Making hay while the sun shines

Just another quick update on Chanbara.

I had a fairly light load of readings for grad school this week, so I've really been trying to crank out the text for Chanbara.  Today, I revised the monster XP tables, lowering values quite a bit from Flying Swordsmen.  FSRPG is all about the kung fu, so combat XP is high.  Chanbara will be about getting the loot as well as kicking monster ass, so XP for GP will be in it, and monster XP needed to be toned down a bit.  Of course, that means I'll also need to devise some treasure tables...  Hmm...

Anyway, I managed to write up seven or eight of the approximately 20 new monsters in the game.

And for those who wish to take score at home, Chanbara will feature:

13 Character classes, 66 spells, around 45 combat Maneuvers (I'll have to count them to be sure), a similar number of ninja Tricks, the above mentioned 20 monsters, and setting information for those islands up at the top right corner of the Zhongyang Dalu map in FS.

I've decided the major samurai clans will be named after sumo stables.  Originally I thought I'd go with famous samurai actors' names, but decided the sumo stables sound more interesting (or at least to me).  Other than that, I'm still not decided on whether I want a "warring states" political free-for-all setting for maximum action and social mobility, or a more stable "Edo-Jidai" human lands with encroaching monsters to go for a traditional Law vs. Chaos thing.  I considered adding notes for both, and I guess that will depend on how long I want this ebook to be.  Still shooting for 64 pages, but it may end up 120 or so like Flying Swordsmen if I'm not careful.

[If you don't mind waiting, I can go full bore on this thing.  If you'd like it sooner rather than later, like me, 64 pages is the way to go.]

Progress!

Progress continues on Chanbara!

Yesterday I finished the Exploration/Interaction chapter, which included all the Skill Dice and Tricks for Shinobi (read as "cool ninja powers"), and started on the Magic chapter.

Finished the Magic chapter at work today.  Well, the first draft, anyway.  And I forced myself into brevity, which I found both productive and liberating.

There are 66 spells in the game, plus the Magic Skill Dice, the spellcasting mechanic (riffing off [or ripping off, if you prefer] of Chainmail's caster roll rather than normal Vancian magic), and a few notes on special magical conditions.  Six pages, A4.  I limited myself to no more than two lines of text for any spell description, along with one line that has name/range/duration/effect.  I figure anyone who wants super bloated "AD&D 2E and further" style rules that spell out all the individual limitations can add that part themselves.

Pretty happy with my writing today.

Crap...or maybe this is a good thing?

I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but I did a bit of editing on what I've written for Chanbara so far. 

And I realized that it's somehow morphed from an expansion intended for use with Flying Swordsmen (or any OSR Clone or TSR original D&D variant) into a stand-alone game.

I think I'm going to have to trim it back to just a supplement if I want even a hope of keeping it to 64 pages.  Luckily, I can keep all the extra writing I've done for my update of Flying Swordsmen, if I ever get around to that.

Chanbara Armor Poll Closed

Super Simple Armor is the winner.

I'll revise it.  I was thinking that I'll have two types of light armor - concealable (for the shinobi, mostly) and non-concealable.  One type each of medium and heavy armor.

Various descriptions of what each type could entail. 

I worked up the encumbrance system today.  Similar to Delta's "stones" system, I'm using vague "encumbrance units" and a PC can carry up to 1/2 their Str. score with no penalty.  Up to Str. with modest penalties to speed.  Up to double Str. at max, but severe penalties.

A full backpack, a bag of loot, a large weapon, a bulky piece of normal gear, light armor - all count as one encumbrance unit.

Medium armor counts as 2 EU.  Heavy armor is 4 EU.

Medium weapons are only 1/2 EU, and Small weapons are 1/4 EU. 

Actually, thinking about it now, that might be broken for PCs with 18 Str and overly severe for PCs with 3 Str.  Maybe I'll adjust the numbers to base 10, with bonuses and penalties for high/low Str similar to BX D&D, like this:

Str 3  Enc. 7
Str 4-5 Enc. 8
Str 6-8 Enc 9
Str 9-12 Enc 10
Str 13-15 Enc 11
Str 16-7 Enc 12
Str 18 Enc 13

One half Enc. value at no penalty, Enc. value at modest penalty, double Enc max at severe penalties.

So you want to be a samurai?

Then chances are, you want to be like this guy:

Yes, gratuitous Mifune image-dump post. 

Lost in the Dungeon

Last night, several of us were in the mood to play - including me, since I will be busy tonight with grad school stuff and will miss our regularly scheduled Saturday game.  And since Justin was out, I offered to run my Megadungeon.

