A bit of a "catch-all" post

I've been holding on to some pictures and art for this blog that I wanted to show off here, so I thought I should start with some standard B/X D&D stats for the Apes and move on from there-

Apes (Gorilla Sapiens) [uses the Simian Empire line of miniatures from Black Orc Games]

Apes are a variant species of Terran Gorilla that developed a roughly human level of intelligence and speech. The Sidhe brought them to Garnia World tens of thousands of years ago when it was obvious they would be wiped out on Earth. Apes are roughly human sized, but weigh about twice as much due to denser bone and muscle structures, even their skin is tougher than that of man. When the Romans came to Garnia World they ended up in the same general area as the gentle and friendly Apes and, strangely, the two species hit it off. The Romans introduced the Apes to higher culture and sophistication, their own language was abandoned in favor of Latin within a generation. Now there are Apes in the senate and in the legions, they make up a significant minority within the empire, the only thing they have retained of their own ways is their vegetarianism.

Restrictions: Apes use eight sided dice (d8) to determine their hit points. They may advance to a maximum of 10th level of experience. Apes may use any type of armor and may use shields. They may use any weapon. They must have minimum Strength and Dexterity scores of 9. They use twice as many rations. They never get an XP bonus.

Special Abilities: Apes have tough hides and receive a +1 AC bonus to whatever armor they are wearing. Upper body strength is part of their genetic heritage too, they gain +1 on all damage rolls. Outdoors Apes are difficult to spot, having the ability to seemingly vanish into woods, jungle or thick brush. There is only a 10% chance of detecting them under such circumstances. Upon gaining the 4th level of experience (Ape Hero) an Ape may, once per day, use an "Intimidating Show of Strength"; which works exactly like a Cleric's "Turn Undead" ability, only on the living, and as if they were a Cleric of 3 experience levels lower and the target had the same Hit Die type as the relevant Undead target, ie. a 4th level Ape Intimidates as though he were a 1st level Cleric and a 1st level Fighter would be intimidated as a Skeleton. The "Intimidating Show of Strength" takes one round to complete and is the only action that can be performed, it only works on creatures with animal intelligence or above and they must be living, not Undead.

Ape

Level Title XP Hit Dice

1 Ape Veteran 0 1d8

2 Ape Warrior 2,200 2d8

3 Ape Swordmaster 4,400 3d8

4 Ape Hero 8,800 4d8

5 Ape Swashbuckler 17,000 5d8

6 Ape Myrmidon 35,000 6d8

7 Ape Champion 70,000 7d8

8 Ape Superhero 140,000 8d8

9 Ape Lord (Lady) 280,000 9d8

10 10th Level

Ape Lord 400,000 9d8+3*

*Constitution adjustments no longer apply.

Since these guys only ever show up in the Roman empire I may change their level titles to represent that fact. I left their stronghold off the list at 9th level for now, because I am not quite sure how to handle that yet. I am thinking either an appointment as a legion commander or to the senate, but I am open to suggestions.

Now the AD&D 1st edition version-

Classes available:

Cleric 4, Druid 6, Fighter 9, Paladin -, Ranger 6, Magic-User -, Illusionist -, Thief 6, Assassin 8, Monk -.

My thinking on limiting their Thief levels is that they are going to be stuck at a lower level because they don't really blend into a crowd and they are not terribly manually dexterous with their giant hands. Their Thief abilities are going to amount largely to thuggery, which is why I made them better at being Assassins. They are smart enough to plan assassinations and when it comes to the thuggery bit, that can be helpful. Given their connection to the natural world, which I assume isn't totally washed away after a few centuries of Romanization, evolutionary biology and all, it only made sense to me that they would be able to be Rangers and Druids, and be better at that than they are at being Clerics. Making them unable to do Arcane magic was a choice I made looking at the PH, most Demi-Humans can't, so I decided to follow that trend. Still, their best class is Fighter, as I always intended. For the purposes of multiclassing they can be pretty much any core class plus core class or subclass that is not a subclass of the core class they already have variation or any subclass variation within alignment restrictions, so C/F, C/R, C/T, C/A, C/F/T, C/F/A, C/R/T, D/F, D/T, D/F/T, F/T, F/A, R/T. If you are using Unearthed Arcana rules, which I don't recommend, D/R & D/R/T become available with an alignment of NG.

