Further Ship-Crawl Notes

The rough draft, now called The Shipping Forecast, has been updated in itch.io with a section about Wealth and Ships. This is all still very preliminary, and thinking aloud (on the page) to work out a system for handling ship exploration and trade in a fantasy/medieval kind of setting.

I’ve been stuck with thinking about how it might work, and realized that, instead of trying to think it into place, I need to come up with a rough draft for it, and see how it works and where it breaks, and then revise as appropriate. But I’m not going to come up with the perfect system on the first pass. So this is an initial, rough, almost certainly broken system. But let’s see where it breaks, and what might make it better.

Wealth (as a ship stat) is influenced by the Wealth characteristic in d20 Modern SRD, and similar kinds of abstracted models in place of pure total tracking. But in this system, Wealth applies to the whole ship and crew, not just to a single individual. There are also several measures of Wealth and Treasure that all pertain to different facets of the assets and profitability and condition of the ship and its crew.

I’m also thinking about information as an economy. Getting intelligence about an unknown place that you’re planning to travel to can be very valuable. And trading information gathered from previously unknown places you have been to can also be as valuable as the goods you’ve brought back.

There’s not enough there yet to call it complete, or even testable, as yet, but there are some additional notes I’ve collected in the past couple weeks, and I’m working on pushing this to a testable framework.

Some Notes on a Ship-Crawl

These notes were originally posted in a thread on Mastodon. And then on Twitter. Sharing here to expand the audience and solicit further feedback.

What I’m trying to hack together is a system for sailing ship operation and activities while going from port to port. Sorta Traveller-esque (in the operating a free trader sense), but in a fantasy setting. The encounters and events in port are the more interesting bits, but what do you do in-between?

Events at sea could include weather (becalming, storms, etc), ship issues (damage and repair, crew matters, fire, etc), passenger and cargo issues, and so forth.

I am envisioning this for use in a game setting where some of the area has been charted, but possible discoveries of new islands may occur. Encounters with fauna or with other vessels (friendly or hostile) could be possible, as well.

For in port activity, I’d like to have a a few systems or sets of tables: a trade and cargo bit for brokering; an encounters bit for potential passengers or possible adventure hooks; administrative and tariff matters; some maintenance and upkeep requirements to keep things in check and have tasks the PCs and crew need to keep up with (or not, if they’re feeling risky).

This was the general shape for the F2F game I was trying to get started at the end of 2021 to start up a new DragonQuest game, but it never quite gelled. So I’m still thinking about it as a PBEM. I’ll probably use DQ for the characters and activities, but it’s not going to be a tactical game at all.

It seems to me that this could be done as a system-agnostic set of tables and rules. It’s hexcrawl-ish, but with elements of castle maintenance for the ship operation and so forth.

My setting concept is for a somewhat known region, but it could be adaptable to a more Edge of the World/There Be Dragons kind of setting, as well.

Is there already something like that out there, so I don’t have to reinvent existing wheels (to pick a particularly un-related metaphor)?

Is this something anyone else would want to play? If someone else was running a game like this, I am pretty sure this would definitely be my jam. Hopefully it’s interesting enough that others might want to playtest this with me.

Some things other people have posted about that’s been a nudge or an inspiration to do more with this idea:
Mastodon discussion
ara – anmwinter@dice.camp
Twitter/blog
emmy – @emmyverte

Also, I think the concept of Paul Czege’s Traverser is an influence, even if his actual game is nothing like what I’ve imagined for it.

DragonQuest rules outline

For years, for decades, really, I have thought about a re-published version of the DragonQuest rules.  Like many other DQ players, it seems so wrong to me that this game should not be available.  DragonQuest still does some wonderful things, but it’s largely forgotten since it’s been almost 40 years since it was published, and SPI didn’t last long enough even to get the first rule supplement to market (though copies of the pre-publication rules are floating around).

So now, I’ve started the outline for a new, open-source re-write of the rules.

The DragonQuest rules outline is (mostly) just the framework of the rules – the first sentence after the rule number in a simple text file.  A couple extra bits were left in for reference in a couple places, but it’s pretty much just the 87 rules of the game.  No formulas, no charts, no numbers, so it’s not playable in this form.  But it distills the rules down to an essence that can be reviewed and then rewritten as a starting point for an open DragonQuest.

This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to do something along these lines.  In the past, I wanted to be very open and egalitarian and encourage everyone to contribute to it, instead of writing *my* version of DragonQuest that everyone else would pick apart.  But that never really got going. So I’m approaching it differently.  This time, I’m starting the project as my own project.  I’m going to try to be pretty open about the process, and feedback from the broader DragonQuest and gaming and OSR communities is going to be important to make this work.  But I’m not going to wait on it.  This version of an open set of DragonQuest rules is going to start from this outline, and move along at whatever rate I’m able to work on it.  There will be updates from time to time to show what has been done and have a chance for input from others.

Since Antherwyck House is producing DragonQuest adventures and materials, getting a version of the rules out there only makes sense.  Right now, it’s my intent to have an open-source core ruleset available for free, and then a more complete, detailed set of rules that we’ll publish in a more polished format with art.

This should not be my project alone, and anyone else with an interest in DragonQuest is welcomed to participate.  This is going to be open-source, so as soon as there is a full, working draft available, that will be shared and posted under a Creative Commons license.

The first step is going to be a revision of the old DQOS framework to allow for new rules to be fit in.

Link: DragonQuest rules outline

The Elizabethan Hack

So, whaddya think about this?

At the moment, this is only a proposal, and a draft of the cover art.

Most of what gets posted on this blog is Rodger’s work, but Thor Hansen is also part of Antherwyck House, and he is the lead on this project.

“There was historically a lot of hand waving about the length of a turn and all the stuff that happened out of sight. I am trying to bring back the flavor without requiring the player to get it all.”

 

DragonQuest combat rules retro-clone resource

There is now a very basic outline version of the DragonQuest combat rules posted at DQRules.  I’m providing extra notice here for those of you who are following Antherwyck House for DQ-related stuff since there are more followers here than there are on DQRules itself.  There are PDF and .DOC versions, as well as a pretty bare plain text, so hopefully at least one of those will provide a useful version.

This is just the bare bones of the DQ combat rules, but is probably enough to run combats if you already have some familiarity with the game.  More importantly, it is the basic skeleton on which the system is built, so a retro-clone would start with this framework and expand out to flesh things out once more.

The other series of questions to be considered are regarding whether any of these core rules should be modified or revised as part of the new version of DQ.  A total retro-clone would stick to this with very little deviation, but a new edition of DQ should consider improvements and modifications.

Before things get too in-depth, this needs to be the next set of considerations.  There are some ideas already being kicked around, but additional feedback would be especially useful for this project.