Road trip!

I am off for the next 4 days, so I am off to Nashville for the weekend. Never fear about my A to Z challenge, I have already written my "A" and "B" posts and will be posting them from my hotel room (how lame am I?). Looking forward to this trip and the month of A to Z posts too.

For all my fellow OSR bloggers taking the challenge good luck & have fun!

More on my DoomQuest hack.

I am still looking at the DoomQuest hack in Fight On! #11, and playing around with the mechanics. I think there is a really cool minimalist game here and I am glad to see I am not the only one enjoying this.

I have changed the format of armor in DoomQuest. While I love the way RuneQuest armor works, it slows combat down and I want something more abstract like D&D combat. So, taking my current love of abstract armor to work with any historical/fantasy like setting, I used the Fields of Glory armor classification again for this hack. We have 4 armor categories: Unprotected, Protected, Armored, and Heavily Armored. Each category provides an Absorption rating and an encumbrance rating, as well as determining your move rate.

So I have given the values as below:

Unprotected (U): AP 0 / ENC 0 / MV 12"
Protected (P): AP 3 / ENC 6 / MV 9"
Armored (A): AP 5 / ENC 10 / MV 7"
Heavily Armored (H): AP 7 / ENC 14 / MV 5"

Again, it is up to the players and the GM to determine what makes up each of the categories. I would suggest light armor (such as quilted, padded, or leather) or shield only as protected. Shield & light armor for Armored, and shield and heavy armor for heavily armored (such as mail and plate).

I have stated up a few Monsters / NPCs with these rules and here is a ghoul and a wight as examples:

Ghoul (eater of the dead)
sword: 14 / sorcery: 6 / social: -
enc: 22 / move 9" / Xp Value: 140
Armor: 3 (P) / HP 7 / attack: claw (d8)
special: -

Barrow Wight (dead noble wearing armor buried in)
sword: 12 / sorcery: 16 / social: -
enc: 18 / move 7" / Xp Value: 160
Armor: 7 (H) / hp 24 / Attack: weapon (d6)
Spells: Fear, Befuddle, Death Touch
Special: Can only be harmed by magic weapons & spells.

My A to Z schedule (well A to D at least)

While initially I had intended to blog about Ugarit for my A to Z challenge, I think I will instead blog about the Holmes edition of Dungeons & Dragons and how I plan to use that as a “complete” game for my mega-dungeon campaign using Ugarit as my backdrop. So I will still reveal bits and pieces of Ugarit while also talking about my favorite edition of Basic D&D.

Here is my current list of blog topics:

Friday Apr 1^st: A – Six Acolytes of Ugarit (6 cleric NPCs)

Saturday Apr 2^nd: B – Band of Berserkers (an encounter with berserkers of Yamm)

Monday Apr 4^rd: C – Cult of Yamm (detailing the chaos god Yamm)

Tuesday Apr 5th: D - Dwarves of Ugarit

Of course with my ADD the above is subject to change (well except for A, which is already written). :)

Fight On! #11 & DoomQuest hack...

I received my copy of Fight On! #11 yesterday and as usual, I love it. I have not missed an issue yet and it seems like it just keeps getting better. This issue there is a really cool mini-game (hack) of RuneQuest called DoomQuest written by Scott LeMien. I have to say, I LOVE this hack. For some reason it is really calling to me, I have already started working on a hack of the hack (changing some of the rules around). I think there is some great potential for this little game, and I hope to try it out soon.

For now I have created an Ogre for use as an adversary.

Update to Swords of Abandon rules

I have updated my rules, really I only changed Comeliness for Charisma -everything else remained the same in this version. I plan to use this rules-set for my upcoming blogging exercise in April. All of my posts will relate to my planning of the under-city of Ugarit.

Ugarit will be on a world (one of the 722) that was isolated just as Tekumel was. I have not created the world yet, but will hope to do so as part of my April blogging. So anyway, if you want to see the newest rules, you can find them here or in my download side bar.

Human Empires Skype Playtest Character.

I give you Yarm'ar Dubois a down on his luck space assassin. After some botched jobs, he has found it hard to get hired. Down to his last credits, he is desperate for work...

This is my character for Hill Canton's skype ran play-test of the Human Empire rules. The game still has some slots available I believe and can be found here. The actual rules can be found on Ix's blog site, here. The concept is Tekumel pre-isolation from the universe.

April blogging challenge... from A to Z.

John over at The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms blog posted a link to this blogging challenge for April. The challenge (found here) is to post from A to Z everyday in April except for Sundays. I think I will accept the challenge and use it to develop my Ancient Under-City of Ugarit setting. I have been very slack at updating my blog recently and I hope this will kick-start me into posting more frequently.

So I have started shaping some ideas for topics for this challenge, of course these are subject to change between now and the posting dates in April. Here are some of the topics I am considering so far....

• A : Armor
• B : Barbarians
• C : Cults
• D : Dogs
• E :
  
• F :
• G : Gods
• H : Healing
• I :
• J :
• K :
• L :
• M : Maps
• N :
• O : Orbs
• P : Portals
• Q :
• R :
• S :
• T :
• U : Ugarit the grand city
• V :
• W :
• X :
• Y :
• Z :

So stay tuned for an April full of Ugarit goodness.

Old "Resistance" file...

I was moving files around to my new desktop when I found a copy of my monsters for "The Resistance" setting. I had thought this document was lost in my many pc & website moves, glad to have found a copy of it. So for your enjoyment it is available here as well as my download sidebar. Enjoy the killer robot goodness!

The Ancient Under-City of Ugarit continues...

Mapping of level 2 is coming along nicely (though I am not sure yet if this is level 2 or just another level 1 split from the other map... I want this thing to be HUGE).

The Ancient Under-City of UGARIT

First Level Wandering Monster Table (Roll 2d6)

2 to 3 : 1d6 Ghouls

4 to 5 : 2d6 Skeletons

6 to 8 : 2d6 Berserkers of Yam*

9 to 10 : 2d6 Giant Rats

11 to 12 : 1d6 Zombies

*Berserkers of Yam are fearless warriors and followers of the Cult of Yam (the chaotic god of the Sea). These warriors dye their hair green and disdain armor. They are typically armed with short blades, hand axes (for throwing) and curved daggers. A typical encounter with a group of berserkers will number between 2 and 12 warriors. There is a 1 in 6 chance that a Priest of Yam will accompany them (a 2^nd level cleric). These warriors will fight to the death, unless a Priest orders them to do otherwise.

Armor Classifications and a new Templar class.

I have typed up my armor classification notes below for use in any old school (original or retro clone) version of the game. (Not using d6 as outlined in my initial post - just base AC). You can download the document here (or in my downloads sidebar).

I am working on my own game for my Under-city megadungeon based mostly on the LBB OD&D. I am removing the cleric class and replacing it with a non-spell casting Templar class. The magic-user is being replaced by a "Sorcerer" class that has access to both cleric and magic-user spells.

I have already written up the Templar and hope to post more about it soon.

Level 2 of the Under-city begins...