Session Update - Just Let It All Hang Out

After very nearly wiping out the party by accident and the players loving it, I decided to put the pedal to the metal and crank up the intensity. Many of the characters leveled up on the last adventure, so there was some give to the take. 

The characters broke into two groups, then four by necessity. The plan was to meet up at Five Tree Hill, just outside the city gates by lunch time, but it was lunchtime when the first group arrived. Jaime, Jim, Matilda, Megen and Melvin arrived on horse. Jaime made arrangements at the inn and stable for the care of the animals and kicked back to wait for the wagons out on the hill.

Megen and Matilda went to see the sights in Nace. Jim just declared himself to be a 1st level ranger and needed better supplies, so Melvin joined him on a shopping excursion.

The players were given several hints that something was amiss, and everyone but Jaime went to check out the "problem". The denizens of Villa quickly came to the conclusion (click for last pre-session update) that Guilbert should be sent north for trial and execution. Ortaire would be quick marched south to Nace for a mini-Triumph then sold in to slavery.

The four raiders in town were not too pleased by this. Ortaire could rat them out. The elven warband also encountered the sad Triumph over Ortaire, and were thinking of doing something about when Megen noticed them.

The players have an issue with this campaign in respect to the status of non-humans. They have been told elves and dwarves are evil enemies, but they just don't believe it. I decided to let fun and intrigue rule the day and the elves bolted as soon as she pointed them out. The players pursued them using a set of racing min-rules I invented. It was a chase as opposed to combat, which both amused and frustrated the players. It made them believe that the elves were shadowy antagonists without ham-fisting it. The players are probably not inclined to kill off elves for the heck of it, like most citizens of the Empire, which is fine by me. But now they are wary of them.

In the meantime, several other events occurred. All of the characters met up at Five Tree Hill just in time for the wagons to arrive. The raiders also came to Five Tree Hill to see if they could recruit help to free Ortaire by force or maybe just kill him to keep him quiet. Neither was a good plan for the raiders.

In the final act, the characters had not identified the raiders as such, but believed they were cut-purses or something and watched them closely. At this point, all players were playing their main character plus at least one NPC. It takes a load off of me, plus they seem to protect the NPC's better than I do. 

Queue up the finale. The Coven of Ash are the self-appointed defenders of the Empire. They are much higher level than the characters. I figure, why would a high level antagonist hide from the player characters when they have an advantage? This is the opposite of respect and should be every big-bad's operational standard. 

The Coven has walked right into the midst of the party, invisibly. As the party passed near the raiders, Caecilia, the youngest of the 3 witches, dropped her invisibility to cast Stinking Cloud on the raiders. Her intent was to set up the party as aggressors against the town and cause them all kinds of problems when they try to re-enter Nace. 

The Coven knows who and what the raiders are and thinks of them as useful pawns. They also know that the player characters are agents of the Emperor. And the Emperor intends to upset the "natural order of Empire", which cannot be allowed. 

We rolled for surprise. Guess what? 6 siders either hate me or love me*. No one was surprised by Caecilia. The player covering Melvin was living it up by doing some real role-play. He was eating an apple with a knife and managed to hit Caecilia before she could cast. 

Foiled, the other two witches helped Caecilia escape by invisibly tormenting the players, guards and raiders. The guards and raiders lost morale and slammed the gates shut. The players managed to convince them to open up, but only after suffering several rounds of invisible high jinx at the hands of the witches. Wails, loud claps and pokes sent the oxen into a tizzy and annoyed the players.  

The party ended the session in front of a warm fire at the inn, with mugs of beverages to sooth their nerves. The players seemed both frazzled and amused. 

*I have a bad time with surprise dice, but this outcome was even better than the one I planned. I can't wait for the next session. 

The Movement Game

In AD&D, movement is not real clear. On page 39, of the PHB distance is covered. 1" is 10 yards outside or 10 feet inside. Ah, easy. Next it says: "Your referee will have information which will enable him or her to adjust the movement rate to the applicable time scale for any situation".

Actually, that's not true. The information is on 101 and 102 of the PHB. Characters move 12" per round or 120 feet per minute. Outside, the rate changes to 12" = 12 miles per half day of travel, where "day" is defined as "daylight hours". Encumbered characters move less.

It is all very reasonable, so long as one doesn't ask "how fast can I move?". If you can run an 8 and half minute mile, you're moving at 62" in game terms or 621 feet per minute. An Olympic runner would be much faster. That is totally nuts.

But why break the math like this? This is AD&D, not a running simulator.

Last session, my players got in a dice heavy combat that came dangerously close to killing several of them and as the DM, I didn't realize how bad it was. 8 NPCs were actually killed, in some cases over-killed.

