No game tonight - but here's a free AD&D/OSRIC tool

... thanks to this miserable cold. I've had two this year already and I'm really ^@#$@#$%#@!!! done with the cold season, thankyouverymuch. I hate cancelling games, but as I told my players, if I can't give 100%, I won't waste my time or their's. Nor do I want to get anyone sick with this crap...

There is quite a bit of planning going on the campaign email list, much of it centering around coming up with a strike force to attack a slaver town. A couple of games ago, my players were exploring the plains between Enonia (their home base) and Irecia (the abandoned city that everyone wants to get back to) and they stumbled onto a hamlet that seemed to be occupied by orcs and goblins! They were about to mount an attack when a mysterious figure rose out of the ground in a gilly suit - it was the former mercenary Anya! She seems quite off her rocker now, but she's waging a one-crazy-woman campaign against the orcs, leaving heads on spikes all over the place. She let the players know how overmatched they were, as the force was at least 30 orcs/goblins but that they met at the location approximately every 30 days or so.

Now the effort is to raise a force to strike at the orcs and the players are discovering that things are expensive. It's not like hiring a two or three zero-level meatshields for a jaunt to the old dungeon, no, this requires planning, it requires expert hirelings and it requires gold. Lots of it.

One of my Dark Ages campaign players, Tyson, made a spreadsheet for figuring out how much a force would cost. I made a copy of it and updated it against the OSRIC/tables. It's AD&D compatible. It's a Google Spreadsheet (AD&D/OSRIC Army Calculator) and the only thing it lacks is a lookup dropdown list - if you want to use it, you're more than welcome. I'm not sure if you have to copy/paste to your own document or if you can save your own copy, but by all means, go for it! You will have to unhide the data to update for your own campaign prices, but it should be fairly straightforward. The prices are all in silver (as OSRIC listed silver for the wage) and the wages are on a monthly basis.

Here are the valid names to put in the cyan column header in order to populate the calculator. If you need to expand the number of calculated columns, don't insert a column, move stuff over. The columns under the grid are the data for calculating all those numbers.

Archer, Longbow; Archer, Mounted; Archer, Shortbow; Crossbowman; Footman, Heavy; Footman, Light; Footman, Hvy Mount; Footman, Light Mount; Horseman, Heavy; Horseman, Light; Horseman, Medium; Pikeman; Slinger

Sgt, Longbow; Sgt, Archer Mount; Sgt, Shortbow; Sgt, Crossbowman; Sgt, Hvy Foot; Sgt, Light Foot; Sgt, Hvy Foot Mount; Sgt, Light Foot Mount; Sgt, Hvy Horse; Sgt, Light Horse; Sgt, Med Horse; Sgt, Pikeman; Sgt, Slinger

(To create lieutenants or captains, simply replace Sgt w/ Lt or Capt)

Some assumptions - Sgts are first level, Lts are 2nd level, Captains are 5th level. Although it's not automatic, my metric is a Sgt for 5 to 10 men, a Lt for every 10 men, a Capt for every 20 men.

Enjoy!