My Utlima OD&D Campaign To-Do List

I've been thinking a great deal about my Ultima OD&D campaign the last few days, but I haven't been able to find time to actually sit down and work on it. I have, at least, settled on a setting: Britannia as expressed in Ultima VI (specifically, right after the Avatar sends the Codex into the Vortex). I think this is an interesting time in Britannia's history; there is a great deal of rebuilding to be done, a new race and civilization (the Gargoyles) with which to reconcile, and Sir Cabrius' journey into the Great Stygian Abyss in the near future. Plus, it gives me an excuse to make gargoyles a playable race (and class).

Side note: Interestingly, I'm not the only one who likes the idea of  running a sandbox game set in the Ultima milieu.  Chgowiz, of the Old Guy RPG Blog (which I recently, happily started following) is working on a full-blown Ultima RPG set against Ultima I-III. I'm really looking forward to seeing his finished product, not the least because I hope I can steal some of it. I'm really sad I can't make GenCon this year; I would have loved to try to weasel my way into his play-test. Anyway, he has a great set of 'blog posts on the Ultima RPG that are worth visiting.

I'm waiting for my White Box and Moldvay Basic to arrive in the mail before I settle on a ruleset. (My Cook E xpert came in this week.) I'm leaning toward using Labyrinth Lord with a heap of tweaks, many of which would push it back towards the White Box/S&W (such as removing the Thief class). More on that next week, hopefully.

Anyway, on to the point of this 'post. As I said, I've been thinking about the Ultima campaign pretty much non-stop the last two days. So I have the start of a to-do list running about my head that I need to get down before it runs further than I can catch. Here's what I have so far:

• Design rules for playing gargoyles
• Write down the competency (skill) adjudication framework I've been using with S&W
• Sketch the town of Moonglow
• Sketch the first level of Deceit
• Build a hex map for Moonglow's and Deceit's islands
• Create a rumors/town talk table for Moonglow that will provide hooks for the islands (and a few beyond, particularly Britain)
• Create Moonglow and environs random encounter tables
• Create a first level Deceit random encounter table
• Decide whether to adapt OD&D magic to Britannia or Britannia magic to OD&D; I'm leaning toward the latter, as the Ultima magic system holds a special place in my heart
• Design some Ultima-ish treasure for levels 1-3
• Figure out what the economy is going to look like, and what changes I'll need to make to the money system, existing treasure tables, equipment tables, etc.
• Decide how to represent the classic Ultima classes (Bard, Druid, Paladin, Ranger, Shepherd, and Tinker) as minimal sub-classes
• Decide where clerics fit in (I'm leaning toward making paladins straight cleric or sub-classes clerics; same for druids)
• Figuring out to what extent I'll let the players use Moongates for travel
• Sketching out the location, activities, and agendas for the "celebrities" of Britannia (Iolo, Shamino, Dupree, and many others); if I know my players, they're going to go looking for them 

Hmmm, I think that list grew while writing it. Regardless, if I can knock down a few of these over the next two weeks we can at least get the campaign started. I can't wait.