Jeremy and Rick were the only players to show up, and they rolled up a couple of new level 1 PCs, Evinarus the (Elf) Thief and Max the Fighter.  Rick didn't have the Basic Fantasy RPG and I was too lazy to look it up since I had my homebrew players' guide right there, so he ran a normal Thief class character and role-played the Elf parts (I did let him have infravision and better secret door detection and we didn't meet any ghouls so the paralysis never came up).  Jeremy of course rolled another 18 Str Fighter with a polearm (great axe), and while he's perfectly fine to imagine for himself massive anime bulging muscles that would put the Incredible Hulk to shame, my world just doesn't work that way.  ;)

They gathered some rumors in the town of Silverwood and set out for the dungeon.  They circled around the outer curtain wall and found a boarded up wooden shack against the outer wall.  Discussions with the occupants (who refused to show themselves) sent them back to town to get a pony keg of beer and they also hired Valeria, a buxom mercenary, to accompany them for 10gp up front and a share of any treasure.

Back at the shack, they found it was manned by thirsty gnomes, who happily let them pass and use the stairs down to the dungeon in return for the beer.  At the bottom of the stairs, there was a closed doorway and Evinarus heard singing beyond.  Going out into a wide corridor running north-south, they heard the singing coming from a side passage straight ahead - and after some cautious moves, discovered it to be a party of young halflings having a party in the dungeon!  Much discussions hinted that goblins lived to the east. 

They explored a bit more and found and set fire to a rickety barricade with alarms that summoned a large warband of kobolds, who shot at them and wounded Max with a crossbow.  A patrol of more gnomes had passed them and had rushed off to get the beer their companions were swilling, but the party followed them back up and convinced them to help take on their ancestral enemies, the kobolds.  Big battle led to all but two kobolds dead, the last two fled, with only one gnomish loss.  Then the party tried to sucker the gnomes into tangling with the halflings over beer, but the halfling party was just wrapping up and they were about to head back to their village, all the beer consumed. 

With promises to bring more beer once they found some treasure, the party next investigated a hallway with many doors.  One led to a makeshift latrine.  Another had a basin collecting run-off water.  Yet another had two strange walls, one a shifting wall trap of some sort which they avoided setting off, the other a secret door.  In the secret chamber was a strange crystal wall blocking them from reaching an alcove where they could see a finely crafted elven bow.  While searching for secret levers or some other mechanism to move the crystal wall, a pair of hungry giant racer snakes slithered in and attacked.

Rolls went against our party.  Although they managed to slay one snake, Max was eaten and instead of fleeing, Evinarus decided to keep fighting and his 4 hit points didn't last him long.  Valeria the NPC fled with the measly 200 cp they'd managed to loot off of the kobolds.

She does, however, now have a map of the area explored, and along with Geissler and Kessel, will join the rouster of local NPC armsmen for hire.

Poison in Chanbara

I just spent the past hour or so trying to find a blog post from a little while back - could have been as far back as last November, or maybe only January.  Don't remember exactly.  Anyway, the blogger had posted about the actual effects of poison, and how they're actually a lot more fun than simply keeling over dead.  Projectile vomiting, uncontrolled diarrhea, swelling, hallucinations, all that sort of stuff.

And I can't find it.

Anyway, thanks to my very light Thursday schedule, I've just about got the Chanbara combat chapter done.  All that's left is the poisons.

Inspired by this renegade blog post (and if you're reading this or you also remember that post and happen to remember who blogged about it please let me know!  I'd love to give credit where credit is due, and also stick that post up on the Links to Wisdom wiki so I and others can find it again), Chanbara [and Flying Swordsmen when I get around to revising it] will have three different types of poisons with effects as follows:

Intoxicants: affect the mind, and could cause any of the following - sleep, drowsiness, confusion, impaired judgement, hallucinations, slowed reactions, severe headache, death

Contaminants: nausea, pain, vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy, blindness, choking/coughing, death

Destructive: hit point damage, greater hit point damage, damage plus intoxicant symptom, damage plus contaminant syndrome, convulsions, rash/swelling, death

I'll have charts with the various symptoms, and different die roll spreads for differing strengths of poison: weak 2d4 (never results in death), moderate 2d6 (slight chance for instant death), strong 2d8 (higher chance for instant death).  Of course, the weak destructive poisons could easily result in death through hit point damage even if there's no chance to roll for instant death on that chart.

Once I get all this sorted, then I just need to come up with prices for the different types...