Simplicius - Basic Mechanics

Art is The Siege (Defence of a Church Courtyard during the Thirty Years War), Karl Friedrich Lessing, 1848.

Simplicius is my current project of focus, a Cairn hack designed to run games narrowly in the Thirty Years War, and more broadly elsewhere in the turmoil that overtook Europe in the 17th century. The end goal of the project is a detailed exploration game set across a hexmap of the Holy Roman Empire sometime between 1618-1648, focused on overland travel and the horrors of the conflict that consumed Europe.

The current conceptualisation of the system is as follows;

• 4 stats (STR, DEX, WIL, INT), determined with 3d6 down-the-line. Two may be swapped.
• Starting equipment packages determined as Into the Odd (although obviously tailored to the historic setting).
  
• d6 Hit Protection as Cairn.
  
• Slot based encumbrance as Cairn (but without slot typing).
• Every 5 slots filled reduces your speed by 10 feet.
  
• Combat as Cairn.
• Armour as Cairn. Following types;
• Buff coat/padded doublet (+1)
  
• Cuirass (Must be worn over coat/doublet, +1)
• Helmet (+1)
  
• Shield (+1). Shields only apply in melée combat.
• Weapons as follows;
• Peasant weaponry (pitchforks, daggers, sickles) deal d6
• Military weaponry (swords, axes, spears) deal d8
• Two-handed weaponry (greatswords, pikes, lances) deal d10. Bulky.
  
• Bows deal d6, crossbows deal d8. Bulky.
• Pistols deal d8, muskets deal d10 but are bulky. Take a round to reload, ignore 1 point of armour.

Cairn is obviously quite a rules light game; written properly, you can probably summarise all this in only a couple A5 pages. Indeed, it's much lighter than I tend to prefer in my OSR games, which is why I'll likely be adding procedures for overland travel, resource management (particularly for large parties), and mass combat to the game. The players should mostly be interacting with the world through these, emphasising the overworld hexcrawl aspect over combat or dungeoncrawling. Expect to see this in future posts!

Bis zum nächsten Mal! Radibimmel, radibammel, radibumm!!!