In which we Enjoy the Funnel cakes!

 It went well.  Settled on the Crypt of Endless Agony (#681 from Elven Tower.)  Did a quick introduction of the characters.  Players started getting vested.  Then they entered the dungeon, encountered a ghoul and the slaughter began.  Shoulda been a two-round win but John kept rolling single digit attacks so it was an early bloodbath.  Set the tone.  

The players then settled in, absorbed the stats, possessions and prior occupation.  Range weapons were used as were makeshift range weapons (apples?!)  Some traps detected, some not.  Turning undead attempted - and failed spectacularly.  Slowly but surely the players did what they do best - gelled as a team.  And the BBG was vanquished and the dungeon was escaped and much coin and treasure was carted out.

Many (several?) fun stories were recounted and then the serious work of character creation began.  Roll 6d6 in order.  1-3 give +1 to the ability, 4-6 gives +2.  I also allowed players to swap one high for a low.  Also kept the requirement that an exceptional total must exist for at least two stats, with one being at least 15 and the other being at least 16. It’s enough if a player has one gifted stat, a minimum of 17, instead. Kris's charlatan had some crappy numbers but we bumped the two highest to meet the standard and she was good to go.  

John is already well on his way with Jutorious Bottomflagon his half orc wizard.  Kris's former charlatan is leaning toward rogue and I'm thinking would make a good Mastermind.  Charles?  Leaning toward druid or may take cleric.  Either way he'll be an asset to the party.  Not much muscle here but a lot of everything else.  I've run John through the background generator and it's provided several interesting backstory questions.  He had a fraternal twin die at 6.  How?  He has advantage vs poison.  Why?  He was given two potions.  One healing.  The other is his choice, as is who gave it to him and why.  He was "assigned" his three cantrips but selected one in the funnel.  His spellbook also has Magic Missile and he'll select the other one.  Will be interesting to see how he interacts with Dakora.  

Equipment?  Basic needs, PLUS the stuff picked up in the funnel, PLUS a 3d6 die roll here.

A nice inscription in the spell book - a gift from his mentor (provided by ChatGPS).  And John's well on his way.  I use my mechanics to make a good fit.  John gets a crap-ton of choices and meaningful questions to direct his backstory.  One down.  Two to go!

In which we get dressed

 OK, y'all know I like some picky grit (grit pickin'?) in my game.  And weather.  And economics.  And that my econ system is being reworked.  So I finally got around to updating my textiles, cloth and clothing production.  Alexis has over a dozen posts on clothing (sadly no longer with comments, some of which were quite helpful.)  And I had begun the task of meshing the clothes and weather systems but several steps remained undone.

No longer.

Weather.  Every population area has a weather system based on latitude, altitude and biome.  This spits out a daily temp range, precipitation, condition and wind speed.  The temp ranges are broken into 10 degree steps and each "step" has a clothing "requirement."

Clothing.  The two prime concerns are thickness and weight.  It takes about 4.5 pounds of material to provide basic coverage.  Every 1.5 pounds provides an additional 10 degrees of "warmth."  When it's pleasant the 4.5 mark is sufficient.  As it gets warmer or colder the party needs to increase/decrease what they're wearing.

An outfit of common clothes (homespun hemp) weighs in at 4.6 pounds and covers the basics.  Traveling clothes are made of linen which is not as heavy material but is made thicker, so 10 pounds which means it's good down another 35 degrees!  Wool socks.  Great hooded cloak.  Mittens.  Now you're getting down below freezing.   It's late spring though and heat is getting to be a factor.  Common clothes.  But even then a failed CON save can result in exhaustion, and that adds up.  And wearing ARMOR while traipsing around the countryside just adds to the problem!  Leather armor adds 8# right off the bat!  

So now part of my session prep will include evaluation clothing/armor worn as it relates to upcoming weather so I can advise the party of the choices they'll need to make.   And choices make the game!

In which we open up the books

It was recently suggested that I write up more details on my trade system. Since I spent a chunk of the last week writing up my procedures for handling travel it seemed like a natural next step. I'm going to skip all of the world building that went into the base of the system although another polite request might get a thousand words on that as well.

So the world exists. Raw materials exist. In places. Limited by biome, rainfall, manpower, altitude and a few other geographical factors. The OTHER thing that exists is my spreadsheet(s.) Before we begin I need to credit my inspiration, Alexis Smolensk. I return to his material daily for guidance and inspiration. A dozen other writers provided insight, ideas and inspiration: for h in hexes , Red Ragged Fiend and others you'll find over there in Appendix N.

