Post by derv on Apr 18, 2015 8:01:40 GMT -6
Things are progressing nicely in our larger campaign with players at the early stages of designing strongholds and evaluating the amount of revenue they will need for labor and upkeep. They have already traveled widely on the map and have some ideas about where they would like to establish a territory. This has me considering the campaign game year and random developments that may have long and short term impacts on their plans.
In the FFC Arneson has a section called “Gypsy Sayings and Chance Cards”. He further explains, “To allow for crystal ball gazing and the like, a set of Chance Cards was set up. Each month, one was drawn from the deck and it’s affect was worked into the game. As Judge, I drew the cards one game year in advance to allow for a logical progression of events.”
There seems to be a long precedence for using cards as a way to randomly generate results in wargames. From my reading of the FFC, it seems Arneson produced his own set of cards for this purpose, but I’ve seen a common poker deck used in an assortment of ways for the same purpose. I have not considered all the probabilities in depth, but here’s some basic facts about a deck of cards:
52 cards to a deck
26 red & 26 black
13 cards of each suit
4 of each type in a deck or 2 of each color
36 low cards and 16 high cards to a deck, 18 low and 8 high to a color, 9 low and 4 high to a suit.
Also, each card has number values from 2-10, 2-14 or 1-13, with variations for the high cards. The possibilities for random generation with cards are obviously endless.
Anyway, here’s my idea for random event generation:
1. Shuffle a common deck of cards and pick one of the suits for the campaign year. Draw one card for each month of the year. This gives a 13 in 52 or a 1 in 4 chance of an event on the first draw. If you don’t return the card to the deck and reshuffle, the probabilities will change (up or down) depending on what has already been drawn. For every card drawn of the chosen suit, there will be an event. If no cards of the chosen suit are drawn, no events, peace in the land. You must keep notes of when a card was chosen to which month it represents.
2. For each card of the chosen suit selected, reshuffle the deck and draw another card. This time we want to consider the colors (and possibly the suits). Remember to keep track of the months represented.
Red Hearts and Diamonds = positive events
Black Clubs and Spades = negative events
3. We can now consult our table of events based on these cards. These tables could have from 6 to 13 results per color or suit, positive and negative.
Something like this:
Hearts
2-9= Content workers/hirelings +1 morale (cumulative)
10= A large source of native grain or root crop discovered, reducing upkeep costs by 10% for the year
J= A vein of silver has been discovered. 1d6 x 1000 sp
Q= Workers have been extra productive, knock 5% off all construction time
K= A band of 1d6 x 10 HF soldiers have volunteered to your service for one season.
A= Gifts have been sent from a friendly neighboring noble (supplies, labor, coin, or food, etc.)
4. Make up some Gypsy Sayings for the Scryers to share based on the results.
Arneson’s Gypsy Sayings were cryptic and separate from his Chance Cards. He had a percentile table with 35 different chance results and, separately, he had a sampling of 14 Gypsy Sayings. I’m suggesting rolling these ideas together.
For fun, anyone want to share a table of 6 to 12 positive and negative random events? Yeah, you’d be doing my work for me. I was trying to pull a Tom Sawyer. Help a guy out
In the FFC Arneson has a section called “Gypsy Sayings and Chance Cards”. He further explains, “To allow for crystal ball gazing and the like, a set of Chance Cards was set up. Each month, one was drawn from the deck and it’s affect was worked into the game. As Judge, I drew the cards one game year in advance to allow for a logical progression of events.”
There seems to be a long precedence for using cards as a way to randomly generate results in wargames. From my reading of the FFC, it seems Arneson produced his own set of cards for this purpose, but I’ve seen a common poker deck used in an assortment of ways for the same purpose. I have not considered all the probabilities in depth, but here’s some basic facts about a deck of cards:
52 cards to a deck
26 red & 26 black
13 cards of each suit
4 of each type in a deck or 2 of each color
36 low cards and 16 high cards to a deck, 18 low and 8 high to a color, 9 low and 4 high to a suit.
Also, each card has number values from 2-10, 2-14 or 1-13, with variations for the high cards. The possibilities for random generation with cards are obviously endless.
Anyway, here’s my idea for random event generation:
1. Shuffle a common deck of cards and pick one of the suits for the campaign year. Draw one card for each month of the year. This gives a 13 in 52 or a 1 in 4 chance of an event on the first draw. If you don’t return the card to the deck and reshuffle, the probabilities will change (up or down) depending on what has already been drawn. For every card drawn of the chosen suit, there will be an event. If no cards of the chosen suit are drawn, no events, peace in the land. You must keep notes of when a card was chosen to which month it represents.
2. For each card of the chosen suit selected, reshuffle the deck and draw another card. This time we want to consider the colors (and possibly the suits). Remember to keep track of the months represented.
Red Hearts and Diamonds = positive events
Black Clubs and Spades = negative events
3. We can now consult our table of events based on these cards. These tables could have from 6 to 13 results per color or suit, positive and negative.
Something like this:
Hearts
2-9= Content workers/hirelings +1 morale (cumulative)
10= A large source of native grain or root crop discovered, reducing upkeep costs by 10% for the year
J= A vein of silver has been discovered. 1d6 x 1000 sp
Q= Workers have been extra productive, knock 5% off all construction time
K= A band of 1d6 x 10 HF soldiers have volunteered to your service for one season.
A= Gifts have been sent from a friendly neighboring noble (supplies, labor, coin, or food, etc.)
4. Make up some Gypsy Sayings for the Scryers to share based on the results.
Arneson’s Gypsy Sayings were cryptic and separate from his Chance Cards. He had a percentile table with 35 different chance results and, separately, he had a sampling of 14 Gypsy Sayings. I’m suggesting rolling these ideas together.
For fun, anyone want to share a table of 6 to 12 positive and negative random events? Yeah, you’d be doing my work for me. I was trying to pull a Tom Sawyer. Help a guy out
