Battle Systems - Northern Homestead

Good morning everybody - long time no post. This is due to a number of reasons, mostly good, but primarily because I have been working. After another long time out of work I managed to secure back-to-back contracts. I am still in the second role and it seems to be going well - hopefully at the end of this contract I will be back to where I want to be financially, so I can begin spending a little more time, effort and money on my hobby.

So, what have I been up to hobby-wise over the last few months? Due to my new work roles and various other reasons, I have not been able to see my youngest son often enough to do any actual playing, but we did do lots of sorting out and chatting about gaming. He has managed to put some paint onto some of his Ebay bought miniatures (not finished yet, but when they are I will feature them in a separate post) and also bought some new figures from a local comic and games shop. I bought a few one-off figures from the same comic/game shop (four halflings which are a bit smaller than the GW LotR ones and an Owlbear - one of my fave monsters from D&D), some Ghost Archipelago rule and scenario books, and some card-stock buildings from Battle Systems.

The card buildings are the main-stay of this post. A month or so back, out of the blue, my son sent me a few pictures on my phone and a link to a company called Battle Systems. He suggested that they might be good for our tabletop battles as they were quite cheap (relative to resin and plastic buildings they certainly are). They looked really good in the photos (not promo shots by the company but in-use shots by a gamer), so I thought I would buy a few to see how they turned out for myself.

There was a sale on at the web store (result!), so I was able to afford to buy enough buildings from my gaming budget to hopefully kit-out one of the scenarios in the Rangers of Shadowdeep rulebook. I chose three of the Northern Homesteads as my mainstay, plus a couple of outbuildings, as they could double-up for use as Rohan, D&D, Pathfinder and so on buildings for a quasi-Dark Age/Medieval setting. There are also options to buy snow effect roofs (rooves?) to allow gaming in Frostgrave or other cold-set climates (Winterfell or beyond the wall for Game of Thrones perhaps?).

The order was delivered in double-quick time and sat on my workbench (well, pile in the corner of the room) until two weekends back when my son was over and we decided to build the first homestead. Out of the box you get three sheets of card-stock building pieces (two the same plus another different one) and a small bag of plastic connection pieces.

The pieces push out very easily, with no cutting required. The only thing you don't get is a set of assembly instructions. Now, I have made many kits over the years so thought I would be able to construct these easily, but I went about these in completely the wrong way. I tried to put the connectors at the bottom of the walls etc. thinking they would be least visible there. However, after my son looked up an online tutorial and we found out that they should be joined by slots in the middle of the walls, the building went together in seconds. We literally built it in under two minutes. Once constructed, they are very sturdy.

There are three choices for the doors, two singles and a double. We decided on a simple single door for this building. As these kits are multi-purpose; they will fit in with all the other kits for completely customisable building construction, so many of the pieces can be used on other buildings. We will look at the watch towers and mead hall next so the double-doors can be used there (Meduseld anyone?) - they do look impressive.

The entry way - the door is off to one side with a porch to cover the entrance for times of inclement weather. You may also notice some holes in the thatch and flooring. There are pushout pieces to give buildings a more run-down look if required. We decided to go full-out on this building. The good thing is, the little bits that get pushed out can be used for scatter terrain later on too!

The front view - with attendant horse-head posts. Perfect for a Rohan setting.

The rear of the building has a platform upon which your archers can stand to defend their homes from marauding uruk-hai.

The side opposite the entrance shows the horse-head posts in better detail.

And finally an internal shot. With the kit you get internal flooring, beds, bed rolls, weapon racks and weapons; in fact all sorts of paraphernalia to sprinkle around the table top when gaming to add flavour. The weapons are a little over-sized, so I won't use them, but plenty of the other bits will be very useful as scatter.

Next time my son is over we will construct a few more of these buildings, most likely in different formats to make up a small hamlet. We can then fight over it with his Rohan (once re-painted) and orc miniatures before moving onto rangers of Shadowdeep once he has figures for his small warband for that game.

The system also features more medieval style buildings that would suit D&D and Pathfiner more, but they could also double-up as buildings from places like Bree or towns around Gondor and the fiefdoms in Lord of the Rings.

Overall, I am happy with my purchases. I will most likely try to find suitable basing material to put these on so they become even more sturdy and hard-wearing, and it will stop the flooring falling away from the buildings too when they are moved. The rest will hopefully be built in a few weeks' time, so I can photograph them all together to see how a hamlet or small village would look.

Dungeon Dwellers' Tactics

Actually, before we start, just a quick aside here - in the Labels section to the right of my main blog page I have listed DnD and D&D. In case anyone is interested, the former label is for older Dungeons and Dragons versions (AD&D, Basic, 3rd Edition and occasionally Pathfinder), and the latter is for 5th Edition onwards. Not sure why I differentiated them, but there you go, it probably meant something to me at the time. Sorry, back to the nuts and bolts of this post...

I didn't think that I would write another blog entry so soon on my old AD&D gaming days, but as I was writing the post on hirelings some of my old DMing moments kept coming back to me, so I made a note of them for future use. These thoughts all tended to be about dungeons and the monsters within them, so here is a post on just that as well as the tactics utilised by the denizens of those dungeons deep and caverns old.

