D@W Campaigns: Possible House Rules

To summarize the previous post about why the Campaigns rules in Chapter 3 were difficult for me to use:

First, too many low-success recon checks slow down game play, and so the game over-invests in maintenance activities that don't involve players. Second, the modifiers that are present skew the dice roll results strongly toward one end of the spectrum, making them too predictable.

Looking at the table of recon modifiers, they fall into three general categories:

• Symmetric modifiers that affect both armies equally (distance, size, terrain)
• Asymmetric modifiers that affect just one side (magic, air, spies)
• Anti-symmetric modifiers that affect both sides equally but inversely (leadership, screening, familiarity)

For my own reference tables, I'll probably rearrange the modifiers in this order.

In principle, size and terrain could be asymmetric, but often they are not because both sides will seek to use them in similar ways. If there's forest around, both sides will hide in it. In a balanced game sides have similar sizes, and if there's an advantage to breaking down into sub-armies, then both sides will break down. In particular, they tend to both result in negative modifiers that make the majority of rolls almost useless (nothing but a 10+, or 11+, or even 12+ will find).

My first proposal is to turn the size modifiers into range modifiers, instead of dice roll modifiers. I would also make them explicitly symmetric, so that both the searching army and the opposing army would get the modifier of the smaller of the two. Then negative modifiers in these categories would simply suppress any long-range dice rolls involving small forces! The base range would be 3 24-mile super-hexes (that is, 12 6-mile hexes), and would range between 1 super-hex (for a -2 modifier with the smaller side under 600 troops) up to 6 super-hexes (for a +3 modifier with both sides over 72,000 troops).

To me, it makes sense for this modifier to be symmetrical and to affect range. Not only is a small force harder to find until it gets close, but it also can't spare as many soldiers to function as deep penetration scouts, and so the ones it can spare will cover a proportionally smaller area.

Also, one of the stranger effects of the current approach is that it is much easier to get a count of the number/type/strength of units in an army when that army is large, instead of when it is small. That seems backward, in that a small army should be easier to scout once it is discovered. That is, if you only see a couple hundred troops, it's easy to conclude "They're all orcs!", but if you see a hundred-thousand troops, all you can say is "The battalion closest to me looked like orcs, and beyond that, they were just an endless field of countless helmets and banners". Locating and evaluating an opposing army are distinct functions, and making size into a range modifier emphasizes their independence.

My second proposal is to remove the distance-between-armies modifiers from the roll itself, and allow it to only affect the recon result indirectly through the Degree of Success results. In effect, this modifier is currently being applied in two ways, since it both reduces success chance (on the roll) and then also changes what it means to have a "success" (on the results table). This is creating unnecessary overhead. If you want range to have strong penalties, it would make more sense to just confine it to one of these two places but intensify the consequences. That is, you could either double the roll penalty, but collapse "Proximity of Armies" to a single row, or else remove the roll penalty but make the variation with proximity more severe.

I think I like the latter option better, although I think distance effects might be too strong already, so the best option might be to just drop distance modifiers to the roll entirely. The advantage of keeping it on the Results table (instead of the roll) is that it doesn't create the too-frequent skew toward "Catastrophe" results.

The benefit of both proposals is that they eliminate effects that tend to push the 2d6 roll out of the balanced range 2-12, and skew it strongly toward one end. This increases the uncertainty of results, since players will have fewer expectations about whether they should be routinely falling on one end or the other. Instead of one or two reasonable outcomes, the full spectrum of five outcomes (from Catastrophe to Major Success) will seem plausible in most cases. If they are skewed, it will mostly be on account of hidden variables, like which side has more cavalry or better leadership.

This makes the Catastrophe result meaningful again! Instead of showing up over 50% of the time due to stacked negative size/distance modifiers, it will again become something rare and exciting, as players will really be unsure whether they have a Major Success or a Catastrophe.

D@W Campaigns: Playtest Thoughts

This weekend was the fourth time I've run something out of the pre-release rules for Autarch's Domains at War, and the first time I've tried to use the operational-scale movement system from Campaigns. While I thought all the rules for the tactical system all worked fairly well, I still have some reservations about how the movement and recon system is being implemented.

Some aspects of the system are satisfying. The quick resolution system for combat was straightforward, and resulted in some nontrivial tactical choices. And it was fun seeing the invasion of an enemy domain trigger a morale check that resulted in an unexpected peasant uprising.

Here are a few criticisms:

1. The effects of splitting armies aren't well-described. The rules mostly assume that each player runs a single army, with a single general. There's one mention of the option of breaking an army into divisions to prevent from suffering the size-based movement penalty for marching with a very long column. The only advice given there is to treat each division as "an army, for movement purposes", which I guess means that it continues to be a single army for initiative, supply and recon purposes (?).

But there are many other reasons to want to break up any army into smaller components and move them separately. Cavalry can cover much more ground, and effectively run away from almost anything that chases them. Arriving on any new map, the logical approach is to scout it out rapidly with multiple cavalry forces. This creates lots of little fast-moving army groups, and makes it obligatory to resolve action on the day-scale, instead of the week-scale.

Do they each get separate recon rolls? Separate initiative rolls? Do they form their own individual vanguards and rearguards? The rules are mostly silent about this. If the answer is "well, obviously yes", then it feels almost mandatory to break down every army into its component divisions, to give them all lots of extra recon roll chances and maximize movement flexibility. This is bad, because...

2. Recon rolls are extremely time consuming. On an average map, there are probably a dozen domains within four 24-mile hexes of any army. This means that any time a player army moves, the referee is effectively making two dozen rolls behind a hidden screen. Each roll has at least five different modifier types applied to it, and they all need to be calculated separately. This amounts to about two minutes of furious dice rolling every time a player finishes moving. A player move itself rarely takes more than a minute, so the player-to-GM time ratio is something like 2-to-1. That is, for every 20 minutes of actually doing stuff, the players need to spend 40 minutes listening to me mutter at dice!

This would be fine if the recon rolls routinely had an interesting effect, but instead...

3. Most long-range recon rolls repeatedly generated the worst possible outcome. With a small forward cavalry force roaming around the board for other similarly small domain garrisons at the maximum possible range, the most common situation was a -1 or -2 penalty for size, and a -3 or -4 penalty for distance, and often also a -1 for terrain. On a dice roll of 2d6, this results in the average roll of "7" being converted into a 2, and anything lower becoming less than a 2. This is supposedly a recon "Catastrophe". In the rules-as-written, this is described as a situation where the judge is supposed to generate a "fake Major Success" result, pretending that the result is a brilliant recon breakthrough and reporting lots of false information.

But the idea that a modified 2 could be "disguised" as a modified 12 to fool players isn't very plausible. If you have any negative modifiers, a modified 12 ("Major Success") is totally impossible, even as a modified 2 becomes quite likely. So all of those supposed Major Success results (and you'll get a half-dozen a turn, from all those enemy armies at max range!) are instantly recognizable as fakes. I pretty quickly realized I would need to just replace them with a neutral "nothing found" result.

Even with that, the bottom line is that there's ton of rolling (while players sit around doing nothing), but virtually nothing happens from it.

