If you don't know about this, well, you're fucking up. I don't know what to say. This shit (the Domesday book) has been up for a long-ass time, I vaguely remember consulting it regularly when I was running my d20 Cormyr campaign (which was a LONG-ASS TIME ago), and it's sprouted features since then.

What I'm interested in here is "how many people can [x] hexes of arable land being worked at [y] relative efficiency feed?" Domesday Book takes easily-arrived-at figures and gives you projected data on how many settlements the land will support (and of what size), how many fortifications will be required to hold the land, what size standing security force (guards, watch, etc) will be present, and how many of several key professions will be supported by this domain. (It's not ideal, for my purposes, that it uses kilometers, but beggars can't be choosers.) (Pretty sure it says that in the DMG somewhere, at any rate.)

Now, I'm actually using Midkemia Cities to generate my city professions, and there is some assumed demographic info there, and there's some figures from the Wilderlands booklets that have other figures, so I'm still kinda juggling all 3 just to see what feels right. The irony in all of this is that this shit won't matter for quite a while, but once players are at the "worrying about domains" stage of the game, it'll be too late to change all of this crap without serious re-working, and I'm gonna want a clear picture of the situation at the commencement of full-on armies and politics shenanigans.

- DYA

P.S.: Oh yeah, the map is from Darklands, the best open-ended sandbox RPG set in the Holy Roman Empire that nobody's ever heard of.

P.P.S.: Oh, and here's Michael Bolton as Captain Jack Sparrow.

Special double half post, which is like one regular post but with ADD.

I just played in the second session of a 1e AD&D campaign that is officially Fucking Awesome: It's Dwarf Fortress, for AD&D. If you haven't heard of it, DF is the most brain-tazeringly complex and in-depth Roguelike RTS city sim featuring manic depressive alcoholic dwarves out there on the market today. It also has ASCII graphics. Did I mention it's free? (Check HERE for how this campaign got started, and HERE for the #1 reason why you need to check out DF. Trust me.)

Long story short: We're 5 dwarves (two clerics - brothers - and three fighters - also brothers - think the Hanson boys in Slapshot) sent from our native hold way the fuck up in the mountains to scout out a site for a new settlement. We've got a wagon of supplies, two 0-lvl dwarven hirelings (a cartographer and a party grunt/porter/wagon watcher), and not one but TWO burglars (a human and a halfling). That's one more than Thorin had, so we've got to be successful, right? Problem is, one of'em (the halfling) is chronically lazy and semi-suicidal (character quote: "Life is pain!"), so he's half useless. On top of that, the other cleric's player has decided to run him as senile as hu- er, dwarvenly possible. The comedy relief is in full effect here, folks.

So that's awesome, so far. Brandon runs a great game, and the players are a blast. We've been hugely successful so far - several experienced players playing smart and hard, plus the fact that five heavily-armored dwarves cut through gobbos and hobbos (and bugbears, oh my!) like a knife through hot butter. A drunken dwarven knife through cowardly goblin butter. We've already cleared out one lair (a ruined monastery) and have started preparing it as a base camp for further expeditions into the surrounding hills. I know Brando's tendency to pile on the hurt when he thinks the players are doing too well for his tastes, though, so I'm sure there's a shitstorm coming our way real soon. But we're fucking dwarves, we'll deal.

PART THE SECOND

In my game, meanwhile, the guys are taking the evil party thing to heart in a big way. Which is also very very awesome. I ran my very first assassination mission at the start of our last session - given the option of a straight roll on the table, or playing out the scenario (and having the opportunity to improve his chances through smart play), the player chose the latter. It was largely a cakewalk - Angus chose the right contract (out of two offered), and took his time casing the location and mapping out the target's moves. When it came down to it, his roll for death attack didn't succeed, but he was able to silence the target with traditional melee and get the fuck outta Dodge anyway. Mission accomplished.

