Happy Thanksgivristmasewyear!

Finally saw Shin Godzilla, Twin Peaks (The Return), and Ash vs Evil Dead Season 3.

I knew Godzilla would focus on government policy but I wasn't prepared for so much high-octane bureaucracy. Very tropey, reasonably fun, and the tension between personal initiative and collectivist values has interesting nuances, buuut I'm probably never going to rewatch this.

Twin Peaks was great fun. My only disappointment is that it ignores all the teases from How I Met Your Mother. I didn't feel like I missed much by being unfamiliar with the secondary movies and books, and I think I have fair idea of where Coop ended up.

The third season of Ash vs Evil Dead was as pleasant and comfy as the first two but I can kind of see why viewership fell. I don't know if Kelly actually gets less screentime than she did in prior seasons, but it feels like she gets sidelined, and Pablo's Brujo sequence feels too empty to be as long as it is but also not empty enough to be shorter. Happily, the finale is the strongest they've had since the movies.

Ha! Such a long, lovely walk, all for that last joke.

Just finished listening to the Potter & Daughter podcast, in which a father and small daughter talk through what the Harry Potter characters are thinking, chapter by chapter. I didn't really want or need Harry Potter cliff notes, but watching someone teach a child how to think was kind of interesting, and hearing a seven or eight year old speak with authoritative knowledge was kind of adorable.

So You Want to Be King of Some God-Forsaken Space Rock (Bandit Kings part 4)

A simple kingdom generator that I'd like to eventually flesh out into generating full sci-fi and fantasy campaigns. Posting this draft version early because... well, I'd rather clean it up some (individual reroll buttons, formatting, grammar, better code, proper weight, proper attribution) first, but it's usable as-is. 

[Edit, Feb 14: you can now reroll sections without reloading the whole page. /Edit]

I fully expected Blogspot to make it extra rough to add javascript to a post, but kudos to them for keeping it surprisingly painless. (If your needs are simple, this guy makes it even easier - just put a list into his widget and it spits the code out!)

Random Kingdom below the cut.

Fire Temple

The primary DM in our 2014(?) Pathfinder campaign lifted a whole temple from, I think, one of the Zelda games. Parts of it translated more easily than others.

Nintendo DM: "This next room is packed with tall stacks of big clay pots."
The Party: "Do we detect magic, undead, etc inside the pots?"
Nintendo DM: "..."
Nintendo DM: "Don't you want to break one? It might have rubies!"
The Party: "We squeeze by one at a time, not touching the pots at all."
The Wizard: "Then once we're all through, I turn around and fireball the room to break as many pots as I can."
The Party: "SO MANY GHOSTS NOW why did you do that aglghghl"

Everything I can remember of the temple puzzles below the cut, plus spitballing variations.

Why Are Unicorns Not Dragons?

Do the bones of a Golden Dragon gleam?

Most of an Eastern dragon's parts - the head of an ox or camel, ears of a cow or dog, antlers of a stag, neck of a snake, and legs of a horse - add up to a giraffe. The Qilin (closest analog to a unicorn) is also a giraffe. In the West, both were about the size of a horse. Both were indomitable. Yet the one associated with monsoons and wildfires grew into a blend of crocodile, dinosaur and zeppelin while the one carrying abstract notions of incorruptibility and divine vigor got stuck as a kind of prissy antelope.

As an antagonist, this self-righteous ungulate can be a pawn in someone else's scheme, be jealous, try to steal or ruin a person or place or object, try to take over someone else's lair, have a vendetta... all the same passions as a small dragon.

Hunger in the year 3058: Feeding Sarna from Kaifeng

Someone challenged me to justify low JumpShip counts in BattleTech. 
I believe I've done so. 
(These other threads are also relevant.)
Warning! This is like my other "bean counting" posts except EVEN MORESO.

Varanus' Gun, the Riddick and the Unicorn, and Gobbo Feet

[Kind of a grab-bag this week. Hopefully next week will be back to more organized things.]