4. Small groups keep passing like ships in the night. Even when directly adjacent, there's still fairly high probability of small scout forces (of a company or two) getting several "Marginal Success" results in a row, due to the -2 modifier for size plus a -1 modifier for woods terrain. A "Marginal Success" only gives a rough estimate of enemy position. This results in scouts circling one another, but never finding exactly where to go to initiate attack. In fact, I had armies literally running through one another's hexes multiple times. The rules only specify that they fight a battle if they end movement in one another's hexes, so the battle would never actually happen until someone got a "Success" (which for me usually required a natural 10). I regard all this as an unfortunate artifact of timescale granularity.

This is a subtype of a larger issue...

5. Lots of dramatic events are hidden from player observation. In a standard RPG, the enemy forces are constantly moving in plain sight, causing dramatic tension even as players are waiting to take the next turn. Will the giant spider fail its attack rolls? Will everyone make saves against the fireball? But in a double-blind system, everything is under the fog of war. That means that the tension of having lots of armies creeping around a map is mostly lost, aside from occasional sonar pings that amount to "something is somewhere, but you don't know what or where".


Next up, I'll try to make some suggestions for how I'd modify the system to reduce the severity of some of these issues.

Green Pass Campaign: What The Locals Know

After successfully inciting a revolt in the valleys of the Clutch, the cavalry officers of the Briarwood Irregulars are able to piece together the following rumors about the region and its inhabitants:

• The peasant militia is willing to defend the region from other attacks and function as an alternate supply base. They don't want to leave their homes undefended, so they won't go beyond their own borders.

• The households of the region are alarmingly depopulated of young adults. They're being shipped off to other locations by the hobgoblins as "tribute" to satisfy various treaties. Most families have lost at least two or three children as a result of this policy, and would be grateful if any of them could be located and rescued (but they aren't optimistic about the chances).

• A tribe of saurians (lizardmen with a bit of draconic blood) lives in the southern marshes. They aren't very numerous or wealthy, and look ill-at-ease when away from their native grounds. They worship a white dragon as their local demigod, which seems odd because white dragons are a northerly species. They disproportionately demand the pick of all the girls as their tribute from the hobgoblins. None have ever returned. The saurians always look well-fed.

• There are a number of gnoll campgrounds to the southeast. They migrate from time to time, and none of them is ever strong enough to force the others into a single political organization. They demand the strongest children and train them to become fanatical warriors using ruthless techniques, then rent them out as mercenaries. It might be possible to infiltrate the camp with a spy posing as a slave-soldier and either (1) assassinate the commander, or (2) play them off against one another using deceit and misinformation, or (3) something else even more clever. Alternatively, since none of them are individually very strong, they could just be crushed one by one. Just move fast, before they have time to unite against a common threat.

• The hobgoblins used to sell off their surplus peasant families to more distant domains farther to the east, but recently all contact with them has been interrupted by the arrival of elvish patrols along the river. The elves are a wild woodland sort who don't look kindly on outsiders.

• Dwarves live in the northern mountains, and keep to themselves. They hate everyone in the region for mostly understandable reasons, but especially resent the arrival of the elves -- who now stand between them and some other old city that was stolen from them by invaders, but won't help them or even grant them passage.

Green Pass Campaign: Expedition to the Savage Reaches

October 3 to 20, Caudex Annales 70 AUP

The Savage Reaches, a windswept tableland above the cliffs of the Mottled Cliffs,have long been outside the reach of Durnovar maritime power. The wild mountains to the south breed great numbers of warring beastmen tribes, and rivers from the region flow mostly north and parallel to the coast, through densely forested land, for hundreds of miles. Undaunted by wind or warbands, venturers supplied out of the river harbor of Saddleport resolved to march south along the precipice, drawing supplies up the rising cliff face from boats below with winched ropes and pulleys.

Scale: 1 hex = approx 250 miles ("Nebraska")

A privately funded enterprise of Thorley Acquisitions and Trade, some 29 platoons of mercenaries styling themselves "The Briarwood Irregulars"  arrived at the cliffside camp of Fort Diffident, a makeshift supply depot carved into a partially excavated hillside left from some ancient quarry operation, and newly reinforced with a barricade of cypress timbers. A force of nearly 1400 men set off eastward toward the mountains, portaging overland an assortment of disassembled light artillery pieces.

Cavalry scouts of the Second Cavalry Company under Sir Charles Thorgood reported observations of trampled vegetation, grazed meadows, and cut wood to the northeast, of varying ages and thereby suggesting the periodic passage of patrols of horsemen around some designated perimeter. A cautious advance through the mouth of a forested valley confirmed habitations extending up the valley, a meager collection of badly maintained hovels overcrowded with many ill-treated serfs.

Upon the arrival of such a splendidly-armed and gaily-bannered knight as Sir Charles, the local populace at once saw an opportunity to accelerate the schedule of a long-planned revolt against their lords. Taking up modified forks and scythes, they rushed from house to house, announcing the urgency of the hour with bells and horns. Gathering in the valley, they presented their host to the Briarwood riders as fellows in arms, and insisted on a swift assault against the longhouses of Baron Vosskoff and his half-breed mercenaries, before they could send for aid from their allies to the south.

Bolstered by the arrival of the armored First Cavalry Company under personal command of expedition financier Adrian Thorley, the force surrounded the walled battlements of the Vosskoff estate, and prepared for the arrival of artillery to reduce the walls. The progress of artillery was greatly slowed by the dense woodland, but proved to be unnecessary in any event. Unwilling to die as rats cornered in a crib, the hobgoblins swarmed forth en masse, eager to put the long-subjugated peasants back in their rightful place.

A brief but furious engagement saw several hundred peasants fall before the hobgoblin cavalry, but the waves of opposition from all directs proved too overwhelming for the center of the hobgoblin lines. Collapsing backward toward the fortress proved to be of no avail, as elements of heavy cavalry moved to isolate the troops and drive them further into the mountains. A daylong pursuit of the final remnants of the fleeing Vosskoff cavalry force left no survivors, aside from a few prisoners from among the officer corps who were retained for questioning. Many peasants took great delight in turning the tools of their long servitude into implements for the harvest of necks instead of grain.

With many of the local workmen being of third generation from the original captives of hobgoblin raids, most of the liberated peasants had nowhere to return, and requested that they be allowed to remain in the Clutch under free rule. A magistrate was appointed from among the household servants of Vosskoff, and Thorley Acquisitions offered a trade pact on favorable terms to supply the region with many crafted goods previously available only to the hobgoblin rulers by participation in the slave trade. Of the close to 40,000 gold in the longhouse coffers, nearly a third was left to the new administration to disburse to the survivors of the battle.

In addition to the balance of funds, Thorley and his officers divided amongst themselves the various personal treasures of Baron Vosskoff, including an Atlantean dagger of unknown provenance but with the name "Thornkiss" engraved on the scabbard. The Briarwood company then turned to pondering fresh rumors of a saurian force mustering from the southern swamps...

