Best of the Web: Fights are fun, Generators, Video Bits,

The House Doesn't Always win, Fights are fun!
Dreams of Mythic Fantasy has a post about how much fun combat in role playing games is. He's railing against the suggestion of many in the OSR that combat should always be lethal and thus avoided when in fact the combat is one of the funnest parts of the game. I have to agree, combat is fun and memorable. Combat is like gambling and it doesn't take a genius to see the size of those casinos in Vegas and Atlantic City and Macao to know that even though the deck is stacked against the player, gambling is fun. And the thing is in a role playing game the deck isn't necessarily stacked against the player. Smart players can avoid combat, run-away when things look disadvantageous, or pick better terrain and tactics in which to fight their battles. Fighting is a gamble but the house doesn't alway win.

And like any gambling there must be risk for the thing to provide thrills. A game in which nobody dies is akin to blackjack where one gets to see the dealers cards before making there own decision. Without that risk the thing is pointless which is a big reason why I think the OSR caught on and 4E failed.

Generators & Tables

• Telecanter's Receding Rules created a list of real village names
• The d20srd has a Fantasy Name generator with a town option
• The d20srd has a wonderful fantasy world generator as well
• The Amateur Dungeoneers has a nice table to help make villages unique

Video Bits
Normally I prefer reading online to video but there is some fascinating stuff so I thought I'd call it out when I saw it (also so we can find things again, that's really what this weekly column is about don't you know).

• Found a video called DungeonCraft. So far I've only watched one but it was a thought provoking bit about doing away with initiative in 5E. His method looks interesting but somewhat of a hassle for the DM tracking a lot of enemy combatants.

Blog Roll.

• Tenkar's Tavern - Once a must visit but now he's also gone the way of video postings more often than not, that and he tracks kickstarters for those interested. Still his few regular posts as well as the ones on the politics within the hobby are fascinating reading. Tenkar also put together an OSR collaborative effort to create a campaign area called Black Isles that is amazing, and the sort of thing more sites should do (oddly I can't find it linked on Tenker's actual site, go figure?)
• Elfmaids & Octopi - Creates lots of tables that fill our heads with creativity. 
• OSR Search - We should have listed this first. The most useful RPG site out there a search engine customized to find results upon role playing blogs. 

Creating a Medieval Manor: Part I (The Whole Manor)

A wealthy village

A manor is more than a building, it more than a village, it is an entire community. This post is based around an agricultural manor (or fief) which would be the most common type in medieval England.  A fishing village would be very similar except the field shape would be chopped in half to designate the water-line.

To determine the basics of the manor roll 1d12, 1d10, 1d8, and 1d6 and consult the tables.

Peasants doing their thing

Table 1: Who is the Lord

-1d12	Table
01-02	Baron
03-05	Knight
06-10	Bailiff, Lord rarely makes appearances
11	Religious institution
12	Secret Syndicate (roll again for who appears in charge)

Shape of the Fields
An agricultural manor is generally composed of settlements around a field. They have separate strips to grow the Lords crops, and fields for spring, fall, and summer plantings as well as one to lay fallow and reenergize. This is all way more than most GMs need for game purposes so we're lumping all of that into the generic 'fields'.

Table 2: Rough Shape of the Fields

1d10	Table
01-02	Circular
03-04	Oval
05-06	Pear Shaped
07-08	Rectangular
09-10	Separated fields, roll again for each

Fields tend to have roads and trails crossing them and separating them and generally allowing folks to get from one side to the other without crushing the crops. The exterior of the manor is the wastes, that is unexploited land such as heath, forest, swamp, or simply grazing land. This land is unexploited but not unproductive, it is used by the Lord for hunting, for feeding the pigs, reeds in the swamp might be used for thatching.

Number of Settlements
Determine how many settlements surround the fields, and name them. If you don't have names ready to go we suggest d20srd.orgs generator for names.

Slam that mead!

Table 3: Settlements

1d6	Settlements
01-02	1
03-04	2
05	3
06	4

The manor gains one supplemental feature plus an additional one for each settlement. The GM should roll and assign each feature to one of the settlements. Typically a manor will only have one of each feature.

Table 4: Supplemental Features of Manor

1d8	Table
01	Beehives
02	Docks
03-04	Mill/Waterwheel/Windmill
05	Fishpond/Eel pond
06	Market
07	Quarry
08	Mine

The largest settlement should be considered the village and will have a church (or temple). The rest may be villages or thorpe/hamlets depending upon their size. We'll cover that in Part II (Mapping the Settlements).

