OSH: Standing Watch

Standing watch is a staple of fantasy travel. Here is basic advice for doing it in Old School Hack. Giving people six hours of sleep is generally enough, and that is two of the three watches–so people can stand one watch and still get a full night’s sleep.

To stay awake during a watch requires a Brawn or Awareness test.

• First Watch. 9 p.m. to midnight. Difficulty 6.
• Second Watch. Midnight to 3 a.m. Difficulty 10.
• Third Watch. 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. Difficulty 8.

Generally horses have an Awareness/Brawn of +2, if weary characters rely on them to wake. If you are not woken for your shift, you can test at +2 difficulty to see if you wake up on your own. And if more than one person is standing a watch, and at least one stays awake, that one can keep the others awake (or let them sleep) as desired.

So the watches cover 9 hours, leaving 15 for the day. Assuming 1 hour to break camp, one hour for lunch, and an hour to make camp, plus time for breaks, and inserting the general fuzziness to the schedule in an era without watches, that assumes 10 hours for travel in a day.

OSH Defense Class armor test results.

When I ran Gothmagog that was the first time I tested my “Defense Class” replacement for Armor Class for Old School Hack. Now, I have not implemented this for the fantasy version, but instead for steam punk and Western and science fiction and modern–the People vs. Creatures hack.

I don’t like the AC abstraction of “hit for all or nothing.” Characters are wearing armor that helps soak some damage, not deflector shields. It gets even goofier when you involve guns.  When I get the Defense Class rule set where I want it, when my year of non-interference with “Fictive’s Talents and Templates” is up, I may revisit the question for the base “Old School Hack: the Fictive Way” too. Previously I felt that was a bridge too far from the original game, and it may remain so. (I have a year to decide how I feel about it.)

Anyway, the Defense Class did not work as I wanted it to first time out of the gate. This is fine, as it gave me the insight and experience I needed to get it closer to where I wanted it to work right for the OSH system.

Here is the next draft of how the armor itself works. Background assumptions:

• Spending Awesome Points to use armor to reduce injury stacks with spending 2 Awesome Points to reduce 1 incoming Wound normally.
• The system for determining DC and encumbrance has not changed.

Ignoring Armor. Taking a focus action to attack, and accepting the base DC (not reduced by armor) means an attacker can disable the armored target’s ‘s ability to spend Awesome Points to reduce Wounds, OR the armored target’s automatic soak.

Armor Types.

• Light armor: can spend 1 Awesome Point to reduce 1 incoming Wound per attack.
• Heavy armor: ignore the first wound from any attack. Can spend 2 Awesome Points to reduce 2 incoming Wounds per attack.
• Very heavy armor: ignore the first wound from any attack. Can spend up to 3 Awesome Points to reduce up to 3 incoming wounds per attack.
• Super armor: ignore the first 2 wounds from any attack. Can spend up to 4 Awesome Points to reduce up to 4 incoming wounds.

For NPCs, Awesome Points spent to activate further armor protection are split between the attacker and the bowl as usual.

Firearms. Steam punk firearms are in a strange place between black powder and modern firearms. Two adjustments: a critical hit does +2 damage (not +1 and doubling, or any doubling.) They have a range of 1 arena per the shooter’s Awareness, minimum adjacent arenas. A rifle adds 1 arena, as does a scope.

Maybe I’ll get to try this out Friday.

Old School Hack in Gothmagog

The adventure report is here.

My adventuring party was typical for Old School Hack–the Fictive Way; a scout, a mechanic, and a cosmic channeler. The cosmic channeler is distant offspring of Thogro, goddess of the sea, and his adventuring motive was that a prophecy states he’ll someday judge the world. The mechanic invented a spring-loaded quasi-pneumatic heavy hammer to hit people with, and during the war was stuck repairing airships that returned all banged up, he never got out towards the front, so he’s proving himself now.