Order of Battle - Briarwood Irregulars

Scale: 1 hex = 6 miles ("Manhattan")

• 1st Cavalry Company (Sir Humphrey Wilson, 5th level venturer), four platoons: 3x Heavy Cavalry (1 destroyed), 1x Horse Archers
• Peasant uprising (Adrian Thorley), forty platoons: 40x Militia (12 destroyed)  

Scouting Group:

• 2nd Cavalry Company (Sir Charles Thorgood, 5th level fighter), four platoons: 3x Light Cavalry, 1x Horse Archers

Order of Battle - The Vosskoff Clutch

• Mobile Company (Borys Vosskoff, 9th level thief), four platoons: 2x Hobgoblin Light Cavalry, 1x Hobgoblin Horse Archers, 1x Hobgoblin Medium Cavalry (all destroyed)
• Garrison Company (Chief Grelb, 5 HD hobgoblin), five platoons:  3x Hobgoblin Light Infantry, 2x Hobgoblin Longbow (all destroyed)

Spoils of Battle

• The dagger Thornkiss (dagger +2), Leather Armor +1, Longsword +1, and a Ring of Protection +1
• Battlefield spoils worth 6495 gold: 3247 divided by troops, 1623 to each officer (Adrian Thorley and Humphrey Wilson)
• Stronghold spoils worth 40,000 gold: 20,000 divided by troops, 10,000 to each officer
• Treasure experience of 46495 experience points: 4 exp to each soldier, and 11,623 exp to each officer
• Command experience worth an additional 5445 experience points: 2722 to each officer

Total Treasure Gained

•  Adrian Thorley
• Thornkiss (dagger +2), Leather Armor +1
• 11,623 gold
  
• 14,345 experience (26,545 / 24,400) -> Level 6
• Humphrey Wilson
• Ring of Protection +1
• 11,623 gold
  
• 14,345 experience (30,345 / 32,000)
• Charles Thorgood
• Longsword +1

Green Pass Campaign: The Savage Reaches

 Petty Warlords of the Savage Reaches

The Savage Reaches lie only a few hundred miles from the City of Durnovar, directly across the straights. The lack of a sheltered harborage and the northern upflow of rivers away from this land, however, has resulted in little interest in settling this territory. The quality of the land on the boundary between the Elysion forests and the southern wastes is relatively poor, and mountain passes through the region are difficult to maintain and easily threatened by bandits and worse.

The principal inhabitants of the region are various degenerate bestial races of monstrous intelligence, preying on travelers and on one another. With little aptitude for honest labor, these creatures have turned to importing slave labor from unscrupulous pirates, and over several generations have developed a native population of ill-treated peasantry. The Crown of Durnovar grows inpatient with this continued affront to justice, and ordains that able-bodied knights and lords-militant be notified that they may discharge their yearly obligations of fealty and service by liberating any of these lands as have fallen under such unwholesome dominion.

The following minor baronies and city-states have been reputed to be influential in the region:

• The Vosskoff Crutch, a notorious band of human and hobgoblin miscreants under the command of a master thief. Their woodland-based network is implicated in all manner of trafficking in illegal goods and captives.

• Pallid's Abode, a dismal swamp infested with saurian crossbreeds serving the famed albino black dragon, Pallid.

• The Forked, Middle, and Upriver Lashcamps, a cruel collective of slowly migrating gnoll encampments devoted to training slave-soldiers and inclined to various forms of recreational torture, of no certain leadership.

• The Clench, a lair of trolls served by countless kobold minions who extort road fees from travelers, dragging away uncooperative victims to become choice entrees in the cannibalistic feasts of the troll warchief.

• The Citadel of Gash, a remote goblin mountain redoubt that serves as the seat of power for Baron Gash, a scar-covered bugbear of immense size and dubious sanity.

• Certain outposts of dwarves and elves who, although not themselves of evil repute, are at war with one another and might prove to regard human interference in their disputes as unwelcome. A savvy diplomat might be able to secure the aid of one or the other, but surely not both!

Provided that any human captives are released from their bonds and allowed to return to their own ancestral homelands, the liberators of the Savage Reaches are entitled to all revenue of their crusade obtained by looting and pillaging the strongholds and tenured lands of such warlords as dwell in these domains, as well as the spoils of battle.

This is playtest scenario for the Domains at War: Campaigns rules covering operational-scale movement and fast combat resolution. Each player will get the ability to control one or two divisions in a small army on the platoon scale. The scenario will run until the army encounters an opposing army that is within a factor of 1.5 of its own power, based on battle rating. Then the playtest will conclude, and the following week's tactical scenario will be based on the order of battle from this encounter!

Although this is still the playtest stage, I'm going to rule that any surviving divisional commanders of this expedition are eligible to be carried over as henchmen/vassals into the main campaign, and can bring with them any magical items they win. Feel free to generate starting character stats (using 3d6) and 5th-level hitpoints (you can max out one die to represent "1st level"), and then pick a character class off the hero list from the file in the previous post. (I didn't include the lengthy lists for proficiencies and spells, but I can provide those on Saturday if you like.) Otherwise, I'll provide a few pregen options as before.

Post any questions below, if you have them.

D@W Playtest Documents

Here's an electronic copy of the D@W playtest documents I've been using:

• A one-sheet condensed listing of all the Adventurer Conqueror King hero classes that are eligible to serve as division commanders
• A platoon-scale D@W: Battles table compilation
• Some company-scale tables containing the first playtest scenario
• The second playtest scenario
• The third playtest scenario

Both of these files were created by me, although elements of the tables themselves were drawn from various portions of D@W. I'll try to update this list with additional useful files in the future.

Green Pass Campaign: Assault on the Umeskelion Outskirts

First wave charge

Note: This battle was called early due to time, at a dramatic but ambiguous moment. The Durnovaric commander had been killed, necessitating a morale check for the D.E.F. forces, but the ogres had suffered the incapacitation of their own leader by a stinking cloud. This would allow a coup d'grace in the next round (from either adjacent infantry), based on my reading of the ACKS core rules. Then the battle would quickly have become very unpredictable, with both sides routing multiple units off the map at once and struggling to hold command long enough to continue the fight. While Durnovar had an inferior position in the casualty count, the poor commanders of the beastmen would have made them more vulnerable to morale check failures.

In the end, I decided to call it a "mutual rout" result, and assume that the expeditionary force was able to mostly regroup and limp home after losing their tower fortress instead of being trapped and eliminated. I also randomly resolved the fates of the various commanders involved by rolling on the "Mortal Wounds" and "Tampering with Mortality" tables.

September 30, Caudex Annales 70 AUP

Mastadons push over a wall.

The final confrontation at the fallen city of Umeskelion was little delayed by the temporary disorder of the Undying Legions. Heavier support elements moved in to replace the routed orcs, and took up an encirclement around the garrison. Before the last cavalry had returned from the pursuit of the fleeing orcs, the main body of the assault force begin a march in earnest to the watchtower overlook north of the city gates. After multiple charges and barrages, the walls were broken and several human formations were shattered. With a final desperate spell, the elven commander rendered Warchief Khazay unfit for command, providing enough of a delay for a full evacuation of the crumbling tower. While the survivors made their exit, the remains of the palisade were systematically smashed by a thorough application of hill giant clubs.

Councilor Laurila was impaled by collapsing palisade timbers, trampled multiple times by an enraged seven-ton mastadon, and subsequently gored by an iron-spiked tusk and several enthusiastic hobgoblin spears. A restore life and limb spell returned her to the mortal realm to enjoy 33 days of recuperative bed rest, but with weird, lingering side effects of a faintly magical nature. Various portions of her body were thereafter subject to erratic real-time growth spurts of a reliably embarrassing character, ones chiefly involving the rapid lengthening of hair - and not always, it might be uncomfortably noted, the hair originating from the top of her head.

She survived the initial fall. Not so much the subsequent trampling.

Duke Conylt was carried away by playful wyverns and dropped down a gulley, landing in a dense patch of gorse briars. His broken body was recovered and nursed back to consciousness with the best restorative arts available to the elite nobility, none the worse for its brief aerial misadventures.

