My original plan after writing the State of the Peasantry report was
to publish an entire revised L0 proposal. But the fact that the
Woodsman is now accepted and stable changes things a bit. On
reflection, I think it would be better to solve the remaining problems
in pieces as small as possible rather than in one fell swoop. If
nothing else, this should make the arguments less complicated.
Therefore, for the moment I'm going to deliberately evade the really
contentious issue, which is L0 alignments and advancement trees, and
just talk about combat stats and weapons.
Here is the current state of play as I understand it:
Name GP HP Melee Ranged
------- -- -- ------------- -------------
Peasant 8 18 5-2 pitchfork 4-1 pitchfork
Woodsman 8 18 3-1 dagger 4-3 bow
Townsman 8 18 4-3 ??? 3-1 ???
(Eleazar has a Henchman proposal on the table, but that's
another topic.)
If we can decide the Townsman's weapons, I can ship WML for the
Townsman and we can get art in place. The alignment/advances question
needs to be settled, but it doesn't need to be settled before we do
these things.
Remember the use of Townsman. It's intended as a Peasant replacement
for urban settings. TROW:Clearwater Port is the archetype -- the
city needs L0 defenders for the scenario to pace correctly, but
pitchwork-wielding farmers running around on castle battlents
look silly.
Here's my thinking...
I want the Townsman to be armed with quarterstaff and flung
stone. Club and flung stone would work too, but in this game club
is a chaotic weapon and if we know anything about the Townsman's
alignment it's that he's *not* going to be a chaotic :-) Besides,
quarterstaff is cool.
Eleazar has suggested blade for melee but I think this would be a
mistake. A sword-armed Townsman would just feel like a wimpy light
infantry unit. I'd rather put more distance between Towsman and
actual line troops.
Zookeeper notes that blades are already somewhat overrepresented
and that it would be useful to have a L0 with impact weapons that
can do a bit better against Skeletons than the Peasant. I agree.
I'm imagining Townsman as the urban mob, basically. Not criminals,
but by no means militarized either -- artisans, shopkeepers, upper
servants, the "middle class" insofar as that's meaningful in a
pre-industrial economy. They wouldn't generally have swords because
swords are for gentlemen.
Please weigh in on this. If we can get the Townsman's weapons nailed
down, we can proceed to other questions like whether the Peasant should
be modified, and to the big wrangle about L0 alignments and advancements.
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it.
Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise
their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to
dismember it or overthrow it." -- Abraham Lincoln, 4 April 1861
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