Cold Iron Blackmarsh Adventures

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One thing I need to work out is encounter tables. My original plan in trying to get Cold Iron rolling again was inspiration from Ben Robbins's West Marches with it's regional difficulty levels which would have meshed well with Cold Iron's class and level nature. Blackmarsh is a more organic setting so doing regional difficulty levels won't work as well. Certainly there can be adventure sites that offer different difficulty levels and there may be some areas that appear to be "high level".

One interesting read for encounter tables is this:


There's also this:


I'm not sure if Wizards and Dragons are the right choice for "always on the encounter table" for Cold Iron, and I'm not sure if a 2d6 encounter table has enough options on it, though with my thoughts on a limited set of creatures maybe that's OK, especially if sub-tables are used or something.

I need to work on how to determine the strength of encounters. In Cold Iron, everything has a Fighter Level and maybe a Magic Level. So is your Goblin 1st level, 3rd level, 8th level? And that really gets to the problem of difficulty level. Drop an encounter with a Goblin Wizard (8th level Magic User) and his 3 Goblin Champions (8th level fighters) on a low level party and the PCs are never going to want to venture outside the gates again. But make most of the encounters low level Goblins with an occasional mid level Troll and the high level PCs are going to tire of all these nuisance encounters (see why the West Marches difficulty level by region sounded like a good fit...).
 
Seeing as there has a already been some talk about character class and skill type stuff here, I’ll open up more conversation on that line.

Cold Iron characters all have a Fighter Level. If they are a caster they have Magic Level or Cleric Level. Characters also have Expertise Level that covers non-combat skills.

Skills (combat of otherwise) cost ((level + 1) * level) / 2 points. Fighter and Expertise Level each give 5 times that many points plus 5. Except Magic Users only get 3x+3 and Clerics 4x+4 from Fighter Level. There are various other intricacies but a notable one is that a fighter can actually use Expertise points to buy combat skills.

5 combat skills let’s a fighter be well rounded wIth Dodge, Hand Hand (grappling), weapon attack, weapon or shield parry, and a missile weapon.

My challenge is how granular non-combat skills should be to make non-soldier professions work well. Ideally a profession like Ranger or Thief should be 3 or 4 skills leaving one or two for social skills or a side skill (or two if skills aren’t taken at full level). This also allows for different levels of focus as a ranger or thief or bard or whatever.

I may handle some things by additional classes like a Dwarf Artificer that is basically a magic type level without spells but also grants skill points.

Any thoughts?
 
I was looking at robertsconley robertsconley 's Majestic Fantasy RPG for thoughts on skills but the skills in that seem a bit too broad for the 5 skills paradigm. On the other hand, RuneQuest is too granular (RQ1's Thieves Guild offers training in 15 skills). Even AD&D is a bit too granular. On the other hand, "thief" or "rogue" is a broad enough concept that maybe some specialization is appropriate.

I think at least Stealth, Sleight of Hand (pick pockets), Devise (locks & traps), and Climbing make sense. Then looking at other systems there's a variety of ancillary skills (Thieve's Guild has a bunch of sensory skills, D&D and RQ have listen and find/spot traps, RQ has camouflage , there's things like shadowing and disguise).

Cold Iron has an Alertness attribute so many sensory things don't need skills at all, and those that do can reference other skills (like "Sense Trap" can just be using Alertness informed by Devise).
 
I thought between the OGL 1.1 discussion and the Character Creation Challenge that I'd revisit this thread...

I did settle on a set of non-combat skills though I'm sure it will be refined in play. Also in play we will suss out just how to translate a skill level into mechanical meaning.

I'm getting really stoked for just how easy my Google Sheets character sheet makes chargen. It means I really can whip up NPCs just in time, even on the fly.

I still have a lot of work to do to get the perfect spell memorization going. Cold Iron has a lot of spells that have improved higher level ones, sometimes just MP efficiency, often better effect (energy spells, short and long spells, Stone/Iron/Steel etc. Flesh (T/DR improving spells)), and sometimes even new features (illusion spells). In general, knowing a higher level spell gives access to all it's lower level variants for free. This can be challenging to code up in a spreadsheet so I'm working on that as a background task. In the meantime, simple manual things can be done...

Some other areas for improvement on the character sheet would be to add some synonyms for weapons, add some standard equipment, and make room for non-combat skill ratings on the first tab.

It will be interesting to see if the exposure from this, from my running some play by post games, and now a Roll20 game prompt interest from others.
 
robertsconley robertsconley - Have you given any thought to encounter tables for Blackmarsh?
I haven't been using traditional random encounter tables for a while. Instead, I been using these rules. The basic gist is that you roll up a handful of encounters before the PCs sets off and then sprinkle them along the route where they make sense. They may have other encounters along the way but they are not noteworthy enough.