Warchief Khazay suffered nothing more than a loss of face, recovering immediately after the dissipation of the fumes despite a reckless swipe by Knight-Captain Robart. He immediately set to work convincing the hill giants to conduct a sensible pursuit, a concept the giants found unnecessarily complicated after the more satisfying experience of hitting large stationary targets with clubs.

Order of Battle - D.E.F.

• 1st Cavalry Division (Duke Conylt-x), five units: Heavy Assault Company A - Cataphract; Light Reconnaissance Company B (Sir Robart) - Light Cavalry; Armored Strike Company - Veteran Heavy Cavalry-x; Tower Garrisons A-x (Squire Ranlyn-x) and B - Crossbow
• 1st Infantry Division (Lord Proprietor Dermot Bag Kellag), three units: Bulwark Companies A-x, B, and C - Heavy Infantry
• Misvale Elven Regiment (Councilor Laurila-x), four units: Lancer Companies A-x, B, and C; Warden Companies A - Light Composite Bow

"x" denotes destroyed

Order of Battle - Legions of the Undying

• 1st Smasher Division (Warchief Khazay), six units: Ogre Skullmauler Companies A; Goblin Wolfbrawler Company A; Giant Mangler Companies A and B; Wyvern Flight Alpha
• 1st Shrieker Division (Chief Awitar), six units: Orc Eyegouger Companies A, B, and C, Orc Gutsticker Companies A and B
• 1st Stomper Division (Engineer Ursk), six units: War Mastadons Alf and Brom; Heavy Catapult; Light Catapults A and B

How Twisty Are Rivers?

The River Jurua, in the Amazon Basin.

The objection has been raised (Hi Kyle!) that my attempt at river generation from a random walk is producing too many twists and that the rivers should be straightened out. I should note that the
example I posted was more twist-laden than a few other attempts I made, and it's quite possible to create a fairly straight section of river as well. Still, let's take a little time look at how to evaluate river bends in terms of their realism.

There are really two relevant parameters for classifying the meanders of rivers: sinuousity, and curvature radius. The former tells us how much curvature is present, and the latter tells us the distance scale on which that curvature exists. Most river valleys are relatively straight or gently bending, and so it is only the river itself that is subject to meandering within the valley.

Here's a plot of river sinuosity as a function of the local land gradient.

http://hydrosciences.colorado.edu/symposium/abstract_details_archive.php?abstract_id=183

Unsurprisingly, the more swiftly the river is descending, the less likely it is to meander. Values range between 1.2 and 2.4, with most rivers clustering above or below the value 1.5 in temperate zone. (The other cluster up above 2.0 consists of rivers in tropical rainforests.) The mean central angle of a river with a sinuosity of 1.5 is between 150 and 180 degrees. That's considerably snakier than a sine curve!

The mean radius of curvature is a little harder to explore, given more limited data. Here's the mean radius of curvature for the Colorado River:

This is roughly in the neighborhood of 1 km, suggesting that river curves are features on the scale of about a mile or so. This is, naturally enough, the distance scale of the river valley bed.

The natural conclusions are:

• Rivers curve quite a bit, frequently making the equivalent of near U-turns.
• The distance scale for these turns is fairly narrow, in particular, much narrower than 6 miles, making these features wash out except on a lower-scale map.

From a game-map standpoint this creates a dilemma, in that a map with granularity of 6 miles can't really represent the lower-scale sinuosity of the river within its bed. It seems important to be able to explicitly locate places where land is surrounded on three sides by a river, for the sake of building your own Conwy! I hate to reduce the presence of bends to something abstractly "hidden" in a hex that shows a straight river, which takes away from the fun of trying to place a stronghold location on the hex map by looking at features on the map itself.

There's a similar problem associated with the difficulty of locating a "rock dome" suitable for a high castle. You can just say that any castle in the mountains is on a dome, but most castles were built on isolated hills and domes that were not otherwise close to other mountainous features. Moreover, since rivers don't go in mountain hexes, this would make it impossible to have an elevated castle on a river (like Conwy).

Thoughts?

Please Note, We're Playing Backward!

For the last couple weeks we've been playtesting Domains at War as a way to learn the system well enough for a campaign game. This is particularly important, since I'm supposed to know enough about the system to function as a referee (strategy-game GM) for the campaign, and design relatively fair and interesting opponents for players.

I want to emphasize that what we've been doing, playing it as a one-on-one tactical miniatures game, isn't really the purpose of the system. Peter was saying to me today that it's a shame that this is "just a two-player", which is completely the wrong impression!

First, the whole concept of a strategy RPG is that, at least to a certain extent, players are working together cooperatively to explore a world. So a battle would usually consist of a "player side" of 1-5 players, each controlling a commander/division, versus a "non-player side" of various antagonists. It's an exactly analogue of a single-character RPG, with the "character" being replaced by a "commander and troops", and exploring the "dungeon" replaced by exploring the "world map". Same basic procedures, though -- for example, each player getting a turn in an initiative sequence, one at a time, during battle.

Granted, there's plenty of potential for players to turn on one another, or to be tempted by evil into allying with the forces of darkness, or other events that can put them at one another's throats. And there's also a tradition of letting an uninvolved player take over for playing an NPC (or in a strategy game, "non-player realm"), to participate in a battle that doesn't involve his own kingdom.

But that's still a departure from the basic theme of the game, which is intended to be "player-vs-environment" instead of "player-vs-player".

Second, Walley and I have been playing everything with normal sides reversed, with me playing the human/demihuman "Lawful" side and Walley playing the monsters. That's just what Walley chose to do the first day when I gave him the option, so we ran with it!

In general, the conventional fantasy theme of the system is "Weaker human-elf-dwarf-etc armies use superior tactics and legendary heroes to overcome hordes of more powerful monsters." It's intentionally promoting asymmetric capabilities in the same way that most RPGs encourage individually weak heroes to team up and tackle powerful foes. In some ways, this kind of command system is a detailed implementation of the "Mook Chivalry" trope, where overlords send out their infinite waves of minions just a few at a time. Walley can attest to the constant frustration of playing the disorganized mook waves!

There are some rules in the system for playing a "Chaotic realm" on the side of evil, but it's not necessarily encouraged from a balance standpoint. Having both elite player-classed commanders and also 7 HD troll armies, all at once, would be a pretty potent advantage! You can add some (non-evil) fantastic creatures to a Lawful player army by using a detailed system of hiring trainers, etc, but there are substantial expenses involved. This is also an incentive for exploration elements of play. (Want triceratops-mounted cavalry? Send off an expedition to the Isle of Dread!)

Square Hole, Round Peg: How To Do Strongholds

Carisbrooke: More square than hexy!

Since time immemorial (or at least since Dave Arneson's Blackmoor), it's been traditional to represent castles using the same quadralinear grid paper layout as the monster-infested dungeons beneath them, with a 10' = 1 grid box conversion ratio (or 5' = 1, if you use a less granular modern system). Trying to get this to work on top of a tactical hex map presents some challenges, though.

Possible solutions:

1. Design the castle directly on the hex grid with lots of abstraction about what's in each hex.
2. Design the castle on a square grid, and then modify the square grid to approximately fit the hex grid.
3. Treat the castle as a detailed mini-map, and move units from the hex map to a square map when they enter the castle.

I'm not sure which of these I like the most. It might be worth some testing.

