Hello,
Just test­ing how to attach.
My play­ers PC.
Not all the boxes are filled yet.
Note on fil­l­able char­ac­ter sheet, may have needed a bit more room for notes with weapons.
Mis­sile could have a range box with each TN

Side note; off the cuff with­out really look­ing, but I thought Shields would have ATN’s also. I watched a fight, with a lot of shield jabs with the edge at the face when an open­ing pre­sented itself. only really pos­si­ble with a Small I imag­ine. I also remem­ber the same with that ROME series, not sure how authen­tic it was.
I sup­pose it would be some­thing sim­i­lar to a Punch with knuck­le­duster maybe.
Allan

Nice one, I like him; many thanky for shar­ing. Seems like some­one read our recent dis­cus­sion about Rid­dick as an inspi­ra­tion.

Samll sug­ges­tion for your player: Maybe he would like to rephrase his “Dis­like Magic” — PA as some­thing a bit more proac­tive, like “Avoid Sor­cer­ery” or “Bring Low Sor­cer­ers”. Pretty much the same what it is now, but gives you and him more to work with.

Allan wrote:
Look right here on how we decided to han­dle this.

Thanks Michael,
I was also not that taken by the Dis­like Magic, but as it was flow­ing from the player, I went along with it.
The sug­ges­tions are wel­come.
Thanks for the link about shields. Could go in the down­loads area.

We were sup­posed to game the sec­ond ses­sion tonight, but he is a very hard work­ing IT pro­fes­sional and lost track of time.
We have set him up very much like the events that tran­spired for Cud­gel from Dying Earth. He has won­dered in from the bush to com­pete in the local fair’s com­pe­ti­tions.
He bumped into some fel­low trav­ellers on the road, one look­ing very much like him.
These are mer­ce­nary assas­sins going to try and kill the local sor­cerer.
In the first ses­sion the same sor­cerer has just hired the PC as his con­tender in the games. Later he can see the assas­sins ask­ing around for there miss­ing friend (dop­pel­gänger to PC).
There attempt on the wiz­ard fails and he learns about there other com­pan­ion and wrongly assumes its the PC, who has been spy­ing on him. He then per­forms the spell to whisk the PC to some ‘outer dark’. But I am look­ing to have the demon trans­porta­tion try to enlist the PC’s aid in break­ing the bind­ing spell. The demon then per­forms the let­ter of the con­tract and deliv­ers the PC to some for­eign shore.
The lead up to this with the fair, gives us some time to play around with the rules, in the form of dif­fer­ent com­pe­ti­tions.
For those who may be inter­ested, I am using the most excel­lent start­ing adven­ture from the ‘Foot­steps of Fools’ series for Dying Earth. In which the author recre­ates the Cud­gel escapades but for PC’s. I very much enjoy his writ­ing. We have played Dying Earth over the years and I was lead­ing up to this series, but did not quite get there.
www​.pel​grane​press​.com/​?​p​=​4​1​4​7
and
www​.pel​grane​press​.com/​?​p​=​4​8​9​1

The player also took some time last ses­sion to write a back­story about his past in the bush. I will see if he can write it up for us.

Play­ing around with;
Tug of War rules.
Even groups — 3 – 5 par­tic­i­pants each side.
Roll d6
1 – 2 aver­age brawn 3, or 1=3?
3 – 4 brawn 4, or 2−5=4
5 – 6 brawn 5, or 6=5
Roll for play­ers group, then work his brawn into the aver­age. Roll oppo­si­tion.
Roll con­test of brawn. 10 foot from each group to the mud pit.
Each suc­cess is over the other group is a 1 foot move.
Work in some fatigue?
Not sure how these games work in the real world, but I am think­ing that the groups can’t move and have to move the rope only, so that could throw in some other coor­di­na­tion roll?

Also the start­ing event for the fair is a run­ning of the bulls type sit­u­a­tion.
Worked out some basic bull stats from the Large Bear (no fangs and claws!)
Kick MP 7 bash
Horn MP 10 blunt bash
Stam­pede.
How does that look?

Allan

Allan wrote:
For mis­sile ranges in meters, the ref usu­ally has that table, but I write it in the notes box since mis­sile weapons don’t really have any­thing else to note. Mine says “Range (m) per band: 2/​4/​8/​15/​-​” in the notes box.

As for weapon notes, it’s just a mat­ter of space on the sheet. There is too much to put on one line to make the box wider, and if I extend it to another line, I have to remove lines else­where. There just plain isn’t room for all the infor­ma­tion you need to jot down.

I thought about mov­ing all the weapon infor­ma­tion to a third page, so there would be a large enough box for all the notes. My prob­lem is that a two-​page sheet lets you print it front-​and-​back of one sheet, so it’s a sin­gle piece of paper.

Yes I agree about the space lim­its, but your prob­lem is you are not using the Tardis prin­ci­ple
Allan

Thanks for shar­ing, Allan!

Allan wrote:
Yes, those Pel­grane prod­ucts are a joy just to read. Though Ihave to say that I have always had trou­ble play­ing Dying Earth — not so much a fault of the game but of the difi­culty of find­ing the right sort of elo­quent and funny play­ers for it.


Allan wrote:
Back­sto­ries are fine, and I’d be inter­ested in read­ing it. I have how­ever observed that quite a few play­ers have a habit of cre­at­ing cool and pos­si­bly unnec­es­sar­ily com­li­cated back­sto­ries for their PCs out of an instinct to pack as many cool things in their as pos­si­ble — as they have made the sad expe­ri­ence that the ref­eree will soon clip their wings of cool­ness. Blade was, among other things, cre­ated to give cool­ness in play back to play­ers.

