Memories of Connor's Adventures

Orlando the Adventurer pulled a Scimitar from beneath his Robes and smiled...

Wednesday, 20 January 2016

Dungeon Mastery: weights, measures and that bloody firkin...

When you tell the players that their character's, having overcome the bandits, have discovered their chief escaping with a couple of small barrels in a rowboat it's probably important to know the boat will probably sink because two firkin of the king's coin silver weighs collectivly short of half a ton (1000lb). Accuracy (or the lack of) is the curse of every dungeon master.
No! Your fighter can't carry that firkin of five hundred pounds of coin silver!
Coming from one of those metric countries, a lack of metric made Dungeons & Dragons an exercise in education:

  • How much is in a barrel?
  • How many stone blocks are on a heavy cart being pulled by an oxen?
  • How many acres are in a fifty six square mile map hex?

Here are a bunch of weights, measures, and stuff you might find useful.

So now your dwarves can measure everything in link and chain...

2 comments:

  1. Nice! Math is a funny thing. In high school I hated it, and I convinced myself that I just wasn't good at it; I was better at English & History, and was just no good at Math & Science. Then I became a DM and have found a true love for math, as the game allows you to do as much or as little as your heart desires. I went from frustration at doing a story problem (which I'd no doubt get wrong), to creating my own just for the fun of it. The brain is an interesting thing.

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  2. Up next...how much stone goes into making your castle.

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