otherwise a Destrier.

If horses of different types mate, treat the offspring as inferior type but add 1 hit at the end of development.  If a Destrier mates with a Rouncey, roll development as a Courser.

An horsebreeder can follow up to 10 horses and can aid horse development three times each season: in case the character is not pleased with one of the above rolls for their horses a Horsebreeding 5MORE test can be rolled. If successful the horse can re-roll and keep the best result except for Pregnancy rolls.

Mares Special Attributes

In addition to any other horse quirks that your system supports, roll 1d6 for each of the following attributes. On a 1 the mare has that attributes, but don’t tell that to the player until it’s evident.

Twin-conceiver: this mare has a 50% chance of conceiving twins.

Late estrus: the mare is receptive also in autumn.

Fertile: +1 to Conceiving roll, +1 to Pregnancy rolls.

All comments here on Google Plus.

Western League: here’s your manor in the Uplands

My Milan group finally managed, two sessions ago, to get land and title, by the way of sheer guts and being possessed by a malignant weapon. I don’t really do session recaps but I’m willing to give it a try.

As it often happens in RPGs, it all started by doing dirty work for the High Chief Karl of the Upland Court. A tribe of headhunters riding terrorbugs (flying purple scarabs armed with claws dripping with psychoactive poison) was killing his villains and prized cows and he wanted the tribe wiped off the face of the earth. The whole setup (and more) is described by the adventure/sandbox/minisetting at the end of the Adventure Fantasy Game handbook. So, spoiler alert.

*  *  YO, I WROTE SPOILER ALERT * *

One day a small part of the group (Schroedinger the Fighter, Kalibek the Engineer and Winston Moretti the Warlock) decided to put an end to the headhunter problem: Chief Karl sent them eastward, beyond the Harga volcano, telling them to look around the area for heads on poles.  After exploring the area they found a hill riddled with tunnels. but while deciding how to act they were attacked by a cannibal hunting party going back to their den. The immediately blew into a horn to raise the alarm, and the small skirmish soon escalated to a slaughter as more headhunters and terrorbugs (often acting as flying mount for headhunters) joined the combat.

Winston, during the fight, killed a bug rider and managed to take control and ride the giant insect, but as he struggled to take control of the bug the tide of battle was pushing against the players, so they decided to fall back. While running away Schroedinger got bit by another bug, failed the save and, due to the psychoactive bug poison, terror paralyzed him. An airborne Winston arrived, dispatched the bug, lifted Schroedinger and flew away. Meanwhile Kalibek was safely running like the wind in the thick woods. Then Winston noticed the fighter was wielding Nautilus and the penny dropped.

Yeah, this is the illustration for Nautilus. It will show up in the second print run of AFG.

Nautilus, the malevolent cephalopod spear, is known to throw itself at enemies it wants dead by draining mana from his wielder, only to reappear in his grasp a moment later. So Winston touched Nautilus felt his magical energy drained by the weapon, which propelled itself against a chasing enemy, killing him, only to reappear in his grasp a second later. Turning back and letting the frenzied spear feed on his mana to throw itself again and again against the few remaining savages, the tide of battle turned once again, this time with the PCs winning!

In the following melee Winston got bitten by another terrorbugbug and succumbed to its terrifying paralyzing poison. Everything seemed lost, but Nautilus possessed him! Winston became frenzied, killed the remaining enemies and then blew the cannibals signaling horn again, hoping to summon more victims. Ten more came out with bows and spears, followed by a dozen kids with daggers and stones, wanting blood. Incapable or unwilling to outrun the savages the party stood their ground and killed all of them.

Winston then, and it’s uncertain whether the possession was still ongoing, piled the corpses, put the party’s Idol of Cthulhu on the pile and then all the party together supplicated and prostrated themselves in front of the God’s effigy. Their prayers were heard, as their wounds started to close and their pain to ease off.

Then they left for their camp and came back the next day, blew the horn again and were challenged by the chiefs and their kids, all riding terrorbugs, 12 riding as many in total. The savages had nowhere else to go and the first snows were approaching, so they tried a desperate last assault to save their ancestral home. At the end all the headhunters were slain, the bugs driven away and their ancestral home plundered.

So, yeah, that’s how you get a manor* from a lord: by killing hallucinogenic bugs and scores of men, women and kids. Because if someone has enough guts and disregard for decency to do that, you’ll end up being a very good knight that does not question orders.

All comments here.

[*]: actually a tower in the middle of a valley linking the Uplands with the Western League. With a big hole in the wall. And a hungry giant living inside.

Concurrent Campaign: many groups, one weaving continuity

Concurrent campaigns happen when two or more groups play in the same campagn settings AND the actions from both groups impact on the setting for both groups. While its common for a DM to run the same setting for many groups at the same time but with none or very limited crossaction, or to run the same continuity for years over many campaigns, running many groups at the same time is both taxing, due to the increased effort and problematic. The outcome is a much more vibrant campaign, with many more details growing organically from play.