I have always found large, rambling dungeon crawls to be a tad "unrealistic". As much as they are fun to play, in that you do not know what you will be encountering in the next room, they are also very brain in bucket style adventures. A few questions always used to pop into my mind when playing these types of scenarios; why don't the monsters next door ever peer round the doorway to ask the room inhabitants to pipe down when combat ensues as they are trying to get the kids off to bed? Why didn't the troll in room 3 not eat the goblins in room 4? How does a huge red dragon get into a room 50 feet underground with access by only 5 foot corridors? And so on.

So, to get around some of these anomolies I used to roll up mega dungeons in advance and part play them through in my minds eye prior to actual game play. I would check what was in each room and its adjacents to see how these beings would interact...

So, the aforementioned troll might allow the goblins scattered throughout the close by rooms to live because they can supply it with a constant stream of other food types. The troll would therefore become some kind of boss monster and I would rearrange the room contents accordingly. In other words the inhabitants could be worked into some kind of tribe/gang-type encounter.

That dragon may have been brought down as a youngling by a family of ogres as a plaything, but after a while it got too big to get out, so the ogres smashed out the roof to allow it to fly out in order to hunt.

These points then brought me onto local ecology issues. The dungeon obviously holds many small factions of hungry and dangerous beings. How would they eat, acquire weapons and armour and so forth? Why would they not just fight against each other until only one gang was left, or maybe two warring factions? This brought me to consider whether the goblins raided the local human farmers for their crops/livestock or did they trade with them? No point in killing the farmers if that meant the food source dried up in a couple of weeks is there? Better to keep them alive so supplies are available all year round would be my best interpretation. How would they pay for the food? Why, with adventurers' belongings hat have been killed in the dungeon seeking their own fortunes. Therefore, the dungeon ecology is directly linked to the local above ground economy.

Getting back to the tribe/gang point above, they would obviously set up some kind of hierarchy and certain troop types would be in certain rooms to aid in the defensive capabilities of the inhabitants. It would make sense to have the boss away from the edges of the mini kingdom so he can have a bit of peace and quiet and somewhere to store his treasure safely. The goblins would form the perimeter guards in a series of slightly tougher rooms as the boss troll is approached. These rooms might also be interspersed with the occasional one-off monster like a roper or mimic for a bit of fun, which leads me to my next couple of points...

Why do dungeon room occupants just charge pell-mell into combat at the first sight of a party of adventurers and not employ tactics?

Why don't they put together a reasoned out defence depending on who/what comes smashing through that dungeon door?

One of the first times I really thought this through was when I was running a small dungeon for a friend of mine to work his way through. In several rooms there were orcs, with the room inhabitants getting gradually tougher the deeper the player characters delved. Our usual style of play was along the lines of; characters listen at the door...they are told they can hear the guttural voices of orcs beyond the woodwork...the door is kicked down after PCs prepare spells etc... combat is joined with orcs just charging the party and getting wiped out in a few rounds.

This time round, things were different. The characters kick down the door and pour in. The orcs split with the larger brutes confronting the party in melee, the ranged weapon owners sniping from the rear and sides at the thieves and magic users, and the 1HP wonder running down the far corridor to warn their fellow guards. The party got the better of the brutes and ranged weapon orcs, but not without taking some damage, and headed to the corridor. At the end they could see a couple more orcs behind a make-shift barricade. The fighters duly charged the sorry sight, backed up by their lesser armoured compatriots. Combat was joined, but the party noted that there were a few more orcs behind the barricade to plug any gaps from their fallen brothers in arms. This didn't deter them until the large ballista showed up. They decided to about-face and run back down the corridor so as not to be hit by the powerful weapon, but stopped dead when they heard that the jeers from behind them were joined by roars of defiance ahead of them (the little 1HP scout had informed the orcs in the next few rooms what was occurring so their defence systems kicked into action). The party were trapped in the corridor and were cut to pieces - TPK.

Ordinarily, these three bands of orcs would have been pulled apart piecemeal by the party (we almost always played 6-8 PCs with several hirelings in tow, so a sizeable force) as they went room to room, but this time round, the orcs easily got the upper hand with a little thought. It also showed how powerful a 1HD monster actually is when used properly. They are as tough as most party members in a toe-to-toe fight.

This just goes to show that tactics can be employed for monsters to up the challenge ratings for the PCs. In future games I dialled back the number of critters in an encounter to take into account the tactical advantages that the residents of the dungeon would have. However, in addition to the tactics, I also included the noise factor - a combat will attract those in adjacent rooms to see what is going on or what advantage they can gain, as well as additional rolls on the wandering monster tables.

Dungeons are dangerous places and need to be prepared for every step of the way.

Henchmen and Hirelings

This is the third, and possibly the last (for now) post on adventuring parties and their impacts on the local environment. This time I am going to discuss henchmen and hirelings. You will have to forgive me if I mis-remember the rules on henchmen etc. as I no longer have my 1st Edition AD&D manuals and it all comes from memory of playing as a kid.

In the previous posts, I mentioned that I used to hire men-at-arms and so on prior to mega-dungeon expeditions; mostly as treasure/supply bearers but also as additional cannon fodder. However, thinking back on what I wrote yesterday I seem to recall that there were four types of NPC character aides available to an AD&D character, namely Henchmen, Hirelings, Followers and Retainers. So, who and what are these types of underling?

Henchmen, followers and retainers, to my mind, are loyal to the character due to their force of character or esteem (usually based on the Charisma stat), but hirelings are only there for the money, and so may butt out when the going gets tough or the money runs out.

