I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

[Michael Hopcroft]

"I told you I'd fix your little red wagon! Here! New coat of paint and everything!"

 

Repairing wagons shouldn't be that difficult unless something spectacular goes wrong (break the axle clean through and you've got trouble) -- but it certainly isn't a task for amateurs either.

 

I also had some random thoughts about wagons.

 

Magic can make certain wagons dimensionally transcendental -- bigger inside than out. Put enough points into it and you can keep a pocket universe in the bank of a wagon. It seems that for a rational amount of points you can have a wagon two or three times bigger inside than out. This has some interesting advantages. Two people could sleep in back in comfort while a third drives at night. You can store more loot and supplies in the back than the apparent size of the wagon would suggest, and you could do so without needing extra horses. Not that it wouldn't have disadvantages -- it could be just as vulnerable to attack as an ordinary wagon, for example. And it still needs to be pulled by something and is still prone to breaking down mechanically.

[Narf the Mouse]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

Change Environment: Bigger on the Inside, AoE: Radius 9m, AoE: Radius 3m plus Extra-Dimensional Movement.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

Fixing wagons is actually very hard indeed. Well, technically, there's a gradient. A Red River cart isn't very complicated, precisely so it will be easy to repair, while the point of a royal carriage is to show off, and it will be very complicated indeed.

And this has been so for a very long time. Bronze Age war chariots were not only very complicated, they were carried around disassembled and then put together by their crews, making it a little amazing that the Shang emperor Wu Ding was apparently so addicted to burying them alive.

To put this all in perspective, a 1698 commission to raise a transport company of 200 new 4-horse provision wagons to fight the War of the League of Rijswick stipulates a complement of 1 director, 1 assistant, 6 officers, 1 chaplain, 1 chief wagoneer, 2 fouriers, 1 secretary, 20 wagoneers, 1 surgeon’s mate with 1 boy, 4 carriage makers, 1 veterinarian, 1 senior smith, 1 junior, and 6 smith’s mates, 1 cartwright, 4 cartwright’s mates, 3 saddler’s mates, 2 harness-maker’s mates, 1 provost, 4 carriage builders, and 400 teamsters, with total annual cost of roughly 30,000fl, or, after a series of more-or-less PFA conversions, $6 million (USD) current dollars per year. That might not seem unreasonable, but the pay standards are: chief harness-maker receives 8x as much as an infantry private; a veterinarian 6x, a wagoneer 4x, 5 apprentice harness-makers 2x, and even a handler 1.5x as much. That's from a comparison of "horse party" pay only. The smiths and carpenters in the above total will be paid in line with the harness-makers. Even given that privates got paid a great deal less in 1698 than they do now, I think a modern plumber would be very happy to get 8x a starting DoD salary! Taken as an index of skills and scarcity, fixing a wagon was hard.

[Escafarc]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

Any time someone brings up painting a wagon:

 

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

Any time someone brings up painting a wagon:

 

 

My college drama teacher was in that movie as an extra (it was filmed in Oregon). He loved to tell stories like how whole crews of extras, in costume and covered head-to-toe in mud, would go to the local Safeway to buy groceries and get the weirdest looks from the other customers.

 

Paint Your Wagon is often cited as the movie that signaled the final demise of the Hollywood musical. It should also be noted that the story they filmed had little to no resemblance to the story of the original play (which the producers considered badly dated).

[Justin]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

Magic can make certain wagons dimensionally transcendental -- bigger inside than out.

Sounds like a (insert game name, you know which one) Portable Hole, or a Tardis--or, truth to tell, my son's closet. There is no way in heck he packs all that junk into that little bitty closet.

 

I like Narf's work-up, but every time I see something like this, the "Evil GM" lobe of my brain starts working overtime. What happens if the magic is dispelled or the wagon is destroyed? Is everything dumped unceremonially on the ground? Do the contents of the wagon disappear into the pocket dimension? For maximum evil, I could even require an inventory of the wagon and state that D100% of the contents are destroyed. (My players are packrats--there would be weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.)

[Escafarc]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

Buy Size with Invisible Power Effect. That's how it was done in the 5E Ultimite Vehicles.