The scout got the adventuring motive that he likes to snipe leaders, and he has a -2 Charm. He wanted more than 1 starting weapon, he wanted a rifle and a couple pistols, and improved light armor. Okay, says me, that’s fine, and you’re going to be the second son of Mondaviak looking for your big brother. So bam, I’ve got a hook and an excuse to reuse the estate and family, and the player is complicit in this instead of a victim of my scheming. The wife inherits, and she finds him repulsive (or he’d be in even greater peril–when he leveled, he put +1 in Charm, so I gave him a new roll whether he liked it or not, and he rolled a natural 1; still repulsive, whew.) Still, he returned from the war to go find his brother, and now he’s done that.

Everybody hit second level, and the cosmic channeler was closing in on third.

So, some interesting learnings and rulings on this one!

I used Awesome Points in unusual ways several times.

• After the climactic battle, I asked if a player was willing to give up 3 Awesome Points to me. Reluctantly, Makon’s player did; I had the gypsies drag Rudolfio back into the clearing, as one of the cultists that chased them off (and they recognized and subdued him.)
• I gave them a 50-50 chance the old man was dead upon their return, and to twist the knife, let a player roll it. He rolled 5, 1 short. So I allowed them to each give up 2 Awesome Points that did not count towards leveling, and bought him 6 more breaths–just enough.
• A player wanted to spend Awesome Points not to have an encounter with the Watch, and I did not allow it.

New rulings!

• On d12 rolls, 1 tilts things in a bad direction even if successful, and 12 tilts things in a good direction.
  • On a side note, I have never seen so many “1″ results on Charm tests–there had to be 7 or 8 in 4 hours.

• If you have put in a day’s work, then to keep going, test Brawn starting at difficulty 7 or 8 and increasing for each additional period of work to add before sleeping/resting. Upon failing, take 1 wound you must rest off.

So if you want to ride all day and investigate and fight all night, there comes a point where you’re draining off Awesome Points to keep going and if you roll poorly enough, you just take that soreness and pain.

All in all, another great session. Thanks, Jeff.

“The Tireless Archer” Play Report and Analysis!

I had 3 hours, and 5 players, 2 of which were veterans and one of which was pretty new to role playing games in general. We had a great time. The write-up is here.

For such a short time frame, I tried out the Tireless Archer cut in half.

• One of the PCs was a scholar (who inherited all the plot hook scholar’s research and had already made the arrangements.)
• I dropped the adversary sub-plot.
• When I ran out of time, I let the Tireless Archer be the climactic foe instead of introducing the ice spiders.
• We did not play through getting out, we ended with the defeat of the Tireless Archer and loot distribution. It worked fine.

Rulings! (Also here.)

• When the frost giant goes down, all his minions go down too. Avoids anticlimax.
• No, you can’t use Awesome Points to modify a role if you beat the difficulty, just to spend the Awesome Points towards leveling.
• I can charge 1-5 Awesome Points to “find something” based on how well it fits the setting. (A player wanted to find a cool book in the frost giant’s lair. Rather than be a jerk and have him find one too big for him to read, I put it in a backpack of an eaten adventurer.)
• Spending Awesome Points to boost firearm damage applies after a gruesome carnage (hit to the face) roll that doubles damage. I mean, come on. You already get +1 (to the face) and the damage, doubled.
• To attack up to 2 arenas past an adjacent arena with a thrown weapon, spend 1 Awesome Point per arena.
• Only one character had a Brawn bonus: the primordial ape. So, because of the biting cold and its dangers, he agreed to carry robes they could put on while resting. It did not seem reasonable to me to charge 4 heavy items for 4 robes, so I figured bundled they’d be ½ a heavy object. Not a big deal or something to codify, not until I get to the supplement on hostile environments.

Rulings to Consider

I ruled that due to his heavy fur and tough muscles, the primordial ape was not affected by the bitter cold. Do I want to codify this on the template? I’m not sure.

What is the range of a firearm? I have a model for ranged weapons from Old School Hack, and a model for guns from People vs. Creatures. But black powder weapons are not as accurate as modern guns, though they can throw shot further than ranged weapons. I’ll be thinking about how I want to do this; the easiest way is to give them +1 arena range, then charge AP as for thrown weapons.