Varanus' Gun

When you made a character in my old high school play group, instead of purchasing starting gear, you got a witness to roll for each item you might have. Better rolls meant better items, and the luckiest I know was a kobold named Varanus who started with a one-in-two-million rifle.

It had every physical and magical enhancement listed in our price guide, plus two more:

1. If it was within 10 yards, the owner could summon it irresistibly to his hands (something akin to dimension door). Fonzying at an opponent's head was a great way to switch from parley to combat. 
2. A magic string was tied to its grip, with a matching string tied to Varanus' gold pouch; if someone tried to take whatever the second string was tied to, they would be attacked by whatever weapon the first string was tied to.

There may have been other features, but those are the two I remember.


The Poachers

Pretty standard heist quest, written quickly. The party wanted to acquire a certain rare animal from a group of professional monster hunters and couldn't buy it. (This is where the kid with the holy sword was hanging out.) Their collection included:

• Roc Chicks: horse-sized fledglings used as mounts by the poachers. I described them as Chokobos and played them like velociraptors.
  
• A Beholder: used for wrangling the other captives, and which might've had a lobotomy scar? It was in a complex harness with reins which allowed one of the poachers to direct its movements and eyes. The players were mostly unfamiliar with D&D so this was weird and exotic. 
• A "Unicorn": the poachers said this was a unicorn, but when I described it to the players, I used the description of a rhinoceros. A PC did end up buying it, and commissioned a war chariot (complete with swords sticking out from the wheel axles) for it to pull.
  
• The Riddick: among the cages containing giant rats and other dangerous beasts was one containing a muscular human in dark goggles. "Me? I'm just passing through." (I'd shotgunned Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick the night before, so I could do passable dialogue.) The players sprung him but he wasn't as much of a team player as they'd hoped. 
• A Few Gremlins: trained for specific tasks, like fishing a potion out of your pack and feeding it to you during combat. Might also have played a collapsible snare drum and high hat. 

Robert "they should all be destroyed" Muldoon oversaw security from an open-air second story with a commanding view of the menagerie. I don't think the troop was commanded by John Hammond, but I do have a vague memory of negotiations proceeding with lemonade and southern hospitality.


Gobbo Feet

Originally in my high school group, players would only play goblin characters as a joke. Other monstrous races - ogres, trolls and lizardmen - were suboptimal but they had legitimate strengths and could generally intimidate peasants into treating them the same as other adventurers. Eventually, a later iteration of the group added special abilities to all the playable races. Goblins became a more normal choice and it became increasingly weird to me that they were getting hassled less than our ogres and trolls.

Around then I read chapter 211 of Berserk, which has a kelpie drenching a town in rain.

So I decided to make a town which hates goblins, put it in the party's path, and surround it in weeks of ceaseless rain. Now, one of the traits our goblins got was they could ignite small fires by dancing; so when the party met some of the townsfolk some hours outside of town, the townsfolk didn't pull out flint and tinder to light a fire; they pulled out a pair of severed baby goblin feet, hanging on strings like baby booties, and jerked them around to make them "dance."

I didn't want to actually spend the whole quest on the one goblin PC, though. So when these two townsfolk saw the goblin PC, they remembered the "gobbo horse" in the middle of town, and they jumped to the conclusion that if a goblin bites you, you become one.

Cricket Whistle

Spent too long examining the moral dimensions of a particular Star Trek character, so, no BattleTech this week. Instead, here's two ways to sound like a cricket:

1. You know that thing in the back of your throat, that you use to gargle, and to make the Predator clicking noise? You know how most people whistle by exhaling through pursed lips? Trill that thing while whistling. (This doesn't work very well if your throat is dry.)
2. If you can whistle by inhaling through pursed lips, do so with a little spit on your tongue. (My preferred method.)

It's a fun gag. Games occasionally have quiet pauses (a joke falls flat, or the group is hesitating indecisively) where a chirp can get a laugh.

Swords of Truth

[Nothing I want to put together for BattleTech or D&D can be put together quickly. So instead, here's some D&D-ish stuff from my old high school group.]


