In which we kick back a little

 After a flurry of posts & comments in early August I've quieted down a bit.  Back to school and all that.  But two writers I follow recently posted related thoughts so I thought I'd just kick back and link to them.  Alexis posted Hits & Misses.  He's changing up his writing flow a bit but the product is almost always worth the visit.  Meanwhile over at Merrick's Musings we get Indifferent Scenarios, Good Friends.

Both of these writers address the fact that every session is NOT a Maserati. But learning occurs.  And growth.  And friendship.  

My table didn't  play last week.  J just had surgery (successful - we'll be gaming around his rehab starting next week,) C is on family vacation in the Caribbean, and G just got cast in a show so is in rehearsals.  We should have a quorum again by Tuesday.  I realized that in my advanced aged and in these apocalyptic times my appeal has become more selective.  My group is made up of four people.  All of them are or were in my FFL.  Three of the four I played poker with regularly in the Before Times.  Two of the four have done theater with me.  And the thumb we found online - a post on D&D Beyond looking for another player.  And he's become a friend to us all.  And we've had two other players who shared a subculture with one of our current party and I.  With the exception of the Beyond find we ALL know each other through other strong socializing ties.  Yet we get together once a week (most weeks) and play at pretend elves.  

The session isn't always great.  Sometimes the scenario lags.  Homer nods.  The game isn't worth the candle.  But the friendship?  The growth?  The socializing?  It is ALWAYS worth the trip.

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 the DM smiles

     Our last session was roughly the 10th in the new campaign.  Party had decided to hit the road.  After exploring a mysterious keep, with the aid of a mysterious stranger, they headed for "the crossroads," a caravanserai.  There they were hired as night watchmen to try to catch/kill an unidentified "monster in the woods."  I thought this was a one-night adventure but it turned into three.  PART of that is because 80% of us play in the same FFL and it's a busy time of year so a LOT of off-topic convos.  But still!  

    The OTHER reason it took so long was because of player agency.  On several occasions throughout the story they reached decision points and took .... creative paths.  They DID uncover the monster, reveal the twist, bring the true miscreants "to justice."  And then left town.  Had they been able to tie the wrong-doers to their higher-up the caravanserai would've rewarded them with a pony and a wagon - something they can definitely use and have been asking about (and can only just barely afford.)  <edit to add> I would note that there was some questionable writing in the otherwise good product I pulled the adventure from.  Too much RR and not enough SB.  Thankfully The Alexandrian has taught me well about the three clue rule, so I was able to "add" undiscovered clues in a couple more areas to smooth the road.  Better writing could have eliminated this necessity.   

    So why the smile?  At the session conclusion there was MUCH discussion over their new-found freedom and agency.  There was SOME last campaign but this time around I've listened, forced myself not to over-plot, and let them go.  They THINK they're being naughty murder hobos.  They DID kill two people on the way into the first village and the rest of the Night Watch given the opportunity.  In reality, ALL of the death sentences were meted out to the local equivalent of the Thieves Guild, unbeknownst to our heroes.  So THEY think they've been given a crap-ton of agency (which they have) and I've been able to to run fronts, short form adventures and random encounters that meet their needs.   There's a blighted forest spreading.  There's a green dragon keeping an eye on them.  They're learning of the Noble Houses which run the realm (and learning that perhaps there ARE no good guys.)  

    Also on the up-side I'm incorporating some of the journey techniques from Adventures in Middle Earth and using the hex crawl techniques from the good folks at Infinium to improve long travel and exploration.  "Lonely fun" as we used to call it.  And we're gonna try to bring back Skill Challenges from 4e!  ChatGPT is your FRIEND!  I'm currently using it to generate NPC's (using the GreatGameMaster's OGAS technique,) fix formula problems in my extensive spreadsheets, design the aforementioned Skill Challenges, select actions and grim portents for Fronts, write short adventures(!), and management of climate and weather. 

    On the DOWN side my hand has been forced on upgrading to NTME23.  I moved all three base files into the same folder and instantly fouled up/destroyed all of the links.  Think I have enough into to run Tuesday's session but there will be some intensive work to get it all reconnected.  ONE document.  Some new raw materials.  Storefront calculator incorporated.  Manufacturing pages cleaned up to be made a bit more uniform.  And an attempt at an "easily" updatable shopping list.

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 make a dragon

 Haven't done session notes for a while but last night's was ... memorable.

Party was hired to pursue some poachers.  Poachers were going to reach target before the party could intervene.  Quick thinking was needed.  "Let's make a dragon" sez Dakora (the wizard) iirc.  I went for a beverage and by the time I got back the plan had been hatched.  Dakora would cast the minor illusion of a dragon's roar.  Terestan (sorcerer) and Aerialayna (elf) would each cast mage hand and use them to shake the top leaves of the trees.  Kirkus (ranger) would lead the charge, urging the poachers to run for their lives as there's a dragon attacking.  A handful of skill checks later and all were running for the city gate.  

Upon reaching the city gate our brave party reported to the watch captain that nothing happened and the other party (poachers) must have been drinking.  The ruse was successful.  Last night.  But it won't work again and they'll need a new, better plan since the poachers likely know the party is on to them.

Film at 11.

In other news I watched Luke's video on "Ten signs something is wrong with your game."  Over half of them apply to us but it's because we're friends who play D&D, not a D&D group who are friends.  Jus' sayin'.

In which we try to catch some shut-eye.

 Not gonna add this to my current campaign but you can bet it'll be part of the NEXT one!

Per Xanthar's: 

Sleeping in light armor has no adverse effect on the wearer, but sleeping in medium or heavy armor makes it difficult to recover fully during a long rest.

When you finish a long rest during which you slept in medium or heavy armor, you regain only one quarter of your spent Hit Dice (minimum of one die). If you have any levels of exhaustion, the rest doesn’t reduce your exhaustion level.

OK.  So we'll use this.  Gotta skin outta that medium/heavy armor to get the full benefit of a long rest.  FWIW Elves don't sleep.  They trance, so no effect.  Game-wise it makes those late-night surprise attacks a little more troublesome.  As a player just make it the rule that if you're exhausted and/or have lost more than 1 HD of damage, you need to be comfy! 

So what if you DON'T get a long rest?  I'm a bit skint when it comes to allowing them, so this might be hard on my parties.  I'll need to be aware of this.  IF you go 24 hours without a long rest you need to make a CON check at DC 10 or take a level of exhaustion.  The DC increases by 5 every additional 24 hours.  Result:  going 24 hours is doable.  Making that first roll isn't bad.  But when you go 48 the DC is 15.  Fail THAT and you take a lvl of exhaustion so the NEXT roll (72 hours) is at DC 20 and -1.  Now you're in a death spiral.  Four days is at DC 25 and likely -2.

Some nice plot points can come out of this.  The elf in the party scurrying to find a suitable resting place (!?) for the fragile humans, etc.  Perhaps the exhaustion from lack of sleep doesn't lead to death but rather a coma-like state.  Out for 24 hours under any circumstances reduces exhaustion by 1 lvl, alowing the struggle to continue