Pages from the past pt.1

I was digging through my old rpg papers from way back and came across some fun stuff that I thought I could post here without deviating too wildly into soup recipe territory.  Before I do that however I would like to credit the artist Susan Hill who doodled things in game or drew stuff on request because I sure as hell can't draw as well as her.  This material comes from a game I ran back in the (late 80- early 90's) using custom rules I wrote based on a Marvel Superheros style percentile chart.  It was a lot of fun, but also a lot of work since character skills would be listed as a letter and sometimes with a green, yellow, red after it - not something quick to convert into from sources like the Monster Manual, DragonLance modules or ICE's Claw Law.

This first piece is a scan of a sheet showing the two main currencies, both based on a silver standard.  The top is the Kamerian coinage, with it's dragon motif.  The coins are your standard copper, silver, gold (crown), platinum (royal) but the higher denominations also have inset gems (what a nightmare that would be).  Also shown is the mithril coin which has no need for markings, being mithril and all and worth about 125 sp.

Kamerian Coins

The second set of 'coins' are Oban Marks - they are flat rectangles of various precious metals from the quarter mark (1 sp) to the Imperial (4000 sp) usually worn on a chain around the neck or waist, kind of a cross between dog tags and boat keys I seem to recall.

Oban Marks

The second bit here is a copy of the Delborian Calender.   I handed out a calender for the players to keep track of events and things.  The calendar had 13 months each 35 days long being a 'small' year and 4 of these small years for every 'great' year (based on the cycles of the moon re-aligning in Summer).  It had the moon phases drawn on it because the moon phases impacted some types of magic and sometimes things might be based on the moon phases (like lycanthropy, demons, terrible prophecy).  Mostly they just wrote people's birthdays on it.  It was great when a birthday came around and they bought/stole/made each other gifts.

Delborian Calendar

The little fellow on the page is a mugwump.  The mugwump was a small furry animal from the Delborian continent that had a breeding cycle of exactly 35 days from birth to birth.  They were a primary source of food all across the land, mainly by necessity, as they were plentiful but not particularly delicious.  At certain times of year in every major town there were large mugwump festivals held in order cook up huge batches of the critters so to keep their numbers down to manageable levels.