Henchmen - If I recall correctly, a character can hire a henchman X amount of levels lower than themselves at any time after the characters themselves attain a certain level depending upon the Charisma stat. They will be loyal and fight for the character even when the going gets tough. That said, they will not tolerate being abused too often, so a decent share of the treasure will always be welcomed. So, it is generally down to the player as to when the charcater should take one on, bearing in mind that there is also a limit to the numbers that can be hired. Where would these NPCs be found though? I cannot recall the exact rules, but I guess they would be encountered in cities etc. and will have tracked down the characters owing to their fame and good fortunes and ask to join the band in their service. Alternatively, this is my modern mind kicking in as I cannot remember if I did this or not, if an NPC is rescued or encountered on an adventure then there was a possibility she may join the list of those retained by that character.

Retainers and Followers - Upon reaching a certain level, fighters got castles, wizards got towers and other classes got whatever they aspired to according to their class; and it was filled with attendant NPCs. Again, these would be loyal followers at mostly '0' level but I recall that some could be higher level and act as sub-leaders (retainers?). Back in the day I always made sure my characters built their stronghold from their accrued treasure and, as a result, would spend hours poring over the DMG costing out all the relevant parts that made up the abode. I would then fill it with the correctly rolled amount of followers and organise them into patrols, units and so on. I saw these edifices as the place into which the retired character would return after their final adventure and begin to get involved in local politics. They would become future NPCs that hired new bands of heroes to do their bidding. But, where do their retainers come from? A dozen or so may be easy to pick up from the surrounding villages and towns but if a fighter needs 100+ men-at-arms then that would put a strain on any locale. In the past I just rolled the number and they were there. Nowadays, I would have to say that they arive in dribs and drabs until the final number is achieved in order to reduce the impact on the local populace.

Hirelings - These are the NPCs that are hired to carry out certain tasks on a short term basis: men-at-arms to fight alongside the PCs in dungeons, guard caravans or baggage trains whilst the PCs tackle the dungeon itself, or an apothecary to brew a potion, or a diviner to tell ones future and so on. When to hire these NPCs was determined by the skill sets that the party did not have, how much coin they had available and whether any were actually available for hire in that particular locale. Like with all people that can be hired, they are more fickle than the more loyal followers and henchmen; when the payments stop, so do they.

To hire a, ahem, hireling the cost is usually just a fee for their work or time; usually calculated by consulting the tables in the DMG and working it from there. The more loyal followers and henchmen will need to be looked after by the characters they are associated with otherwise dissention will breed (albeit no-where as quickly as with hirelings). This will be a more long-term cost as their upkeep will need to be met on a weekly, monthly or annual basis. Henchmen, as they take a share of the treasure, are easier to accommodate; no treasure equals no pay, but if there is a large hoard, then they will get their fair share. These, to me, are your typical hearthguard-type warriors as opposed to those called up for military service by a lord due to land ties - local fyrd-type warriors and thanes would come into this class as followers and retainers.

Adventurer retirement, as mentioned above, would be a time for the characters to rest on their laurels (unless the threat is huge) and become patrons for the new generation of heroes. If a new threat is exposed, they will no longer ride out to meet it themselves but will provide aid in the form of supplies and manpower (at a cost). This brings me to the final point of this post - what effect does this have on the local population and economy?

If a party breeze into a village, hire on all the local manpower and then proceed to lose them all in their latest dungeon escapade, the widows, orphans and old folk left behind will not be able to keep the village functioning when it comes to harvest or sowing time. The villagers would either starve, abandon their homes to go live with relatives, or start new lives anywhere their local lord would, or could, accommodate them. The lord would be furious as he would then be seriously out of pocket. Likewise, when a character gets to that certain level and acquires her retainers and followers, where do they come from? As mentioned above, the local city would be better as there are more numbers and a more diverse bunch of trades available. However, kitting out a castle with 100+ men-at-arms, or filling a cloister with dozens of clerics might draw suspicious looks from other local land holders or religious orders. Rivalries could build and spill over into violence and raiding.

 

So, where does this leave me with today's gaming? In the Frostgrave campaign I am currently prepping for, what are the people who follow Balthazar classed as? Dave, the apprentice, must be classed as a henchman; he is loyal and will be rewarded richly by the transfer of knowledge and some major treasure items. The initial band of soldiers that follow Balthazar will be classed as followers or retainers; they are paid out of the imaginary extraneous loot, but follow out of friendship (or coersion, but that is another story) and will die for their leader. However, if any of the said adventurers do die and have to be replaced, then their replacements must be hirelings, as they are brought into the fold with a one-off stipend. That said, and this is not covered in the rules from what I could see on my initial trawl through, what happens if they are not treated well? Could this be the place to write that loyalty table that is rolled upon after every adventure?

Dungeon Ecology

Hard on the heels of the Dungeon Parties post, comes this one about Dungeon Ecologies. This one was not intended to be as long as the previous one, as a lot of what was to be said in this one has been said in that one, but as with all things gaming I tend to ramble on forever and find new things to add as I am writing.

The previous article was more along the lines of what is an adventuring party. This one is more about the effects an adventuring party has on the local environs and the actual dungeon itself. To represent this post, I have trawled the net to find one of my favourite pictures from the original AD&D 1st edition Monster Manual (?) - an ankheg bursting from the ground to startle a farmer. This is kind of apt, as this colourised version of the artwork has the farmer looking very similarly dressed as one of the farmers from my Frostgrave party - I may use this as a Frostgrave scenario idea...