The main thing about Paladins in our old high school homebrew was their holy swords. Small damage buff (huge buff against unholy creatures), glowed in the presence of unholy creatures, and injured the wielder anytime the wielder lied, cheated, disobeyed orders, desecrated the dead, or fought dishonorably. If you were especially cruel (and tough enough to survive the sword's punitive zap when you reclaimed it), you could impale an enemy, then heal the wound around the sword so they'd get zapped if they lied under questioning.

Our most memorable NPC paladin was a puzzle. The party was under his command, and we kept getting more and more indirect and circumstantial evidence that he was treasonous and breaking the paladin code, but we could never catch him red-handed. His holy sword was genuine and I don't know if we ever learned how he avoided offending it - maybe he just took the damage and was good at hiding it.

The next most memorable such NPC wasn't a paladin, it was a merc brat whose holy longsword was too big for him and who - despite obviously getting injured every time he lied - still attempted all the mischief and bravado you'd expect from an adolescent hanging around with mercs.

Translating these swords into Pathfinder (for my evil rat), the GM wanted to make the punitive zaps do bleed damage, but that doesn't seem sound to me. (Not that I have the best grasp of Pathfinder/D&D balance.)

It never came up in play, but I intended my rat's sword to have lore ties to the oracular statue in my city quest. I envisioned the big oracle sword as a "purer" version - instead of relying on the bearer's perception of truth, the oracle judged objective truth. It could be used in civil and criminal trials, and the wealthy could pay beggars to test other claims. The players proposed testing the oracle with a paradox; I figured that would turn them undead instead of killing them. The players didn't find that as logical as I do, but whatever - oracles aren't meant to be fair or straightforward.

First Look at 3025 Davion 'Mech Manufacturing

[Skip to the bottom to see my estimates.]

from House Davion: The Federated Suns

Seeing as how every other faction with complete-ish manufacturing data (that is to say, everyone but Kurita and Liao) builds all three of the Locust, Wasp and Stinger; and that Achernar of New Avalon builds only the Locust and Wasp (and Phoenix Hawk) but not the Stinger; I think Aldis of Terra's unnamed 'Mech production is likely to be Stingers; and I suspect the Weimalu proposal is a hedge against loss of access to Aldis in the upcoming Fourth Succession War (and is ultimately supplanted by the Hornet line on Talon).

Remember how, on the MW1e 'Mech Lance tables, the frequency of Liao, Steiner and Kurita 'Mechs line up with the frequency of those factions on the Character Affiliation table (400, 500 and 600 respectively), but Davion was 675 instead of 700? I notice that Aldis of Terra supplies the Federated Suns yet is independent of them - 25 'Mechs/yr from Terra would cover that gap nicely. It's a little on the small side, as 'Mech manufacturers go, but that's fitting; Terra never comes across as a big military supplier in 3025 material.

I also notice that 25+50+75+100+125+150+175 = 700. If we look Davion manufacturers, Independence of Quentin falls between 50 and 75; the two manufacturers above it don't give numbers, but Corean of New Avalon's 130 is close to 125; and Dorwinion builds exactly 150 (6000 over 40 years). So the Davion Weapon Industries pages not only order manufacturers by size (as do the Steiner, Kurita and Liao books), but also rates them in fairly predictable intervals. 

If the 'Mechs named on the Davion industries pages show the same 270 : 230 split (common unseens vs. less shared factional designs), then Kallon Industries must produce only 55ish Enforcers and JagerMechs combined (230 minus Valkyries, Atlases, etc). If the Suns produce 700 'Mechs/yr and the industries pages show only 230+270, then 200 'Mechs aren't being shown, and the remaining Enforcers must be among those 200. TR:3025 puts the primary Enforcer/Dervish factory on a world called Dorwinion - since Cal-Boeing of Belladonna is also at a place called "Dorwinion," I'm taking them (and their production rate of 150/yr) as an intentional analogue for Achernar of Dorwinion.