Just realized I have NO idea where to start. So I'll send you back to Alexis's. That's a rough starting point for the travel stuff. We then use THAT table to calculate how far each and every shipping point is from “Our Town.” Divide the amount of something that's produced “far away” from the distance and you get a number reflecting how much of any given item is available here. He uses the example of elephants from Burma to Norway. That's 300 units of travel. His math further determines that 144.55 of the beasts are available in Norway. That's the number of elephants moving through this town of 2,500 in a year. Or COULD be, if anybody wanted to ship pachyderms through Norway.

All of that is pretty much a straight adaptation of Alexis' with a few corners cut. I then do the same thing with “Storefronts.” Manufacturers. Trade people. People who convert raw materials into stuff … and the people who convert that stuff into other stuff, etc., until it ends up in the PC's backpack. Short version: Cow to stockyard to butcher to tanner to leather worker to armorer to Ranger as leather armor. Or sheep to shearer to spinner to weaver to tailor to Druid as that sweater to weather this winter's long journey. By using the same formulas for Storefronts as for Raw Materials I can generate another decent number to calculate finished goods reflecting the rarity and difficulty of the labor which goes into it.

The question that was bugging me was what are the caravans hauling into and out of a given place. Here's what I'm testing. Spreadsheet. Column 1: all raw materials. Column 2: Amount of each resource in “Our Town.” This represents what is produced locally AND can be shipped in. Column 3: amount of resource produced locally. Anything with more than .25 units produced is considered for export. (This may change in future iterations as it's a work in progress.) Column 4 is Column 2 less column 3 (total available less locally produced.) Another way to phrase it is amount available for importation. If it qualifies for export I won't import it and if there's less than .25 units for importation it's rare enough that it rarely gets here. I take what's LEFT and look for what's most available, by type. I consider the three most prevalent types of timber. Our current location imports maple (used for handles), chestnut (utensils, tools and furniture), linden (furniture), and yew (sometimes art but in this case, bows.) We export iron ore but have to import clay, salt and construction stone (hence why most homes are wood.) Livestock? We export hogs, ponies (!), freshwater fish, and chickens. We import sheep (for wool) and saltwater fish (salted of course.) Carrots and turnips come in as well. Using the same system I can tell you the woods are full of moose and elk, along with fox for a good trapper.

But it was at this step that I hit a wall. Shelby and I discussed this almost a year ago when considering rarity and availability. I'm omitting a lot of the reasoning that went into the following tweaks. In short, in order for later stage production to occur the inputs must exist. Let's make a pair of cowhide shoes. In our current location there are plenty of cows. A butcher (or tanner) needs to separate the hide. The tanner tans it (turning it into finished leather.) It can then go to a leather worker or a cobbler. Cobbler turns it into shoes and we're done. But without a tanner, there's a problem. Why would a cobbler exist in a village with hides, but no tanner? Potential solutions: a) make existence of a cobbler dependent on existence of a tanner. b) allow for “fractional tanning” via cottage industry in small locales . c) admit this is a bridge to far and hand wave it away. Hate C. Increasing number of tanners lowers cost of their labor. Decreasing number of cobblers increases the cost of shoes. Much of our math so far is based on “support population.” But perhaps rather than just looking at how much population it takes to support one tradesman we should (also) be looking at how many lower level tradesmen it takes to support a later stage. A little back of the envelope math indicates that (roughly) one tanner can support eight cobblers. So I rewrote the formula. Calculate tanners. Calculate cobblers. If “cobblers*7” > tanners, cobblers equal tanners. If C*7<tanners the cobblers equal cobblers. CAN have tanners w/o cobblers. As I find similar occurrences I'll use a similar corrective. Not going to chase them down.

Note:  When calculating the cost of a manufactured item we take the cost of the raw materials divided by a labor factor and add the  cost of raw materials again (A/B)+A.  The labor factor is the cube root of the available references. 

As we approach a thousand words I'll end this lengthy (for me) post. PLEASE ask any questions. I'll gladly fill in any gaps I've left, and I've left quite a few.   

In which we experience FOMO

 For those of you closer to MY age FOMO is "Fear of Missing Out."  It's a thing.  Not going on a rant here (although I could) but rather sharing a bit of a table story.  Party has set off on the road "south" looking for adventure.  A few random encounters.  A few interesting sights/landmarks.  And one of the players sez "I wonder what's happening in Brethamney?"  They left the small town a couple months (IRL) ago (maybe a week in game time) with some unresolved issues, most notably the Wood Elf refugee problem and the growing blighted forest.  The expression of FOMO means I'm doing something right.  They cared about the village and the growing threat/problem.  Which means I can keep escalating the Fronts there and allow the PCs to hear rumors of what's going on as they're on the road.  And THAT makes this "garden game" work.   I feel like I can pull 'em back there any time I want without  railroading.