Like with all the images on my blog that are not my own copyright, please tell me to take it down if you are the owner and object to me using it without permission.

When I started to play AD&D again at my local club several years back, I wanted my campaign world to be believable (in as far as a fantasy setting can be). I still put most of the emphasis on playability but world coherency was also a significant part of my thought process. As mentioned in yesterday's post, "I built a little consistency and randomness into it too, to show that life was carrying on at that place even if the adventurers weren't around to see it happening".

When building the campaign world of Doggerland, I had to work out a back story for the region - accomplished by playing a few play-by-email games to build a solid timeline, then adding in a few historical characters and creating a point in time to then work from. I then added to the timeline and the current power-plays of the local area; who were the main pro/antagonists and what was likely to still be around in the environs even after the area had settled down after the last PBeM game completed. So I asked myself a few questions and worked out a few stats before putting pen to paper and making the scenarios fit the world...

Who built the dungeon and why? - Each scenario, whether hand-written or taken and adapted from a published magazine article or offical supplement, had to fit with what was going on in the main narrative. For example, at the start of the camapign, the weather in the Loidis region was in turmoil; hazardous weather limited travel, destroyed crops and basically hindered any progress for anything but the second coming of the demoness. I had a table written up linked to the phases of the moon and a random factor that stated what the weather would be like each day. Once the adventurers had solved the riddle and got the authorities in to destroy the power orb that controlled the weather, then normal patterns began to emerge again. This was a long-winded way to say that the broch in which the Cthonic druid resided had a history - it was an ancient, vitrified tower from the age of the first PBeM game and was tied to the history of the land. When the demoness was first encountered in Doggerland (I based this on details from the Temple of Elemental Evil history set out in that supplement) she was defeated, but her legacy lived on through her worshippers who still inhabited the abandoned places in the landscape awaiting her return.

Wandering Monsters had to fit in with what is in the dungeon - I made up small randomly rollable tables for encounters in and around the dungeon settings (based on the random encounter tables given in the supplements, or made up to only include monsters from the adventures I made up to keep them coherent. In other words, if a dungeon was full of, say, orcs, goblins and the like, then only those creatures plus a few standard trope wandering monsters (gelatinous cubes and the like) would be encountered there - no chance of a red dragon, for instance, as that would change the entire feel and objectives of the scenario. I also tried to fit the wandering monsters into the narrative of what was actually happening in the area around the dungeon. So, if a patrol of bandits was encountered and wiped out by the party then they had to have come from somewhere. If the scenario stated that some of the bandits at encounter location X put out patrols, then if I rolled bandits, they would be from that location and the results of the random encounter would mean that location explanation would be amended. A prime example of this was when the party had half-cleared the moathouse dungeon in the boglands near Staneford - the resident bad guy decided the heat was too much and he high-tailed it out of there with most of his followers before the party got to him.

Treasure and why monsters hoard it rather than spend it - Where do they get it from? Where do they spend it? These are questions that have always puzzled me, and to be honest I do not really have any hard and fast answers. In my campaign, the humans encountered would have earned it in some way. That said, most encounters with humans (unless boss types) resulted in poor treasure hauls; a small pouch with a few coins or the occasional magic item. Monsters, on the other hand, would be the ones that held onto magical trinkets and caskets of precious metals and gems. This doesn't really make sense to me, but as players want their characters to grow and become rich to enable them to do more in the imagined world they inhabit, I guess this strange treasure placement becomes part of the reward structure (along with gaining levels due to experience). I kind of explained this away by making it that these treasures were tribute from their lackeys, or items purloined from other adventurers who had tried to defeat them in the not so distant past. As to where the monsters could spend it, I have no idea, except maybe to pay their henchmen or bribe other bands of adventurers to let them go if they are on the point of defeat?

Re-populating a dungeon after a party has plundered it - This ruling really put my players off their stroke. After half-clearing an encounter location they would often return to civilisation to divvy-up treasure, re-equip themselves and heal in safety. Upon returning to the previous location they found that some of the rooms that they had cleared were now re-inhabited by new denizens - they were so used to playing in games where they literally just carried on from where they left off. I saw this re-population as the natural way in which societies and the natural world would re-align itself to a new situation; nature, as it is said, abhors a vacuum. If there is an ecological niche that becomes empty, then something will come along and fill it. Again, these rooms and caverns would be filled from either the nearest inhabitants expanding their demesne (possibly with new recruits) or by a wandering monster using the newly vacated area as a new home (and a new source of food in some cases).

Effects on the local human population when adventurers hit the town (or village) - This is also another item that is very rarely covered in the rulebooks. A band of adventurers rock up in a small village after plundering a dungeon, loaded down with coinage, gems, looted weaponry, and boastful stories. Where can they spend their ill-gotten gains? A small village would hardly be able to provide what the adventurers require - there is no Ye Olde Shoppe of Magicke like in the main cities (not that I use those in my camapigns anyway). So, they may be able to spend some treasure on finer lodgings, gambling and getting outrageously drunk on alcohol and satiated on fine food. However, villages can really only offer a brief respite from the harsh realities of the adventuring world and a means of re-stocking basic requirements; weapon and armour repairs, bows and arrows, lower class armours, food supplies, beasts of burden, maybe a riding horse or cart and local hirelings, as well as the usual R&R services.

