d108 or almost percentile with d6

So, stubborn as ever, I figured out how to replicate a percentile die with d6. The trick is to not sum any dice but to do a nested table like the good 'ol d36 from the enquiry table.

18 x 6 =108

So this should now be an equal 0.93% chance of rolling any of these values. As close as you can get to a percentile die using only d6.

See anything else I missed? Let me know. As with most endeavors, I have the interest but not the aptitude. But I'm nothing if not persistent.

Mythic with d6

Sometime last week CS was talking about simplifying the Mythic dice rolling process for GM Emulation here.

He was talking about funny dice and dice fiddliness (is that even a word?) and it got me thinking that there must be someway to do this with d6.

At the time I begged off because I was waking up at 2 or 3AM every morning but things haven't improved much since I returned home. That coupled with going out for a few pints last night may make the following seem a little more incoherent than usual.

The basic gist is this. At certain times in the Mythic process of answering questions you come up with a random event. You then have to roll for the Focus, Action, and Subject. Anyhow since it is all d10, d100 based you usually have a table of 100 words or phrases. Sounds simple right? Well lets say that I don't have any of those fancy gaming dice and I raided all of my copies of Yahtzee, Risk, Monopoly etc for dice. I can get fairly close to 100 with just four d6.

Hopefully I can find one of  a different color and three that are the same. I roll all four together and cross reference the colored die with the sum of the other three on a table like this:

	1	2	3	4	5	6
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18

16 * 6 = 96 so pretty close to 100. I know this isn't rocket science but it was just one of those things that got stuck in my craw.

I was also reminded that I hadn't done this yet by Ricardo's post here where he also reminded me of the Enquiry Table here. This gives a d36, basically 2d6, which is another nice distillation of mythic.

There is also a file floating around somewhere that converts Mythic into THW terms using the ubiquitous d6, but I can't seem to locate it right now.

I know I need to get back to an actual tutorial for heraldry and I want to focus on banners next in that series as well.

*** Addendum 1/12/13 ***

As Colgar pointed out the only problem with this is that by using the 3d6 you get a bell shaped distribution.

from http://topps.diku.dk/torbenm/troll.msp

So more likely to get the values around 10 or 11. This could be useful and you could load your table accordingly, but was not really my intention. For some reason I had convinced myself that rolling 2d10 or 2d20 as percentile dice would some how also give me a bell shaped distribution. But it does not. My guess is that, because we are not adding the face values, we don't. In trying to figure it out I did learn how to write the expression a few different ways. d100, d10*10+d10 or (d10-1)*10+(d10-1).

I also re-found the links to Troll Roller and Any Dice which looks a little nicer. So I don't know if it's back to the drawing board per se but you have an equal 1% chance of rolling anything with percentile dice that you don't have with my solution. Sort of par for the course for me.

But then I had another idea (stupid ideas always coming up when I'm about to finish posting). I looked at the enquiry table d36 arrangement and found that it has a equal 2.78% chance for nay value. Hmm. Looks like a second post.

Nuts & Bolts #1: Blod Orn – Prologue

For my first Nuts & Bolts article I'll try to elucidate how I used various resources to guide the story of my Viking Character in the Talomir setting.

So I started with a given, we want a Viking theme in Talomir so we start in Mirholme. I tried some random generators for a prophecy for this character and ended up narrowing down a list from donjon, but as of right now it still doesn't fit. Or at least I don't know how to make use of it yet in the story.

What did make sense was the Age of Fable character motivation table. I believe the available tables were Barbarian, Peasant and Noble. A quick d6 roll gave me Noble (1-2, 3-4, 5-6 if you're wondering). Rolling on that table I received a result of [Committed a crime and was let off on condition they go into exile (innocent)]

Mirholme is made up of two provinces so 1-3 capital (western) province, 4-6 Eastern. And I got Capital.

So it was at this point that I felt I needed to flesh out the back story a little more. I came up with the idea of a succession struggle and our main character being framed for kidnapping the clergy who would be needed to coronate the next King. I could have just written a narrative, but I decided to give Mythic GME a try to help me drive the story forward.

Mythic Questions ( Chaos Level 5):

Is the person who framed him a family member? [50/50 Roll 90 = No, 91 would have been an exceptional no.]

Is the person who framed him now the King? [ 50/50 Roll 73 = No]

Has the person who framed him been granted possession of his lands? [Likely Roll 97 = Exceptional No]

Does he have a younger brother who is now in charge? [Very Likely Roll = 76 Yes]

Does this brother support the new king? [Likely Roll = 34 Yes]

Is the new King from the other province of Mirholme? [Very Likely Roll = 74 yes]

So from this line of questioning we see that the younger brother has now taken over our heroes duties and has, while not framing him outright, supported the rival faction.

Now we had characters to name. I chose to name the characters with the Age of Blood naming table and I made up an IPT file to do so which you can get here.

Main characters:

Our Hero: Hemming Wulfgarson, his brother (Dag), the High Priest (Stakard Svafrlamirson), the evil Jarl (Aun Bjarnisson) and the characters of Oleg Vikarson (the young spearman) and Fafnir Svafrlamirson (the grizzled vet). These last two were his shieldmates so to speak who would help him on his adventures, essentially so he wouldn't be killed outright.

This brought about one more Mythic question:

Are Fafnir and the priest brothers? They have the same patronimic. [Likely Roll = 58 Yes]

I ended up not really doing anything with this story line, but it may be useful later.