Norse of Marduk is tricky; I don't want to outshine the combined output from Defiance's two sites. I'm less concerned about outshining Nanking's Wolverine line, since that one isn't operating at full capacity in 3025. It helps that I can count some of Norse's production as being at a second site.

My first estimate of Davion manufacturing rates is below. What's really neat is that if you add up all the tonnage, and divide by 49 tons (the average mass from the FWL book), it comes out to a hair under 675 'Mechs' worth of 49-ton 'Mechs. It makes me think the final numbers will end up being pretty close. (Well, that, plus how hard it is to change things without skewing light.)

I've been taking it for granted that the "130" Valkyries and "20" Marauders (and so on) mentioned in the text really are exactly 130 and 20 (and so on), but I have to wonder if they aren't being rounded off.

I've included Javelins and Blackjacks in the table because the Marik and Steiner books include designs like the Spider and Goliath that're even deader in TR:3025.

2000 Stalkers in 3025

The Stinger, Wasp and Locust are the three most common light 'Mechs. They are a certain fraction of all light 'Mechs. Perhaps the most common assault 'Mechs (the Stalker, Banshee and Charger) are an identical fraction of all assault 'Mechs?

• Per TR:3025, "five thousand or more" Stingers survive to 3025. Adding Wasps and Locusts in the MW1e ratio of 51:42:32 should bring us to 12500 (5100+4200+3200).
• I count 55000 'Mechs total in 3025. BF1e says 30% (which is 16500) are light and 10% (5500) are assault weight. 
• Per TR:3025, about 500 Chargers, 5000/3 Banshees, and a larger but unspecified number of Stalkers survive in 3025.

12500/16500ths of 5500 is exactly equal to 500 Chargers, 5000/3 Banshees and 2000 Stalkers. That's a very plausible number of Stalkers; and if any of my premises going into this were wrong or arbitrary, the number shouldn't have come out as such a clean integer. I kinda wonder if the assault 'Mech fraction was picked first and then the light 'Mech fractions were reverse-engineered to match.

My Favorite Monster

I first used these (way back in high school) to pop up from under loose floor tiles. Just a small ambush to make the party wary. Then, in the middle of a big room with a high ceiling, the PC ogre who'd been bringing up the rear felt his helmet lift off his head. He turned around. Saw nothing. The rest of the party saw two of these things daisy-chained from the ceiling, holding his helmet, while a third clung to the ogre's back. (And shortly after, to the ogre's face).

The second time I used these (a few years later), the party was looking for lost children to rescue. They'd heard movement or indistinct voices a couple times, and a couple other times they'd opened silent wardrobes or drawers only to have these critters jump out at them. Eventually, the party got strung out down a hallway: a decoy fight at one end, an ambush through an open doorway in the middle, and two kid-sized lumps hiding in a pile of laundry at the other end. One PC defends the laundry pile; he hears voices from it. "Yeah, what is it, kid?" he asks over his shoulder. The response is indistinct, so he glances back, and it isn't kids it's two of these critters with laundry on their heads mimicking kid-sounds with their mandibles.

It worked so well these first two times that I can't resist trying again whenever enough new players cycle in. It's how the the larval tank beetles in my second Pathfinder run were supposed to play.

I think next time, I'll have the players trying to meet or find an NPC, but everybody in the NPC's location has evacuated to certain well-known mines or tunnels. The PCs come alongside a deep shaft, where a small figure in a (blood stained) cloak clings desperately to a chain hanging out of the party's reach, with a heavy metal elevator or slab or something sitting against one of the other walls, too high to be useful. If (when) a PC jumps or falls onto the free hanging chains, weights will shift; the heavy metal will rise, unsealing a tunnel and freeing the swarm of critters therein; and the cloaked figure - another of the critters - will attack the PC as their chains sink into darkness.


Shriekipedes, Centipede Mimics or Jack in the Box Bugs

Never had a good name for these critters.

For D&D5e, I think I'd start with "Giant Spider" as a template, make CON 8, HP 18, AC 15, double its damage when it attacks with surprise, ignore all the web abilities, and bump the poison save high enough to scare the party tough guy.