Their ability modifiers are +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity -2 Charisma, they still get all the B/X abilities I gave them, except the no XP bonus thing, that would be by ability score and class in AD&D.

Now someone else can write them up for other game systems, using this as a base.

Anyway, you all have seen the pictures of all the Gorilla Sapiens miniatures, so that was a pretty long, but fruitful, digression from my original posting point. Now, here are some other miniature pictures that I found on some blogs with Roman Legions, think of them as a supplement to the Roman Apes-

Click to embiggen anything that seems small to you.

Now we move on to this drawing of a poor Christian Cleric being tormented by a hot demoness, probably a Succubus. I think this is a scene right out of the Mistlands-

Here are some miniatures from various companies of Mongols and Mongol Dwarves! I still plan on getting a "20 questions" article about the Altan Ordu out to you, but you can think of these cool pictures as a preview. Trust me, I have tons of Mongol oriented art on my hard drive.

Lastly, I found these Samurai Skeletons that I wanted to use for a post on the Empire of Tenchuko, but I haven't gotten around to that yet either, so here you go-

And that's all for today. I hope you enjoyed it!

Finished reading 43 AD and Warband

I finished Warband just this morning and I have to say that the rules are great, they cover pretty much every aspect of what we want in the Garnia World campaign with one glaring exception- there are no rules for non-human characters. This makes sense because it was written as a historical RPG with fantasy/horror elements, but Garnia World is chock full of other races that HAVE traditionally been PC races; ie. Dwarves, Elves, Half-Orcs, etc.

Now, I know we're planning on starting the 43 AD/Warband dual campaign soon, and having it ultimately lead as a gateway to Garnia World; just as my Norse B/X campaign will ultimately do if it ever comes back online. I suspect I'll have to wait for September or October for that, after Lance's work schedule pretty much grinds to a halt at the State Fairgrounds. Lee Ann is already antsy for some RPG action, but her 12 hour shifts and near constant "on call" status as the new RN at the ER have kept her from making games for like two months now. Besides, I think it's probably better that her husband and her daughters get to see her, despite the fact that it's kind of killed my home game.

Anyway, I wandered pretty far off point with that tangent. 43 AD and it's Warband supplement give us, when combined, the ability to make both Roman and Celtic characters; a way for GMs to design entire campaign areas in either the Roman or Celtic style, fairly quickly and easily; a magic system that is pretty easy to use and rather open ended; a bunch of Celtic monsters, because the game takes place in Britain, although seeing the design style I think it would be pretty easy to import D&D monsters over or create anything. Warband also gives us mass combat rules for both huge combats with 10,000+ combatants and smaller scale skirmishes.

The real pro of the system is that it's pretty rules-lite, the con of the system is that it's less "heroic" than D&D, more realistic in a lot of ways. Character advancement is, essentially, religion based, and the points you receive are, more or less, based on the monetary worth of the sacrifice that you make at the Temple or Altar of the God you are sacrificing to, if your character is a Roman. Celts can make either sacrifices of items of worth or enemies of honor. You may only try and improve one ability per game session, and it doesn't always work. So, in play, I fear character advancement may be damnably slow, the character you start with, you had best get used to, because he's going to be roughly the same for a long while. On the other hand, improving stats and skills isn't everything, Roman Legionaries can get promoted to various higher ranks or than can be decorated for valor. Celtic characters can achieve higher status through gaining honor in various ways.

The only real complaint I have is the disparity in possible social classes between the Roman characters and the Celtic ones. All of the Roman characters start out as simple Legionaries, there is no chance of being an officer or from an important family in Rome, or even an important provincial family. You are almost to a man poor, sometimes freedmen, occasionally vicious criminals that were just never caught. The Celts on the other hand, are all Heroes of Honor level 3, but at the GM's discretion can be brought up to as high as Honor 7 Warchief. I guess that would settle the question of who is going to be party leader though.

I am also making the assumption here that when I run into any difficulties with this system in trying to convert to the eventual Garnia World setting, that I'll be able to fall back on the older, free version of the rules, that were much more fantasy, although still somewhat based in a Romanesque campaign world; that actually might be helpful for filling out the Roman space in Garnia World. Now I fear I'll have to read those rules too.