Hope this is useful.
 

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I haven't been using traditional random encounter tables for a while. Instead, I been using these rules. The basic gist is that you roll up a handful of encounters before the PCs sets off and then sprinkle them along the route where they make sense. They may have other encounters along the way but they are not noteworthy enough.

Hope this is useful.
That does look interesting, though I was looking for encounter tables that would help set the tone of each region. Otherwise, with Cold Iron I have a tendency of relying on just a handful of creatures, goblins, trolls, various undead, wolves, and maybe a few others...

What I have used to minimize the pain of rolling lots of encounter chances is a table that renders the cumulative chance of an encounter after N intervals for each step. Basically taking the idea of the Cold Iron Chance Adjustment table and instead of rolling to find out where on the normal distribution curve you land, you roll to find out where on the cumulative distribution for length of time before an encounter with X% chance per interval. And basically if the roll translates to more intervals than the length of the trip, or segment of a trip, then no encounter.

But I'm also really hashing out what makes sense for encounters. When would wolves actually attack a party of humans? If running a "realistic" or "naturalistic" sandbox, do encounters scale with the party capability?

I'm not quite ready to totally abandon a realistic/naturalistic system for "sprinkle some encounters across the trip" system, though I see the appeal of that for making long trips less of a drag. Your system also allows for some unusual encounters without, for example, the hassle of rolling for weather every interval and hoping it makes sense. Instead, you have some trips have a significant weather incident.
 
Like robertsconley robertsconley what I tend to have done for decades is rolling up encounters and writing them all up ahead of time and then use them as needed when I feel like it makes sense for my game world. It saves you time and keeps the game flow going and I prefer anything that does that. Especially now a days with how many distractions gamers have for their attention at the table.
 
I'm not quite ready to totally abandon a realistic/naturalistic system for "sprinkle some encounters across the trip" system, though I see the appeal of that for making long trips less of a drag. Your system also allows for some unusual encounters without, for example, the hassle of rolling for weather every interval and hoping it makes sense. Instead, you have some trips have a significant weather incident.
I travel for my company to work on the metal cutting machines we sell to customers. Often in a major city like New York City or Boston. In these cities when walking around, there is a lot to see and potentially do. But over the years, the number of notable encounters where I interacted with someone or something was pretty small. The same when I drove in a rural area.

So when I encountered Adventure in Middle Earth Journey system, it made a lot of sense, and as a bonus it made handling traveling easier and a lot more interesting. So I figured out how to adapt the general idea to my campaigns. I ditched the more gamey aspect like travel roles (guide, lookout, etc.) but kept the core idea that in a given journey there are only a handful of notable encounters. Another benefit is that the encounters can be tailored to the terrain and circumstances of the journey by relying on the judgment of the referee. Random tables often fail to capture the nuances of a specific locale.

I argue that this approach is more realistic/naturalistic than periodic rolls. In life, notable encounters are a chaotic phenomenon. Also keep in mind that like walking through a wilderness forest or a major city, you are seeing things all around you. But most of them are expected or easily avoided/dealt with. The encounters my system generate are those who stand out.


What I have used to minimize the pain of rolling lots of encounter chances is a table that renders the cumulative chance of an encounter after N intervals for each step. Basically taking the idea of the Cold Iron Chance Adjustment table and instead of rolling to find out where on the normal distribution curve you land, you roll to find out where on the cumulative distribution for length of time before an encounter with X% chance per interval. And basically if the roll translates to more intervals than the length of the trip, or segment of a trip, then no encounter.
That works, and while I didn't go as far running calculations it the same general idea behind the number of encounters you roll in my system. Especially for city trip.

But I'm also really hashing out what makes sense for encounters. When would wolves actually attack a party of humans?
Because they are hungry and humans are prey. But most times wolves have their preferred prey, or are not hungry. My intent is that if you roll a random encounter from getting that result in my system then it is assumed it is a challenge of some sort for whatever reason make sense for that creature in that locale.

If running a "realistic" or "naturalistic" sandbox, do encounters scale with the party capability?
No. The area is what it is. Just keep in mind apex predators are few and far between due to what they need to live. Likewise encounters with highly experienced NPCs is not likely under normal circumstances.
 
That all makes sense.

So do you have any particular thoughts on typical encounters for various regions of Blackmarsh? Obviously the descriptions and lairs inform some of the encounter possibilities. But what else might be out there?
 
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