In other news, here's what I have going on outside of basic sesion prep:

1.  My NTME system crashed a couple weeks back so it's being rebuilt.  Personally I HATE working on just one aspect for a prolonged period of time.  I get cranky.  I start cutting corners, getting sloppy and resort to hand-waving.  So I just do one or two entries on a handful of things so as not to lose the edge.

2.  Do one step on my storefront table (calculating how many of each shop are in each market town (over 150 globally.)  

3.  Rebuild one storefront (which determines what's available from a merchant along with its cost.)  Last night I did fletchers, bowyers and armorers.  One issue here is that many of these are interdependent so I leave notes for things I need to add/re-evaluate.  Really need to hit the textiles chain: from raw material to thread, cloth, yarn, clothing.  Kinda important and far-reaching.

4.  Found a nice article on random generation of caravans.  Have been VERY disappointed with my random encounter tables in this regard.  They don't really reflect road travel well.  Rather than rebuild them for that purpose I've decided that unless my table gives me a GREAT encounter I'll make it a caravan, and use THIS generator to design it.  

5.  All of the above are related to the import/export question and I'm working on "designing" the math to determine what's coming in and going out of a given market.  So far so good but there's a LOT of "formula writing" issues.  

6.  I've had the hex crawl data for MOST of the trip the party is currently on but I need to do three-horizons prep for the new destination.  AND the new destination.  The city, layout, power structure, and the beginnings of Fronts.

7.  Also noticed I need to prep random encounters more.  Was very disappointed with my play of combat encounters on the road.  Solution?  Have one in my pocket!  So part of weekly prep is now spending some time to build a GOOD encounter at the deadly, easy and in-between level.  As an offshoot I need to prep the encounters suggested by the current encounter table so they're ready to go when they come up.  Viva la spreadsheet.

That's pretty much where we are.  PCs will be jumping to 4th level soon with all of the fun THAT entails.  Then at 5th they'll make "The Choice."  They create new characters.  We'll either do the traditional random roll, OR a Lvl 0 funnel OR maybe even a point crawl.  Old characters may be retired ("settle down") or kept active.  New characters may EITHER be tied to the existing party (the B team) OR plugged in to their own campaign somewhere else. 

In which we ask "How big is a dragon scale?"

 I've spent the last two days researching limpets, komodo dragons, fish, snakes, pangolins, gators, armadillos, bones, goethite, keratin and a crap ton of physics and geometry.  And dragons.

Weeks ago my party found a "dragon scale" in a plundered abbey.  It was meant to clue them in as to the presence of a dragon in the area.  A plot hook.  They ignored it which was fine of course.  Days later they briefly encountered a wyrmling in a dark forest in the rain.  As the dragon withdrew they noted it was missing a couple scales.  And in our most recent session they considered using the scale to further the ruse of "there's a dragon in the woods" (see prior post.)  I questioned whether they had TAKEN it.  They said they did.  I said I didn't remember, but I'm willing to allow it.

Jump to my post-session review.  I need to update Aerialayna's inventory to reflect that she's carrying the scale.  So how big is it?  How much does it weight?  The interwebs and ChatGPT had no (valid) answers.  "It depends" was a common response which is fine if it's followed up on.  

Most of the attempts at answers failed on SOME level.  Usually too heavy.  Reason?  Virtually every animal we know of is in the 3%-5% range of "hide" to total weight.  Notable exceptions are armadillos (15%) and turtles (50%.)  I'm happy to go with that 15% figure for our dragon.  A wyrmling is a medium creature which means it will max out at 500 pounds.  So the dragon would have 75# of scales.  So the dominant answers found online (usually somewhere between 20 and 50 pounds) means our wyrmling would have FOUR scales.  No.  Just no.  

So if a satisfactory answer doesn't exist I need to create one.  Not gonna bore you with all of my leaps and dead ends but I will include some assumptions.  Rules:  Dragons range from medium to gargantuan.  Assumption: scales are bigger on bigger dragons.  Using some of the critters mentioned above we can assign diameters of 6, 9, 13 and 25 inches.  To simplify the match we're going to use round/cylindrical disc scales.  And we're going to make the scales bone as opposed to keratin or goethite, for size purposes.  Next assumption - the body surface of a dragon covered by scales is similar to the amount of usable  hide from a cow (sq footage equal to .05% of its weight.) Final assumption: scales overlap so they'll only cover "half of their size."

Now lets take a look at our 500 pound wyrmling.  It will have 75 pounds of scales covering 30 square feet.  Scales have a 6" diameter.  Each will cover 14 square inches.  It will take 300+ scales to cover the dragon.  Each scale would weigh about 4 ounces.  Jumping the gun: ancient dragon scales would weigh over 4 pounds!  All of the scales would be .1298 inches thick (1/8.)

