Ponderings on the Hyborian Age

So...what to do next? Is this relatively complete as it stands, with the Chainmail combat, magic and saves, and the character classes and races set to go? I mean, I can't really post individual writeups of the Hyborian Age societies, kingdoms, countries, etc., without stepping on the toes of some serious license holders. For gods, monsters and magic items, the pre-existing OD&D writeups (See Supplement IV) hold true. Since we are using Chainmail for combat, mass combat is also well covered.

Thoughts? Suggestions? What's missing?

I should note I'm unlikely to change anything here because someone doesn't agree with my presentation--if you disagree with something I've done, that's great, and you can change it in your home game. That's what OD&D is all about. This is my take on it.

That being said, if there are things in the RULES I've put forth that seem problematic on their face (truthfulness to the setting notwithstanding) feel free to point them out and I'll re-examine how they work. Some of the racial abilities in particular may be a bit much, I admit.

Comments

  1. Matthew SlepinAugust 5, 2009 at 4:05 PM

    Hmn. Do you want to mess with the XP rules at all?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Grey ElfAugust 5, 2009 at 8:32 PM

    I have for allowing characters to pick up extra racial abilities...but probably not much more than that. Why?

    ReplyDelete
  3. AkrasiaAugust 7, 2009 at 3:27 AM

    The material that you've posted on Hyboria looks great, Jason! Thanks.

    I've been thinking about using my own 'S&S house rules' to run a Hyborian campaign at some point. (In case anyone is curious, an index of those house rules can be found here: http://akraticwizardry.blogspot.com/2009/07/swords-sorcery-house-rules-index.html .) Your own thoughts on using OD&D for Hyboria has given me a lot to chew on.

    I'd certainly be interested in reading any thoughts that you might have on what adventures (and, for that matter, campaigns) you might run in Hyboria. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. The Grey ElfAugust 7, 2009 at 2:31 PM

    Therein lies my downfall. I'm horrific at creating adventures, unless they are specific to whatever group I'm running at the time. To be honest, I'd probably look to Mongoose's Conan line for adventure ideas, as they've done a bang-up job with the source material--d20 just isn't a good fit for a system. Beyond the Thunder River and Road of Kings both have a shit-ton of great adventure ideas in them. Tales of the Black Kingdoms could be done easily just by substituting any stat blocks with OD&D ones, and replacing skill rolls with a more old school "describe it and go" feel.

    ReplyDelete

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