AD&D armor types for Ascending Armor Class

One of the players in our BFRPG Rom’Myr campaign wanted to know if other armor types were available in the game. Specifically Ring Mail, Studded Leather, Splint Mail and the like. All the additional armor types you will find in 1E AD&D Players Handbook. At the time I said no, you’ll have leather, chain and plate and that should suffice.

For the record it isn’t that I was opposed to additional armor types. I was opposed to taking the time to shake out the details during game time. Now I have had the time. To assign Armor Class values at least. Still haven’t settled on price yet. I don’t want to take the prices right out of the book because in Rom’Myr your cost for armor is substantially higher than traditional OSR equipment lists. 

Here is the breakdown for BFRPG’s Ascending scale;

Padded Armor: AC 12

Ring Mail, Leather & Studded Leather: AC 13

Scale Mail: AC 14

Banded & Splint: AC 15

Re-Purpose Circus Maximus for OSR Race Rules

The BFRPG Rom’Myr Dying Earth campaign has presented the possibility of live racing on mildly domesticated mounts. I looked towards my ragged copy of Circus Maximus from Avalon Hill for inspiration. More like just rip-off their tables and apply them to the OSR mechanics of BFRPG.

I’ve never been a fan of the game. While chariot racing in Ancient Rome sounds hella cool, it never translated for me or my juvenile friends on the table into anything exciting. But I’ve kept it nonetheless all these years for that fateful day. The day when I may need to adjudicate a race that the PCs are participating in. This particular race is a Dero Race but the rules can be used for any type of live mount or any type of track you have in mind. For Dero racing you are looking at 20’ at the shoulder, six-legged pachyderms. Being extremely large, and not want the race to take a whole afternoon, I’ve decided on a “horseshoe” shaped track. I then broke up the race into three parts; the start, the turn, and the stretch. Now with Avalon Hill’s map board for guidance, I abstracted the track on an excel spreadsheet so precise position can be established throughout the race.

Skipping all the fiddly bits I’ve added, here are the base rules. At its core there are only two stats to track. Points in your Speed Bank and your jockey’s rating. How a character’s individual attributes will be affected during a race will have to be adjudicated by the DM as she sees fit.

Race rules in case it comes to that; Dero Racing

• Roll d10 or d20 to establish your Dero’s speed for the turn. Rolling a d20 costs a point from your speed bank.
• Breaking to reduce speed costs a point from your speed bank no matter how much speed you are shedding.
• If you go over the posted speed limit through a turn you need to roll on the blowing the turn table. When racers are side by side they may make a jockey attack or dero slam. Either one, both or none are all legal. This is settled with a contested roll on d20’s. Roll on the appropriate tables to find out the results of successful attack. Racers can make as many attacks as they want but can only attack from any square once. Unless the racers are side by side than additional attacks can be made as long as the racers want. The racer who’s turn it is can disengage at any time. Making an attack costs a point of speed for the turn.(edited)
• Your speed bank is your constitution score. These points can also be spent one-for-one for additional speed in the turn.
• The jockey is assigned a rating from +4 to -1. This rating can be added to the turn speed and attacks, a negative rating must always be added.
• This is determined by the DM. It is the DM’s job to assign final odds and establish every jockey’s rating at post time.
• Blowing the Turn; subtract the lane’s posted speed limit from your turn speed. This is the number of crash points. Roll 3d6 for that column and check results. The jockey’s current rating score is subtracted from the roll.
• Attacks; a defender can avoid the attack by sliding back one and spending 2 points from their Speed Bank.
• A Dero Slam; the attacker rolls 3d6, adding his current jockey rating and subtracting opponents. The resulting number will tell who is injured in the slam on the Slam Chart. Then roll on the Damage Effect Chart to find out how many points are subtracted from their speed bank.
• A Lash Attack; each racer rolls 2d6(+/- jockey rating) and the attacker’s total is subtracted from the defender’s total.

All the charts referenced are just the Circus Maximus tables re-purposed for my particular race. It is real easy to reskin results on these tables with your own for unique flavor, and should be done! I am not worried about the race being balanced or fair. Its use is to give a tool to give turn by turn results of all the racer’s actions. And I only intend to use it if the PCs are personally involved in some way. This level of detail is in no way necessary if they are only spending a casual day at the track trying to win big. In those instances Rock, Paper, Scissors or a random d6 roll can give winners and losers quickly. I wouldn’t worry about odds. Whether a racer is 2-1 or 12-1, rolling randomly for a winner makes it feel like gambling (since anyone can win) and resolves the race quickly. It is only when everyone wants to hang on every turn and bloody move on the sands and drive home a winner should these rules be used.

Santicore 2017!

I am placing this link here mostly for my own benefit. I'm also proud to have wrangled for Santicore. It was a wild ride and certainly had given up hope and dropped out of the line.


Big hearty thanks to all who dragged the beast over the finish line. Now to stab  it with our steely knives!

Stupid, Simple Way to assign Milestone XP's in OSR games

Besides experience point awards for monsters defeated completing “other challenges” is the only other way to earn xp RAW with the Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game. What the xp awards are for monsters defeated is easy to calculate for like most OSR rules systems there is a chart outlining these awards. But not so these other challenges. Here all is subject to DM/GM whim. If you are interested in reining in randomness which may occur in the flurry of events, and begin to set PC’s teeth on edge, may I recommend a simple xp calculator.

BFRPG has an optional rule for “Ability Rolls” which I am not to keen on and do not use in play. But I see it as a useful method to assign experience “for other challenges as the GM sees fit.”

Use the Target Number as a quick guide to calculate XP awarded for such “milestones” achieved. The scale of difficulty for BFRPG goes from 7 to 17 with a “roll over” needed for success. The DM assigns a milestone, a goal the character (or characters) wishes to achieve with one of these difficulty numbers. When success is achieved multiply the difficulty number by 100. The DM doesn’t even need to tell the PC’s ahead of time what the number assigned is. All they know is they should make 700 to 1,700 xp when successful. This is for each character, not an award to be split. And it doesn’t matter how many characters are involved in pulling whatever it is they are trying to pull off. Three, Four, Nine… just hand them out to the characters which are invested in the outcome.

Of course this shouldn’t be applied to every little thing the character gets up into. You have players that want to win xp for successfully walking across the room and opening the door? Rocks fall all die.

Milestones, goals, achievements; these are not created equal. Saving the world is not the same as saving someone from a burning building. With only a thousand point swing separating the extremes of this goal orientated method of achieving xp we may need more granularity. Especially as PCs reach high levels. Adjust the multiplier. Instead of multiplying by 100 multiply by 1,000, or only by 10 if that makes sense. These awards are all subjective. It is up to the DM to give each task and/or goal, player driven or not, a number.

BFRPG makes gold for experience points as an optional rule interestingly enough, leaving awards “for monsters defeated, and for other challenges as the GM sees fit.” as the players only way of measuring their overall success in the game. I gladly add GP=XP, optional rule or not, into my BFRPG. But I like the players can establish their own path to XP through achievements and goals as well as grabbing loot. Hopefully this use of difficulty target numbers can guide your hand with fair and equitable disbursements.