I really rather like the idea of having little miniature castle arrangements, and moving troops off the hex map and into a platoon-scale castle setting as they breach the walls. It should be easy enough to blow up the paper counter icons included with D@W to a larger scale. But building lots of quality-looking paper castles is a substantial investment of time!

Green Pass Campaign: Pursuit Along The Viadunian Way

September 29, Caudex Annales 70 AUP

Cavalry rebuffed by ogre steel.

Reeling from a rebuff by the beastmen horde, survivors of the Battle of the Skywash fell back along the road. North of the ruins of Umeskelion, the Expeditionary Force rendezvoused with elven emissaries from the Misvale Valley under Councilor Laurila. To cover the wounded, elven guardsmen were dispatched to the rearguard and dispersed into ravines along the roadside alert for pursuers.

Expeditionary force outnumbered...

Ogre Warchief Khazay had little difficulty assembling a pursuit group of dire-wolf riders from the servitor clans, moving into the range of elven sentries while the wearied human forces set camp for the night. As battle horns sounded the call to arms, a fierce spearhead of ogres and goblins charged the center of the elven position, shattering bowmen before they could take defensive stations.

...until the human vanguard arrives.

Elven magic singed the coats of the dire wolves, frenzying them into hasty retreat. Spears in three-deep rows held the line against the massive ogre onslaught until the arrival of cavalry support. The situation remained tense until it became apparent that the human vanguard would arrive well in advance of the Legion's rearguard. Warchief Khazay slew Knight-Captain Martyn in single combat, but was swiftly avenged in a counterattack by Company B under Captain Robart. A lone formation of wyverns was blasted by spellfire, and the remaining orcs turned to flee from the thunder of charging hooves. Reports indicate Khazay has been permanently scarred by a lancestroke, and has expressed his displeasure with the tardy arrival of the forces Chief Zraqua -- expressing his recommendation for their subsequent reassignment to ogrish command with an impromptu axe-based court-martial.

Order of Battle - D.E.F.

• 1st Cavalry Division (Duke Conylt), four units: Heavy Assault Company A-r - Cataphract; Light Reconnaissance Companies A-x (Sir Martyn-x) and B (Sir Robart) - Light Cavalry
• 1st Infantry Division (Lord Proprietor Dermot Bag Kellag), six units: Bulwark Companies A, B, and C - Heavy Infantry; Armored Strike Company - Heavy Cavalry
• Misvale Elven Regiment (Councilor Laurila), four units: Lancer Companies A, B, and C; Warden Companies A-r and B-r - Light Composite Bow

"r" denotes routed
"x" denotes destroyed

Order of Battle - Legions of the Undying

• 1st Smasher Division (Warchief Khazay), six units: Ogre Skullmauler Companies A-r and B-x, Goblin Wolfbrawler Companies A-x, B-r, and C-x
• 1st Shrieker Division (Chief Awitar), six units: Orc Eyegouger Companies A-r, B-x, and C-r, Orc Gutsticker Companies A-r and B-r, Wyvern Flight Alpha
• 2nd Shrieker Division (Chief Zraqua-x), six units: Orc Eyegouger Companies A-x, B, and C, Orc Gutsticker Companies A and B, Wyvern Flight Bravo

Generating A Random Domain

One of the more enjoyable features of my old Starfire games was generating the random star systems that can be explored and colonized by your growing empire. The ACKS rules leave the nature of a ruler's starting territory intentionally vague, since exploration is something you're supposed to do directly as heroes on the way to "earning" your first stronghold. When starting a high-level game, it's important to have a good kingdom-generator that integrates with the existing rules. Here's my attempt!

The rules specify that you need a "land value" multiplier in the range 3-9, so my intent is to develop a procedure to

• generate a random piece of mapped terrain
• derive the land value from that terrain, yielding a value in that range (probably toward the higher end, since an established hero would make an intelligent pick of the best option available).

One small part of a world-map hex

Let's run through some steps in order, using graphics from Hexographer. Here's a blank hex-of-hexes (shaded), containing a total of 61 6-mile hexes for a total land area of around 2000 square miles. For sake of reference, this region is about the size of Prince Edward Island in Canada, just a bit larger than Rhode Island. This is tiny for a kingdom, but pretty substantial as the holdings of a starting baron. Of course, you won't be able to administer all this land at once, since ACKS limits the size of a personal domain to only 16 of the smaller 6-mile hexes. But it defines a region each player can carve up to create the personal domain (out the most valuable parts), and then later, some land grants for loyal vassals (out of the less valuable parts). Each world-map hex contains roughly 20-30 regions of this size, so it's sensible that multiple players could be neighbors in the same world-map hex.

Step 1: Creating a River

Most valuable land historically was close to a river for the sake of drinking water, transportation, and irrigation. I'm going to assume that any fantasy world works the same way, and that (for sake of fairness) every player should have access to a river large enough to deploy boats and sail them out to the ocean. Let's begin by starting the river in the center, to make sure it goes cleanly through the hex, and then random-walk the river out to the edges by dicing for directions.

For example, the river to the right was generated by rolling a 3, a 1, a 6, a 6, a 6, a 5, and finally a 6 to exit the region. Any results that bumped into an existing river hex (or left no legal placement for the other half of the river) were rerolled.

This gives one side of the river. Now we head back to the center and repeat the process. This is a really twisty river, and nearly half the hexes in this region will have excellent access to water. A more average result might yield a river that exits the region more quickly and leaves more non-river hexes. I would expect about 15-20 river hexes on average, out of the original 61.

This looks a little unrealistic, so let's do an artistic clean-up by drawing over the existing river in order to remove the angular corners, and then delete the angled connected-dots version. This gives a final version of the completed river.

Step 2: Adding Terrain

Terrain is going to determine land value. For starting terrain, I would say that the land along the river is developed, and contains whatever land is regarded as most valuable by a certain type of settlers. Humans would want cropland, but other fantasy races might want something else: hills for dwarves, or forest for elves. So I'll just assume that the river hexes are full of whatever land is optimal for the ruler's race. If you aren't playing a human ruler, then replace them with something more appropriate.

Next, we add the surrounding terrain. This is the type of terrain shown on the world map. In the case of Green Pass (or really, the hexes adjacent to it in Elysion), this would be forest. So all the land adjacent to river will contain forest. Finally, for regions with multiple hexes, I'll roll a random 1d6 check. On a 1-2, the forest rises up into hills and mountains. On a 3-4, it sinks down into a swamp. Otherwise, it's just a forest all the way back.

For my one region with a depth greater than one hex from the river, I get a 1. So I'll add a hills hex beyond the forest. In general, each hex adjacent to the river gets a forest, each hex adjacent to the forest gets hills, and each hex adjacent to the hills would get mountains (if I had one!) Now my map looks like this.

Step 3: Adding Resources

This map is a little boring right now. Let's add some strategic resources. Each hex might potentially contain a certain type of resource (river - fish, forest - timber, mountains - gold, etc), but they all have the effect of making that hex more valuable. To place resources, roll a 1d12, and count through each column of hexes one row at a time. For example, if I roll a 9, I count through the four hexes of the first column, and then go five hexes into the next column. There's my first resource, in the forest at the bottom of the second column! Each new resource appears 1d12 hexes beyond the previous one. With a lucky set of rolls, they could be densely packed.

Next I add some mysterious ruins. I like the idea that the ruins represent the places that the ruler explored, back when he was a wet-behind-the-ears adventurer. For this, I'll do the same thing but using a 1d20. It's quite possible that ruins might appear in the same hex as a resource (grey used for clarity if they overlap).

