Finarvyn Administrator Dungeon Master member is offline
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Wanderer « Thread Started on Jul 6, 2008, 7:51pm »
As an offshoot of the "Traveller as a Universal Game System" thread, I've been tinkering with my own version of Wanderer.
For anyone who has not read that thread yet, there is a picture of a mock-up fantasy Traveller box and rulebooks for a game that does not exist. The guy who made the mock-up called the game Wanderer.
I compiled several pages of ideas for a Wanderer game some time back, but that other thread sparked my enthusiasm once again so I dusted it off and have been tinkering with a rules set. At this point it's based on a couple of fantasy traveller rules sets I've found online over the years, but I'm starting to tinker with something more original at this point.
Doc, Pjork, and Sieg have copies of my 25-page file and Doc has offered some suggestions, which I am planning on bringing into the rules set. At this point I'm not sure if this is a passing fancy or the start of something more, but I am in the tinkering phase and just thought I would mention it here.
Marv / Finarvyn DCC playtester (2011) C&C playtester (2003) I'm partly responsible for the S&W WhiteBox Builder of the TrollBridge Master of Mutants; MA since 1976 OD&D Player since 1975
"Don't ask me what you need to hit. Just roll the die and I will let you know!" - Dave Arneson
Joined: Nov 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 245 Location: Behind the Orange Curtain Karma: 10
Re: Wanderer « Reply #3 on Jul 7, 2008, 11:46am »
Looking at the supplied links to the RPGSite, and seeing that there are now several different people running off in their own directions, it seems that as a game, "Wanderer" has become this vague idea, out of which are spawning numerous "house-ruled" versions (for lack of a better term)...
...can there be anything more 'Old School' than that?
Joined: Apr 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 477 Karma: 20
Re: Wanderer « Reply #5 on Jul 8, 2008, 4:12am »
I've posted some stuff at the end of the rpgsite thread linked to above.
I started by trying to convert it as directly as possible (with islands analagous to planets), but I ended up doing the skills quite differently (a lot less emphasis on weapons and equipment). I also changed being killed during character creation to being injured. I'm not sure how this will effect game balance.
My preference with character creation would actually be to combine all the charts into one, so you just roll a certain number of times and can end up with injuries, resources, money or skills.
I ran another session of Wanderer this weekend. Since we now have an official "Wanderer" thread, this is where I'll discuss it:
The characters, now minus their sorcerer, find themselves skulking through Simarghan, a dire temple-fortress carved right into the face of a mountain by the mysterious Night Tribes. They discover that the goblin goddess has but a single commandment for her faithful: "Put thine enemies to the sword." They also learn that nearly a thousand years ago the goblins (then known as "gnomes") were a race of forest dwellers cruelly enslaved by humankind and driven nearly to extinction. The party manages to free dozens of human children that the goblins were preparing to offer up as a sacrifice to their pale goddess, but not before one of them is ensnared in the barbed whips of the goblins. He is literally drawn and quartered into bloody chunks as the rest of the group flees with the children to the outside world, safe beneath the bright sun that is poison to the Night Tribes.
In terms of the actual Traveller rules being adapted for Sword & Sorcery, I have to say that they appear to work well. The combat is simple, but gritty enough to ensure that combat is taken very seriously. I'm thinking about adding a critical hit system similar to the original Arduin books; dangerous and bloody.
The only part that doesn't really jive is the magic system, which seems too much like something from the Dying Earth books. Since this past session didn't have any magic in it, it never came up. I am going to eventually sit down and see how I can put a spin on it to put it more in line with more traditional S&S magic. But on the the other hand, I have to admit that I kinda like Wanderer magic as it is. So I guess that I'm conflicted. I like the dangerous, overblown, sometimes insanely powerful way that magic is depicted, but I don't know if it has the right feel for something like a Conan or Lankhmar setting.
Joined: Aug 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 598 Karma: 17
Re: Wanderer « Reply #7 on Oct 14, 2008, 11:31pm »
Neat idea! I played Traveller only a few years less than D&D, and I always enjoyed it. I like the fact that it is a fairly open system and that the Fantasy crossovercould flow pretty good. I hope you guys put it together as a pdf or something!
Now that Mongoose Publishing has released an OGL/SRD ("2d6 OGL") of their Traveller rules, we could do almost everything we please with the SRD, including using them for low-fantasy settings.
A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY: This is based on Traveller, and in Traveller (beginning from Classic Traveller) the term "DM" means "Dice Modifier" and not "Dungeon Master". The "Dungeon Master" is called a "Referee" in Traveller.
Joined: Nov 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 245 Location: Behind the Orange Curtain Karma: 10
Re: Wanderer « Reply #9 on Apr 22, 2009, 4:46pm »
Well, I've managed to dig out my notes (though many of the computer files have been unfortunately lost). I've been poking at the trade tables, and the more I try to unravel things to convert them to fantasy, the more I simply marvel at how integrated those three LBBs are. Classic Traveller is really an amazing bit of game design. To make a list of trade goods and base prices, you need to know about the economy of the world; the die modifiers need you to know how the world generation works; you need to know the size and carrying capacity of ships, and their operating expenses, which leads you back to the economy.
