Everything Has Changed!

The boom town is in hex 2409, Stonehell in 2207.
Hex 1816 contains the nearest city-state.

OK, not everything. I have changed the game I'm running. I've gotten tired of trying to balance long GURPS combats and non-combat sessions, so for now I'm just going to run an unholy mix of Delving Deeper and White Box Fantasy Medieval Adventure Game, plus a bunch of stuff I like. I'm going back to some kind of basics with it. The starting outdoor map is the Outdoor Survival map, though I also have vague plans to use Rob Conley's Blackmarsh even though I'm not yet sure where it hooks up to the classic map (and I seem to recall that it does connect to a couple of the Points of Light maps, which means I need to pick those up at some point). The game involves characters who have come to a boom town near Stonehell Dungeon in order to make their fortune.

• Goblins are going to be influenced by Jeff Rients, especially the "What Are the Goblins Doing" table and the "Goblin Door" table.
• I'm adding a Death & Dismemberment chart, specifically the one by Norman J. Harman, Jr. at Troll & Flame. I'm going to be crueler, however, and say that Clerical magic can't heal Death & Dismemberment damage directly. You just have to wait for those broken bones to knit.
• I'm using psionics, with the Basic Psionics Handbook from New Big Dragon.
• I like the concepts behind Courtney Campbell's On the Non-Player Character: Solving the Social Trap, so I'm using that. As a side note about those, it's a good supplement. Courtney has the right to price it however. In my opinion, though, it is worth $10 for the pdf, and it would be worth $15 for the print version. You could stretch the print price to $20 if you were the kind who doesn't worry too much about prices when buying your gaming materials, and you would probably not be sad about it. Unfortunately, that does mean that, again in my own opinion, the DTRPG pdf is overpriced and so is the print version. Sometimes the print one goes on sale, though. Note that I do link to all three there, and I don't have any code that gives me a cut. Take them or leave them, it is a good supplement, but not as good as Courtney apparently wants to price them at.
• I'm changing out the spell list for Magic-Users to be the one from Delta's Book of Spells. It's more deliberate and I like the aesthetics. The only stumbling point for me is the inclusion of Magic Missile, but that's not really a big deal.
• I've added the material components from AD&D 1st edition to the Magic-User spells, and tapped Dragon magazine #81 for the expansion on how to handle those. Clerics won't use material components, however.
• I'm mainly using Delving Deeper, but I like the classes, experience progression, and single saves from White Box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game (which is, as you probably know, the same thing as Swords & Wizardry: White Box), except that I prefer the Cleric and Magic-User spell progression from DD. I also vastly prefer the dual classing method in DD.
• I'm using a silver standard, replacing all references to gold pieces with silver pennies. I'm also using classic duodecimal coinage: four copper farthings to a penny, 12 pennies to a shilling, five shillings to a gold crown, four crowns to a pound, a pound and a shilling to a guinea. Only farthings, pennies, and crowns have actual coins, the others are notional units of account.
• I'm incorporating a version of encumbrance by stone. In my system, there are coin weights, item weights, and stone weights. 100 coins equals an item and five items equals a stone, but round up for number of stones carried. Characters can carry up to Strength in stones, with more weight reducing their movement rate.
• There are other classes in other regions of the setting, and Clerics and Magic-Users are mainly only found in the local region. Some of the classes I know about are Dragonriders, Mystics, Monks, Shamans, Illusionists, and Druids. Players will not be able to start as any of these, however.
• I'm using the skill system from Savage Swords of Athanor. Sadly, you can't get that in print these days, but you can find the pdf in various places. Look at Scribd or something. EDIT: I was reminded by Sully that you can find it from Doug Easterly directly in the "Game Files" menu on the right side of his old blog.
• I'm going to use Doug Cole & Peter V. Dell'Orto's "Grappling Old School" system, which was published in The Manor issue 8. I think you can still get it at Gothridge Manor?
• I want to use a morale system, and the one in Rules Cyclopedia works well. I'll probably have to make Morale scores for some monsters, but that's not really a big deal.
• I have a couple of other House Rules, which I've written up.
• Alignments are Holy, Neutral, and Chaotic, but there are also other alignments out there. The players will not be able to choose those yet. Clerics must be Holy (or a similar alignment) and Magic-Users and Thieves may not be Holy. The vast majority of people are Neutral.
• Around 1 in 20 people have a class and level.
• Characters gain experience for spending money (1xp per sp spent), defeating enemies (100xp per hit die or level), converting NPCs to the character's religion (100xp flat), or a number of other means, probably taken from Pendragon's tables of Glory and Insight. Players may take advantage of the carousing rule, letting money spent carousing count double for experience (that is, it counts as spending money and then it also counts as carousing). I'll probably allow Holy aligned characters to gain xp by donating money to the Church, and Chaotic or Neutral ones to spend money on sacrifices, but those shouldn't be as beneficial as carousing.

So, that's fun. I wanted to do as little worldbuilding as possible, to do most of it as needed at the table, but I can't stop myself. Still, I've managed to not do all that much this time. I still haven't really named it. I know that there are six city-stats that collectively call themselves the Wilsur City-States, that they lie along a river valley, and I know the main structure of the Tetradic Church, which is one of the few that has Clerics. I know that Clerics are not always Priests, that sometimes they are holy people outside of the hierarchy of the Church, and that the Church is not very happy about that situation.