Here's the new result:

For even more flavor, I'm going to roll on some random tables (from Kevin Crawford's An Echo, Resounding) to give some descriptive attributes to the ruins. Then I'll give each result an in-game effect that makes the ruins valuable! My results are:

• An ancient settlement (Wealth) filled with great artworks (Social).
• An empty tower (Military) on top of rich resources (Wealth).
• Prehuman ruins (Wealth) with an ancient armory (Military).
• A crumbling fortress (Military) with a commanding location (Military).
• Another ancient settlement (Wealth) with scrolls explaining lost techniques (Wealth).

A domain that contains ruins gains benefits associated with the fame and prestige that comes from being built on glorious ruins. Each Wealth result will act as another resource. Each Social result will add another 1d10 families to population growth every month. Each Military result will grant a morale bonus to any soldiers defending the domain against an enemy invasion (the "defending homeland/sacred ground" bonus that says "Judge's discretion) on the D@W morale table).

I could roll for resources, but it's easier to just assign them logically (rivers get fish!) like Civilization does. Later I might have a longer list, for now I'll just go with:

• River/Lake/Swamp/Coast - Fish (Wealth)
• Forest - Timber (Wealth)
• Desert - Salt (Wealth)
• Grassland - Pasture (Wealth)
• Hills - Common Metals (2x Wealth and Military)
• Mountains - Precious Metals (2x Wealth and Social)

Each resource boosts supply and suppresses demand on the "Environmental Adjustments to Demand" table for trading, which means that your traders can get a discount when purchasing that good to sell to other markets (if you build a caravan or trade ship fleet).

Step 4: Placing Strongholds

The ACKS rules tell you how much of a total investment you need in stronghold construction to protect a domain of a given size. We'll assume that the area is close enough to friendly cities to count as "civilized", which means we need 15,000 gp worth of stronghold for each hex. That the cost of a small tower. If we use 16 hexes of domain (the maximum size) that will require 240,000 gp of total stronghold.

To be included in the domain, a hex must be adjacent to a stronghold of at least 15,000 value (my own house rule, since ACKS leaves building placement abstract). That means a single stronghold can only control a domain of 7 hexes, maximum. To extend beyond that requires one or more watchtowers. The total value of stronghold construction can be divided up any way desired to secure a desired number of domain hexes, although it makes sense to have at least one large central stronghold to protect the domain's leader and treasury vault's! The only constraint is that each domain hex must be adjacent to at least one stronghold structure.

Here's my result, after adding strongholds:

The main castle is on the right (on top of the ruins), and there are three other watchtowers to control the outer land holdings. You could assign them to trusted vassals as "practice domains" to allow a vassal to gain some experience managing a small piece of land. (Well, assuming he survived!) Of course, domains managed by low-level vassals get some penalties due to the reduced enthusiasm that peasants have for being placed under a junior baron.

Incidentally, the D@W rules specify that any stronghold on a river or in mountains gets certain defensive advantages against a siege. A crooked river (like the main castle above) would probably count as a peninsula, giving a larger bonus.

Step 5: Calculating Land Value

ACKS assumes that each domain has a land value between 3 and 9. To value land in a more interesting way than rolling 3d3, try this:

• Add 3 for each hex in a river, 2 for each hex adjacent to a river, and 1 for any other hex.
• Add 3 for each hex in optimal terrain (grassland for human, forest for elves, hills for dwarves), add 2 for most other hexes, but only add 1 for a swamp or desert hex.
• Add 1 for each Wealth result from resources or ruins.
• Divide the total by the number of hexes in the domain.

For example, the map above gives (11*3 + 5 * 2) + (12 *3 +4*2) + (4 + 8) = 99, and 99/16 = 6.1875. Round this off to 6.2 -- this is the land value! The various ruins will also give a morale bonus of +4 to any troops defending the domain.

This method should give most starting domains a land value close to 6, which is the average of the 3d3 random rolling method. With good resource rolls, it could trend up toward 7, but often at the cost of a spread out "gerrymandered" domain that would be harder to defend. Small domains can capitalize on including only the best concentrations of resources, which helps to balance them a bit against large ones.

Land discovered during adventuring might be worse, since it represents an unsettled wilderness. It's also going to require larger garrisons, and support fewer peasants. But it's unlimited, and free for the taking! By contrast, the land in the region above represents a one-time land grant from a generous king, and the land next door is already owned by other lords (who wouldn't part with it for anything short of a small fortune).

Domains at War: Rules I Got Wrong

During my first play-through of the Domains at War rules, I really did only a quick skim of the first couple sections of D@W: Battles. Even then, I missed a few things that now jump out on a second, closer read-through. I'm writing all these down, in hopes that I'll remember them for next time.

1. Units have individual morale modifiers based on type, just like in 80s-era D&D (or my own FF rules). For example, most cavalry gets an innate +1 or +2. These aren't mentioned on the tables that contain Rout or Morale modifiers, but they are mentioned in the text. This is pretty important for the sake of determining whether a given unit will rout, since even  +1 modifier on a 2d6 is a substantial effect.
2. Disordered units get a -2 to AC until they become ordered again during activation. This is very important when dealing with high-AC units like those blasted wyverns. Hit them once, and every additional attack against them is at a 15+ instead of a 17+.
3. Units in a division each move and attack one by one. When asked about this, I answered they all move first, and then attack all at once. Not so! You move a unit first, see if it hits with an attack, and then move the next unit, one at a time. This means that you don't even need to decide which unit to activate until you see what the last one did. Maybe not very realistic, but it does create some new strategic options. (Shoot a missile volley, if it disorganizes a target, converge on that weakened target to kill it!)
4. Units can only voluntarily retreat from the map if they reach the map edge. Since routing automatically "teleports" units off the map, I figured that voluntary retreating works the same way.
5. Units can't move through between hexes that are both adjacent to the same unit. So you can't move around to attack a flank, once you're already in front of a unit. This is true even if the hex isn't threatened (in front of) the enemy unit.
6. Crossbows (unlike other ranged weapons) can only be used by a unit that stands still, not by one that marches.
7. Units that ready to attack not only get a free attack at anything that attacks them or a neighbor, they can also force that attacking unit to switch to them! This creates another reason to use the "phalanx" units to merge polearm infantry.
8. Units cannot focus-fire their targets, if another target is available. That is, if at the end of movement you have the choice of attacking a unit that hasn't been attacked that round, you must attack it (instead of that badly damaged unit next to it). This is another way that strong units can protect weaker units by remaining adjacent.

Of the things above, the one that makes me a little uncomfortable is the business about moving to the map edge to retreat. It's odd that an involuntary rout is a much more efficient way to get off the battlefield than a voluntary decision to leave. It creates a perverse incentive to find clever ways to fail a morale check, in order to whisk away your valuable leaders and elite troops to safety. I think I would rule for consistency that a unit may elect to automatically fail a shock/morale throw in order to voluntarily rout.

I also posted to the designer forums, to ask about the consequences of running away from a battle. In a real campaign, there are plenty of times when this would be appealing to avoid being crushed in an imbalanced fight. It didn't seem right that this seemed to be so easy, just by stepping back off the map at the start of a battle.

