Improved Wilderness Map

I told myself last night that was going to quit messing with it for a while, but today I couldn't help making significant aesthetic and functional improvements to the wilderness map for my forthcoming 0e/LBB retro-clone, Torch & Sword. Here's the map PDF. The map is © Paul Gorman, and licensed under both the OGL 1a and the Creative Commons Attribution License—take your pick.

Wilderness map

Seeing as copies of Outdoor Survival are in short supply these days, I spent a big chunk of today drawing a wilderness hex map for my forthcoming retro-clone, Torch & Sword. I'll probably refine it a little for the final rulebook, but feel free to take a look at this one page map PDF: The map is © Paul Gorman, and licensed under both the OGL 1a and the Creative Commons Attribution License—take your pick.

Caves!

These recently discovered caves in Vietnam are inspirational:

I'm still alive

I haven't abandoned this blog, despite the recent lack of posts. Work has been insanely busy, so I decided to concentrate my scarce free time working on my Torch & Sword retro-clone project rather than blogging. I'm on vacation now, but aiming to release an alpha version of Torch & Sword by the end of the year. Posts may not be a daily occurrence for a while yet.

Treasure type averages

Although I haven't posted much lately, work on my retro-clone continues. Today I started looking at treasure types. Here's how I got the averages in the table below. Take the gold in treasure type E as an example. Page 22 of Monsters & Treasure lists it as "1-8: 25%". So, I assumed that the average roll would be 4, giving 4000 GP. Those gold pieces would only be found 25% of the time, so that 4000 GP is reduced to 1000 GP. I did the same for copper and silver, and added them to the GP value.

Missing monsters

I spent a little time yesterday checking monsters in the d20 SDR. Apart from a handful of spelling variations, all the creatures in Monsters & Treasure appear in the d20 SDR. Eventually, I found green slime and yellow mold in the dungeon hazards section of the SDR, rather than the monster lists. I was happy to find them, as I thought I might have to substitute some real-world or mythological monster. The "snotties" found in Cueva de Villa Luz would make a reasonable real-world substitute for green slime. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) they are archaea, a biological group that includes organism living in volcanoes and other extreme environments.

Upkeep costs

James Maliszewski posted about OD&D support and upkeep costs. I had been wondering about the frequency of payments myself, and assumed that upkeep was paid on a recurring basis. As migellito says in the comments to James' post, paying upkeep costs at the time XP is awarded is the most parsimonious interpretation, and therefore the most appealing to me. That works to simply bookkeeping for food, lodging, maintenance, etc. If, on the other hand, the referee wants to use upkeep costs as a stick to drive characters toward play focused on establishing and maintaining baronies, upkeep fees should be assessed more frequently, perhaps on a weekly or monthly basis.