And it finally happened...

I had made quite a few final(ish) changes to Chanbara last month. I added a chart with various shinobi activities and standard TNs (target numbers) for them. I'd made a bunch of charts for rolling up random magic item powers, and charts for determining randomly what sort of item had been enchanted (more fun than having lists of standard items). I'd moved the campaign setting information to another file, to be released as a PWYW web supplement in order to free up those pages for the magic item charts and so on. I'd also come up with a random weather chart and some more concrete rules for wilderness exploration (based on the D&D Expert Set but not entirely identical).

Yesterday I lost my USB.

And I hadn't saved a back-up of the file on my work computer. I'm pretty sure I also didn't save a back-up on my home computer. But I'll need to wait until I get home from work this evening (and get the boys to bed) before I can check.

Yes, today, I kick myself.

Never fear, though. I more or less remember what I'd done. It'll just take time to re-do all of that.

Oh, and I'd copied the weather chart to use in my upcoming face-to-face 5E West Marches game, so at least I've got that.

A Battle Most Simian

Being a continuation of the journal recording the travels and adventures of the Green Knight Jack Summerisle, and companions various and sundry, currently seeking a lost city in the strange underworld realm of Pellucidar, far beneath the surface of Eberron. 

Having brought our raft as far up the river as it seemed possible, or way being blocked by rapids and waterfalls, we took to the shore to continue our progress. The ground was rocky, and the black rocks sharp as blades. Having experimented some with the magic items gained from the Serpent Queen's treasure chamber, Yuv the Cleric of Bahamut donned a mask which allowed him to float into the air. Connected to myself by a rope to prevent him from blowing away in the winds, I borrowed the clawed gauntlet of the ghoul-enforcer from Jade and began to work my way up the treacherous cliff. While still climbing, a pair of demon-monkeys, which had been watching our progress, attacked viciously. One would scramble down, claw and bite, and then leap to relative safety, while the other continuously pelted us with sharp stones.

With Yuv and myself suffering these attacks and ineffective in returning paid to the enemy, Flagan the Halfling Monk scaled the cliffs with magical boots and joined the fray. Jade, Makarak, Thorvald, and Rhea offered some support with spells and missiles.

Then a third monkey, red, entered the combat with its evil eye. Whenever its foul gaze landed upon one of us, we could feel our magical prowess diminishing. Before her magic was totally drained, Rhea cast a spell on Makarak the Half-Orc Barbarian, transforming him into a gargantuan ape. In ape form, the barbarian quickly scaled the cliffs and turned the tide of the battle. The two white demon-monkeys were dispatched, although the red one escaped. Makarak, in ape form, assisted the remainder of the party up the cliff, and we crossed some dangerous territory before settling down to camp.

Repurposing Like a Boss

I'm getting my West Marches style hexcrawl prepped. I've got a wilderness map, and thanks to Enworld's Phineas Crow and OSR bloggers Dyson Logos and Matt Jackson (among others), I've got a plethora of lair/ruin/small dungeon maps to sprinkle here and there, along with a few classic TSR modules I plan to plop down in a few select places.

I started stocking the map over the weekend, and decided it would be nice if there was a good randomizer for deciding the contents of a hex if I didn't already have anything special planned for it...and then it hit me. I've had one for years! It's the random dungeon room contents chart in the Basic Set.

For a wilderness setting, it breaks down a little differently, and in addition to potential treasure there's also a potential for discovering an exploitable resource (if the players bother to look for that sort of thing). My revised version looks something like this:

Roll a d6 for Hex Contents:
1-2 Empty
3 Hazard (quicksand, rock fall, lava flow, sentient thorn bushes, whatever)
4-5 Lair (animal den, monster lair, human or demi-human outpost, etc.)
6 Unusual (all the weird unnatural stuff, special ruins relating to the backstory, etc.)

Then roll another d6 for Valuables
Empty: 1 Treasure, 2 nothing, 3-6 resource
Hazard: 1-2 treasure, 3 nothing, 4-6 resource
Lair: 1-3 treasure, 4 nothing, 5-6 resource
Unusual: 1-4 treasure, 5 nothing, 6 resource

Not quite exactly the version passed down from Gygax, Moldvay and Mentzer, but close enough.

I've got some tables from an old hex crawl that I can use for determining chances to locate the above contents/treasures/resources in a hex when passing through, depending on how much time the party spends interacting with each hex. Just passing through, not much chance. Spend most of the day there, you're nearly guaranteed to find something.

Sand in the Box

My son just turned 9, and has been wanting to play D&D with people other than just me. There is a local group with three spots open (playing 5E), but when I asked the DM if he would mind playing with a 9-year-old, he reluctantly said he'd ask his players. I told him don't bother. I figure if he's uncomfortable with the idea, it really doesn't matter what the other players say. So, I'm falling back on my plan to start a new face-to-face group where my son can play.

A while back, I made several posts about running Dragonlance as a sandbox campaign in 5E, thinking I'd run that for my son and whoever else. Dragonlance because the world does have a lot of neat elements to it, and I read tons of the novels when I was a kid, so I know it pretty well. 5E because that will make it easier to attract other players. Sandbox, because I'd rather not introduce my son to playing group games by making him ride the DL module railroad.