I've been looking at the discussion thread on the RPGSite board, and to me, at least, they seem to be going at it too narrowly and limiting themselves to a very primitive, early Bronze-age Mediterranean island-hopping background (with a bunch of oddly anachronistic elements mixed in.) I'm trying to keep it a little more broadly applicable - more of a 'toolkit' and less of a 'Mazes and Minotaurs' clone.
I'll post the embryonic Trade Table once I get more of the prices set...the die modifiers are going to have to wait until I can put some more thought into worldbuilding.
I seem to recall that, at least with a type A ship, it was nearly (literally?) impossible to pay the bills with trade, freight and passengers alone. One pretty much had to find patrons offering lucrative jobs ... which of course tended to be interesting!
Oy...,my search for prices on trade goods is leading me to primary source materials like Xenophon and Diocletian. Who ever said that gaming wasn't an educational pastime?
As I may have mentioned in the other thread, there is precedent for "when in doubt, pick the Roman model" - Loren Wiseman is a Roman history buff, and its influence shows in Traveller. Had GDW made a fantasy RPG, I think this influence would have been even more pronounced.
Interestingly (bouncing subjects), I recall that the Romans HAD marines, namely specialist forces that fought on board galleys. My original impulse was to make the Traveller class of 'Marines' into "Warriors" (meaning fighters from the heroic, martial cultures like Gaul or Germania), and 'Army' into "Soldiers" or "Legionnaires", but there may be some merit in making the 'Marines' "Marines", and base the "Warrior" on the 'Barbarian' template from the 'Citizens of the Imperium' book.
Oh well, back to ICE's "...and a 10' Pole" and Diocletian's "Edicts"...
I've been looking at the discussion thread on the RPGSite board, and to me, at least, they seem to be going at it too narrowly and limiting themselves to a very primitive, early Bronze-age Mediterranean island-hopping background (with a bunch of oddly anachronistic elements mixed in.) I'm trying to keep it a little more broadly applicable - more of a 'toolkit' and less of a 'Mazes and Minotaurs' clone.
I thought of it as being a combination of ancient Greece and the Carribean during the 'age of piracy'. I guess they're the two settings with lots of trading and small islands that first leap to mind.
If I'd done non-human creatures, I think the existing aliens would've worked fine: lion-headed people, Eastern wizards...
« Last Edit: Apr 23, 2009, 5:27am by apeloverage »
I thought of it as being a combination of ancient Greece and the Carribean during the 'age of piracy'. I guess they're the two settings with lots of trading and small islands that first leap to mind.
That's what I meant by "oddly anachronistic elements". Shells as currency but the "Brotherhood of the Coast"? The first is pre-bronze age, and the latter is 'Golden age of Piracy' (although... wampum was made from shells and was still accepted as currency in some places in the American colonies into the 'GAoP' ("Golden age of Piracy"). Naaa.. if I keep playing Devil's Advocate to myself, I'm going to disappear in a brimstone-scented puff of recursive logic.)
I had a basic trade table worked out, but then browsing through one of my old text books that surfaced recently, I found a list of trade goods found at Jericho during the Neolithic period. These included salt, sulfur, bitumen, turquoise, cowry shells, obsidian, and "greenstone." I hadn't thought of sulfur, and I had listed semi-precious stones as at a later tech level. This may require some juggling.
Based on the comparative weights and values of different Roman and Greek coins, I have found some relative values of metals: Silver was between 22 and 25 times as valuable as brass (called orichalcum or aurichalcum - literally "gold-copper." Yes, that is where this word comes from.) Brass was about twice as valuable as regular bronze. Gold was about 14 times as valuable as silver (In Greek times, it was more like 10x the value of silver.)
One of Diocletian's reforms was to create a silver coin called the Argentus, which was the same weight and purity of the denarius of Nero's time (which was 3.4 grams, at least before it was debased later in his reign) This gives me something to make comparisons with. Diocletian's maximum prices were just that - maximum retail values, and while inflation quickly made an utter hash of things, it gives relative values at one point in time. The main question for a trade table is: what might the wholesale price have been like? ... I'm going to take a wild stab at 30-50% and see where that gets me. The next step is to make some sense of Roman weights and measures, and to convert back and forth between bulk and weight. (i.e. how many modii of wheat in a modern ton if there are 60 pounds of wheat in a bushel and a modius is one third of an amphora? And what would the average wholesale price at the dock be if the maximum retail price is 4 argentei per modius? And if I bought a ton of olive oil, how much of that 2000 pounds is taken up by the pottery containers? [It turns out to be about 50% at the top end.])
Wheee! Basically I have a very enjoyable brain teaser to distract me whenever the stress of filing out divorce papers gets too high.
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