In this session, I wanted that fun without the element of danger and without railroading the characters with imaginary danger. The players realized the scenario was good fun without too much danger.

Here are the rules:

1. A character can move 12" per segment, or 6 seconds. Encumbered characters move less fast.   
2. At these speeds, no weapons can be used. 
3. Turning 45 degrees costs 1" of forward movement. 


1. Diagonal movement on the ground has no penalty other than the loss of distance covered, as the character moving parkour style. 
2. Diagonal movement for flying creatures is doubled. One unit at a 45 degree angle counts double as they need to avoid things to stay airborne. 
3. Turning 90 degrees costs 3" of forward movement.
4. To stop, one must roll a 1d4 to see how many inches they will travel before stopping. 
4. You can hit people with things in the environment, such as tree limbs, baskets, boxes, etc. 
5. Everyone is AC 10 to these attacks, less Dex bonus and magical item bonus.
6. These attacks don't do damage, they change the target's facing. 
7. Roll to hit vs. AC 10, then roll a 6 sided die for effect. Consult the following table: 
1. Turned 90 degrees to the left for free, but returning to your previous course costs 3".
2.  As above, but to the right. 
3. Turned 45 degrees to the right for free, but returning to your previous course costs 1". 
4. As above, except to the left. 
5. You hurtled the object and moved one 1" forward for free. 
6. You are knocked down. You are motionless for the remainder of the segment. 
8. Repeat as long as the fun allows. 

What is great about this system, is everyone can participate with little danger of death. Of course, wiley characters will invent ways to kill each other like this.

As near as I can tell, there is no good way to implement normal combat with this set of mini rules. Some rules of thumb. Bow fire could come once every 5 segments, twice per round and always comes last in the order above. Crossbows can fire immediately on segment 1, but then have to reload over the next ten segments. The interesting effect of bow fire and crossbow fire, is the environment itself. In a crowded city street, even a slow character can step around a corner preventing a shot from landing or even being fired.

As far as melee weapons go, even a lowly magic user or urchin should be able to stay one jump ahead...

Meet The New Antagonists - The Coven of Ash

For tonight's session, I added a few more problems for the players. These three self-styled witches are dangerous magic users. 

Looking at the pre-generated character lists, I am missing druids, illusionists and assassins. Druids and Illusionist are coming soon, but assassins will only appear as a historical footnote. In this campaign, the Praetorian Guard was made up of regular soldiers under the leadership and guidance of assassins. The Coven of Ash is a collection of magic users that believe they can do the Guard's job better with magic. 

About 3 years ago, all of the assassins were eliminated by the Coven. The city of Nace recorded 37 dead in just 7 days. Exactly how this happened was a mystery. The main headquarters was the focal point of these attacks, but the last several bodies were found in the Temple to Jupiter. These witches know no bounds. 

The Coven has the same purpose of the Praetorian Guard, except they answer to no one or no thing except the concept of Empire. The do not take orders from the Emperor, as he is only human. The Coven strives protect the Empire against all threats, foreign and domestic, with dark magic and terror.  

In reality, our plucky heroes didn't
 come close to landing a hit.

After a close call with the Coven and the Elven warband, the heroes knocked heads with the raiders failing to lay low in town. 

Session Updates - Level Up and Kit Up

The party is now in 4 groups. Felix, Felice, Gurwinder and Rona will arrive by wagon my lunch time. Melvin, Jim, Megen, Matilda and Jaime arrived by horse at the end of the last session. Melvin and Jim have gone off to acquire new equipment for Jim as he is now a 1st level ranger. Megen and Matilda are exploring the town while Jaime is getting lunch for the party. The plan is to meet up at Five Tree Hill at lunch time.

Megen, Matilda, Jim, and Rona have all leveled up last session. The players will check out their new character abilities and proceed from there. You can click the link to see the PDF file.

I have also created a reasonable list of provisions in the wagons, as record keeping became a nightmare last session. I believe the party somehow acquired an extra horse. Not sure, but it is now official, they have two wagons, 4 oxen, and 6 horses. The players don't seem to be abusing their character sheets, so I'm letting this one go. They don't need six horses and perhaps don't realize they have that many. It seems they gave Gurwinder a horse to search for the raiders last session, but now she's riding on the wagons like a captain of a fleet of ships.

They'll have a chance to obtain new horses and such in town. The players don't seem to be making a distinction between horses, but by my records, they have 3 riding horses, a medium war horse and 2 draft horses.

As a gag, I plan on firing up my old Mac and letting the players play a little bit of Oregon Trail. That should be fun.



If the numbers seem right, I'll let them obtain provisions like this. They need more Oxen and a few wheels. :)

I have to run. I need to generate some raiders and a couple of witches.

