Preview: The Iron Queen

I have the pleasure of announcing the upcoming release of my latest project: The Iron Queen. Designed for Old Style Essentials (classic version), it offers a detailed description of a spacefaring dwarven ironclad and an adventure module: Raid on Teros. The release includes a map pack with six full-size poster deck plans and a collection of maps for use with the adventure, all rendered at full resolution. The Iron Queen will become available on DriveThru as a digital release fairly soon. The manuscript and all graphicsare now in the hands of proofreaders. Keep your ears to the ground. Click here for the latest updates.

All deck plans and outside views of the Iron Queen will include 3 posters labeled and 3 more unlabeled. The present png files are 86 megs and 10800 x 7760 pixels (or 36"x 26"). See the views below for an idea of the contents. Click on the images below for full-res views. Some images may take a minute or longer to load, given their sizes.

                            

The author warrants that no AI was used or harmed during the development of this project.

Skyship Battle

I was exceedingly elated when I discovered a blog article Xaoseed wrote in 2021 about the game mechanics I posted back around that time. I didn't spot it until yesterday. He (she, they) playtested them and found that they worked as I'd intended. So, thanks awfully for that! I wanted mechanics enabling fairly detailed movement rules involving the speed and direction of winds while merging ship battles with traditional OSR player-character and monster combat. So: mission accomplished. With Xaoseed's permission, I'm reposting his article here, for the record!

21 August 2021

Actual Test: Calidar (Fantasy Space Combat Rules)

tl;dr: fantasy flying ship combat where the wind direction matters - surprisingly easy to pick up, lots of fun and some great old school damage tables detail that makes ship combat more than just slugging away at hull points.

After testing two magazine-published sets of rules for fighting magical flying ships - the 3e adaptation Shadow of the Spider Moon and the 5e Aces High aerial combat rules from Arcadia #3 published by MCDM as well as the original AD&D Spelljammer we come to the thing that kicked all this off - Calidar.

The Calidar supplements come from Bruce Heard, creator of the magnificent Voyages of the Princess Ark, one of the original D&D Flying Ships (*the* original?), as a vehicle for him to continue with flying fantasy ships as Princess Ark is no longer continuing. I grabbed the Calidar books because I love me my flying ships and also pulled down the skyship combat rules from his blog. Initially, the ruleset looks scary as hell but I cobbled together a word doc and sat in the pub and red-penned it until I figured out how it worked then took it to the table.

Mimicking the 'big vs fast' set up of previous fights I set up the feature ship of the setting - the Star Phoenix - against a fast ship, the Lucky Deuce. We put down a hex grid and ran the same altitude and edge-of-board escape conditions for the 'heavy' as before. The first really interesting thing about the Calidar system is that ship speed is wind-driven - the sails matter - and first thing to do is dice up the wind. We got a strong wind, just short of a damaging gale, blowing straight down the board. One of the hardest pieces of the system for me to grok initially was the points of sail until I finally got that the wind directions were split more finely than hexes have sides and suddenly it all made sense.

The second interesting thing is that initiative is diced per round for combat actions but movement is done in order of speed - and big ships can put on more sail and go faster. We were surprised to find that the Star Phoenix was faster than the Lucky Deuce (though harder to turn). We set off, everyone out of range to start then after movement where both gained altitude, the first long distance fire was exchanged. The Deuce landed shots to the hull and the Phoenix fired back and swept away almost a quarter of the Deuce's crew. Here another interesting system point came up where each hit led to a roll on a table to see what was hit - masts, crew, weapons or the hull. This was a very interesting aspect of the system, making it harder to knock out an enemy ship but inflicting lots of other pain on them.

Round 2 - we diced to see if the wind changed - as there was no DM we adapted the system by rolling 2d8 to get under the count of turns since the last shift in wind. The wind stayed stable for now. The Deuce fired, scored another hull hit and both ships soared onwards, with the Deuce using its superior maneuverability to stay out of the Phoenix's broadside fire arcs.

