Goodman Games

guyz,

Ive been pondering this for a bit, but I tink that having the characters being part of a battle may make an excellent funnel. From going over the Book of War:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/daniel-collins ... 91327.html
http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2011/09/b ... eased.html

it seems to fit that they could be part of a figure/unit and use this as their test of fitness. Conan was born in a war, why not our cruddy 0 level PCs? They seem like they fit in pretty well with the low level fighting man pictured in BOW.

Im pondering how to deal with the "testing" part. Since in the Book of War they won't be powerful enough to make the individual figures more successful, how can it be a good test of their fitness? In other words their presence won't give any advantages on the mass scale.

What I'm thinking is that I will mark the figure their part of and stipulate that they have to drop out of BOW mass combat and use regular DCC rules at least once during the battle or they will have to give up their character. If they entered combat and never dropped out I may rule that they were destroyed if the unit experience losses. Either way, they won't progress.

the true test of a warrior is battle, is it not?

thoughts, amigos?

The concept is very workable and it could be an enjoyable way to funnel them into 1st level. I think as long as they have plenty of choices during the session that will give them an opportunity to kill themselves, have their individual characters emerge, and you are using the DCC system for the 0 level portion of their career, you are capturing the essence of the funnel. In my opinion, a fundamental part of the enjoyment of the funnel (and the game as a whole) is dealing with how pitiful the zero level characters function within the DCC system before getting to elevate one of them to 1st level.

As far as the specifics of the battle system you are referencing, I can't really speak to it because I don't know anything about it. But I can say that anytime you are trying to mix two gaming systems together, that have completely different goals, like this case where you want to mix role playing with table-top wargaming, it's not going to fit together neatly. That's fine if you have the time to work and rework some solutions, then playtest them and are okay with the fact that there will inevitably be some things that simply won't line up correctly between the two systems.

one of the things that interests me between the Book of War and using it for DCC is that your supposed to get similar results between the two. Or more exactly between BOW and ODnD. In BOW one figure is equal to 10 men. Pitting a figure against another figure over and over again, we are to get similar results of pitting 10 men against 10 opponents in regular OD&D mechanics.

Not to mention that the game looks incredible simple! That's good, since it will be really easy for the playerz to pick up. There's only 24 pages of rules and you may only need to read a page or 2 to get gaming.

I think this is just the beginning for me in thinking about how to make it be a funnel.

A module I was running through my mind this morning was starting out having the PCs be part of an army fighting an invading force of evil. If they survive they later take the fight to the invaders fortress thing. That might be a sneaky mission where they (probably 1rst level PCs at this point) go as a party and not an army.