TFT Spell Costs vs. HOW Spell Costs

So, a quick analysis of spell costs in TFT vs, HOW. They’re mostly the same, except that all the TFT spells that have a continuing cost have had that cost folded into the casting cost and the duration replaced with IQ + Spell Skill Level in turns, which is a pretty huge power-up. E.g. something […]

D&D To HOW Stat Translation

This is just a quick recap of translating D&D attributes into their Heroes & Other Worlds equivalents, if what you care about is how much the attribute adds to the chances of success on a roll. See my previous post on Bell Curve vs. Linear for a deeper explanation of the probabilities involved. It […]

Bell Curve vs. Linear

Here’s a handy little chart showing the difference between a linear distribution like rolling a d20 and a bell curve distribution like 3d6 when it comes to rolling versus a target. The first column is the d20 roll, the second is the approximate percent chance of rolling that or less on d20. That’s pretty obvious, but […]

Chaotic Caves Hexmap

This is a hexmap version J.D. Neal’s Chaotic Caves map from his The Chaotic Caves supplement for Basic Fantasy, released under the OGL, which is basically a nice, simple, hexcrawl retroclone of The Keep on the Borderlands. C.R. Brandon released a version reskinned for Heroes & Other Worlds. Since I was kind of irritated by the […]

HOW to Sacrifice a Shield?

C.R. Brandon, In a recent post on his blog, entitled Sacrifice, talked about some of the changes he’s contemplating for the revised edition of Heroes & Other Worlds. I left some thoughts on them on his blog, but I think blogspot ate the comment. Or maybe it’s just stuck in moderation. So herewith: Not really thrilled with […]

Languages and HOW!

Two more (last for now?) tweaks to Heroes & Other Worlds before I’m ready to start running it. Languages Languages don’t count against the IQ limit on skills/spells known. If you want languages to be a big factor in your setting, it’s counter-productive to place a tight limit on how many languages a character can know. It’s even […]

More HOWs Rules

Some more tweaks to Heroes & Other Worlds. Weapons and Armor Per the original Melee/TFT rules, summarized here. I just like it better, and I know it will be hard for me to get used to Broadswords doing 2d6+3 instead of 2d6. Wizards may wear any armor, but DX penalties are also applied to IQ […]

House Rules, and HOW!

Although I’ve yet to play Heroes & Other Worlds, I’ve played a ton of The Fantasy Trip back in the day, so I’ve already started down the road of house-ruling a bunch of stuff. Here’s my current list: Criticals & Fumbles In HOW, 3 is automatic hit and double max damage, 4 is automatic hit […]