Towns would only be a marginal step up but there would still not be enough on which the adventurers could spend their coins. So, what to do? There was one occasion during my last campaign that a fighter set up a fortification within the remains of the moat house in the fens. This cost a lot to do, so was a good way of spending his money, but it was a rare event albeit in keeping with 9th level fighters establishing a fortress according to the rulebooks.

Next step up are the cities; these allowed for at leaset one extra thing to be accomplished - training. Provided there was an NPC of the same class and a couple of levels higher than what the PC required, gold could be spent on a one-for-one swap for XP.

So, in reality, there is not a lot a band of adventurers can spend their gains on except a re-stock of arms and armour, rest and recuperation, maybe a bit of training, and having fun, with the local denizens trying to find ways of relieving the party of their cash and trinkets where they can.

But, the effect on the local economy can be catastrophic after the adventurers leave. All that excess gold and silver in the economy would artificially hike prices so that the local populace can no longer afford basic supplies and amenities. All the items that the party purchase would leave the town or village short of certain goods that may not be replaceable, and if there are any deaths due to hirelings being killed whilst away on an adventure, or in bar-room brawls then there will be a lot of widows and orphans. Who will look after them?

Again, this tended towards a longer than expected post, but, like all of my posts, they are written off the cuff and tend to ramble to wherever my thoughts take me. There is a kind of an idea in my head of what I want to cover but it never comes out how I envision it. I hope it makes sense and is coherent enough for you to get something from it.

Dungeon Parties

This post is primarily aimed at those involved in dungeon crawling adventures of the Dungeons and Dragons type. There is a blog, Hobgoblinry (see December '20 and January '21 entries) that I am currently reading that spurred me to put finger to keyboard as the author is currently going through the same thought processes as I am (although much further along the path than I am at the moment).

As a kid, when AD&D had just been released, I was involved in many of these types of adventure and they played a perfect role in my development as both a player and Dungeon Master. I lost myself in many a mega-dungeon, creating characters, fantasy tribes, and all sorts of menageries to inhabit the sprawling underground warrens I had created from my imagination. At the time, internal consistency did not matter.

Even when I restarted DMing (still using AD&D rules, even though I had toyed with Version 3 and Pathfinder in the meantime) a few decades later at my then local club, play was still more important than world building. However, I did pay lip service to a kind of internal organisation where the monsters weren't just sitting in their rooms waiting for adventurers to poke their noses in before attacking them. I built a little consistency and randomness into it too, to show that life was carrying on at that place even if the adventurers weren't around to see it happening. So, as a result of a little bit of maturing as both a player and DM on my part, my games were a little more coherent and made a little more sense from a player's point of view; there was something tangible that they could get their teeth into - something with a living background.

Fast forward another couple of years and I began to play 5th Edition (only played so far, not DMd yet). There seemed to be a big difference in style of play. Gone were the games with anywhere up to 15 players with an interesting array of different character classes; now we were in the realms of a limited number of charcters (5 or 6) that were hard-hitting and skilled up to the nines. I like both styles of play, but they are very different. Often, though, after a 5th edition game, when I looked back on the adventures of that particular session, I felt something was missing.

Today, I no longer live near that RPG club, and lockdown has prevented me from finding new players in the new area in which I now live. I am blessed in my friendships, as I am able to partake of a play-by-email sci-fi RPG to keep my gaming pangs at bay, but I still want some tabletop action. As a result, I have been trying to get my gaming fix in the solo arena. Frostgrave has grabbed my attention lately as it involves a party of adventurers looking for treasure in a long abandoned city. It is a game that seems to involve a larger than 5th Edition party, so it has got my creative juices flowing.

Now, I want to try to recreate some of those lovely adventures I had as a kid, so my thoughts turned to AD&D again as a source of inspiration. Unfortunately I no longer own a copy, but the wraparound cover of my trusty Players' Handbook kept hoving into view in my mind's eye (see the picture below)...

 

 

This picture portrayed to me, as an early adventurer in mega-dungeons, what a party should look like. The characters have just beaten a gang of troglodytes (or whatever) and are now ransacking the temple they were set to guard. Each member of the party has his/her own tasks to perform. Fighters are standing guard and cleaning weapons after the melee, the wiser ones are discussing what to do next with what looks like the party leader, and the lackeys (thieves, hirelings and henchmen) are collecting and collating the treasure.

So, what do we have here in this simple, almost throw away picture? I see a few hardy combat type figures, a couple of thieves, with a wizard and wise priest/monk fellow that most likely comprise the main player characters. These are backed up by a small force of hirelings, or NPCs, who carry the party's gains and clean up after them. Eleven people (in sight anyway - how many others are in the temple room and beyond the left-hand door?) are involved in this escapade.

Back in the day (when I was not yet a teenager) we played several characters at a time to increase the size of the party. Each time I wanted to take the party down a mega-dungeon (randomly rolled and huge, sprawling affairs) I made sure that there were enough people to carry the purloined and plundered treasures held within. Not only did I hire men-at-arms on a handful of silver pieces per day, but I also bought sacks, caskets and mules with panniers to carry all of the imagined treasure in them. Many of the hirelings were just local toughs (cheaper than a man-at-arms) brought along to hold torches and guide the mules. Very rarely were they called into a melee, but if they were, it meant that the players' party itself had failed and a TPK (Total Party Kill) was on the cards. Often many were left outside the dungeon to guard the entrance and create a safe base to return to at each break of play to dump off hoarded treasure and to heal up, replenish spells and maybe even level up. These NPCs provided the pool of talent from which new 1st level characters would be recruited if current party members died.