Subinfeudation 102: The Manor

Growing up as a GM the players saved villages again and again and those villages were inevitably reskinned version of the village of Homlet (T1)  or Orleans (N1). I saw some villages in the Harn products but somehow my mind got stuck on village = manor. I didn't really have a solid grip on what an actual medieval manor looked like and when I finally found a map of one I was more than a little surprised.

So here is the manor of Harmondsworth, a real medieval manor.

Note the Bath-to-London road cuts across the center of the fief from East-to-West. This is an old Roman road so its probably pretty nice. The fields that pay the bills dominate the center with Heath and Moor on the outskirts. The scale of the map is three miles wide and two miles high (as you can see by the red/black bars) but the guts of the feif are mostly within a one to one and a half mile area. Surprisingly the manor is not just one settlement but five.

• Harmondsworth, the village proper is on at the Northwest of the fields. It has the same name as the manor which is probably not an accident.  It has a Parish church (the church of St Mary) that probably served as the social center of the fief and that still exists despite being rebuilt over the centuries. Harmondsworth is also the location of the Great Barn the largest barn in England (and it is still there despite the proximity to the airport). In 1391 the Harmondsworth village contained 1330 inhabitants so Harmondworth village would be where the bulk of the manor's inhabitants actually live.
• Longford - A hamlet at the fords of the River Colne and its distributaries. Judging by the name their presumably was no bridge and the rivers had to be forded. Folks that arrived near dusk would probably stay in the hamlet rather than attempt to cross in the dark which justified the place. In 1337 Longford had 30 inhabited buildings.
• Perry Oaks - The manor house at the Southern edge of the fields. Pretty isolated from the peasants. Initially the fief was held by the Church (and likely administered out of St Mary's but eventually sold to Bishop William of Wykeham who built the manor in Perry Oaks for some reason.
• Heathrow - During the medieval period Heathrow or Heath Row was a one-sided lane of smallholdings at the edge of the Heath. Now its an airport, go figure.
• Sipson - Initially this was just a major farmstead but eventually additional buildings raised the place to the level of hamlet. In later maps Sipson had their own dedicated fields so this hamlet may be a case of peasants just building closer to the workplace to cut down on the commute.

Beware the Moors

Perhaps someone has an answer for why old maps have two different names for what is essentially the same thing we have:

• Heath - an area of uncultivated land usually characterized by heather, gorse, and coarse grasses.
• Moors - A tract of open uncultivated upland; a heath.

I think it's probably two old local names or one of the terms changed over time.

The maps I've found are all from the sixteen and seventeenth centuries and they show the "fields" subdivided so that Sipson has their own fields, as does Heathrow, so there is no way to tell if the folks in these neighboring hamlets considered themselves to belong to Harmondsworth or to belong to Longford/Heathrow or Sipson.

History of Harmondsworth Manor

• William the conquerer grants Harmondsworth to an abbey in Rouen
• William of Wykeham (1320 or 1324-1404), Bishop of Winchester and Chancellor of England, bought Harmondsworth in 1391

Subinfeudation 101

England showing Historic Shires with Middlesex highlighted

Empire

Multiple Kingdoms or large regions under the same crown are typically known as an Empire. Examples would be Angevin Empire which at different times contained England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Normandy, Aquitaine, Brittany and other bits of France. Typically they function similar to a Kingdom with various King ruling it all acting as king of the bit and pieces as well.

Kingdom

At the next level we have the Kingdom.
All land in the Kingdom is owned by the crown. That's a lot of territory for one person to control so the crown subdivides everything into Duchies & Shires.

Duchy
A Duchy is basically the same as a Shire (below) except it is controlled by a Duke who is usually a member of the Royal Family and uses the Duchy as a vacation spot and money generator so they can enjoy life at court.

Shires
The term Shire and County are used somewhat interchangeably with shire being older and a bit cooler sounding so I'll use Shire for consistency sake. A shire is held by an Earl. William the Conquerer tried to bring the title Count over from France but it never gained traction. Oddly enough the Earl's wife is known as a Countess, probably because Earless sounded daft. The Shire boundaries throughout England haven't changed much until more modern times although some have been busted up a bit.
An Earl controls most of the land in the Shire (at least land not directly controlled or granted out to someone else by the King). The Earl may also control land in other counties as if he were a normal Baron in those areas.

