RPG Animal Companions - Dogs and Horses

As promised in this post, here are the experience and quirk tables for dog and horse animal companions, suitable for use in any OSR-ish RPG. If you're looking for mules, check out the previous post.

RPG Animal Companions

Animal companions are pretty common in OSR play. Mules carry heavy loads on long trips, dogs add a little offense and serve as an early-warning system, and horses let lowly adventurers feel like they're someone important. Why not give these lowly companions a little love and advancement.

What follows is a simple leveling system for commonly used animal companions. Adding this system to your game won't turn mules, horses and dogs into powerful allies, but it will add a little color and fun to your game. Who doesn't want a 7th level guard dog as a companion?

I Have Powers - Minor Powers

One of the things I've done in my current Labyrinth Lord game, is give each main character a small perk power that matches up with their character concept. These are simple bits that may or may not be useful in play, but give each player a little something to call their own. Some of these were adapted from other systems, some adapted from spells, some were just made up.

Here they are...

Labyrinth Lord - The Beastmaster

I'm sure this has been done before, but my quick web search didn't turn anything up so I decided to just roll my own. Recently one of the characters in my Wilds game met an untimely end. The player had the opportunity to take over one of the NPCs associated with the party, but wasn't really interested, so after a chat about what he wanted out of his next character, this is what we came up with.

Hexmap Speed Test I

I decided to run a test using the hexmap tables I've been working on to create a terrain-only map from scratch. Starting with a blank map, I dropped a few predetermined hexes into the grid, then started working. This is the starting map.

 After 20 minutes of random generation, this is what I ended up with.

Not too bad.

Hexmapped Again

This is another demo map created using the Fudge-dice table system I'm working on. I did this one a bit differently, using an alternate 'rule' for the map processing. If you've read the previous articles in this collection, you know there are several terrain tables that are sorted in numeric order. Each hex you generate is marked up with terrain and a table number. When generating a new hex, you use the lowest numbered table marked in the already generated surrounding hexes. Table I is a random table.

Hexmap in Progress III - Complete!

Here's the final result for my latest randomly generated hexmap. Terrain-wise, I'm pretty happy with how this looks for a five-mile per hex map. The ocean terrain is still a bit fjord-like, but as I said before, I'm OK with an emphasis on land as opposed to water.

Hexmap in Progress - Part II

I've done some additional map generation on this map, after tweaking the tables a bit more. I really need to sit down and rebuild the special sites tables to cover civilized vs. uncivilized lands. I also need to remember to follow my own rules, as I sometimes forget to check for special features in a hex, leaving me with too much blank space.

Hexmap in Progress

This is another iteration of my hexmap random generator project. I decided to throw this out as a work in progress, so you can see how things have been working out. This map is about a third-done, and I've changed up the process I'm using a bit.

The Hexmap and Reality - Answer

Earlier today I posted up a map challenge asking people to ID what they thought a rough hexmap represented. Here's the answer:

The Hexmap and Reality

I've been thinking about hex maps and outdoor adventures quite a bit recently, mostly because I've been working on a random terrain generator that, hopefully, will produce not-terrible maps. I decided to try an experiment, so... Take a look at this map and try to guess what it represents. The scale is 20 miles / square (yes I'm lazy and used stagger squares instead of hexes -- sue me). Terrain is:

• Pale green - plain
• Drab green - scrub
• Light green - light woods
• Dark green - forest
• Tan - hills
• Brown - mountains
• Light blue - wetland/coast
• Dark blue - ocean

Click for larger view

I'll post up the answer a bit later.

Random Hex Terrain II

Another map generated by the random generator I mentioned earlier today. This one started in wetlands, and  has a fair amount of ocean. I think it looks fairly solid, no real why is that there spots.

It's getting better. I've been visualizing these maps as 25 to 30 mile hexes, so about 375-400 miles across and 250-300 miles north-south.

Random Terrain Generator

I mentioned in a recent post that I was working on a set of random tables for terrain generation. The tables themselves aren't quite ready for use; at the moment they only exist as an Excel spreadsheet; but I did spend an hour to build a small test map. Once I had the raw map done on graph paper, I used Hexographer to create a legible map.

A Survival Game - Random Thoughts

Survival games in the RPG world are nothing new. There are plenty of zombie apocalypse based games around, and more than a few D&D games are survival focused. Over the past few years I've toyed with the idea of a more practical survival game without coming to any satisfactory conclusion about how it would work, or even what the game would be about. This post is a bit of a brain dump on the subject.