This method of playing was not an intentional way of adhering to the encumbrance rules set out in the rulebooks, but it did kind of get around it. It also served the purpose of giving a more realistic approach to how a dungeon would be plundered - a multi-layered approach that included a supply base, support infrastructure and a safe place to return to if badly beaten up. In real life, a handful of people would not journey into the darkness below, it would be a large undertaking that would involve many from the local environs. A band of adventurers would be seen in some instances as a means to earn a few pieces of silver.

Testing Downloads

This is a test post - I am trying to be able to add links to certain JPGs and PDFs that I have created in order for fellow gamers to view and subsequently download those files to aid in their games - I have had many requests for my Village of Hommlett maps, so would like to present these for all to use.

To begin with, here are test links to my two Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition (AD&D) village maps. I have had a play and they seem to work for me, but I am wondering if there are other settings at my host site that may need to change to enable others to download them? Could some of you out there have a play and let me know if they work - I am aiming for the links to open the JPG files and display them for on-screen use but also allow them to be downloaded.

If you could leave comments below that would be most helpful. Here are the links (I will try to "pretty them up" at a later date as my skills at doing this grow)...

Hommlett

Nulb 

Many thanks.

 

 

 

Doggerland : Aftermath

The final playing session of this campaign was last week, but I had plenty of after campaign paper work to do this week. I wrote a follow-up session about how the characters were rewarded for their efforts and tried to complete any small items that were left undone.


I have asked the players whether they would like to carry on using their characters for a further adventure in Doggerland sometime next year using 3rd Edition rules. Some have already answered, so it looks like that will be a go next year sometime. I will now be awarding experience and levelling up their characters in readiness for the conversion session which will take place before the next game starts.



This week I attended the first session of a new Pathfinder campaign run by the DM of the Dragon Warriors adventures from last year. I have rolled up a Half-Elven Sorceror - about time I played one of the magic using classes since getting back into RPGs a couple of years ago.

The Destruction of the Temple

The Adventurers

Bow – Ranger

Cormac – Fighter

Johan – Cleric

Maximillian – Thief

Tarquin - Fighter

Theoderic – Fighter

Vox – Magic User

Death Throes – Thunorsday 4^th September (Day 91) – early evening

Zuggtmoy’s screams rent the air as she scrabbled for purchase on the smooth granite flagstones of the throne room. Her pseudopods could get no purchase as she was inexorably pulled into the bright beam that lit the rest of the chamber. As soon as she was completely immersed within the purple light the screaming stopped and the light shut out.

Johan rushed to check on Vox and he was able to stem the bleed he had sustained when he was dashed to the floor of the throne room by the demon queen. Vox groggily looked around him but was still dazed enough to not know what was going on.

As the party regained their feet and eye-sight after the brightness of the purple column of energy had disappeared and the chamber had been dashed back into the dimness of the mould induced luminescence they began to feel slight tremors in the ground below their feet.

Bow was first off the mark and he raced to the ascending throne device. However, he passed the details of its manual activation (which he still knew even though the Skull had winked out of existence) onto Max as he ascended the shaft. The rest of the party followed Bow up the shaft one-at-a-time as the throne room began to collapse slowly around them.

They exited the main Temple building as the thunder of collapsing earth got louder and louder. As they exited the Temple they met with the remainder of the Thuringian raiding party as they too fled towards the road that led away from the Temple.

When the adventurers and their Thuringian allies had made it beyond the confines of the Temple’s outer defence works, the ground began to shake more and a bright purple glow began to emanate from the ground. All of the material belonging to the edifice was slowly but inexorably dragged into the glowing sphere of energy that had now appeared just below the ground surface within a large crater that was rapidly forming.

Finally, there was a brief titanic implosion and the whole of the Temple and its local environs disappeared into the purple ball of energy, which winked out of existence with a final rush of inflowing air that ended with a great thunder clap.

Return to Castleford – overnight

On the way back the small army met with its supply train and rear guard. The party swapped stories with the leaders of the expedition who then told tales of strange creatures and beings that they had encountered within the dungeon complex. They mentioned the party’s handiwork on the first two levels but also mentioned that they had only just scratched the surface of what was also encountered therein. Many men-at-arms and acolytes were slain but also many prisoners were taken.

The wagon train moved throughout the night in its haste to get back to the safety of Castleford’s doughty walls. As it travelled, the acolytes from the Sol Invictus temples from all around were there to Heal and succour the wounded.

Guests of Honour - Freyasday 5^th to Godsday 13^th September (Days 92-100)

When the wagon train arrived at Castleford it was immediately waved through the main gates and escorted to the castle. The prisoners were led to the dungeons whilst the remaining injured soldiers were taken to the infirmary for further Healing. The party was asked up to the keep where they stayed as guests of honour for the next week or two.

The adventurers spent most of the intervening week or so retelling their tales of danger and derring-do to those that would listen. They also headed out to the merchants’ quarter to pick up the items that they had previously ordered; Tarquin, Bow and Max had special magical rings that were due for delivery any time soon.