Young dragon: Large, 4k#, 240 square feet, 9" diameter, covering 32 sq inches each.  Just under 1,100 scales, weighing 9 ounces each.

Adult dragon:  Huge.  16 tons.  1,920 square feet.  13" diameter, covering 66 sq inches each.  Just over 4,100 scales weighing 18 ounces each. 

Ancient dragon:  Gargantuan.125 tons.  1,667 square YARDS.  25" diameter, covering 1.7 square FEET each.  Almost 9,000 scales weighing 4 1/4 POUNDS each.    

I think I can live with this!!!!

In which we visit the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker

As usual Alexis started it.  Still noodling the numbers on wages.  Figure something might gel by Labor Day.  In the meantime it provoked me to revisit one factor of the trade system I've never been comfortable with.  for h in hexes and I have been "corresponding" about our approaches to the mechanic.  He's a coder.  I'm a spreadsheet guy.  But we benefit from comparing notes.

To recap:  each settlement in the world produces things, dependent on size and location.  These things are disbursed over the planet based on distance from the source.  These resources can then be acted upon by those with the proper skills to make secondary (or tertiary, etc) products.  At each step the craftsman impacts the cost of the finished product.  This impact is determined by a factor, somewhere between .5 and 2 (?.)  The factor CAN be assigned to achieve whatever price range is desired for the product but that seems arbitrary.  

I had already adopted a system for deciding what businesses existed in a city, based on it's population, using MDME.  Why not plot the businesses for EVERY settlement, then determine how much impact they have on neighboring villages using the trade table.  The numbers the raw system gave me were WAY too large, but using the quad root proved to be ideal (so far.)  More testing to follow.

End result: the cost of anything you wanna buy is determined by the cost of raw materials, cost of the skilled tradesman to convert them, and the distance both of THOSE are from the purchaser.  As a general rule no settlement deals in anything that costs more than 1 gp per 10 pop (so 10%.)  So I can keep the shopping lists limited in small or out of the way locations.  Rarity creates conflict.  Conflict creates plot hooks.

In which we revisit equipment

 I've been spending WAY too much time watching TTRPG Youtube videos and recently stumbled across a spate of them talking about equipment.  What, how much, where, how - all the good stuff, much of which I've touched on before.  There's a lot of handwaving going on at a lot of tables due to cost, encumbrance, etc.  Not at mine.  You either have it or you don't.  But what DO you have?  Or what MUST you have?

A quick perusal of the starting equipment in 5e and PF2 yields some good but not definitive answers.  is Both are crawling with packs and kits.  Excluding specialty stuff it appears the generic adventure starts with a backpack, bedroll, mess kit, tinderbox, and a waterskin.  Also frequently mentioned is rope, chalk, soap, torches and the dreaded iron rations.  Surprisingly no clothing.  Or footwear!  Inadequate.  

So here's what WE do:  we follow RAW on starting equipment, but after that there's a "required minimum."  Players are responsible for their own equipment list but I tinker with it.  I use a "wear" table.  All items are either new, used, worn or useless.  I check on my "decay table" after a month OR three days in the wilderness OR one day in the dungeon.  Players are notified when an item becomes worn (time to replace.)  Last campaign we had a bard and a druid whose main contributions were just keeping all the equipment in good repair via their Mend spells (house ruled to 1st lvl.)  Run out of torches?  Or tinderbox?  Tough luck Skippy.  

But some things it seems to me MUST be "owned."  Clothing.  Footwear.  Backpack.  Bedroll.  Mess kit.  Waterskin.  So when those become useless (ie, if the players didn't replace when "worn") I'll replace them when they're available.  If they give out in the wild?  Exposure, slowed movement, no rests (long becomes short, short vanishes), dietary distress, dehydration.  A tent might join this list.  Previous party had a couple members skilled at "roughing it" so it wasn't required.  We'll see what happens when they hit inclimate weather.

Side note:  calendar has turned to spring so the party was peeling out of their winter clothes and into something a little lighter for travel.  I was checking prices in the small settlement they were occupying when I saw that WINTER clothes cost over 600 gp!!  Figured there was an error somewhere in the numerous formulas and recipes that go into the calculation so I started tracing it back.  And found the issue.  No sheep!  This community has no shepherds.  So all wool and wool products must be "imported."  I casually mentioned this to the party.  Not directly but I DID mention that the incoming caravans were carrying, among other things, iron (ingots, bars, rods) as there's none mined locally, other metals, and raw wool as well as wool clothing!  They've JUMPED at the chance to clear a mine so they could claim part of the income.  Wonder if they'll try to help out a family in need by setting them up in the sheep biz?