[Narf the Mouse]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

"Bigger on the Inside" as a Change Environment and as a Naked Advantage:

Bigger on the Inside: Change Environment (-3 to Normal Hearing PER Rolls, -11 to Normal Sight PER Rolls), Area Of Effect (3 2m Areas; Original Area; +1/2), Fixed Shape (-1/4), Persistent (+1/4), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Area Of Effect (9 2m Areas; Expanded Area; +1), Fixed Shape (-1/4) (77 Active Points); Conditional Power Power does not work in Ubiquitous Circumstances (Wagons only; -2), No Range (-1/2)

 

Bigger on the Inside: Area Of Effect (3 2m Areas; Original area; +1/2), Fixed Shape (-1/4), Area Of Effect (9 2m Areas; Expanded area; +1), Fixed Shape (-1/4) for up to 25 Active Points of Wagons, Affects Desolidified Any form of Desolidification (+1/2), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Difficult To Dispel (x16 Active Points; +1) (75 Active Points); Conditional Power Power does not work in Ubiquitous Circumstances (Wagons only; -2)

 

Buy Size with Invisible Power Effect. That's how it was done in the 5E Ultimite Vehicles.

You mean Growth?

Bigger on the Inside: Growth (5-8m tall, 3-4m wide), Inobvious Effect On Target (+1/4) (62 Active Points); Limited Power Power loses about two-thirds of its effectiveness (Size Only; -1 1/2)

 

Annoyingly, Invisible Power Effects doesn't allow you to choose "No Change" for the power itself, so I had to Custom Modifier an IPE for "Inobvious Effect On Target". And then I removed anything that wasn't size.

[bigbywolfe]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

You mean Growth?

Pretty sure he didn't mean Growth, he meant Size just as he said. When building a vehicle or base you buy its Size...

[Narf the Mouse]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

Pretty sure he didn't mean Growth' date=' he meant Size just as he said. When building a vehicle or base you buy its Size...[/quote']

Oh, right. Didn't get much sleep last night.

 

...I just opened up a Vehicle sheet in Hero Designer and Size cannot be bought with Invisible Power Effects because "Size is already Invisible"?

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

Then there must be another way to build something bigger than it looks.

 

Then again adventurers can live in what are essentially horse-drawn cottages, should they so wish. (I'm thinking "caravans", but that term has a different, distinct meaning in most fantasy settings).

[Narf the Mouse]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

Then there must be another way to build something bigger than it looks.

 

Then again adventurers can live in what are essentially horse-drawn cottages, should they so wish. (I'm thinking "caravans", but that term has a different, distinct meaning in most fantasy settings).

...What, "Gypsies"? *Confused*

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

...What' date=' "Gypsies"? *Confused*[/quote']

 

I was thinking more along the lines of camel trains.

[Matt Holck]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

buy the vehicle as a base with +30 is in it's own pocket dimension

pay for base size

create an extra-dimensional gate to the base vehicle that happens to be the smaller wagon on the outside

[Narf the Mouse]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

I was thinking more along the lines of camel trains.

My other thought was merchant caravans. So...Probably not a default definition.

[bigbywolfe]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

Oh, right. Didn't get much sleep last night.

 

...I just opened up a Vehicle sheet in Hero Designer and Size cannot be bought with Invisible Power Effects because "Size is already Invisible"?

 

Keep in mind that, while highly accurate, HD is not "the rules". The Invisible Power Effect version is in published material (granted it's 5E material) and that trumps a HD mistake. Unless of course they intentionally disallowed that in 6E, but I doubt it.

[Narf the Mouse]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

Keep in mind that' date=' while highly accurate, HD is not "the rules". The Invisible Power Effect version is in published material (granted it's 5E material) and that trumps a HD mistake. Unless of course they intentionally disallowed that in 6E, but I doubt it.[/quote']

I'm aware that HD is not the rules. I thought it was post-worthy anyway.

[IndianaJoe3]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

(I'm thinking "caravans"' date=' but that term has a different, distinct meaning in most fantasy settings).[/quote']

 

I think your use is a Britishism. I picked up on it, but I've heard it used on Top Gear.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: I fixed your wagon! (Or rathere building a special one)

 

I think your use is a Britishism. I picked up on it' date=' but I've heard it used on [i']Top Gear[/i].

 

I think you're right. Bernie Taupin (Elton John's lyricist) used it in a song on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, which is where I seem to remember it from.