"Black Dougal gasps 'Poison!' and falls to the floor. He looks dead."

Sunday, May 27, 2012

The Typical B/X City

One thing I am fascinated by is the setting that is implied by the rules and tables in the B/X rulebooks.  For example, the average B/X Armourer is far better off than the average Calgarian in terms of the ratio of average housing price to average annual income.  The average house price in Calgary is about $470,000 and the average household income is approximately $125,000 per year for a ratio of about 3.76-to-1. Page X52 in the Expert rulebook says that a typical two-storey wooden civilian building costs 1,500 gp. The average an Armour is paid 100 gp per month (1,200 gp per year) for a ratio of 1.25-to-1. I'm not too sure this really tells us anything but I find it interesting.

While I was recently looking at the wilderness encounter tables on page X57 and X58 I was thinking about the probabilities of city encounters. Below is a table that lists the probability of having a specific encounter given in the random encounter tables as well as how many times each encounter would happen in a year. It assumes one random encounter check per day using the dice rolls given on page X57 and X58:
A few observations off the top of my head:

1. The typical B/X city is a place of commerce - the highest probability is with a Trader followed by Bandits.

2. Two encounters with Ghouls in a year?!? What kind of place is this? How do the normal humans survive?

3.  You will encounter a Dwarf, Elf or Halfling as often as a Goblin, Orc or Ogre. I find the low probability of encounters demi-humans interesting. Also, the chance of encountering a chaotic humanoid is higher than I thought. Not quite Mos Eisley but more monsters wandering around the city than I thought.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

I haven't vanished again

Just travelling for work. I am working on a post about B/X city demographics which I will get up here soon.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

New Weapons

I got a package in the mail today…

Sorry for the poor quality blackberry photo.

Small But Vicious Dog

I have been out of the loop for a while so I just discovered Small But Vicious Dog. It is AWESOME!

It makes me want to grab it and Stars Without Number and make a hack to play a game with Noise Marines.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

One Adventure Only

If you could have only one published adventure module, which would it be, and why?
And don't wimp out and pick a compilation ;)

I would likely choose...

  • I love the pulpy, Red Nails-esque mini-sandbox.
  • I like the fact that it is easily expandable and customizable as it has no direct story.
  • There is lots of roleplaying potential between the various human factions.
  • And come on… Zargon is the bomb… He is how B/X demons should be treated.