So that is how I used Mythic and Age of Fable to start the campaign.

Blod Orn – Prologue

  The sky began to lighten as Hemming Wulfgarson readied his pack for the long trip ahead. His fathers old Huscarl, Fafnir Svafrlamirson, was sharpening his axe while the young Bondi, Oleg Vikarson, thanked the Farmer for his hospitality. Hemming's head swam at the thought of how he had gone from inheriting his fathers lands to exile in just two short seasons.

  Wulfgar had died from age and illness in the Summer of 985. Hemming had taken over as Jarl and his brother Dag had inherited a few farmsteads to the north. Hemming remained a loyal supporter of the King, Haakon Thrandson, and all was well. This continued through the fall and winter of that year and it wasn't until shortly after the new year, in the Spring of 986, that things all began to go horribly wrong.

  First the King had died suddenly and without an heir. All the Jarls were quickly called to the capital and the factions began to jockey for support. Hemming had sided with the Jarls of the Western Province in backing a distant relative of King Haakon. Those from the East backed the Grandson of the King before Haakon. They were at an impasse and it looked as if the country would be torn by civil war. It was at this point that Aun Bjarnisson pulled Hemming aside. He said he had a way to make a deal with the Eastern Jarls but he needed Hemming to go a get Odin's Godi, Stakard Svafrlamirson, to quickly coronate the new heir before they had a chance to change their minds. In order for this to work, Aun explained, Hemming's brother Dag would have to be present to cast his vote while Hemming brought the priest.

  The road had been hard and Hemming had been waylaid by bandits, but two days later he brought Stakard to the Council chambers. It was then he learned he had been duped. Aun's sly tongue had fooled him and preyed upon his brothers sympathy for the Eastern Jarls. Dag had cast the deciding vote for the candidate of the Western Jarls. They then claimed that Hemming had kidnapped the Godi to prevent the coronation. Rather than further shame his family name or challenge his beloved brother to combat, Hemming accepted the penalty of exile.

  Now he would follow the winds to fame and fortune and cut a swath across the fat belly of the decadent southern lands. If he could make it out of Mirholme alive.

Mythic GME & Age of Fable Links

In yesterdays post I had made mention of two game aids that I am using, but forgot to add links to them. So for Mythic GME you can look here. I believe I bought it from Paizo.

The Age of Fable tables can be found here.

Enjoy!

Talomir Campaign – Blod Orn (Blood Eagle)

Following in the footsteps of TalomirTales, Javier at War, Chroniques du Fort Bastiani and HalfwayStation; I am starting a campaign set in the Two Hour Wargames setting of Talomir. This is a fairly stock Fantasy setting with Elves and Orcs, Good and Evil etc. In it I will try to tell the story of Hemming Wulfgarson, an exiled noble from Mirholme, using the Warrior Heroes: Armies & Adventures (WHAA) rule set for his adventures. For larger geo-political events I will use Rally Round the King (RRtK). To help drive the story I have been using a combination of Mythic Game Master Emulator (Mythic GME)¹ and random tables from Age of Fable, as well as other random generators from around the web. I'll try to point those out as I go along.

As is usual for any project I do, I have gotten so far ahead of myself without even playing that I have become bogged down in minutiae. So to reign that in I am, more or less, following what they are doing over at Talomir Tales. To that end I am focusing on that portion of Talomir referred to, by some, as Norwes. This will include the countries of Mirholme (Vikings), Altengard (German Imperialist), Capalan (Italian Condatta) and Tereken (Irish in the rules but Saxon for me).² Therefore I can use the Viking and Saxon figures I already have (still unpainted) and concentrate on amassing only two more somewhat similar armies.

So the first issue to resolve is the Army List for the now Saxon lands of Tereken³ . I could use the one from Talomir Tales here, but I am not sure about having so many mounted. Age of Blood has some provision for mounted Nobles and another Army List for WHAA for the Anglo-Danish armies of 1066 has 6% chance for mounted Huscarls. However, the brief blurbs I skimmed about Hastings (and Stamford Bridge for that matter) make no mention of Anglo-Saxon cavalry and if anything only mention that some Huscarls rode to battle and then dismounted to fight. This same WHAA Army List has a 9^th century Saxon list which includes no cavalry. I'm leaning towards this as I want the Vikings and Saxons to be roughly equivalent.

So I shall endeavor to post AAR's and a more story like telling of the tale in subsequent posts. Nuts and bolts, game mechanics and figure sourcing, as well as general thinking out loud will be separated into their own posts so as not to totally destroy the narrative.

Well it's off to online traffic school for me, I've put it off for almost too long.

Notes:

1. I first read about Mythic GME on The Old Dessauer's Table. It was a great blog and seems to be out of action at the moment. The impetus to actually start using Mythic GME came after reading this series of posts on Solo Nexus.
2. Again, blatantly taking this from Ruaridh over at Talomir Tales. I also cannot find any Medieval Irish figures in my preferred scale of 1/72.
3. Interestingly enough a Google search for Tereken turns up the Belgian (Flemish) town here.

Welcome to BragonDorn of Bragondorn's Asylum and A Squirrels Tail. Quirky stories, observations and reviews. Looks like fun.

Oh and I submitted my site to the TableTop Gaming News Blog Network, but I have no idea if I've been accepted.