SOBH movement rules for hex maps

On our village map, the current movement rules for hex based maps is very restrictive. There are alot of corners, so it makes it very slow to move around. Its also very hard to check quickly if you or your opponent is making the correct move.

To simplify things, I'm thinking of setting up the following house rules for hex based movement.

Counters are given a default movement of Medium on a map. This translates into generally 5 Movement Points( MP ) on a small map. Short = 3 MP and Long = 10 MP.

Each hex of movement costs 1 MP. Any rough terrain costs 2 MP to enter( forest, brush, light rock terrain). Each additional step costs 1 MP. You can change direction as many times as needed during a movement phase for 1 MP.

Water hexes = These hexes end movement unless you have the special Amphibious.

Example: A wardog with Long Movement has 10 MP on a small map. If the wardog runs in a straight line, he can run 10 hexes. If he wants to run in a zig-zag manner on a hex map, he can only move 9 hexes. Any rough terrain he encounters costs 2 MP to enter.

This will need some testing.

Campaign rules for SOBH

I've been looking for custom campaign rules for SOBH.

One of the more interesting links I found was this SOBH rules for "Island of the Lost".

Unfortunately, its a google link so I can't link back and find the original author's website. I'm curious what other ideas he had.

UPDATE 20081014

The author's name is Trevor and his material can be found at www.fionaadoresheroes.com.

It looked like a fun simple campaign system. I would love to try it out but alas my gaming group has grown up( i.e. married with kids).

Alternative Vassal Module for Cry Havoc

While looking around for new counters to enhance my cry havoc game, I came across the Samurai Blades Engine Module. The author definitely put alot of work into the module.

He has custom icons for the buttons and also included a feature to have a mini-map of the game. However, the vassal module looks alot more complex than the original Cry Havoc module.

The bare bones feel of the original module inspired me to try and take it to another level. This module looks a bit intimidating. Definitely useful as a source of inspiration.

First SOBH Campaign

I setup my first campaign in SOBH against J. My first warband is an orcish warband lead by an orcish shaman. J's warband is a small human adventuring party.

To keep things simple in this small campaign, we played with 180 points. A max of 60 points can be spent on personalities. My single personality was Claw, an orcish shaman 3/3 with the special "Magic-User". J's personality is the knight Hume, human 3/3 "Hero".

The first scenario is a Treasure Hunt. J is playing the Attacker while I'm the Defender. I used the Village Cry Havoc map as the map for the first game. J placed 3 orbs to represent the hidden treasure token in the center of the map.

SOBH Mod for Cry Havoc

While using Cry Havoc to play SOBH, I got tired of having to look at the reference files outside Vassal, so I took the time to learn how to create a module in Vassal.

I added 2 more dice buttons to easily roll the d6 in sobh. In addition, there is a summary sheet for the game. To ease bookkeeping, a property sheet was added to characters.

It was nicer to have labels for quick glance at stats but this is a workaround. Ideally, the graphics would have the stats like Cry Havoc did.

SOBH Online: Screencast

I put together a screencast of how to play A Song of Blades and Heroes online using the Cry Havoc Module.

Game review:avernum 5

I came across a review of avernum 5on a review site over the weekend.

It had glowing reviews and I do remember reading about spiderweb software as a decent indie rpg site, so I took another look at the game. So far, I'm only about 3 hours into the demo but its been a fun experience.

Its a lite relatively straightforward rpg. Anybody with experience with Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition will get the hang of it in the first 15 minutes.

So far, its been a great experience putting together a fledging party and hacking away in the underworld.

Gundam Scenarios

For scenarios involving Gundam, you can use the campaigns outlined at the excellent Gundam site: Mobile Suit Battlesystem.

Mobile Suit Gundam Battlesystem is an excellent system based on Game Workshop mechanics of 40k.  The author also wrote up a neat set of campaign rules for his Gundam battlesystem rules. 

Its relatively easy to take some of the ideas in my previous post and use the scenarios he outlined.

Gundam mod for Song of Blades and Heroes

I had some initial design ideas for a gundam mod of "A Song of Blades and Heroes".  Here are my design notes.

Could use the basic rules to model a quick Gundam game.  I would need to pick different traits to represent the mechs.

RX-78  Q:3 C:4
Ranged(Long). Hero

Zaku Q:4 C:3
Ranged(Long)

Break up the Combat score between Melee and Ranged so that you can do a bit more diffentiation. The other thing is to have a trait called Melee to give units a +1 in Melee combat to defentiate between their ranged and melee scores.  A melee trait fits more in the system than breaking it out.  When you build the model, assume all Mechs have a default combat value for ranged. Give better melee mechs a Melee trait.

RX-78 Q:3 Melee:4 Ranged:4

Zaku Q:4 Melee: 2 Ranged:4

Something simple like that. You could give the generic mechs gregarious, so they can do group move or something.  This could simulate unit actions.
Command Mechs get the Leadership trait.  The system is pretty flexible, so it should work.

Reuse the simple scenarios from Gundam Game as sample scenarios.

New Traits:
Melee: +1 to Combat score in Melee
Ace: Treat Ranged combat hits as Lethal
Melee Master: Treat Melee Combat hits as Lethal

To model new type powers,
Magic-user: No ranged attack but you get the Transfix ability( represents mental stun)
Cleric: Represent Fast Recovery and basic buffing of troops