But then I thought, why not save myself a lot of time, and just run it with 1E AD&D? It may be harder to get players, but easier to run the game. It would be even easier if I ran it using my BECMI houserules but with race and class separate. But again, getting players might be a problem.

Then, last week, I found a game on RPOL.net with an old school DM running a West Marches game using 5E, and I joined it. And I've decided to copy that rather than set my game on Krynn. Part of the decision was a bed-time discussion with my son, before I got the answer from the local DM, about what sort of character he'd like to play. I gave him a run-down of the 5E races and classes, and he thought a Dragonborn Monk would be fun to play. Not very DL, at least not pre-War of the Lance. So something more open, less defined, and with plenty of options might be in order.

So, I'm thinking how I'd run my own West Marches style sandbox game. There's a bit of a desire on my part to try my saltbox Maritime Campaign from a few years ago, but that's more work for me. With a more standard West Marches type set-up, I can plop down TSR modules, old dungeons I've made, free downloads from WotC/Dragonsfoot/the OSR community, and the like throughout the wilderness, and let the players explore to find them.

I say "West Marches style" because I'm planning to only run it with this one group, meeting regularly. It will be pretty open ended, but since there's only the one group, I'll probably need to lay down lots of rumors and the occasional mission/request for the townsfolk to get them motivated to explore, at least in the beginning.

So now we get to the nitty-gritty of this post. What do I need to run a West Marches style hexcrawl sandbox?

1. A Map: Of course, I need a wilderness hex map. The home town is on the far eastern edge, in the middle, and players have free reign to explore to the west, northwest, or southwest of the town. But if you go east, you're entering into retirement in the civilized settled lands of the Empire.

I'll probably start with a small scale map at 6 miles per hex, with various Basic level dungeons scattered here and there, and a few tougher dungeons and monster lairs. Later, if the campaign lasts long enough, I can create a larger scale map (24 miles per hex).

2. Wilderness Encounter Tables: These are most important, since from the beginning the players will be exploring the wilds trying to find dungeons or monster lairs with treasure. I don't have the 5E DMG yet, just the PHB and MM, and I don't remember if there are wilderness encounter tables in the free Basic Rules DM download, so I may have to just use the Expert Set ones, or make my own custom ones. Custom ones would be a better West Marches fit, so that each area of the wilds can have its own flavor, so I'll probably work up some custom jobbo.

3. A Home Base: In the RPOL game, the home base town is really more of a hamlet, with about 30 residents, not including adventurers. That's easy enough - the town just has the basics needed by adventurers and nothing else. But I may use the "home town" I've been developing for years now, Silverwood, just because I know it and the NPCs there well. I'll likely scale it down in size from around 5,000 residents to merely 500 residents for this game, but the various inns and shops, the mayor and town officials, the temples and thieves' guild, will all remain the same. Like I said, I want this game to be easy for me to run.

4. A Few House Rules: Just exploring for the sake of exploring may not really interest the players. Like I said above, unlike the original West Marches campaign, I'll need to bait the hooks with rumors and missions to get the players out of town and where the action is. Old school games do this well by giving XP for gold. 5E, however, has a very very fast progression rate compared to BECMI or AD&D, so I'll need to tinker either with the amount of treasure worth 1 XP or else with the advancement table.

I think 5E works well getting PCs to level 3 quickly, so that everyone can choose their specialization early on. I'd like to keep that. So I'm thinking I'll give out 1 XP for every 1pp (10gp) in treasure, plus use monster XP from BECMI. That might actually give more XP for higher level monsters, I'd better check on that. Also, the old school "no more than one level per adventure" rule must be implemented.

5. A Jeff's Gameblog style Triple Secret Random Wilderness Fate Chart of Very Probable Doom: Even though I'm only going to be running this game with one party, I'd rather not leave them out in the wilderness between sessions. There will be "safe haven" locations on the map, which can be used to rest and recuperate, resupply and maybe get a bit of information, and of course the players may set up more of their own if they attempt such. If they don't get back to town or to one of these safe havens by the end of the game session, I'll roll and see what happens to them.

6. Dungeons (and dragons, too!): I've still got the Caves of Chaos 5E conversion from the Play Test, and the Isle of Dread, and maybe there was another adventure in there? So I have some stuff already with 5E stats and the like to use. I've got plenty of old TSR era and 3E WotC era modules/adventures on the computer that can be easily converted to 5E, I think. And it's not hard to whip up a few 5 to 10 room ruins, caves, and the like. So I can scatter those around the map, plus leave clues/rumors to other locations in each. I'll also need to decide on a few "pockets of danger" like dragons, undead, or other tough beasties who have a known (or easy to recognize as a more dangerous place) lair in some of the easier areas closer to the home base.

Goodman Games is apparently releasing classic modules with 5E conversions soon, but I'll likely just do the work myself instead of waiting for them to get around to it. The good thing is that I can put a few things I already have near the town (like the Caves of Chaos...in fact, maybe I should use Castellan Keep instead of Silverwood as the home base...), and work up or convert other stuff, as the players get closer to them in their explorations. I could even use those Dragonlance dungeons I was planning to convert to 5E anyway!

That should do it!