[Easter Edit: CON 6, HP 12, AC 17? In our homebrew they were agile and strong-shelled, but couldn't survive more than one or two typical hits. Not sure how to translate that to 5e. /Edit]

Lurking: these things are three to seven feet long, can fit through any hole a typical dog can, and tend to trap themselves in chests and cupboards; they're great at pulling lids or doors shut but crap at pushing them open again. They're more likely to chew or dig their way out through a back corner.

Face Grabbing: PCs hate having stuff latched onto their faces, so that's what these things go for. If the attack succeeds, the PC is likely blind and/or suffocating; if the attack is stopped by a helmet, there's a good chance the helmet will be pulled off; if the attack misses, the bug might latch onto a nearby wall or something by accident.

Backwards and Forwards: the head and the tail are difficult to tell apart, and they're both good at grabbing stuff. When one side latches onto something big (like a wall or a medium size creature), the other end gets advantage on strength checks. The bug can't voluntarily let go of something without making a DC 10 INT check.

Shrieking, 3x per long rest to: cast Counterspell or Dispel (with a +3 ability modifier), combo with another bug's bite attack to count as a magic weapon with the sonic damage type, add d8 Bardic Inspiration on the next bug action against a chosen target, inflict d8 Bardic Disinspiration on the target's current action... other sonic effects aren't out of the question.

I don't know what the "challenge rating" for these would be. Low, I imagine; I think I tend to fall back on them where other people would be falling back on  basic skeletons or zombies.

[Easter Edit: I forgot! Because our high school group had so many mages, these were highly resistant to magic. For 5e, I'd give them advantage on spell saves, and if they get 20 or more on the save or counterspell roll, the spell reflects back on the caster.

...their "challenge rating" might be higher than I think.

I like how jump-scare monsters can make the players paranoid. I try to prime them before the quest to consider half-heard noises nonthreatening, and by the end have them paranoid enough for friendly fire against already injured NPCs doing their best to hide from the monsters. I sometimes also try to deescalate their paranoia afterwards, but rotating GMs from week to week makes that less of a factor. /Edit]

PS: Happy, hoppy Easter Eve?

BattleTech ABCs

[A filler entry while I work on other things this week.]

A is for Amaris, the Usurper detested.
He killed all the Camerons, then by Kerensky was bested.

B is for Blake, Blest Minister of Communications,
Told by the Great Lords to restore HPG stations.

C is for Cameron the Royal and ComStar the Holy,
Once forging, now hoarding much lost technology.

D is for Davion and for DeChevalier.
One a great general, the other just cavalier.

E is for Light Horse, the warriors Eridani.
Most noble and skillful of soldiers mercenary.

K is for Kurita and also Kerensky.
One killed Amaris. The other, Kentares.

L is for Liao, cunning and oily.
S is for Steiner, prodigious industrially.

M is for Marik, and for malfunction.
Coalitions and widgets break at this junction.

W is for Warlords, the five Successors.
They tore down the Star League to become its possessors.

I is Invasion and IlClan, Nicholas' blood.
In their eugenic utopia our names are all mud.

F is to forget all others alphabetical.
Fortresses fallen, and futures inescapable.

"Secret Project" - BattleTech faction intros

After making this guide for new customers a few years ago, I decided that since I was doing a lot of factional research anyway to figure out manufacturing rates, I may as well create a beginner's guide to BattleTech's factions.

But what are factions even for in BattleTech? They have no gameplay effect; they don't constrain force composition; the product line isn't organized by faction; they aren't being used to organize paint schemes; and they do little for mid-game banter.

I think originally, and at their most basic, the factions exist as a way of communicating the scope of the setting and how games fit within that scope; then, as flavor text is added, they create the illusion of ongoing campaigns for the customer to aspire to. That, then, should be my goal: to give each faction all the trappings of a functional campaign environment, with as many hooks and tools to that end as possible, without assuming any particular rules or scale.

