Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Wearing Clothes


The above table can be downloaded from my wiki, at this page.  It is perfectly safe, I assure you.

As the wiki says, the table is intended to simplify difficulties surrounding the wearing of clothing in different weathers, with the general purpose of assigning damage to those who wear too much clothing or too little.  I have not made a practical use of this table: it has come into existence due to collaboration with the players of my Juvenis campaign, which has not been around as long as a week.  The work could not have been done without the help of Dani, a regular contributor to the blog, an ex-student of my tutorials and one of the persons running in the Juvenis campaign.

I hope that the generator will be of help to other DMs in other games.  I've played around with it a bit and I'm very pleased.  I'm sure my players will be, also.

19 comments:

  1. Wow, this is really great. Looks slick as hell too.

    Quick question, while I calculate how massively overheated I'm likely to be from my three/four layers of clothing: You've got Robes(Desert) on Neck and Shoulders, but just Robes in Upper Body.

    I'm assuming this references the headscarf from your trade tables? I would put "yes" under both categories, Upper Body AND Neck/Shoulders, right?

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  2. I decided to put anything that covered the whole body, such as the arming gown or the desert robes, under neck and shoulders ~ largely because it drapes from there. Desert "robes" include pieces that cover everything ~ and because I don't want to separate those pieces (it would mean a bunch of unfamiliar articles that likely wouldn't be bought separately), it all goes in one place. These robes are nothing like the "robe" that we associate with European clothing.

    You'll notice the neck and shoulders clothing lacks ties and cinches that affect the upper and lower body, different from the coat, say. The cloak, for example, attaches together at the neck. Robes, on the other hand, tie at the waist.

    I must have missed the headscarf from my trade tables ~ you have me confused with your last question.

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  3. Sorry, was unclear, the headscarf is included within the desert robe styling, and does not come as a seperate item.

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  4. Rowan, yes, that's correct. I found this site explaining the desert robes, if you're interested:

    https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081121061827AAwWy73

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  5. I love this. You have damage listed in other activities. Is it safe to presume the intention is still damage per round like in combat? It seems a little extreme if so.

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  6. The wiki indicates that the damage for other activities is over a 12-hour period. So, not so extreme.

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  7. Very cool!
    Do the standard dresses in your market sheets fit under frock?

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  8. Not to add another monster project to your list, but it seems that material doesn't change the CLO value - a silk robe is as warm as a wool one is as warm as a linen one. Do you plan to eventually make material distinctions, or is this already grainy enough for the purposes of play in your view?

    (I was thinking of adding the CLO values directly to my inventory, which made me look back at the trade table, which made me realize that adding values to all possible individual items of clothing would be a pretty significant undertaking.)

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  9. Hah!

    I was enormously pleased to stumble across this enormously long document which at one point makes clear that material actually makes very little difference where it comes to CLO. Obviously, it is possible to make very light and thin fabrics, but any fabric can also be made thick enough that it protects, and it is the layering that produces the greater capacity for insulation, not the fibers themselves.

    Since we are speaking of a Renaissance world, I can cheerfully argue that clothes are made with greater thickness than today, due to a lack of central heating and building insulation, then discard the whole matter.

    So, no monster project. Huzzah!

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  10. There you go again, cheating by using real-world data to save yourself work again instead of going with what seems right and introducing massive complications as a result.

    For shame! ;)

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  11. Hah -- for once the real world data means you get to avoid a massive undertaking!

    I really like this, Alexis. I will admit I had never heard of "CLO" before we started the Juvenis campaign, so it's no wonder I didn't cotton onto that as a road to wilderness damage, etc. Once again your point about D&D as a teaching tool has been reinforced. (And again, with the article you linked about clothing insulation not being related to material.)

    It's almost as if people have used roleplaying games as teaching and practice tools for hundreds of years and a game based faithfully (though not slavishly) on real-world information is capable of expanding one's knowledge of said real world ...

    ... but like, that sounds way harder than just buying Pathfinder and using the same goddamn ridiculous incoherent kiddie rules that fuckheads have been pushing since 1974.

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  12. Reading "Playing at the World" got boring after about 2/3 of the way through, and I got tired of the author making the same old mistakes about what roleplaying games can be rather than what most people think they are (i.e. children hero games), but one thing I appreciated about it was learning about the long, long history of wargaming for practice and testing of military procedures, and, since the 20th century, usage of freeform roleplaying in psychology and therapy contexts.

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  13. I never did read that.

    Recently I've been reviewing Ken Burns' Baseball (and cutting a personal version of it for myself, without the endless opinions and Americanisms that poison the tempo of the work). It is interesting to note how the game was seen in the 1850s and comparing that with the game in the 1970s. Who, in 1855, could have foreseen where the game would go?

    I think we mistake ourselves when we are so certain that what we HAVE is already the perfect form of anything. There was no curve ball in 1855, no nationally organized league, no professional players, no journalism coverage of games, no backstop behind home plate, no owners and very few consistently agreed-upon rules. Each change that happened after that was argued over, resisted, abused and ultimately codified ~ because it seemed right to the people who came after.

    The world is change. Neither you nor I, Maxwell, have yet played D&D as it inevitably will be "properly" played. We're still in 1855.

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  14. I think I missed your question, Tim. Yes, the dresses on the market sheet fit as a frock, except for the kirtle, which has its own rating.

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  15. For extreme weathers and extreme inadequacy of clothing, the 1-3 value per 12 hours seems like too little. But then, I can tweak that, if needed. Thank you for the tool.

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  16. Something just occurred to me from personal experience - should 'backpack' be a separate entry on the CLO calculator? I know from personal experience that a loaded backpack can create a significant heating problem both from the bulk of material and the blocking of airflow, to the point where I'm sweating steadily with a pack and completely comfortable without it regardless of the actual weight of the thing.

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  17. If anyone wants to find a CLO number for a backpack, I am all in. Otherwise, I'd rather not spend another fruitless half-hour looking. It seems that every webpage out there with information about CLO is taking it from a single source, probably govt, since the numbers are exactly the same, the choice of article is exactly the same, the description is the same and no one, no one, postulates on how to calculate CLO for an article not on the list.

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  18. That's more than fair - I see the frustration as soon as I start searching myself, given that search variations on 'CLO value [of a] backpack' all lead to discussions of CLO values _while backpacking._

    I did find a site that talks about calculating CLO value based off of a material's insulation value by weight combined with square yardage of coverage, but it's mostly listing various high-tech fill and nothing yet that gives a straight answer for something like a pack. I'll let you know if I find anything.

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