Cephalon Dusp's Archives

     A while back, I ran a small pirate campaign. The campaign ended up not going very far, but I have some incomplete notes on ships and sea-faring that have been kicking around in my head ever since. So, lets share them with the world! Ship Stats     The most fun part of this, of course, is looking at all the cool ships you can get. In order to simplify things, I made several classes of ships with fairly generic stats. Additionally, borrowing from Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City (UVG), I created the concept of the "chest" unit of weight. This is approximately one chest of treasure, one person, enough supplies (including water) for a person for a week, and the minimum amount of crew member needs on a ship. Its mostly weight, but has a space component too. A cannon, with balls and powder, takes up 20 chests, which by my math was about 1 ton. Generally, a single crew member is assumed to take 10 chests of capacity, through their weight, equipment,...

    This is the final week of the Gygax 75 challenge! Unfortunately for me, this week ended up being surprisingly busy and I didn't get nearly as much done as I would have liked. Still, each part I did complete ended up being larger than was probably necessary, so I think it evens out.    Back to part four Week 5: The Larger World Calendar     For this, I decided not to do a standard calendar but use the approach for events from Oriental Adventures, where you have events rolled over time to ensure you get dynamic changes. For background information, the calendar has 12 months of 4 weeks each, with each week being 7 days long. Additionally, there are 2 days "outside the calendar" at the end of the year, which are a time of hedonistic celebration. Seasonal Events     Roll 2d6 on this once per season (3 months), with a d12 roll telling you what week the event begins in earnest. 2.  Dragon Sightings, lasts 1d3 weeks. External Chaos. 3. Nomads Vis...

     Another week, another portion of the Gygax 75. This week ended up being much more difficult than I expected, because of the two thorny problems of mapping the town and how to name things. I spent a large amount of time fiddling with Vulgar , a piece of software that helps automate language creation. I still keep finding issues, but I also need to be done with this week at some point so it will stand. Back to part three Week 4: Town Features      For your viewing pleasure, I present the City of Soorzel Somfawt (the nobles). It was made very quickly in Watabou's City Generator , though I am not particularly happy with it. The estimate on this map is that it would contain 800 buildings and be about a mile across after generously doubling the size of everything. Thus, I have decided this is the main portion of the city where the clans live and things generally happen. Outside of the walls are smaller compounds for smaller clans and the clan-less, explainin...

     Wow, slightly over a week later and I can say this was the biggest week so far. Didn't help that I was apartment hunting and travelling while doing it, but I do have the first three levels of the starter dungeon to present! I haven't completed the dungeon as much as I would like, particularly levels 2 and 3, but it is once again enough that I could probably run a session or two with it.     For the curious, all mapping was done in  dungeon scrawl , which is a nice free dungeon mapping software that runs online! Back to part two Week 3: The Dungeon The entrance to this dungeon is a sunken hole in the ground, leaking cool air from below. Level 1      This level is themed as a buried temple, though it ended up being pretty small. Still, it should provide some interesting adventures, particularly on repeat visits. The Statue in 05 can very easily become a recurring problem/feature of the level depending on how it is handled. The entrance to ...

Week 2: Surrounding Area Back to part one Hex Map     Mapping this setting has been an interesting challenge. I tend to get a little in-depth with worldbuilding, but did my best to hold off on the details. So, without further work I present, The Map:     I did this in Worldographer , after doing most of the work on paper first. Now, the most important detail of this map is that the hexes are 1.5 miles across. The larger, grey, hexes are 6 mile hexes. While 1.5 miles might be a weird number, but works well with my travel system, which makes use of Leagues (how far someone can walk in an hour). Another interesting thing about this map is that inside of the canyon is entirely filled with hills, because the interior of a canyon is basically only flat if someone comes along and manually flattens it.     For the sites on the map, you can see the main city located around 07:07. It has a population of about 5,000 people, making it small but still notable. At 03:11,...

Some Background      For those who are not aware, Gygax 75 is a sort of challenge (available  for free here ) based on creating a new campaign. It is based on an article written by Gary Gygax in 1975, less than a year after the original editions of D&D were released. The challenge itself is broken up over a series of weeks, with each one focused on a different concrete task.      I have been interested in trying the challenge ever since I first encountered it, and now that I have some inklings of an idea for a Mars inspired setting, I decided that now is the time. Week 1: The Concept Pitch Points Everyone lives in enormous canyons . This red planet is inhospitable outside of enormous canyons which snake across the surface of the planet. Every canyon has a river snaking through it, providing life-giving water and supporting the agriculture necessary for large, organized society. The soil is iron . The planet is red, because nearly all of the soil is...

     In the past weeks that I haven't been writing here on the blog, I have been creating and running a Pirate Campaign for my normal table. We have been having great fun with it, but as I have worked on cobbling together the systems to run it, I have hit quite a few brick walls. A Standard for Every Ship      Among the most annoying problems I have encountered, is the handling of ships. Every system I have encountered has its own ways of handling ships and they rarely agree, even if they are ostensibly easily convertible between them.      Now, historically, in the pirate age one of the most popular boats was called a Sloop, usually being a single-masted sailing ship that was quick and maneuverable in the water. If a Sloop has 2 masts, it becomes a cutter though that doesn't change much about the ship other than making it slightly bigger.      After robbing some nobles' pleasure flotilla, my players earned a massive haul and w...

       Well, looks like it has been a bit since I last posted. My schedule is a bit fuller than I had previously anticipated, but I am still unsure if it is because it is so busy or if it is because I have lately been making a strong commitment to staying on top of everything.     Anyway, a retrospective on my most recent little campaign which ended Tuesday! A Brief Overview     I only somewhat recently discovered that the Dishonored series has its own tabletop RPG. I got a digital copy of the book and read through it, discovering that it runs on what is known as the 2d20 system. The core mechanic is that characters (Players and NPCs) both roll 2d20s (or more) and try to roll at or below their target number. Nat 1s are critical successes and count double. The goal is to get a certain number of successes, set by the DM.  Target numbers are created by combining an Action (ie. Fight or Move) and a Style (ie. Forcefully or Quietly). Each of ...

     Very recently, I finished my first campaign as a DM. It was run in Monte Cook's Cypher System, using their Unmasked campaign/setting/splat-book. The campaign lasted 26 sessions, not counting our session 0, and told a fairly complete story. There is a lot to dive into, so lets get going. The Cypher System     For those unfamiliar with it. t he Cypher System is a story-telling system created by Monte Cook, which is the system behind their most well known game: Numenera.           As a quick summary, the game works with d20s. The DM tells the players what the "level" of any task they are attempting is, and they need to roll that number times three on a d20 to succeed (ex: Level 3 task = 9 target number). Through spending effort (which depletes pools doubling as your health) or using skills, tools, or abilities, players can reduce the level of a task. This becomes absolutely necessary when confronted with any task of level 7 or hig...