Expedition D&D Dev Log Part 2: Basic Expedition Rules

In the second post, I want to dive into the details of the expedition system itself. Following on the Source of the Nile rules, I want to have two base units you can hire: soldiers and bearers.

Soldiers are going to be pretty much the same by default. I’m thinking of the DCC retainers, maybe amping them up a bit because Simple D&D has higher HP. So I’ll set them at 4 HP, +0 to hit, and dealing damage by weapon (typically d6).  Their armor class is set by whatever armor they wear, and they have zero bonuses to their stats—generic mook-type characters.

Bearers, on the other hand, have no combat abilities at all. If a fight breaks out, they’ll run, scatter, or hide.

Next, I want to establish some carrying capacity limits. I love the way Source of the Nile handles this. Each bearer can carry about 10 units of supplies. Bearers don’t have weapons or armor, so they can always use their full carrying capacity for supplies.

For the soldiers, we’ll make a tradeoff. They will also have a base capacity of 10 units, but their weapons, armor, and other gear will count against that total. If you want to bring along a lot of supplies, you’ll need more bearers, because your soldiers will be partially loaded down with their own equipment.

For the heroes, I’m considering tying their carrying capacity to their strength score, like in Shadowdark. But I’ll put a pin in that for now.

Next, let’s get some numbers for food. Regarding food, I found a few sources from the Roman army; one says between 59 and 78 lb per man per month, while another gives 2.5-2.8 lb/day. I’m going to assume this didn’t change much. As our baseline for supply I’ll approximate 10 units ≈ 100 lb, so we’re at something like 1-2 units of food per unit per week. I decided to keep it simple at 1. Maybe this is generous to our expeditions, but I like how easy it will work in game.

For water, the sources say anywhere from 2-12 L/day (depending on conditions). The daily ration in WWI was 4.54 L/day, Vietnam was 3-5 L/day, but could go to 10 for certain duties. With 1L = 2.2 lb, that is something from 4-10 lbs daily. We’ll be generous again so that our expeditions can stay in the field longer, and say 1 unit of water daily per two individuals. But, we’ll give this multipliers, noting that multipliers up to 8x are historically plausible. Maybe we’ll have some rules to apply these in hot environments.

Finally, I want to make some other decisions about water. First, I don’t want to track containers. Caravaneer did this, and it worked only ok because it was a video game and I can’t imagine doing it by hand. Second, I don’t want to track it while you are along a water source. I like the idea of what this system will do for water tracking. It will be really demanding in terms of weight to carry water, so it will be hard to move away from water supplies. I like that idea and I’m excited to see it play out.

So there are our working Rules:

Bearers: Do not fight. Carrying capacity of 10
Soldiers: HP 4, AC and attacks as equipment (+0 to hit). Carrying capacity of 10.
Food: Each unit eats 1 unit/week
Water: Every two units consumes 1/day. Subject to multipliers of up to 8x according to condition. Do not need to carry if next to fresh water supply.

Development Log: Expedition D&D (Part 1)

 I'm going to start blogging about the OSR system I'm creating, which I'm calling "Expedition D&D". 

My goal looks back at the long history of adventure storytelling—a genre that stretches all the way back to some of the earliest recorded stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Odyssey. Over time, that tradition evolved through tales like Beowulf or the Arabian Nights. It came to America with Last of the Mohicans and then the pulp fantasy of the 1920s and ’30s, with authors like Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. And you can trace that DNA right up to modern adventure films like Indiana Jones or The Mummy.

This kind of adventure storytelling leads directly to what folks like Ben Milton call “adventure gaming”. I love that term because it places these games in the context of that literature and history. The adventure is the heart of Dungeons & Dragons. 

Modern D&D usually focuses on a small cast of characters, one for each player. Each one of these is a hero in their own right. It's like a Mission Impossible team where everyone crucial to the mission.

But the scope of adventure storytelling permits larger parties, which I'll call "expeditions". Think back to the Odyssey: it isn't just Odysseus alone, but Odysseus and his group of soldiers. I also like Michael Crichton's Congo, or Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, or the historic Lewis and Clark expedition (the pair had some 40 people in support). 

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To make this work, I want a system that supports three types of play. The first is expedition play, which is your overland travel. You're controlling heroes, but also a number of generic soldiers or porters, some perhaps with special abilities, who are part of the journey. Here you'll do hex-crawling: you’re exploring new places, dealing with hazards, managing the morale of your team, ensuring everyone’s fed, and keeping track of resources.

Then there’s the hero play, your classic dungeon crawling. Those smaller scale adventures where the heroes are engaging in combat or exploration within a defined location.

Then, I want to have some support for mass battle play. If you have an expedition with 50 or 100 guys, you might end up in a large combat and the hero play rules won't work. 

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The simplest part is the mass battle element. For that, I’ll basically start off using the old Chainmail rules. If that ends up being a problem or not fitting perfectly, I’ll adjust from there.

For the hero play, there are a lot of great systems out there—OSR games, Shadowdark, and so on—but I’m going to use one called Simple D&D. It’s something I got from a friend named José. Characters start out strong enough to feel heroic, rather than super fragile at level one, and the progression slows down around level three. That means the heroes can become useful and powerful, but they won’t overshadow the rest of the expedition. They’ll still need to rely on their team and resources.

As for the expedition system itself, I have the least experience there. I'm going to start with the Source of the Nile rules. I actually played that game with one of the original creators, Ross Maker, who was part of the Blackmoor crew. David Wesley was the co-designer, so it has a nice link to RPGs. Source of the Nile is very expedition-focused—you have a hero, some soldiers, bearers, you track food and deal with environmental hazards—and I’ll be building on that as the expedition framework.