Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Simple Pack Elephant +

The idea is that players can load their elephant up with cargo or passengers.  Each square is equal to one manifest sheet worth of cargo.  Players can write the names of characters riding in those boxes, or they can put an identifying manifest label for a portion of cargo like "provisions" or "caving gear."

Each manifest sheet has 60 slots at ~7.5 pounds a piece, or 450lbs.  That means a rider is figured at an average 225 pounds.  I'm okay with that figure for simplicity's sake.  For every big armored knight, there might be a hobbit or practically naked mage.  That also means old jumbo here can carry ~1800 pounds.  An elephant might carry more but with the mahout and howdah I think it's a reasonable figure.

You'll need to print out four manifest sheets for every riderless pack elephant.  I divided them into two halves for further convenience.  I'm hoping that will make tracking supplies for a big expedition easier.

The four silhouettes are meant to show the normal limit of riders.  Players could potentially double the number, but the pictures of tiger hunts I kept seeing didn't have very many riders per elephant.  I think I would keep the limit four for un-impeded combat and such.  More riders might have negatives to missile fire or be unable to cast spells because of the press of bodies and jostling.

Here is an attempt at a mammoth, as requested.  It isn't quite as symmetrical because I was trying to avoid obscuring the silhouette:
I feel like the silhouettes should be scruffier-- prepared for ice age conditions.  (Did I ever tell you that I loved the Dragon magazine article about Ice Age D&D?  Makes me want to create a blizzard/Arctic travel mini-game.)

4 comments:

  1. I'm starting to really like these pack animal cargo sheets. They're more fun and intuitive than just a sheet of paper. I can imagine my players buying a pack animal and then suddenly I hand them a cool sheet for that animal. My experience is that players (and DMs) love handouts and these are very useful ones.

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  2. I've been using cards (business and smaller) for stuff. With plan of sheet of paper with similar sized boxes for "encumbrance". Proly not making sense. Point is, damn, you're really making me want to junk all that and use your awesome creations.

    (hopefully) constructive critisism, the people make elephant too busy. I think it's clear enough that people or cargo can go in those spots. making Pachyderm dark and people light might help.

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  3. Hey, I'm I just not seeing it? Are there no dogs? I can understand no pack dogs (although those are utterly cool and you should totally make one. Which I'm mentioning cause last time I asked for something it appeared the next week! Which may or may not have had anything to do with me asking for it, but, nonetheless made me giddy with delight/megalomania imagining I controlled a pack silhouette making minion out on the Internets somewhere ;)

    But, no dogs in your PD silhouettes? (thanks for those by the way). Screw it, dogs are stupid. The local store were cannon fodder is bought only has Terror Birds for sale. And sheep, warsheep!

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  4. @EPW: Thanks so much. I appreciate the comment. Having these done make me want to give players some jungle or desert to trek through.

    @Norman: You know, I agree, the figures are probably too prominent for the info they convey. I could strip them out all together and leave it cleaner. I'm working on a dog sled sil. But yeah, no dogs yet. Closest is wolf. When I started it was all about OD&D's monsters and I made other silhouettes for utility along the way. I guess a little character sheet for a fighting dog could be helpful, but that might be overkill if a player just needs HP, DMG, and a name.

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