High Sheriff
To keep a tight reign on things the King usually appoints a High Sheriff yearly. The High Sheriff had number of Sheriff's under their charge and would be responsible for enforcing law and order throughout the Shire (not so much collecting taxes despite some tales, tax collection was primarily the responsibility of the Duke or Earl). The High Sheriff was responsible for organizing the Shire militia, chasing outlaws (tales got that right at least), and dealing with court cases. The High Sheriff was often a commoner but had the power of the King behind them.

Hundreds

Middlesex hundreds with Elthorne highlighted

Each Shire was divided into Hundreds (or wapentake in areas conquered by Vikings). A hundred was an administrative unit for taxation and legal matters and doesn't have a titled holder. Originally a hundred meant that the area could support a hundred hides, or a hundred families, but that changed over time as populations increased and they never bothered to chop up the hundreds to keep up. Each hundred typically had a Bailiff appointed by the king who worked beneath the Sheriff.

Barony
A barony was the same as a Fief (below) except held by a Baron, one of the lowest of all hereditary titles. Being a hereditary title meant the Baron had the ability to pass property to descendants which meant in time a Barony was likely to expand to a number of fiefs through marriage and the blessings of the crown. Baronies were granted directly by the crown rather than by the Earl.

Fief
Each Hundred was subdivided into  fiefs. This isn't exactly true as the fief boundaries and hundred boundaries do not always line up but things get messy if you nit-pick. A feif was usually granted by the Earl to ensure someone loyal was watching the fiefs in the Shire (with the exception of Baronies which the Earl had little control over).

Elthorne Hundred with Harmondsworth highlighted

The fief was originally sized so that it had enough land to support and equip one mounted soldier. Better agricultural methods changed that later.

The Lord of the manor lived in a house known as a manor or manor house (over time the terms fief and manor became interchangeable). A manor might be fortified, in risky areas it might be a very simple Keep, but more often than not during the medieval period the manor was just a nicer houses than the peasants had.

Parish
The Church divided the Kingdom up into a subinfeudation of their own, but were kind enough to mostly duplicate the civil system. The Church used the term Parish for a fief. Each fief had a church to serve the needs of the worshipers in that fief. Over time the terms Parish and fief became interchangeable.

Social Class: The Nobility

King with globus cruciger and sceptre

King/Queen - The ruler of the land.
Prince/Princess - The children of the King/Queen. The Crown Prince, if there is one, is typically the heir to the throne.

The hierarchy of the remaining noble titles can be remembered with the mnemonic device:

"Did Mi'lord Ever Visit Bosworth Battlefield?"

Duke/Duchess - The lord ruling a Duchy or one granted the title ceremonially. Either way they are usually a member of the extended royal family. Beyond being ruled by a Duke a Duchy is like a Shire.
Marquis/Marchioness - A Marcher Lord. Similar to an Earl but with more power because of the risks required subjugating the Marches.
Earl/Countess - A baron that controls a Shire on behalf of the King/Queen.
Viscount/Viscountess - Similar to a High Sheriff but working for a Duke instead of the King. Originally non-heridatry the Viscount became a hereditary title over time.
Baron/Baroness - A hereditary title, typically the holder of one or more fiefs.
Baronetcy/Baronetess - A hereditary title but not a Peer (and thus not entitled to attend the House of Lords).

Well equipped Men-At-Arms

Beneath the hereditary Lords are:
Knight - One granted the honorary title of knighthood by a king/queen, bishop or other political or religious leader for military service.
Man-At-Arms - A term that applies to all military folks, typically mounted and well equipped, despite their title. A Mercenary peasant and Countess armed for battle could both be called a Man-at-Arms despite title or gender although in medieval history female Men-At-Arms were more than a bit rare.

Medieval Research, an introduction

Even the best schools in America tend to give short shrift to the medieval period. You get a bit about the difficulties of a peasant, maybe something on the Manor and castles and pow, Columbus discovered America. A thousand years covered in a week if you are lucky. Hollywood made things worse.
I read a ton of books, most of them dry or outright terrible. Then the internet came around and it was full of information. Some of the information was conflicting, some was amazing (such as the British History Online), the internet is hit and miss that way. As I come across bits & pieces of research I expect to post it on the blog and correct the posts as necessary if I find something was wrong.