Don't know when or if I'll get around to finishing this, so, here's what I'm picturing:

How MW1e Figures House Currencies

House	Strength in...
	Stars	Mechs	Currency
Davion	507	7	9
Kurita	407	6	8
Steiner	439	5	11
Marik	332	5	7
Liao	209	4	5

When MW1e said House currency was "measured in terms of industrial strength and the availability of important natural resources" (p103), I had no idea there would be an actual equation behind it. Approximately:

(Stars - 'Mechs*60 + 173)*(9/256) = strength of currency

The number of stars in a realm seems to be a proxy for that realm's natural and industrial resources. That's pretty fair, I think. "Mechs" is 1/100th of the House's annual 'Mech production, and seems to be a proxy for the House's military production in general. So we've got a pretty clear "guns and butter" situation. Not, y'know, clear enough to base a domain-building game on yet, but it's a step in the right direction.

The 9/256 factor is very interesting. Remember how Periphery realms get four worlds for free and then need two companies of 'Mechs for every world after? Well, there's 9 companies in a regiment and (per BF1e) 128 'Mechs in a regiment, so to garrison 9 extra worlds you would need 256 'Mechs. 

I don't know what the 173 is. Could be a logistical term which varies slightly from House to House for reasons I've yet to discover. Could be a meaningless term invented to put the currencies on a more attractive scale.

Bears Discover Skin-Walking

Way back in middle school or high school I read the short story "Bears Discover Fire" by Terry Bisson, and I thought it had the seed of a fun RPG encounter.

I imagined bears who'd discovered vodka ("is there a bear in the woods?"),  who'd discovered specialization of labor (and wore simple heraldry depicting their profession), and were governed by a Grand High Poo(h)b(e)ah. These Ursuevelts would brew a gummi wine, and bake golems (teddy grahams) in emergencies. The cubs would be as bribable as Ewoks, and the adults as implacable as the Hoth Gnophkeh.

But ultimately that only amounts to background flavor. It doesn't stand on its own. Any adventure where the party just happens across them would play the same with a different wacky village swapped in their place. It needs hooks and conflict.

A decade or two later I'm reading Legacy of the Bieth's Tundra Encounter Table, and I pause at the Neanderthal entry. Why does a fantasy game have Neanderthals? A realistic lense would show little difference between them and modern humans, perhaps less even than between Wood Elves and Drow; a mythologized lense would surely transform them into trolls and ogres. So what are they, here? People whose skin doesn't fit quite right, and who aren't quite as good at being people?

Then I see the entries for the polar owlbear and the orca with legs. Looks like bears wearing the skin of other animals. So: that's the Neanderthal too. The gods taught cave bears how to skin-walk and now there's these bears and they don't know how to get along with all these invasive, johnny-come-lately humanoids.

Yes, I know I'm a little late in realizing this.

Revised Winter Lands Encounters Table

• Keep the Prey (sabre-tooth rabbits, huge deer, Baluchitherium) and Predator (Wolves, Woolly Lion, Giant Walrus, Remorhaz) entries, with a 1/6 chance that it's the pet, herd or guardian of [roll again]. 
• Assume all People (Trolls, Nagas, Humans, etc) are nomads and prefix "Frost," "Polar," "Arctic," "Winter," "Ice" or "Snow" to their race, except for a 1/6 chance that they're foreign and lost (abandoned and alone, purposely questing alone, or an organized train of sleighs/sledges). 
• Add Psychic Warrior (Githyanki/Githzerai Warlocks, if Gith were Predators from the Alien/Predator co-franchise) to the table, with a 1/6 chance of riding invisible flying manta rays. 
• Condense the spirit entries into a hungry, oversize skeleton of [roll again] which will usually manipulate sound and silence to separate party members in the dark or a blizzard and lead them into deadfalls or ambush, but has a 1/6 chance of conveying a divine vision instead.
•  Replace all remaining entries with a bear skin-walking as the local People, with one additional skin (owl, orca, mammoth, platypus), and a 1/6 chance of being escorted by [roll again] (if People, they are devoted cultists; if Prey/Predator, they are temporary familiars). 
• Add a new entry for navigating when lost: that landmark (river, rocky hill, treeline, village) you thought you'd never see again; the wrong landmark; your own trail... I guess with a 1/6 chance of happening on a hidden and useful location the party isn't otherwise aware of.