On the Godsday (13^th September) following their return to Castleford a great banquet was held in the party’s honour. Again they are guests of honour and are treated to a sumptuous feast as well as a reward for their contribution to the downfall of the Temple in Vannin. Each member of the party was awarded 10,000 gold coins and a small plot of land with a rent of 1,000 gold coins for their efforts. Again, Vox eschewed the ceremony but he was given his reward the following day personally by the Prince.

A few days after the great banquet, the adventurers were escorted to their new lands and introduced to those that would work for them.

Doggerland Final Session (Zuggtmoy's Realm)

The End of the Matter (10^th September 2014)

The Adventurers

Bow – Ranger

Cormac – Fighter

Johan – Cleric

Maximillian – Thief

Tarquin - Fighter

Theoderic – Fighter (NPC)

Vox – Magic User

Zuggtmoy's Realm - Courtesy of TSR/WotC

The Throne – Thunorsday 4^th September (Day 91) – early afternoon

The knowledge of how to use the throne mechanism in the main Temple above ground thrust itself into Bow’s mind. Now he knew how it worked the party had a second means of entry to the interdicted area inhabited by the demon queen Zuggtmoy.

He led his companions back up to the dais and throne in the Temple above and then gave them full instructions on which tiles to press, in which order and details of the passwords required in order to work the mechanism. He could get down using the powers of the Golden Skull.

Just as the party were about to approach the dais, they were disturbed by the tramp of many feet at the far end of the nave. Suddenly, the whole of the here-to-for gloomy Temple lit up as bright as daylight and each party scrutinised the other; the adventurers recognised that it was the military force from Castleford led by Prince Thrommel, the baron Tancred, the lady Mathilde and the High Priest Ralph, accompanied by several of their associates and scores of men-at-arms. The military contingent also recognised the companions and each wished the other party good luck as they set about their tasks; the adventurers to dispel the demon queen and the Thuringians to conquer the rest of the dungeon complex in order to give them the opportunity to do so undisturbed.

The party arrived one at a time into a throne room very deep below the ground level. The dais upon which the throne sat was constructed from large, seamless slabs of sickly-coloured porphyry whilst the rest of the room was coated in layers of slimes and moulds. Bow tested them with a variety of materials and found that they seemed harmless in themselves but they were slippery, so dangerous under foot.

When the party were all down safely – it took several minutes for each person to be able to come down after the throne returned to its position in the upper Temple – they cautiously made their way to the large set of stairs to the west that led further down into the depths. Their torches and lanterns lit the way through the maze of slime and mould trails but as they approached closer to the stairwell they could see a dim light source emanating from the bottom of the stairs.

The party split up with half moving across the throne room towards the doors on the opposite side of the room led by Tarquin, whilst the rest descended part-way down the stairs. Those that went down the stairs could make out in the half-light from the fluorescent moulds growing on the walls three columns of precious metal that rose to the ceiling, topped with the visage of a demon; one each of gold, silver and copper. The rest of the chamber expanded about halfway along its length to incorporate a large, round dark pit in the centre, and it culminated with a wall faced with a heavy dark purple drape with a very large gem-encrusted throne before it upon which was seated a black-hooded figure; they couldn’t tell whether it was a very small person on a normal sized throne or a normal sized person on a very large throne- their perspective was out by the juxtaposition. They decided to back up and follow their companions through the door on the southern side of the chamber to see if it would lead round the back of the throne and thus give them more of an element of surprise.

Animated Armour

The party followed Tarquin through the more westerly of the two wooden doors (some members of the party could not move to within twenty feet of the central magically locked and shielded double valves – the same Antipathy spell affected this side of the doors too) and entered a small chamber that had a black wooden throne butted up against the eastern wall which looked directly down the western corridor opposite. Other than some ghastly murals painted on the walls, there was nothing else in the chamber.

As there was nothing of interest other than the black wooden throne, which Tarquin said to avoid, the party advanced past the murals and into the corridor beyond.  Tarquin led the small band of adventurers into a second chamber beyond which had the same ghastly murals of moulds and fungi being ordered to carry out unspeakable acts upon innocent humans whilst demonic looking people looked on.

Unfortunately, the fighter’s attention was on the wall-paintings, and as he stepped into the chamber, the four suits of armour, set two on each of the north and south walls, came to life. In his haste to move into combat, he pointed his Wand of Wonder at the animated armour and spoke the trigger word. The room filled with flame as a Fireball ripped through it, but luckily only Tarquin and Bow from the party were in range and were the only ones slightly injured. The animated suits of armour seemed to bear no damage other than minor scorch marks.

The adventurers took the fight to the animations whilst Vox, who had cast a Flying spell upon himself, explored the main arrival room without having to touch the floor. After a while he got bored and decided to join the rest in the fight that he could hear emanating from the distant room. As he passed the entrance to the stairwell down to the pillared throne room he heard a cackle of laughter. He decided that as the fighters would most likely have everything under control in the fight, he would head back to the stairs down to see where the laughter came from. As he reached the top of the flight of stairs, he saw a bright, sickly purple light suddenly shine forth from deep within the room.

The party, however, were getting the worst in the fight and Tarquin had been seriously injured, so they decided to fight a retreating battle back out of the room. Tarquin went against his previous wary thoughts on the black wooden throne, and sat upon it in the hope that perhaps he could command the animated armour. Alas, this ruse did not work and they attacked him whilst he sat there none-the-less.

