Tony Bath Campaign Rules #3

Part Deux Redux... ?

One part of this whole substack thing is to be better about publishing creative things. I am totally a ‘hide in my cave forever making things perfect but never actually show anyone’ kinda guy. So lets grow as a person and trash my last post.

The Purpose of this Campaign

… is to replicate Tony Bath’s Hyboria campaign rules, to better understand his approach to roleplay over a wargame campaign. ¹

I read his book and read about forests being dense or loose and allow for game or large creatures, I read about him mentioning stable breeding populations for horses, I read about mountains having sparse sources of food!

Then he goes and breaks every hex into a single, passive gold income, and puts every cost as a simple gold amount…

I need that more, I want that more, I want mechanical implications when the Baron demands 4,000 horses for his knights and the castellan says ‘but an army like that doesn’t EXIST my lord’

Attempt #1

Playtest 1 was a very small scope game, and it used limited single digit resources. This was just to feel out the map and moving blocks and taking long turns and the logistics of using index cards and paper to track multiple cities and armies and all that fun stuff.

I had recently played a small freestyle roleplay thing inspired by How To Host a Dungeon, and my mind was too set on that style.

After our playtest, I wanted to further incorporate different resource granularity than JUST gold— just like Tony outlines multiple times in his book, the complexities of raising and feeding and supplying armies with all their goods and toys!

Enter: my last post. This was my attempt to map gold values to simplified resource values.

Playtest #2: complete failure.

1. The values I picked were too low, and couldn’t be subdivided. This made conversions instantly annoying and way more complicated than they needed to be.

2. Tony gives gold values for everything, so I had to find a reference to mix gold and resources, if a bridge costs 50gold in his rules, do I say 50g worth of lumber?

   1. What about labor? do I make up a worker cost? Use Peasants? I am suddenly making my own whole system.

3. If all of that was in flux, then how was I supposed to understand how much a hex should give? should a farm give 90 gold? 40 gold and 5 food? 8 food and 10 gold?

   1. Does that mean hexes need variations, so a forest is for hunting and gives food or for forestry and gives more lumber? This snowball is rolling away from mount “Tony Bath’s Campaign Rules” quite quickly.

4. Tracking things of different amounts was getting awkward, I had 1200 gold, but 2 metal? The abstractions were of different scales, it was not working.

You get the point: I was creating a whole new game instead of following Tony’s footsteps…

Attempt #3

I wish to use Tony’s values and ratios, but I wish to add more resource complexity, because he talks about them frequently but then ignores them at the margin. ²

Lets be more direct and simple about this:

1. The Major Resources we need are:

   1. Gold, Food, Lumber, Horses, Stone, Metal³

2. Resources will translate directly to their gold equivalent.

   1. So 40gold of food is 40F

3. Half of a Hex’s gold Value is comes from its base resource.⁴

   1. Each hex will give 1 type of resource and gold

4. All costs will be directly what Tony lays them out to be in his book:

   1. Half of any costs will be paid with the related resource where applicable.⁵ ⁶

      1. Example: horses for a regiment cost 75 Gold, so 38Horse and 37Gold.⁷

For the next playtest:

• Cultivated Ground

  • 40Food, 40Gold

• River/Coast

  • 48Food, 48Gold

• Plains

  • 32Horse, 32Gold

• Forest

  • 20Lumber, 20Gold

• Hills

  • 24Stone, 24Gold

• Mountain

  • 16Metal, 16Gold

Reminder that Tony recommends taking a hefty sum of the amounts to the local leadership. He uses 1/3’s, but I hate 1/3’s of 1/3’s so I will not.

• 1/2 of domain Gold income becomes taxes

  • 1/2 of taxes to straight to the baron

  • 1/2 of taxes go to a vague ‘expenses’ and are lost

• The remaining 1/2, has settlement and army upkeep deducted before hitting the coffers.⁸

The tests shall continue!

Post Image from Here

1. I have scoured google more than once, and can’t find any detailed receipts of anyone running Tony Bath’s game as written, I can only find 50 people saying ‘it is good.’ Sometimes the internet disappoints. To the squares we go!

2. Here I would insert a rant the inability of modern Americans to even understand mercantile economies, never mind be willing and able to replicate them, blah blah. Go read a book or five on economics.

3. Tony does mention a lot of ‘softer supplies’, like clothing, leather, etc… I am going to sidestep that, keep it just gold, as I don’t think it has an impact on the wargame.

4. I do need to do a little work here inventing on my own, Tony talks about ‘workshops’ and ‘factories’ and ‘supply depots’ but doesn’t explicate further. This will be done AFTER I get a working economy going with just 1 type per terrain.

5. This feels obvious at first glance, I don’t think there are any resources that are not obvious? Armor and weapons? metal. Cavalry? Horses.

6. Probably need to address multiple costs though, baggage trains could be Horse and Lumber, I am currently thinking 1/2Gold 1/4Horse 1/4Lumber for things that are obviously multiple resources, but will have to see if this actually comes into play.

7. I might say round to the nearest 5, with the resource taking the bigger chunk, to make the maths a little prettier. I appreciate beautiful maths. 40Horse + 35Gold. Minor detail ?

8. Each settlement has a leader in charge of it, and then notable named PC’s will be added based on the size and scope of that settlement. Each settlement will have a gold upkeep cost associated with it, that cost will be divided among the leaders similar to the total income to the baron. This creates a clear hierarchy of gold, putting the majority of gold earned into the hands of a person in the world, demanding roleplay and conflict to get anything done.