The answer is that, in the Campaign system, a lost battle immediately triggers a loyalty check by all fleeing units, in addition to the usual pursuit rolls. This is like a morale check, but results in the permanent desertion of the unit. Note that as a special perk religious commanders (cleric, paladin, etc) get a small number of absolutely loyal followers who can run from any battle (or endure other calamities) without needing to make this check! They would make pretty good scout or guerrilla warfare units, I think.

Green Pass Campaign: Post Battle Analysis

The Campaigns book (the other half of the rules, covering recruiting, training, supply, and other operational components of the game) includes a fast-combat resolution method. This is nice in a campaign game to avoid having to play out totally imbalanced fights. They can instead be approximated by a few dice rolls. But is also provides a good aid for designing scenarios, which would have been helpful last night.
For the battle last night, the D.E.F. forces were rated at a combined Battle Rating of 56, and the Legions of the Undying at 93 or so (depending on which units were counted as excluded from command limits). In particular, the two wyvern units were individually worth BR 30 each, suggesting that they could have even won the field single-handed (which is nearly what happened). A fair fight based on BR would probably have been to include just one wyvern unit, instead of two. (And then to not be stupid about targeting it.)

The Campaigns book also lists the consequences of victory and defeat in a full campaign game:

Time to plunder!

• Units that are destroyed or routed result in some number of deaths, but some number of mere injuries. Any destroyed unit has a 50% survival rate of lightly-wounded members, which allows two such units to be combined to reconstitute a full unit after a week (or alternately, them to be refilled from a reserve, or added to the reserve themselves). In a defeat, however, these survivors are claimed as prisoners of war.
• Routed units fare even better. Only 25% of them are lost, and the others escape to rejoin the retreating army. These lost units are prisoners if their side loses, or deserters otherwise. Allowing your army to be routed out of a losing battle is often a sensible decision. ("Every man for himself!")
• The winning side gets to claim spoils of war from each dead or captive enemy. The value of spoils is the cost of one-month's salary for each defeated soldier.  I work that out to 4905 gold for last night.
• Captives can be sold (either for ransom, or if you're more evil, into slavery) for 40 gp each. That's another 5700 gp from last night, for a total of 10,605 gp. Leaders are worth more. The rules don't specify how to determine whether a leader is really dead or just injured, so I assume you could dice for it. Maybe a powerful cleric could resurrect a dead enemy leader just to sell him back for a king's ransom!
• Or interrogate him for intelligence data. There are rules for that too, somewhere.
• Evil armies can feed dead soldiers to their carnivorous beasts to reduce supply costs. Selling them into slavery is probably more lucrative, but I just want to point out that there are five paragraphs of rules covering this option. Five!
• Gold is distributed 50% to mercenaries (and effectively lost), but the other 50% is claimed by the general. So the winning general of that battle (Warchief Khazay) should get 5302 gold.
• The winning side also gets experience from the win, equal to the wage value of defeated enemies less the value of defeated allies. In this case, 10,605 gold would amount to 10,605 experience, for a flawless victory. Half goes to the general, and the other half is divided between commanders. So the general gets 5302 exp, and the commanders get 2651 each.
• Lieutenants ordinarily get no experience, unless they detach and fight as an independent hero group (in which case they get the exact exp they'd get in a man-to-man RPG battle).
• Troops also get small amounts of experience equal to the gold they divide between them (about 10 gp in this battle). Usually this is a small amount of experience, since armies are large. In principle, after earning 100 experience, they will advance to become veterans (basically, 1st level fighters), with additional hit points and attack/saving throw bonuses.

Pulling gold teeth out of corpses on the battlefield isn't why mercenaries go to war. The real money (and experience) comes from conquering and looting a castle and its domain. Pillaging a large domain (like the sample one I generated) would yield something like 60,000 gold (and thousands of slaves, if your alignment rolls that way), plus the substantial treasury of the castle itself with potentially 100,000's of gp, and rare magical artifacts. That still gets divided rather thinly over the number of troops required to reduce a stronghold, but it definitely enriches the conquering general!

Other observations about last night's playtest of the (still pre-release beta) version of the Domains at War: Battles ruleset:

1. Laying the map the wrong way almost certainly contributed to some awkwardness of the system. The units are supposed to orient themselves with the up-down axis of the map, rather than being forced to point at 30-degree angles to it. Not only was it unfamiliar because the units were never facing a hex side, but also because they weren't really facing "forward" or "backward", making rules that involved those directions ambiguous.
2. I'm still not sure I understand the threat rules for flyers. The only definite statement I can find is that flyers can't be threatened while they move, and they can always pick their elevation. But do they threaten anything themselves? Can archers adjacent to them still fire at them from front hexes? From any adjacent hexes?
3. Hills seemed to have a minimal effect on the game, but only because of the way I used them. I think this is actually because hills are "just the elevation", and many hills are supposed to overlay with other terrain types. For example, you're allowed to make "forested hills" or "rough hills", etc, in order to gain other attributes that (for example) slow down movement -- which is more the way hills function in other game systems. Terrain in this system is more modular than others, so effects can stack to give more specific results.
4. Flyers (wyverns in this case) were very powerful, due to a combination of the high armor class of a formed unit with the flexibility of a loose unit. They could always convert their small amounts of damage into a withdrawal, making them invincible to anything but a sequence of several coordinated attacks.
5. I totally forgot about all my javelins, which probably would have done some meaningful damage during the early phases when the Undying army was throwing the lone wyvern at me. Keeping a tight formation and surrounding it with spear-chucking infantry and light cavalry might have been enough to knock it down, especially if I could coordinate two divisions and use the first to disorganize it and the second for the kill. I'm not used to playing a system with javelins!
6. I added a Green Pass map to the battle report, to show the local environs. This entire map occupies a single hex on the world map.

Green Pass Campaign: Battle of the Skywash

September 17, Caudex Annales 70 AUP

Orc attack!

In a representative sorte across the Pass, elements of the Durnovaric Expeditional Force under His Grace the Duke Conylt encountered elements of the Legion of the Undying. Both sides met along a branch of the Skywash River, engaging in uneven marshland in the early morning. Forces consisted one division of the Duchy's elite cavalry, and two divisions of vassalage infantry divisions directed to the front under a general call to arms by HM King Godred III. The Undying forces were led by heavy war ogres and wyvern sky harriers under the dread Warchief Khazay.

After several minutes of intense bloodshed in which dozens of horses and men were slashed into ribbons by shrieking wyverns, Baron Alister's 3rd Division was crushed by a formation of ogres that charged into his flank up a forested slope. Fleeing in disarray, the survivors numbered barely half of the original force. Orc losses were minimal, and little injury to the wyverns was also observed. The D.E.F. has been recalled to defend the gates at the Pass, and further field operations have been suspended in anticipation of a counterattack.

Order of Battle - D.E.F.