Round 3 - we diced and there was a chance for wind to change but testing for change in strength and change in direction led individually to nothing - a flutter but no actual change. The Deuce took advantage of their positioning to fire again, landing a ballista bolt and managing to knock out the starboard forward ballista on the Phoenix. Then both ships moved: the Phoenix diving and the Deuce keeping pace and lurking ahead of it.

Round 4 - a pattern was setting in with the Deuce peppering the Phoenix bows with mid range fire. The port forward ballista was knocked out this round, then after both had moved two shots threatened the Phoenix masts but failed to cause telling damage.

Round 5 - another round of fire and the Deuce knocks the Phoenix below 70% of hull points, worsening their maneuverability a grade and causing it to sink an altitude level per round - now they have to advance 2 hexes before they can turn one face, leaving the Deuce weaving circles within the Phoenix turning arc as it tried to bring its broadside weapons to bear. The chance to climb out of the gravity well and escape into the Great Vault was also closed, only one path to escape remaining - the board edge.

Round 6 - the Deuce fires and knocks out a starboard aft mast on the Phoenix.

Round 7 & 8 - the wind changes, slowing, and the dance continues at lower speed. The Deuce throws ballista and scorpion bolts at the Phoenix, shaving off hull points down to 50% of its original total.

Round 9 - the Phoenix captain finally figures out their tactics and races away across the grid before turning slightly at the end and leaving their broadside arc facing down the line the Deuce needs to approach (or if the Deuce turns wholly away it would allow the Phoenix to flee). Alas the damage to the Phoenix ballistae is telling and only the aft set remains to fire as the Deuce stays out of range of the Phoenix broadside catapults. Too close, and the Deuce weaves out of arc, too far and the catapults are out of range - the captain of the Phoenix is growing increasingly nervous about surviving.

Round 10 - the Deuce sails up and misses most of their scorpion shots while the Phoenix fires back with their lone ballista and flees for the board edge. The Deuce follows, allowing their own ballista to get to optimal range before firing and landing decisive hull hits. The Phoenix is looking shaky but is only one turn from the board edge.

Round 11 - knowing this is their last chance to stop the Phoenix, the Deuce fires everything, no matter the range and misses entirely. Heartened by this last spot of luck, the Phoenix flees off the board edge, with a shattered mast and two destroyed ballista.

A Hammership and Wasp paper mini standing in for the Star Phoenix and Lucky Deuce respectively

Overall the system was a lot easier to use than it appeared from the heft of the assembled rules. The points of wind took a little getting used to but once that was done, the challenge of turn limitations due to maneuverability class, fire arcs of the ships and the potential to shed or gain movement points as ships adjusted heading was a great fun part of it that really made the Calidar rules feel distinctly different to the 'powered flight' of the other systems tested.

The ships feel complex but not too complicated - initially I thought the 'roll on the damage table' for every hit to be preposterously fiddly but it quickly became easy to handle. The consequences of exceeding damage thresholds in certain categories was potentially very interesting - a lucky first shot by the Phoenix killed 8 out of 39 crew. Another similar strike to the crew would have been guaranteed at minimum to knock it below 3/4 of the crew, making all shots 10% harder to hit and that would have made life much easier for the Phoenix. On the other hand the Phoenix has nine masts and happily risked strikes to those as it would have taken at least 3 lost to impact maneuverability and each of those strikes was damage diverted away from the hull.

Another very interesting aspect of the system that I liked a lot was the 40 second round - if heroes had been present, acting individually, they could have gotten in 4 actions per ship combat round. This is also reflected in the relatively high rate of fire of the weapon systems - twice a round in most cases. Chucking fistfuls of dice about - however justified by the system - is a lot more fun than examples such as original Spelljammer with 1 in 3 rounds or 1 in 4 rounds firing rates.

