Setting Out of in Search of Adventure

A little while ago I told my son (6 years old) and my wife to each select a miniature. The idea is that I'd stat them up and then run some OSR derived skirmish battles for them, while hopefully linking the games with a narrative of sorts.

It took me longer than I liked to stat the characters up, in part because I kept trying to get everything "just so" for my large OSR-as-a-minis-game project and developing set of homebrew rules for a potential RPG campaign. Then I stopped trying and got the stats done, which is better.

Now all we need to do is play the first game, which we'll do real soon. Like, we were going to do it today but then my wife's cousin and her family came over and I had to grill them some burgers. I also ended up having another commitment in the afternoon. So that didn't work out. Luckily, I hadn't promised anything except to myself, so I'm the only one who was disappointed.

Anyhow... my son picked an old citadel wood elf (Skarloc) with a big sword ("he must do a lot of damage") and bow ("and he can shoot"), and named him Bravery.

My beloved wife picked a Reaper mini, I think primarily because in her opinion the dress makes it the prettiest female mini I've painted. She was given the name Epiphany.

In part the abilities and so on are homebrew adaptations of a beta version of Kevin Crawford's upcoming Worlds Without Numbers. It's reasonably old school, but not quite B/X. I've also tried to put everything on the character sheet, both because it's easier for my player base to engage with and because it's less work than trying to write out the whole homebrew ruleset before we play.

My son also commented something like "imagine we had FIVE friends with us, and they got STRONGER when they work together" which I thought showed excellent early development of leadership skills. It also adds a bit more moving pieces for what is supposed to be an on-ramp to skirmish gaming, and provides an excuse for trying out some of the concepts I'm looking to develop.

I picked five viking minis (no armour) and named them Alfhild, Baggi, Eilif, Finnulf, and Klefi.

One of the concepts I'm looking at - and will be testing out in this game - is the idea that "regular troops" carry out instructions fine when near a leader. However, if left to their own devices you need a morale check to avoid them potentially showing undesirable independent initiative. It's intended to be a general rule, but in this case I've rolled it into the traits of the unit.

Next up, the narrative....