That completed, we went on to determine what the other players' PCs were doing while this was going on (the whole thing took about a week, game time). As I've mentioned here before, I'm using the Midkemia Cities book (which I highly recommend) for its city encounters, but there's also a "city catch-up table" for determining what (if anything) happens to a character during their off-time. They can adjust their chance for an event (up or down) by a certain amount based on their intelligence and/or wisdom. Some of the events on there can have some pretty profound effects on the game, especially if the player chooses to pursue them - for example, one player got "offered dangerous mission". PC gets offered a mission (with the price determined randomly before they accept), and if they choose to attempt it, they have a straight percentage chance of either making it back (with a big bonus in gold and xp) or simply dying. My brother's PC took his chances (for a first-level character it's a smart gamble), but the dice didn't agree, and he bought it. To his credit, Dave shrugged and asked for a clean sheet. (Vive la AD&D! LOL)

The other present player for this session (we were a bit short-handed this night) got a result of "make a friend / your friend has insulted someone / friend asks for help". A few more rolls, we find out that a co-worker (these tables allow for PCs to actually get a job while they're killing time in they city - I decided this was just a fellow adventurer) has insulted a powerful personage, has to get out of the city or face assassination, and asks the PC for assistance. Brandon, without missing a beat, offered to take this guy along to the Castle, and then asks Angus about taking the contract. LOL So now I've got two players in the assassins' guild. EVIL PARTY FOR THE WIN. (They also hired a couple of 0-level spearmen, but these men-at-arms didn't stick around for long once they saw the kind of shenanigans my guys get up to. Hahaha...)

Since they were pretty short (and planning on killing the NPC they'd already hired), they went about looking for a healer to hire on. Since they're complete bastards, this would have been somewhat problematic, except that they thought to inquire through the assassins' guild as to "sympathetic clerics." What they got was one crazy SOB cleric of Erythnul, who was almost more sadistic then they were, and a damn sight creepier. The expedition assembled, they headed off down the Old Castle Track towards the Little Hillwood (and Castle Greyhawk beyond). Oh, with a quick stop to kill the NPC fighter and stash his body.

They delved into the Castle ruins, touched up the map some, encountered some bullywugs (who'd just moved into the lair of some goblins the PCs had "forcibly evicted" a few games earlier), and defeated them. One PC was wounded (the assassin), so they stashed him in their secret bolthole and pressed on. They then returned to the room where, several trips back, they'd fought an evil cleric and his gnoll minions. They'd driven off most of the gnolls and killed the priest last time; anticipating that the gnolls might have returned (but presumably without their clerical backup), they didn't anticipate any problems cleaning up. Which would have been true if the leaderless gnolls hadn't allied with the nearby Old Guard Kobolds. A sound PC rout followed. ("Game over, man, game over!!!")

Getting back to town, our aspiring assassin came up with an interesting way to get treasure identified (they'd come across a potion and a magic dagger in the bullywugs' bindles) - send his hos out to track down a sympathetic bard, and then treat him to a triple-around-the-world on the house. I gave it a chance on the dice, and it came up jackpot, so this worked. (Hey, I'd have gone for it.) So they were able to avoid dealing with the Striped Mage (and his occasionally reasonable but highly variable prices). All in all, a unique session by any standard (well, mine at least).

-DYA

Tuesday's game was an interesting session.

Last time, the PCs were on a map-and-loot jaunt through the Storerooms (level 1 of the Castle Greyhawk dungeons). Near the end of the night, they managed to discover a long-hidden secret chamber. Shortly after, a nasty skirmish with a band of goblins left them pretty banged up, and they retreated to the secret bolthole for a rest.

Now, they were careful to cover their tracks and leave no obvious trace of their passage, so I allowed that they'd be pretty safe there, as long as they Anne Franked it. Usually I've encouraged a trip back to town at the end of a session (since you never know who's gonna be around for the next session, and I try to avoid having un-played PCs in the game), but here at least the players who turned up could operate out of the secret room, with the inactive PCs hiding out. Well, next session we ended up with 3 players.

There was some discussion of turning back to town and assembling some hirelings, but instead the 3 PCs mounted a scouting expedition. They spent a few turns double-checking the party map (there've been a handful of mappers working on it, which tends to make things nice and confusing), and then headed off to the quarter they hadn't hit, yet. And met the Old Guard Kobolds.

If you're an adherent of the Lake Geneva Campaign, you've heard the stories, if not - well, just suffice it to say that these are some Very Burly Kobolds (who've been taking out PC parties for decades, now). The party as it stood was about as tough as a 3-member low-level party can be (two tanky fighters and a fighter/cleric), but right off the players knew something was up. The little bastards were falling like so much wheat (or at least the ones in the front were), but only due to some fancy rolling on the players' part - and they weren't falling fast enough, since the ones in back were tossing oil - and then some of them turn out to be capable swordsmen - and that one's wearing fucking PLATE MAIL - and here come two more units of'em - SHIT SHIT SHIT LET'S GET OUT OF HERE - and I laughed very much.