Best of the Web: Passive Perception, Accents, & 30 Minute Dungeons

Passive Perception Checks
Methods & Madness has added to the ongoing discussions on when to have perception checks for spotting traps or hidden things. The basic problem is that when the GM calls for a perception check everyone knows there is something to be found. Calling for fake checks to hide that fact just fills the game with tedious rolls.

OpenQuest has a Perception skill, I suggest using such a skill as a passive check.

To do a passive check the GM just adds a value of how well hidden any trap/hidden thing and anyone with a perception level higher than that value immediately notices the hidden thing (but not necessarily how to work/open/disarm the thing). If a player states specifically that they are looking at the statue or wall or whatever can roll their perception skill the normal way to determine success, getting a second chance of sorts.

I feel that this encourages the player to dedicates a few improvement rolls to Perception or at the very least to encourages the party to hire someone with outstanding eyesight to come along.

Passive Weight Limit
Shouting Into The Void had an interesting post about using weight limits on bridges in war-games. This made me think about how similar situations in role playing games. A couple of dudes in plate armor could be heavy, and traps and opening secret doors could be based on the weight of who steps upon the trigger.

So how to use this in OpenQuest? GM marks on their map how many ENC it takes to trip a trap or to make a bridge or floor collapse.

I read somewhere (not in OpenQuest but most of the children of RuneQuest are similar enough in mechanics that it doesn't matter) that "each SIZ point is roughly equal to 4 ENC" so if one takes the SIZx4 then add the ENC of what a character is carrying a total ENC can be derived. If that number is near the ENC limit of the trip the trap or make the bridge or floor collapse the characters might hear creaking or some warning sign, if they are above the number....

This not only puts value on the the SIZ characteristic (beyond damage bonus) but it makes ENC more important. Reversing the math also works to determine if a character can squeeze into a tight place. Take the characters total ENC carried divided by 4 and add the result to the characters SIZ. It's inexact but easy and useful and there are few things that unnerve a character like tight places in which they might not be able to defend themselves properly.

Accents
Monsters and Manuals has a very helpful post on British Regional Accents. Long ago I read a book that talked about how to write in the various accents but this post has videos so you can hear them which is far superior as a role playing resource.

30 Minute Dungeons
The Bogeyman's Cave has put together a little self-challenge. This seems like a good way to populate a sandbox rapidly.  Here are the details.

• A Hook 
• General Background 
• 3 Combat Encounters 
• 3 "Empty" Rooms 
• 2 Traps 
• 1 NPC 
• 1 Weird Thing To Experiment With 
• Some Treasure 
• A Magic Item

Maps aren't generally included with this, as it is a writing challenge and not a cartography challenge, but I might go back and make some.

Blog Roll
A trio of RPGG creators from different viewpoints who have joined forces for an occasional podcast called Inappropriate Characters so I'll add them to my blogroll together.

• RPG Pundit - He's hated by many for his politics but his products Lion & Dragon, Dark Albion: The Rose War, and Dark Albion: Cults of Chaos are first rate. As is Arrows of Indra which has me scratching my head and wondering why more folks haven't picked India as a place ripe for adventure. His blog is entertaining if overly concerned with defining what is and isn't the OSR.
• Venger Satanis - Venger likes things on the sleazy side, his name, and a product line titled "like a fucking boss" and it's no surprise that he's got a number of haters. Venger came to my attention with a sourcebook about a Alternate Manhattan based on 80s movies No Escape from New York that I found very entertaining (but which no longer appears for sale on DriveThruRPG. That was good enough to get me to try Revelry in Torth, and Islands of the Purple Haunted-Putrescence, and his entire Like a Boss line. All of which are all very readable and sparked my creativity enough to search out his blog and read it regularly.
• Postmortem Studios  - Of the three I found James ‘Grim’ Desborough first when I was obsessed with zombies and Runequest and ran across his products Bloodquest and Blood. I got the games primarily for weapon and monster stats (I buy most games to pull apart as I suspect most folks do) and searched out his blog soon after. Grim Jim doesn't post as often as the other two, and like the other two he's caught up in strange internet hate for something he supposedly said. Now he's got a Tales of Gor a Role Playing Game based on the Gor books by John Norman (which is daring to say the least). The game is powered by Open D6 which I don't know so I haven't picked it up yet but will at some point.