Concurrency 101

Here is the core of concurrency: play the same setting with more than one group and let players change the setting in a way that other groups can perceive and interact with. If you run a sandbox it’s going to be easier than in other styles of campaign, but then again, sandboxes are easier to play with. Easy peasy. You will soon realize though that the whole practice is fraught with problems. Or you might discover that it’s fantastic without any hitch. Anyway, here’s a small list of the problems I found and remedies to mitigate them.

Not enough Content

Two parties go through content twice as fast. And you’re a really busy person. In fact, they don’t. What happens is that, in a sandbox, they will either drift in different directions and stop interact (and then will go through content quickly) or will instead mooch about the trail of devastation and/or consequences left by the other parties. But this trail is, unless you are a consistent shit-hot designer and writer, much better content than most of the stuff you write, so the two groups will faff about in each other’s trail of devastation. Why is it better, though? Mostly because its fully coherent: it’s bourne out of a real story that unfolded itself, leaving bashed doors, mutilated corpses, destroyed fortresses and broken hearts following the criteria that a group of murderhobos would follow. Second, its corpses, ruins, and survivors are interesting because they come with their own drama already. And you dont have to prep it, because the previous parties will have provided all the shenanigans your poor npcs will ever need to have a terrible existence. Third, early groups will follow the most interesting bits of prep and improv you throw at them, and there’s a big change following groups will follow them too.

In short, having a band of adventurers play with your setting is the best prep you can muster, especially if many groups trampled through your campaign already. So, scratch that fear away, multiple parties create a lot of content by themselves.

Timelines & Paradoxes

Different parties do go through in-game time at different speeds. This will cause you headaches and possibly blow your mind open with paradoxes. But it will only if you care about the Game Police.

Let me explain better: it’s not mandatory to completely have the parties act in 100% coherent worlds, and for many reasons.

The first reason is that there is no Game Police telling you that you’re doing it wrong. So try to chill out and enjoy.

Second, most importantly, only the relevant stuff is worth to synchronize. Players are known not to care or notice or misinterpret small details anyway. It usually does not matter if one of the two timelines has an additional three months long trip unless someone cares or its somehow important (and, in that case, you can nimbly reshuffle events between the two campaigns unless there is a post-hoc event).

Third, in case it gets excessively problematic, just bluntly tell the players that, for the purpose of a single adventure or limited time or action frame, you’re taking the liberty of keeping the sessions not synchronized. Just tell them. This is so meta that some of your players might be turned off by this breaking of immersion but, if you want, don’t even tell them. Ultimately concurrent campaigns are a crutch to help you, the DM, run more interesting games. You dont have to justify how you run different groups unless you have a very very complicated social contract with your players. For what they know, the other party is not even real, of its actions are used by you as a suggestion.

Incomunicability

The two parties will probably never meet: for logistic reasons, while the PCs live in the same world and maybe in the same city and maybe even work for the same master, they will never meet unless the players happen to be playing at the same time. This can be fixed by careful meta-discourse, the GM running PCs ar NPCs and understanding that the campaign has some brittle spots that are better not be prodded. On the other hand this does not stop players interacting indirectly by, for example, setting each others house on fire. Apparently wanton destruction on absent PCs’ properties is a sport with a tradition of more than 40 years, and who I am to deal a blow to such an important traditional sport?

How to start

Start a steady campaign and, on the side, play one shots in the same whereabouts with different groups, or in nearby places with the same group. The fire and forget nature of one shots make players risk prone and extremely propense to create the trail of consequences described above. Pit them against the mob. Have them disappear up in the mountains. Let them set the woods on fire. Rob a caravan. Murder the Major. Collapse bridges. Destroy dams. Kidnap princes. Make volcanoes explode. Make sure that they super-piss-off NPCs. Let them seed new adventures, then reap the results with your core group.

Once youre fine with random acts of wanton campaign vandalism, simply go bananas with many groups at the same time. The most I had were three groups at the same time: while two adventuring locales were kept effectively separated, the rest of the setting was fully synchronized. This happened even when I was running Western League for two of groups weekly and for the third once every three months. Just dont feel constrained by the relative incongruences: even if two of the groups meet they’ll be busy discussing shared lore, interesting details and experiences and what a douchebag Lord Dude Mc Duderson is rather than nitpick at your shoddy treatment of the calendar or shopkeeper inventories.

Be brave.

Where’s my end of the World? AFG Apocalypse Sale Ending Tomorrow

I realized that the world might not be ending at all anytime soon. So, instead of being killed by the Rain of Colorless Fire, we’ll be killed by climate change and peak oil consequences.