Who or whatever the party encounters could be migrating; grazing / hunting for [roll again]; fleeing from [roll again]; is a corpse being [action'd] by [roll again]; is drunk and reveling, mourning, or raging; and a low, outside chance of being encased in ice.

The bears would have an additional table for what they're doing, or will try to do.

- Regally aligning large mystic stones.
- Embarking on a poorly-planned expedition against a settlement.
- Wandering around calling for whatever spirits the local People favor or fear.
- Identify something every party member has, and deprive them of it.
- Negotiate the surrender and execution of the party.
- Interrogate the party about the location of another "neanderthal."
- Lure or drive the least robust party member off into the wilderness to die.
- Learn a spell from the party and use that spell against them.
- Charm the party's champion into slaughtering the most hated local People.
- Challenge the party to a death duel in whatever the party is best at.

Though really, any mildly hostile people they encounter could probably use the same table to establish basic motivation; they just wouldn't commit with the same zeal and unsophistication.

First Look at Sphere-Wide Fighter Production

We know the Free Worlds League is "the preeminent builder of new and reconditioned DropShips and Aerospace Fighters," manufacturing 325 AeroSpace Fighters per year (HM:FWL, p114-115).

Recall that the Inner Sphere builds 2700 'Mechs/yr, with the five Great Houses each taking 7/27ths, 6/27ths, 5/27ths, another 5/27ths, and 4/27ths of that total. We have no reason to think AeroSpace production would be apportioned the same way, but if the FWL's 325 fighters/yr did represent 7/27ths of the Inner Sphere's total production, then that would put the annual total around 1254 fighters/yr.

I don't have a direct way to corroborate that figure, but I think I can check it indirectly by estimating LAM production.

I suggested a few posts ago that the Draconis Combine may produce 270 Stinger LAMs/yr; and we've seen that LAMs are as prominent in the FWL as are assault 'Mechs, of which the FWL builds 34/yr. 270 Stinger LAMs + 34 Phoenix Hawk LAMs makes for an annual total of 9800 tons of LAMs. I imagine LAM turnover would've been figured as an average of 'Mech and AeroSpace Fighter turnover, so, after some algebra...

...and assuming that (like 'Mechs) AeroSpace production averages 49 tons per fighter, we get an annual turnover of 1263.63 Aerospace Fighters. This figure is intriguingly indistinguishable from 1263.89, which is what the total would be if the FWL's 325 fighters/yr represented 9/35ths of the Inner Sphere's production, with the other four Houses taking 8/35ths, 7/35ths, 6/35ths and 5/35ths.

This 9:8:7:6:5 split is enticingly simple, but there may be one or two more LAM manufacturers yet to account for, and I'm not certain that AeroSpace Fighters do average 49 tons like 'Mechs do.

I hate to go to the Availability Chart in the old Mercenary's Handbook - I think I've mentioned before that its biases make extrapolation difficult, and AeroSpace Fighters have the added problem that I don't know what total percentage of fighters are light, medium or heavy.

But unlike the 'Mech availability numbers, the AeroSpace ones actually fall into some kind of order.

Summing (or multiplying) a faction's chances of rolling its light, medium and heavy fighters puts the Houses at fairly regular intervals with Marik reassuringly at the top. The other Houses seem to follow according to how much attrition their average 'Mech regiment suffers each year (ie, annual 'Mech production divided by number of House and mercenary regiments):

Marik = 500 / 60 rgts
Kurita = 600 / 80 rgts
Liao = 400 / 60 rgts
Steiner = 500 / 75 rgts
Davion = 700 / 110 rgts

[Edit, March 16: the JumpShip and DropShip manufacturers on page 15 of DS&JS are also keyed in this order! /Edit]

I'm not surprised that Davion would come out on the bottom. House Davion: The Federated Suns (hereafter HD:FS) seems to list weapons manufacturers from biggest to smallest, and its three AeroSpace manufacturers are all listed after a 60-65/yr 'Mech manufacturer, so a Davion total around 180 fighters/yr is to be expected.