Green Pass regional map (6 mile hex scale)

• 1st Cavalry Division (Duke Conylt), four units: Heavy Assault Companies A and B* - Cataphract; Light Reconnaissance Companies A (Sir Martyn) and B (Sir Robart) - Light Cavalry
• 1st Infantry Division (Lord Proprietor Dermot Bag Kellag), six units: Bulwark Companies A, B, and C - Heavy Infantry; Skirmisher Companies A* and B* (Sir Bertram*) - Longbow; Armored Strike Company - Heavy Cavalry
• 2nd Infantry Division (Baron Alister*), four units: Bulwark Companies A*, B*, and C*; Skirmisher Company A (Sir Ronan*) - Longbow

* denotes casualties

Order of Battle - Legions of the Undying

• 1st Smasher Division (Warchief Khazay), six units: 2 ogre skullmauler companies, 4 orc eyestabber companies
• 1st Shrieker Division (Chief Awitar), six units: 3 orc eyegouger companies, 2 orc gutsticker companies, 1 wyvern flight
• 2nd Shrieker Division (Chief Zraqua), six units: 3 orc eyegouger companies, 2 orc gutsticker companies, 1 wyvern flight

Green Pass Campaign: Realm Creation Example

This is a continuation of the previous post, describing the process of creating a realm for the Green Pass campaign. I've selected a cleric (named Dermot Bac Kellag, for a vaguely Celtic-isle flavor) as my ruler. He's starting with 310,000 experience, which puts him at 10th level. His exceptional stats are WIS 13, CON 15, and CHA 15, which all provide a +1 bonus to various mechanics. Rolling his health gives 40 hit points, which is pretty durable in this system (a 10 HD adult dragon would have around 45). I also assign some useful proficiencies (i.e. feats and skills) that provide domain management bonuses. I take three ranks of military strategy, and one each of command, leadership, and diplomacy.

Now I need to spend out my 240,000 gp budget on realm assets and personnel.

First, I'm going to buy my sailing ship. The "large sailing ship" description is a bit vague, probably to allow it to flexibly cover both ancient and medieval settings. I'm visualizing this ship as a carrack from the Renaissance era. It costs 20,000 gp and can ship 30,000 stone of cargo, or about 64,000 gp of freight. Even if I can only turn a 10% profit on this each month, it's still going to earn me about 6000 gp. So I can envision this paying me back in just a few months, and then becoming a reliable generator of income. A large ship can also mount three small catapults/ballistae for defense, so I need to remember to buy some of those too.

Magellan's carrack, the Trinidad. (Cutaway by Stephen Biesty.)

A ship needs a crew, so I'm also going to buy a complement of 12 sailors, 2 navigators, and a captain. The total cost of putting this crew on retainer (their pay needs to be backdated by 6 months) is another 6*222 = 1332 gp.

I'll purchase 5 medium ballista (80 gp each) for 400 gp, and 200 ballista shot (2 gp each) for another 400 gp. I'll stick the extras in some of my castle towers.

Next up: Mundane gear. I'm buying a standard assortment of clothing, armor, and weapons. I'm assuming I just need to buy gear to wear in the battlefield, and that my normal household expense budget (0.5% of stronghold cost) covers daily wear. I buy about 200 gp of basic equipment (plate mail, shield, mace, tunic, cassock, boots, robe, and a holy symbol), and then another 280 gp for a medium warhorse, saddle, and saddlebags.

Now I'm rolling for my magical items. After a bunch of rolls to check how many random items of each type I'll get, I end up with 5 items, 2 potions, and 5 scrolls. I'll exercise the option to swap out some items for formulas, at a 2-to-1 ratio. Now I have 3 items, 4 item formulas, 4 potion formulas, and 5 scrolls. Note that every item also gives me an extra formula for that item (i.e., a formula can be reverse-engineered from a found item), so I'll be able to easily manufacture those too.

Here are the results of rolling these on the treasure tables:

• Items:
  
  •     Sword +1
  •     6x Arrows +1
  •     Sword +1, +3 vs Summoned
• Formulas:
  
  •     Staff of Healing
  •     Crossbow Bolts +1
  •     Scale Armor +1 and Shield +1
  •     Eyes of Petrification
  •     Potion of Undead Control
  •     Potion of Growth
  •     Potion of Invisibility
  •     Potion of Climbing
  •     Scroll of Insect Plague & Sticks to Snakes
  •     Scroll of Protection from Evil & Find Traps & Detect Magic

This is mostly generic stuff, which isn't necessarily bad. Basic +1 items will allow me to arm henchmen and a personal guard without breaking the bank, and having the ability to damage elite monsters (like demons) that are immune to normal weapons is always helpful!

My wand - so expensive!

The most interesting item on the list is the Eyes of Petrification formula. The d20 SRD specifies that these work for 10 rounds/day, but the ACKS rules allow for creating items with a wide range of use restrictions from "single use only" to "N number of charges" to "unlimited". Of course, unlimited use items are wildly expensive. Making an unlimited version of the Eyes of Petrification (a la Jadis of Narnia) would run me something like 75,000 gp, and take a couple of years of work to finish. And that's just for a chance to make a crafting check, which might fail. It's probably a more sensible idea to scale it back to a few uses per day, or even per week.

I can also attempt other items without a formula, but the chance for success is lower and it takes twice as long and twice as much money. Typically a formula is something literal like "the hides of a dozen basilisks and the blood of a blue dragon", but clerics have the option to create items based on raw divine power if they command an entire realm of worshipers, bypassing the need for material components. Oh, and I'll need a magical workshop for my projects. That's another 6000 gp.

So much for items. Next I'll construct my castle. The size of my castle will determine the size of the domain under my control. In a civilized part of the world, each 15,000 gp of stronghold value gives me control of a 6-mile hex. The maximum domain size is 16 hexes, corresponding to a 240,000 gp stronghold.

Bodiam Castle, roughly the size I'm after.

Ordinarily this would be too expensive for a new ruler, but clerics (as their special perk) get a 50% price cut on strongholds as well as a free garrison of starting troops. So I'll build a max-size stronghold for 120,000 gp. This is enough to get me a central keep, a barbican (gate with towers), a filled moat (200' long), a 40' high wall (also 200' long), and 4 medium towers. I might spread out a couple of the towers into other hexes as watchtowers, rather than include them in my main castle. (Note to self: Write some house rules that justify this!)

The castle comes with an automatic garrison of "followers" (a concept dating back to the original 70s-era release of D&D!) After rolling 5d6x10, I end up with 190 soldiers, which are assigned ten at a time from another table. I end up with (effective gp value in parentheses)

• (240)        40x Light Infantry
• (240)        20x Heavy Infantry
• (600)        20x Light Cavalry
• (450)        10x Medium Cavalry
• (1800)      30x Heavy Cavalry
• (750)        10x Cataphract Cavalry
• (450)        30x Archers
• (180)        30x Slingers
• (100)        4x 1st level clerics

The cavalry force is pretty strong, but I'll need more archers and infantry.

Finally, I need to hire personnel. This will include (1) mercenaries to round out my force, (2) some armorers to keep them in good repair, and (3) henchmen to act as battlefield lieutenants. I end up hiring an extra 90 heavy infantry, 60 longbowmen, 15 horse archers, and 30 more heavy cavalry. That should amount to a respectable field army of about 10 platoons. My ruler can only command 6 of those platoons personally (in one division), so I'll need a 3rd level fighter to act as my lieutenant (for a second division).

Henchmen are free, but leveling them up at the start of the game will cost an amount of gold equal to their intended level. This will require rolling up some additional stats for each of them. After creating five characters (using 3d6 but with no wildcards), I get one character with a +1 bonus to STR, CON, WIS, and CHA, a sensible for a fighter. There's a lieutenant! I'll try to find uses for the others later, maybe as security on my trade ship, which will let them slowly level up. But for now, I'm going to sink 4000 gp into raising the fighter up to level 3, to command my second division.

This just about spends out my budget. I have about 15,000 gp left, and some of that will go toward equipping my lieutenant. The rest will be for purchasing my first cargo of freight for my trade ship.

Next time, I'll show an example of a totally different starting character: a master thief with a crime guild.