The party managed to escape the black wooden throne room and slammed the door upon their exit. They headed back across the slime covered floor to the stairs down where they joined their companions Vox and Johan, who had been first to leave the room in support of the mage.

The Three Pillars

Vox headed down the stairs still in Fly mode but his covetous thoughts betrayed him. A voice in his head said that if he wanted to take the copper pillar he could. He was sorely tempted to take the pillar but decided after a long pause to advance to the edge of the brightly glowing pillar of sickly purple light that now stretched from ceiling to floor from the central pit and lit the entire room to see what he could now see beyond it.

The party slowly filtered into the room but nothing seemed to change – the hunched figure still sat upon the large throne and the bright purple light neither dimmed nor grew in intensity. Eventually the whole party had moved up into a position where they could all see the throne and the person upon it. Tarquin touched the copper pillar on his way past and he too was asked within his head whether he wished to take it. He ignored the voice and the impulse to seek a way of moving the obviously extremely heavy pillar of solid metal.

The Ritual Begins

Vox, Max and Cormac advanced upon the dais to attack the black-cowled figure whilst Bow moved into direct viewing range of the throne. He set up the Golden Skull and readied the Sword of Solitude for the ritual whilst Johan drew a chalk circle and a variety of holy symbols around him on the floor of the throne room and then cast a Protection from Evil spell on the holy space. Tarquin and Theoderic took up positions in order to aid either group of their companions or defend them from any summoned minions that the demon queen may deign to conjure from the Abyss.

As the small party approached the throne they were all offered the precious metal pillars as an attempt to appeal to their greed but all of the party ignored the enticement; their goal was to call out the demoness and cast her back to her own realm. Seeing that her enticements were being ignored, the black-robed crone then changed tack. She tried a bit of reverse psychology and warned them not to take the jewels from the throne and then began to fiddle with some of the jewels encrusted upon the arms of the throne.

Bow had not started his ritual just yet, as he wondered what the black-robed figure was up to. He fired a single silver tipped arrow in her direction but it missed her and skittered away after hitting the back of the throne. He then began the ritual. At the same time, Vox cast a Lightning Bolt from his circlet, and Cormac also added a strike with his trusty sword. The magical attack managed to hit the figure upon the throne and then rebounded off the stone work to hit her again.

The old crone howled with rage but carried on threatening that no-one would get her treasures and fiddled more with the jewels upon the arms of the throne. She got herself worked up into a berserk frenzy and after just a few more moments of fiddling with the jewels encrusted upon the arms of the throne a variety of different coloured lights shot forth and struck the ceiling and floor of the chamber, blasting holes where it hit. One such beam though, reflected off a particular surface in the eaves and it rebounded to hit the crone and turn her into a pile of ash.

Summoning

Johan saw all of this and reacted as if he knew what was due to happen next. He lit his Candle of Invocation and was lucky to Gate in a Valkyrie; exactly what he wanted to enable him to protect Bow whilst he conducted the ritual. Just as the Valkyrie appeared, a Babau demon also appeared right in front of the chooser of the slain. The demon then summoned another of its kind from the Abyss and the two denizens of the Void took up fighting the Valkyrie.

At much the same moment, the demoness herself appeared on the throne in all her tentacled and hideous glory and began to attack her assailants. She magically teleported most of the party back into the original throne room but Vox and Cormac stubbornly avoided the magical command. Bow was most annoyed as he had completed just over half of the ritual and would need to get back in place to complete it. What would the demoness do in the meantime to hinder their progress?

As the rest of the party rushed back into the fray, Vox and Cormac put up a brave fight against the demon queen whilst the Valkyrie held her own against the two Babau demons. Zuggtmoy summoned three strange looking mould creatures to her side, and they slowly advanced upon Bow’s vacated position but they were not quick enough to make it before the ranger could begin the ritual again.

The demon queen, annoyed that Vox had hit her again with his Magic Missiles (although this time it was not damaging) used her telekinetic abilities to pull him out of the air and dashed him into the ground. The impact knocked him unconscious and he slowly slipped towards death.

Max managed to slow one of the Babau demons enough with a back stab so that the Valkyrie was able to finish it off with her next blow. Cormac still hacked away at the demoness whilst Johan and Theoderic helped the Valkyrie against the remaining demon and prepared to defend Bow against the mould creatures.

Zuggtmoy’s End

Max then turned his attention to the demon queen to aid Cormac whilst Bow finally completed the ritual. A scream rent the air as a magical pull dragged Zuggtmoy and her remaining minions towards the glowing column of sickly purple light; the gateway to her realm. Unfortunately this magical draw also pulled half the party towards it too, but luckily there was someone close enough to each of those drawn thither to prevent them from being dragged to the netherworlds. Vox was moved to safety by the Valkyrie as a final act before she returned Valhalla.

When Zuggtmoy crossed into the purple light she let out a final scream of defiance and then the gateway shut. Everyone in the chamber was left temporarily blinded due to the brightness suddenly disappearing, but Johan was able to crawl to Vox just in time to administer a few Healing spells to arrest the mage’s descent into death.

Bow looked around for the Golden Skull and the Sword of Solitude, but these had also disappeared. Max advanced upon the throne to begin prising out the gems but Johan warned him that for every jewel prised out, a demon would be summoned. He said that this was best left to those with the knowledge of how to deal with such artefacts.