Six Sided Periphery

It's not easy to fit P1e's maps of the Periphery onto the housebooks' map of the Inner Sphere. Some worlds match fine, but others - like in Morgraine's Valkyrate, or the district capitals of the Outworlds Alliance - get twisted around into new positions.

So I overlay the Periphery nations with the geographic territories and I notice that the six territories seem to butt up against the edges of a hexagon. Six territories, six sides - know what else has six sides? A cube! 

Different viewing angles would explain so many things about these P1e maps. There's a few ways a cube could be oriented; based on where the "Draconis Rift" is, though, I think it has to be the first of these:

The "Outer Sphere" is pretty obviously in the top-right corner; I assume the "Hyades Rim" runs along the bottom to the right; and the "Draconis Rift" looks like it runs along the top (but maybe not the very top) toward the top-rear corner. Much harder to guess how exactly the other three territories lie.

Now Playing 5e (Storm King's Thunder)

Last March my Pathfinder group wrapped up our campaign and switched over to D&D 5th Edition. I'm pretty happy with 5e. The rules are a lot less finicky than Pathfinder; there doesn't seem to be a loot treadmill, nor a skill bonus treadmill; and characters are a lot easier to create and level up.

I especially like the background tables (motives, flaws, trinkets, etc). They're enough to hang a persona on without getting too intricate. I mean, I don't normally bother with backstories, yet I made a coherent one simply by drawing arrows from one result to another.

Bonus: I didn't have to make my own character sheet! The official ones even have room to annotate with character creation notes (which is near mandatory for rogues, who're likely to get overlapping skill picks from multiple sources).

Monk: "We all chose wood elves? What a neat coincidence."
Rogue (me): "It's not surprising. Wood elves are the optimal choice."
Monk: "Damn min-maxing. Okay, I'm a gnome now."

It's been a continuing challenge to keep our "elf forest first, other kingdoms can rot" party interested in the welfare of foreign peoples.

Now that I'm thinking to make a second character, I'm less enamored with 5e's chargen. It's designed for you to pick a class and then make a small number of branching choices; doing the process in reverse - having a suite of abilities in mind and then trying to figure out which class fits it best - means leafing through just as many feats and features as I had to in Pathfinder.


Storm King's Thunder is a weird module

Our PCs start as level one nobodies, with a who's who of Faerûn factions falling over themselves to help us on our way; we never stay in one place long enough for the party's personalities or backstories to matter; and we don't get a real reason to be on the quest until halfway in.

The set-piece encounters have been fun, but rarely require real effort; last week's session was the first time in almost a year and eight levels that I've taken damage. Granted, my character type isn't generally in the line of fire; and granted, we may be rushing the plot a bit. (We only play two hours a week on a weekday after work, and the GM only reads one session ahead.) But still: I think the module has been pulling punches. Is that fair for an introductory module to do? I don't know; I'd hope it has guidelines about weaving the plot into an existing campaign, modulating encounter difficulty, and - for groups who are starting at first level - hooking the PCs better, earlier. Haven't read the book to see.

More odd things:

• We keep getting loot, but nary a way (nor need) to spend it. So, now that we've cleaned out the fire lord's fortune, the GM just told us to shop magic items out of the GM's manual. Ironically, this is one of the things we wanted to leave behind with Pathfinder. 
• Apparently, some of the maps don't have scales marked. 
• Our group has trouble communicating the geography/architecture of a space; the vertical layout of the fire lord's forge has been a particular source of confusion. 
• Shouldn't there be multiple adventuring parties from each of our multifarious patrons, pursuing the same goals we are? Why haven't we run into any? There are some temporary PCs early in the book; it could be fun to run across them again near the end.