Worldobuilder By Inkwell Ideas for Maps

A few months ago, I picked up a whole suite of software for mapping and world building. I have to tell you, the Worldographer software is excellent. I use it for my books, my blogs and my campaign. It couldn't be more handy. They have a collection of software, but my favorite is Worldographer. It basically does everything I wish it to.

You can pick up new icon packs from Patreon, as monthly subscription. My campaign is Roman themed, so I haven't partaken in that yet. I did purchased the e1 Icon pack when I bough the software. It allows me to make maps that look a bit like the Greyhawk campaign map. I love it.

You can give it a try with very few limitations from the store section of their main site. The free version doesn't nag or limit you too much. It is mean to just give you a taste.

I can't help but tinker. My setting is a peninsula with a vast savanna, I needed acacia trees. The set of icons I had didn't have any, so I modified a regular tree into one using the GNU Image Manipulation Program.

It reminded me of modding Civilization Icons. You need a transparent background. Did you ever try that? I used to have great fun adding dinosaurs and Veritechs to the game.

Anyway, back to my campaign. I have a large Romanesque city. Romans lived in villas and apartments. The software had a half dozen choices, but I need to populate a massive area. Repetition stands out like a sore thumb, so I got modding.

In the first version of my city, the buildings looked very medieval. I decided to make the whole area more Roman by making most structures either ramshackle wooden or Spanish tile like.

  
You can see those Spanish like rooves from 35,000 feet. Nice.

Then I wanted new villas. Just two choices didn't give a lot of variety.

I now have 4 or five variations. Square or rectangular and so on. One thing I discovered while working is, if you leave the courtyard area transparent, you can trees and other structures to the yard. Nice touch. The other thing is you can use the software to flip, rotate and scale the same building so even a copy doesn't look exactly like the one next to it.

For my last trick, and this is completely outside of the scope of Worldographer, I decided to add my party.

It is completely useless for game play, but I thought it was a nice trick. I have two wagons and 5 horses, to match my party. If you zoom in too much, there is zero detail, so the trick loses it's charm. But I enjoyed giving it a shot.

The Campaign So Far

Last session, mistakes were made. The raider party was not much of a combat, it was a just an opportunity to chew up NPCs and scenery.

Here is the set up for tomorrow. First, Guilbert and Ortaire surrendered themselves at the Villa. Guilbert was outmatched and Ortaire was exhausted. There is no more fight in either of them. The players got some information out of them, but decided they were safe to leave behind for the Empire's justice.

The elven war band is still out there. They were hampered by their uniforms, so they stole some clothes from the Villa, plus a horse.

Horses have become a record keeping nightmare for me. The players seem to absconded with too many horses, so at their next stop, I will present them with a livestock auction so they get the animals they need and dispense with the ones they don't. They swiped horses from the raiders and the elves, then lost some to the Guilbert. Now I am convinced they have two too many. We'll fix that with some auction fun. The characters are flush with cash.

The raiders are just as scattered as the characters and the elves. So, let's get everyone together.

Step one, the elves flinched some stuff from the Villa and have entered Nace ahead of the characters. They are doing about as well at disguise as Spock, Capatin Kirk and Bones but no one has noticed them yet. The elven sloop is in the south, marked in green on the map. It is too far away to help, even if they had more troops, which they don't. I'll give them all something to do in a moment.

There are five raiders in or around Nace. One is going home to never again venture off the farm. His farm is the small structure on the right hand side of the map. It's isn't important, I'm OCD. We'll likely never hear from him again. The four raiders in town have been drinking themselves stupid. Their ship is marked in red, so it's of no help to them. Let's have them join the elves.

Guilbert and Ortaire were back at the Villa the last time the player saw them. Justice was swift. Guilbert is on his way north to the Capital for torture and execution if he doesn't come up with a plan. He has a plan. He is pretending to be a much high rank than he is and will happily make up anything he can to save his neck. This got Ortaire's neck out a noose. Ortaire has been taken to Nace for a mini-triumph. He is being paraded around on a donkey and will be auctioned off a slave as soon as the humiliation gets old.

(Remember, the Emperor is NOT into slavery and he is the only person who can declare a Triumph, so heads are going to roll over this. Luckily, his agents, the player characters are on hand. Maybe they'll do his will or maybe he can spin whatever happens to his will. The Emperor really needs a name because he is turning out to an ex post facto, arch-machiavellian, super Amadeus.)

Queue up the 3 elves and 4 raiders. The elves hate slavery and the raiders are horrified by the capture of their friend. Both groups are going to attempt a rescue. The characters will become embroiled in the mini-triumph over Ortaire and will definitely meet the raiders and the elves.

Maybe, everyone will wear disguises. Wouldn't that be fun?