The crews did not get to play a great part in this fight but could have. The boarding mechanics are very interesting with a compare ratios then roll table. I used it to stage out a guards raid on a safe-house in my home game and it is a nice neat system for that. We checked what might have happened had the Phoenix gotten to grips with the Deuce - the boarding party from the Phoenix would have been repulsed at a high cost to the Deuce, which would have left the Phoenix free to either sail off happy that they would be unlikely to hit them as they left or board again with even more chance at success.

Some really nice pieces of this system are:
1. How wind and facing matters along with relative speed and altitude change.
2. The 4-to-1 hero-to-ship action tempo is a nice way to keep the pace of ship activity high while also allowing heroes to make a real difference.
3. This was ship-on-ship but there is a large roster of monsters and clearly a lot of thought gone into integrating monsters as ship opponents. Taking a big dragon up against a ship could be a lot of fun.

If you read through all the posts as presented on the blog it is not easy to make sense of the system but assembled together and read through together (as in its intended published form) it makes a lot more sense. There is guidance on how to calibrate it to the system of your choice with multiple proposed approaches suggested from percentile to adapting d20.

My only complaint is that as the system is currently posted in parts, it is missing the editors run through of elaborating on terms the first time we run into them - it took me a while to find SR meant Structure rating, what windward meant and so on. There are some good worked examples in among the text to help it all make sense. I think the combat round sequence should be right up the front to help frame why all the individual pieces of the rules are important and where they come into play.

Certainly I would be happy to grab this when it eventually gets released. It has some real old-school flavour in the look up tables but I was surprised how universal a rule set it turned out to be. You just need to select the correct damage scale and then decide whether you want to use percentile or d20 to hit and off you go.

Star Phoenix Revisited

What a difference several years make. When I embarked on the mission to publish my own books eight years ago my skill level was minimal. Most of what I learned during my 15 years at pre-WotC TSR in the 80s and 90s was still there, but much of it no longer matched the self-publishing realities of the 2010s or the kind of work required when operating independently from an established publisher with somewhere near 100 employees. In the distant wake of the Voyage of the Princess Ark that I authored in the 90s for Dragon Magazine, I wanted a series of skyship deck plans to be featured at the World of Calidar's core. At the time, I had no idea what to expect from a Kickstarter, and the price tag of having these maps drafted by professionals seemed well over what I might be able to afford. So, I drafted the maps the best way I could back then. Here's a "before" & "after" snapshot showing what the original maps looked like vs. what I'm doing now.

Before: a simple diagram published in CAL1 "In Stranger Skies" in 2013

After: a work-in-progress rendition of the revised main deck & superstructures

I use a freeware application called PaintNet. Though limited in its graphic abilities, its learning curve is fairly low. It does require a lot of add-ons, and I rely heavily on 3rd party textures and stock art for details. Those took years to accumulate. The result speaks for itself. Here are a few more sneak previews of the final work.

Main Deck, Stern Section

Outlines Layer by Itself

Work files are raster graphics, which presents a challenge when adding colors or textures within line art. To prevent badly pixilated edges resulting from a simple attempt to fill in colors, layered graphics become a must. The complexity of fully detailed renditions often requires 15-20 layers (such as outline layers above color or texture layers, or whatever lies on a table layered above table graphics, which lies above chair elements, carpet graphics come next, and that lies above floor textures, and so on). Add to this any number of temporary layers that get merged with permanent ones during the drafting process. Patience with this is key.

Filled-In Textures Layer

Good luck making corrections later if something doesn't look quite right. Every single layer will need to be looked at. A common mistake is adding something to the wrong layer, and then spending precious time later to find which layer it was put on. This is when the cats perk up at the sound of muttered French swearing as I switch layers off and back on, hoping I didn't mess up something else.

How about some shadows?

The texture for the floor or in this case a ship's wooden deck begs for some thinking as regards how it might blend in with a grid. Some trial and error is to be expected here until the graphics are scaled properly.

Grid vs. Texture Layers

You're getting the idea. Add to this the layers for what should show "above" the walls' texture, such as doors and windows. Way up higher, you'll position layers for map symbols (stairs directions, secret doors, etc.) and labels.