To their credit, they just exactly pulled it out of the fire, with only one fatality and a handful of hit points left, but (by at least one of my players' admission) their reluctance to flee was almost the death of them. I'd like to say the lesson was learned, but of course they're already plotting out bloody vengeance against the kobs. I suspect it won't be as easy as they're imagining. [EVIL DM GRIN] Their early realization that these weren't "just kobolds" was downright heart-warming, however; if they can at least take away from this that they can't always rely on their knowledge of the Monster Manual to gauge encounters, I'll consider us ahead of the game.


After that fiasco, the party hoofed it back to the Free City of Greyhawk. This was the first time I broke out the map (I'm using Joe Bloch's maps - Joe Bloch of the Greyhawk Grognard blog and the thoroughly awesome WG13 - for my City of Hawks and so far they're eminently suitable), and the first time I plotted the party's course to their destination, with encounters every few thousand feet courtesy of the Midkemia Cities book (I'm loving this supplement so far - read on).

The first encounter I rolled up, as the party was traversing the main drag north towards the Old City, was a prostitute. Consulting the sub-table, I learn that this is exactly (*roll*) one prostitute, who is (*roll*) approaching one of the characters for (*roll*) help. Off the top of my head, it becomes apparent that this is a street girl, and that some bruisers from the bawdy house nearby have been trying to run her and her co-workers off of their corner (nobody likes competition). The players bite and we're off on our first city adventure of the campaign.

This ends up being an interesting exercise in on-the-spot content creation. They head to the spot, the party leader gets the girls to point out their antagonists, and the PCs go to "straighten out the situation". After a few tough words are exchanged, they demand to speak to the thugs' boss; the thugs are only too happy to show the PCs in so that they can fall in behind and bash their collective brains out in private. A close-quarters melee follows (in the foyer next to the coatroom), and, with the thugs realizing the futility of direct attacks (one fighter in plate mail, and we're using weapons VS. AC, they'd be hitting on 20) I got to break out the pummeling and overbearing rules from UA. (Lesson learned here being that you really need multiple bodies for the overbearing thing to work well.) With the largest of the three doormen downed, and the other two wounded and fled, the party leader relays his message to some newly-arriving bravos (that the girls ought not be messed with from here on out), and they take off. Being smart enough to have the hookers show them through the back alley, they even avoid the watch patrol that's headed to investigate the disturbance. The girls are brought to the Green Dragon (where the regular working girls shoot them dirty looks), and it is decided at that these will now be two of our PCs' hos, and that they will now look after the ladies.

So now my PCs have some hos. I'm still figuring out how to handle this. Gary Gygax's Canting Crew book has some amazingly detailed thieves' guild info (that I'm using pretty much as-is for my City), and from here I learn that not only is prostitution a guild-run activity, but that there's even different branches for different types (high-class girls, house girls, street girls, etc.). So not only are they horning in on one branch's racket, they're interfering with another's. I suspect they'll find that pimpin' ain't easy, even in the City of Greyhawk. LOL

All in all, out of one random encounter I got a new city location, the name of its owner (and an idea of what its foyer looks like), two new slightly-detailed NPC enemies (the escaped doormen), a potential in-town conflict for the PCs to deal with (the guild), and a rather interesting and potentially hilarious campaign complication (i.e., "How the shit do I handle PC ho income?")("And do they gain XP for it?")

Hell of a session.

-DYA


PS: This post at Old Guard Gaming Accoutrements is awesome.)

Nothing momentous to report. Just another Tuesday night around here: Me and some good buds enjoyed some single-malt scotch and some good buds. The party dickered over terms with some hirelings, then made an expedition to Castle Greyhawk, only to run into a hobgoblin and his goblin cronies - the same group that they'd only a few sessions earlier routed with judicious application of murder holes and flaming oil. It was a near thing, with the party pulling out a win but with the thief injured and the rest near "E" on healing and hp, but the haul was just worth it. The hired spearman ate it, while the torchboy ran away. They returned to the city, blew a week while the thief rested up (two members were offered positions in the military, another Gilliganed his way into a possible knightly appointment, and the thief picked up a nagging chest cold that will slow him down for a few weeks)*, then wandered the streets (passing by a Pelorite pilgrimage being harassed by street urchins)* hocking their ill-begotten gains and recruiting for the next adventure.

Man, D&D fucking rules.


* Random city events courtesy of Midkemia Press's fine "Cities" book - now re-available from Midkemia's website here: LINKY)

-DYA