The AFG sale will end tomorrow. Buy Adventure Fantasy Game while it’s still cheap.

Mayapocalypse!!! 33% off Adventure Fantasy Game

The world is about to end and I want a bottle of rum, eggnog and smoked salmon over rye bread. Therefore I realized that I might as well sell my game on the cheap.

Feed my bad habits, buy my game.

Get it before the world ends. In case the world will not end I’ll send you the PDF of the next revision too, with new layout and illustrations.

The Solstice is Nigh! It’s that time of the year again!

Twelve beheaded dwarves,
Eleven poisoned halflings,
Ten giant frogs a-leaping,
Nine aligned swords,
Eight balors,
Seven keys for seven gates,
Six phoenixes e-xploding,
Five golden rings,
Four shriekers,
Three cockatrices,
Two death ray traps,
And a dragon on his hoard!

Plus a small status update on all things here at the lost blog:

• The Pergamino, CORSICA and Chthonic Codex will be put out by a publisher. Yes, that would be me. The publisher has a name and a site. But the domain registration went wrong so I don’t feel comfortable revealing more details. 
• This means that to pre-order the Pergamino you have to send me an email and/or send me 15£ via Paypal (+5£ for shipping outside of the UK). There are still copies available for preorder, but not a great number. After the site goes live the price will probably be bumped up a little bit.
  
• The publisher will focus on the following business: small press games, limited edition handbound books and tabletop games and a POD+handbinder. This means that you can send me a PDF and I’ll send you back a book bound to order. Due to the problems above online orders are not available yet so send me an email if you want some
• CORSICA (yes! it’s definitely going to be published! 100% not a joke!) went through a preliminary layout experiment to “feel how it feels”; it feels great. Richard and I concluded that since we don’t specially care about shipping it early, we would rather be incredibly ambitious and ship something awesome later. Later means not before Spring 2013. This means I’ll have to go to Amsterdam and looking at rigging and hulls drinking advocaat, well, it’s going to be tough but I’ll gladly take one for the team.
• Chthonic Codex went through a not-great period due to what can be best described as authoral problems. At the moment the manuscript is between 15 and 25 pages of dense text, plus a trainload of illustrations. There is still twice that amount of text to be written plus an unrelated wagonload of drawings I can’t discuss about yet. It’s coming together how me and Chris wanted it to be, which is the most flattering thing I could ever hope to write, really.
• Roger and Rea came to Glasgow and stayed over at mine. Happenstance, on my 33rd birthday. We had hopes of engaging in some gaming, but after a 6 courses dinner we decided to just sit and have a chat. Fruitful discussions about RPGs happened! And design! Amongst the gifts I received Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, shiny purple d30 (I need excuses to use it now) and some character art Roger made years ago. In the back of the character drawing we found the map of Roger’s second campaign ever.
• Burgs and Bailiffs needs only layout. Yay and thanks to everybody that collaborated!

Pergamino Barocco: Not your usual spell RPG supplement

In the life of a small-small-small-small-press RPG publisher there are times when substance and content is the only thing that matters. Some other times, instead, it’s mostly about style. Then there are some lucky combinations where both need to be turned up to 11.

RPG supplements about spells and magic are usually awfully plain lists of descriptions of spells, all crammed up in as few pages as possible and seemingly written in the driest way possible.

Enters the Pergamino Barocco

And here is where Roger and I break the mold. Because you always wanted your spells to be in a book that looks like a spellbook, feels like a spellbook and illustrated with arcane imagery. Maybe handbound. Like in the picture below, showing Roger’s copy.

The Pergamino Barocco contains a panoply of arcane knowledge ready to be used in your old school fantasy game. Each spell (designed and written by Roger) occupies at least a page and is illustrated with a period woodcut.

And it’s not going to be a stitched book, but a folded scroll. So not only you can page through it as a normal book, but you can also display any number of pages you want at the same time,  potentially all of them at the same time, as shown below [*]. This also makes possible for multiple magic-users to peruse the book at the same time should they agree to share its secrets.

I will bind all copies (click for some examples of my bound books), individually and carefully, by hand. The cost is not exactly defined but it will be around 15£ + s/h (free shipping to the UK).

You can choose your Pergamino to be bound in your choice of the following materials: maroon buckram (washable and resistant, same quality of Roger’s copy but maroon), purple bookcloth (nice feeling, more delicate book-grade cloth) or black japanese silk (three copies only, price around 25£ due to the sheer cost of book-grade silk). And will come with a gold-yellow ribbon, because all books need at least a bookmark. [**]

The print run is going to be extremely limited. First come, first serve basis. Custom orders are naturally possible. Preorder here.

[*]: my garden-variety gnome Gnaro is in the picture to provide some scale. I honestly can’t remember how it ended up in the picture in general, and there in particular.

[**]: Roger’s copy does not have one, in case you wonder.