Upping the Ante: the Lower Deck with full details

Here's another view with everything and the kitchen sink. Oh, the joy of making sure stairs connect exactly with those on adjacent decks. I'm a stickler for this, although most players and DMs won't lose sleep over a few pixels. While in game, this won't matter. I made precisely this kind of error in my original diagram of 2013, much to my dismay. It's now fixed in the revised version. Ugh. How embarrassing.

Just for fun, I'm including a screenshot of the hold's forward section. The final work includes two 12"x18" sheets and the digital files rendered at 600 dpi (with and without labels). I'll see if I can include VTT files for use with Roll20 and such; that's new territory for me. Drafting the revised deck plans took exactly 2 weeks, working pretty much full time, using the old map version and the original sketch produced by the cover artist, Ben Wootten. The design was part of the last Kickstarter project I ran, July 2021. Backers receive this as part of their rewards. The deck plans will become available to the public on DriveThru probably before the end of this year. Ideally, I'd like to redo all of the deck plans in CAL1, but this will have to wait until I'm done with the current project. If you have questions, contact me via Facebook or Twitter. Hope you enjoy your weekend!

Happy Flying!

Local News in Alfdaín

Here I am, running out of space for the miscellaneous news and local rumors in the upcoming players' guide to Alfdaín. Ah, heck. Let's masquerade this section as a glimpse of a local newspaper. Just a bit of fuff today!

Try this link for the full-res image.

Alfdaín Ascendant

Calidar’s upcoming Series 3 project focuses on the elves. Barring unforeseen production changes, the author is pleased to announce the participation of Thorfinn Tait, master cartographer, and of Jeff Easley tentatively for the cover art. Joseph Garcia will provide internal illustration (b/w inks) and Janet Deaver-Pack line and text editing. Calidar gamebooks are intended for use with mainstream RPGs. As established in the two previous series, the new project will include:

• A Gazetteer: 132 pages color, PDF format or printed (hardcover or softcover). This book is already written and most of its maps are in their final states as of mid-May 2021.
• A Players’ Guide: About 24-28 pages, color, PDF format or softcover
• An Adventure Book: 24-68 pages, color, PDF format or softcover. Final page count will depend on stretch goals during the crowdfunding event. The more backers, the greater the adventure for the same price.
• Two Conversion Booklets: About 24 pages each, color, PDF format or softcover. They provide all game stats from the previous three titles specifically for use with Labyrinth Lord^tm and Osric^tm.

Click here for the preview page on Kickstarter, and select the "Remind Me" button near the upper right corner. The launch date will be June 9, at 09:00 am CST.  

The Cal3 Gazetteer

The Queen’s Gift: As with previous releases, this campaign book’s opening chapter is a novelette running 18 pages. It is the third episode of the Star Phoenix adventures, a skyship exploring the Great Caldera. The story is told in the style of the Voyage of the Princess Ark originally published in Dragon Magazine in the 1990s. The Queen’s Gift features a mysterious living skyship.

History: The Gazetteer’s main body goes on to unveil the history of the elves, covering events in their ancestral moon, Alorea, and in the Confederacy of Alfdaín on Calidar itself, a former colony of Alorea. The history tells of a bitter rivalry between the old elven empire and the younger, independent nation.

Geography: This chapter focuses on Alfdaín, describing the lay of the land, the people, the economy, and the region’s climates. More than 12 full-page maps are featured, including a monumental 9-page atlas based on Thorfinn Tait’s topographical artwork and an overview of Undersea, the world of the sea elves, along with a map of the marine floor.

Riddle of the Woods: A sinister event, care of the old empire’s nefarious machinations, corrupted some of the forests covering Alfdaín. The evil plot lies behind this magical plague, threatening to overtake the whole of the confederacy. Each tainted region’s effects receive a detailed description.

The Law and the Sword: Alfdaín features an alliance of three sovereign realms. Who holds the power in each dominion, how they interact with each other, what armed forces they possess, how the traditional clans work, and what laws are in effect comes through in these pages.