Allan wrote:
All very nice and work­able, but I were to com­ment I would say that weak­lings usu­ally tend to avoid games of strength while strong guys are drawn to it, so maybe:

1 BN 3
2 – 4 BN 4
5 – 6 BN 5


Allan wrote:
Just about right. Like a stronger and more bel­liger­ent warhorse with horns.

Thanks for the advise for all.
His back­story was along the lines off;
He is from the Shin­ing Hills. We have united the Wamuba into one tribe as there seems to be a rul­ing queen. His father and mother were part of a fac­tion try­ing to resist the Shoma incur­sions. His uncle who is the reli­gious leader of the tribe was secretly work­ing with Nugga-​Tikanda the death­less queen for the oppo­site cause.
His father and mother were both killed by ‘ban­dits’, on a sim­i­lar trip to the town of Razenomei (of the king­dom of Azimba) for the annual great fair.
We were try­ing to work with the vague ref­er­ence to a mine that was sealed by pre­vi­ous peo­ple. I think the idea was that the pre­vi­ous head-​shaman had found this sealed place and awoke some entity, which is the rea­son for the queens title of death­less — vague and not really rel­e­vant.
Any­way Ridik was fos­tered by his Uncle and forced groom­ing for the next Shaman. But he dis­liked the teach­ing and the man and was slow to learn. As he grew up he had a close friend, I think we worked out that the Uncle (who is sac­ri­fic­ing peo­ple as part of the pact with the entity from the vault), took the friend and Ridik saw or became aware of the killing along with other deaths.
He spent as much time with oth­ers clan mem­bers on the hunt etc to stay away from his Uncle.
He received a cryp­tic warn­ing from another clan mem­ber to be care­ful and learnt about his par­ents fac­tion to resist Shoma.
This is when he decided to leave and go to the great fair and test his strength.
There may have been a few other details, but that from mem­ory was the gist of it.

We were try­ing to work in the few vague details in the book, strange under­ground vaults that so scared early find­ers that it was sealed up. Death­less queens, etc.

I have a ques­tion for oth­ers con­cern­ing lan­guage in the game;
Already he has a lan­guage bar­rier with the towns peo­ple of Razenomie. Speak­ing rough pid­gin.
What should I do when he is trans­ported hun­dreds of kilo­me­tres away. It would not be fun to have a real­is­tic prob­lem that would take months to fix. Or would it be ok? He has to find some dirt grub­bing job to sur­vive until he can under­stand what the locals are say­ing. But he is going to have the same prob­lem as he moves back across the land. I assume all this dif­fer­ent King­doms on Xoth have there own lan­guage.
I was think­ing that the trans­port­ing demon could cast some spell, to help, as he wants the PC to find some counter spell to free him from his bondage.

Allan

Allan wrote:
Hmm…I could see some easy role­play­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties with a char­ac­ter “sud­denly” hav­ing the abil­ity to under­stand dif­fer­ent lan­guages, but not yet hav­ing the chops to speak them. Inter­est­ing story and I want to hear more!

Thanks Phil, yes I can see that work­ing and at least he under­stands but has to grunt in suit­able bar­bar­ian style his response.
I just remem­bered also, that I think it was from the back story that the play­ers — Aaron, had gar­nered the pas­sion, Dis­like of Magic.
Allan

Allan wrote:
Nice. It’s just a lit­tle bit wasted on a cam­paign with a premise like the one you out­lined. Shame that none of this is likely to mat­ter.

Allan wrote:
Two obser­va­tions:

From my own expe­ri­ence I can reli­ably assure you that, when one is totally sub­merged in a for­eign lan­guage, with­out any recourse to a lan­guage one knows and with­out any oppor­tu­nity to hear or speak it, pick­ing up the basics of the for­eign lan­guage is incred­i­bly quick. After a month one can eas­ily express absolutely every­thing one wants to express (though of course with an accent and faulty gram­mar) and under­stand every­thing that is said clearly and with­out heavy use of very uncom­mon words. In game terms, I would say that one can under such cir­cum­stances eas­ily pick up 1 level of Skill every week.

But the sec­ond obser­va­tion is that the game isn’t even con­strained by this degree of “real­ism”. From the point of view of the needs of the game I would say that pick­ing up 1 level of Skill every three days is not yet break­ing the con­straints of plau­si­bil­ity.

Allan wrote:
More or less pretty much so, yes. Though in my games I have estab­lished that cer­tain lan­guages are more impor­tant than oth­ers and serve as the lan­guages of inter­na­tional trade. With me, that’s Azim­ban in the Black King­doms, Yar-​Ammonite in the entire mid­dle lands from Khazis­tan in the north to Azimba in the south, and Taraamite in the north. But then some­thing like that won’t help Ridik much, as he will hardly learn an inter­na­tional, but rather a local lan­guage, and this will, as you rightly say, change as he trav­els.

Allan wrote:
Bit deus ex machina, but prob­a­bly the best solu­tion, the alter­na­tives being the player hav­ing to spend all his Pas­sion points on lan­guages or being stuck role­play­ing an end­less string of com­mu­ni­ca­tion prob­lem sit­u­a­tions. But I’d rather have the demon give Ridik an item than cast a spell on him — an item can be lost and offers more story poten­tial than a spell.