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 travel

And eat. And hunt. And forage. And carry stuff. All at once.

OK so MANY DM's out there skip ALL of this stuff. There's a TON of discussion out there about overland travel – how to do it, when to do it, even IF to do it. Me? In an immersive world it's an important part of the game. There's an “easy” way to do it. One twenty mile hex per day. Period. Done and done. But not immersive. And passes up some GREAT gaming opportunites. So I designed a spreadsheet. It considers terrain, weather and pace and movement rate and in seconds tells me miles per day as well as MPH, how long it will take to cross a 20-, 6- and 2-mile hex. So every morning after checking the weather the party sets their pace: fast, normal, exploring or foraging. Finding how far they progress on the map is a piece of cake. This is the easy part. Check.

Then there's encumbrance. Again, MANY DM's hand waive this away. I HATE that. A significant part of the game is asset management: hit points, spell slots … and weight! But how much? First there's RAW. Strength x 15. That's it. Oversimplified? Indubitably. After more research it seems that 64 year old 215 pound me is about a STR 7. That means I could carry 105# without an issue. No a US Marine has to do that as a matter of course and I'm no Marine. Then there's a variant rule provided that provides for slowing down if you're carrying it. So my “7” means I could carry 35# without slowing down. That's a little more accurate. I take another step loss at 10x. Again, reasonably accurate. Of course I had to go one step further – what about weight. The CHARACTER's weight. So Alexis has a chart for that and I'm using it. Seems to mesh nicely with the variant rule. Not a fan with how Beyond tracks this though, so I've put together my own spreadsheet. Each character gets a tab. I plug in their weight and STR and list their inventory along with weight (and condition.) Between each session I update it to keep it close. ALSO use this sheet to track the condition of equipment: checks after every 3 hours in a dungeon, 3 days on the trail and the 1^st of every month. Whole thing takes less than 5 minutes. Done.

Which brings me to eating. Sustenance. And travel. And encumbrance. And HERE is where I go down the rabbit hole and over the edge. I'll skip a lot of the failed attempts and see if I can get to where I am – and then maybe where I WANT to be.

1. Characters eat. They consume calories. I use https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/bmr-harris-benedict-equation to calculate the daily expenditure.

2. Rations? Hard tack and jerkey? No thanks. I wanna dive down the rat hole of nutrition! Five

   catagories of food: protied, carbs, fruits/veggies/nuts, dairy, salt/spices/stuff

3. Where does it come from? Town? Hunting? Foraging?

Whatever I do it's gonna be on a spreadsheet. Crunch a LOT of numbers in short order.

<a day later>

Spent quite a few hours reading RAW and variants and AU and dozens of homebrews. And I'm back at the point of beginning. The above stuff is easy, fun and playable. The mechanic lends itself to game play. Player agency matters. Input counts. But I still need a mechanic that doesn't take forever. The fact that my party just finished a long cross-country journey in February may have something to do with my sudden interest in fixing this! No game in season and limited plants to forage.

So how about this. Using all the stuff mentioned above we determine how many pounds of food per day the party needs. My current party requires 56 pounds, so we'll round that up to 60. At the beginning of the journey we set a die with the “6” face showing <edit to add: this number is 1 for each load bearing party member). Each day it resets one lower. When it gets to 0 starvation sets in. In the following we'll refer to the face of the die as “X”.

1. <edit to alter: this only applies if 1/2 X is greater than 1/2 the party)  X is added to the negative repercussions already effecting movement rate, so as food is consumed the MR increases.

2. X is not reduced IF the party passes through a civilized area where food may be purchased although this only adds 1 to X.

3. If the party allows for ½ a day of foraging and the result is <5 pounds the die moves as normal. If between 5 and 15 pounds there is no movement for that day and if more than 15 it increases one.

4. If the party allows a day for hunting and the hunter brings back <4 pounds the die moves as normal, if between 4 and 16 pounds there is no movement. None can be used the next day.

5. Harvested meat counted the same as #4

Spreadsheet calculates lifestyle expenses for days in town and food cost for six days of food plus whatever days are added during the trip via purchases.

I actually think this might work!

In which we start over, sort of

I have another "starting over" post set for next week but this is kinda different. Different KINDS of starting over. First I spent some time re-evaluating my campaign. Players needed to "direction." Stumbled acrtoss Colville's old "lore delivery system" video AND Baron Garop's "Plan Your Campaign in One Hour" (or is it evening?) BOTH provided some GREAT suggestions that I'd overlooked. Or rather had SEEN and TRIED to implement but hadn't gotten done well. So I grabbed a trusty spreadsheet and FIXED things. List of populated areas. List of Towers. List of "other special locations." Then EVERYTHING got linked to at LEAST two others. Now wherever they go they SHOULD be able to find at least ONE piece of candy. The session immediately following this re-start yielded a LARGE lore dump, but it all fit into the role playing and seemed seemless. We'll see if these bits are enough to get them "back on track." The second "start over" is with my economics system. Gotta get a few kinks worked out. My various and sundry "metalsmiths" need cleaned up. Most other products are in good shape but I DID design a wonderful "harvested products" system that never got used and now I need to revisit it so I CAN implement it if it DOES come into play. Additionally I made some decisions when I set this thing up about what did and did not exist. I now want to flesh it out just a tad more. Example: horses are scarce (ie expensive) but mules and donkey's might need to be more plentiful. Need to address. Need to add a few resources like alabaster and obsidian. Third I need to "start over" with my mapping and infrastructure development. Hourglass will be a challenge. Probably have it done by spring: sooner if needed, put off if bypassed. Alexis over at Tao is doing yeoman's work. And my fourth project for 2023 is to work on a randome encounter generator. Been using the tables from Infinium Game Studio. Wanna automate it. Like I did with their Interaction charts. Enjoy yor year!

In which we harvest

 

A few months ago I stumbled across this website and began incorporating it in my sessions. Was kinda neat but needed soe work to be fully actualized and then I found out the guy had a book. Actually THREE books.

So I read the books and I did some tinkering and here's how I'm going to complete the integration …. and how you can too!

Step 1. Appraising. What can the party do with that carcass before it? Somebody makes a a check against 8 + the critters CR. The skill used is determined by the type of creature. Success means the character has knowledge of what they can get and how hard it will be, along with risks and how long it will maintain efficacy.

Step 2. Harvest. Make a DEX check with the same skill used above. The higher the roll the more items may be harvested. It will take the DC/5 minutes to harvest.

Step 3: Buying and selling. And out comes the spreadsheet. Long version. Using my economics spreadsheet I give every city, based on its infrastructure, its appropriate terrain. This provides supply/demand prices for critters. Spreadsheet has a drop down for terrains and pulls cities valuation based on that. Also a field for DC of production. Dropdown based on occurrence, based on this site. Then a bunch of math based on that and I get how much an apothecary would would charge for the item and how much the party can get for selling it.

If an item isn't listed and the party wants to harvest it anyway, use the following table:

Material	DC
Blood and fluids	5
Soft Tissue (tongues, ears, genitals, etc.)	5
Hard Tissue (claws, teeth, spikes, horns)	5
Bones	10
Eyes	10
Internal Organs (heart, stomach)	10
Limb (leg, arm, tail)	15
Hide (fur, plating, scales)	15
Complicated lim (wing, tentacle)	20
Brain	20