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?

Aligning the Stars and Setting the Stage

Last session, the players romped all over the raiders then chewed scenery. I totally lost track of both real time and game time and probably let them do too much. This caused the party to be fragmented, with half at the gates of Nace and the other half still traveling with the wagons.

To get around any sort of headaches, I'll start the session at Five Tree Hill. It's a location just outside the Eastern gates. The "hill" is actually the slope to the city, so it is lower than the gates, but still dry.  As you can see, I have revamped much of my map to look more Roman.

Just inside the gates, there is an inn, a stable, water on the outskirts of the city. Food is also available at the Inn. Five Tree Hill is a convenient meeting spot for travelers. It's a large open area marked out by some arrowroot trees. The guards keep this trees pruned, so they don't interfere with the defenses of the town. No camping is allowed, but a lot of people grab a meal here while waiting for news, deliveries or friends. It's a good place to find a walking stick and swap gossip.

I Totally "Invented" My Own Archery Rules for AD&D and It Screws Up Everything

The other day, I had a game session that featured an awful lot of archery. Bow fire in this campaign turns out to be very deadly. It probably didn't help that between myself and the player characters, over a half dozen 20s were rolled in a single combat.

I decided to look back at my PHB and DMG for AD&D e1 to see what I was doing wrong.  According to the PHB, characters get two shots per round. On page 61 of the DMG, missile fire comes after evasion, parley and awaiting other party moves. Step 4 D covers all kinds of distance attacks. The old wargamer in me sees no problem with this.

Bow wielding characters can fire twice before the onset of melee in Step 4 E. But the question in my mind is: do you have to shoot twice? Since you have two shots, can you invoke 4 A, B, or C in lieu of your second shot? The extremes of this are "yes, what if you only have one arrow?" or "no, you missed your chance this round".

As a player, I have seen the "best" way of avoiding this is to have each character roll their own initiative. As a player, I like this choice, but as a DM, I think it's too much paper work and dice throwing. I am certain to goof this much dice action up. 

My house rules make clarify to the order of battle, without making too much of hash out of out. It does have the effect of making bows more deadly.

Here is how I handle initiative. If all parties are in one group, then they get one die roll modified by the best player's reaction. As a reward for that reaction bonus, the best player goes before all others on his team. Everyone else in each party is going at rough they same time.

Sometimes, I have a three or four way initiative if there a number of players not in the same general area. Note: I never allow separated members to roll for surprise on their own. Surprise is strictly an all or nothing affair. The curve on a six-sider makes an extra surprise opportunity too deadly.

Typically, in the first round of action missile fire is king and it is important to get off all missiles into the closest targets first. In the second round, spells are trump arrows, as they tend to hit harder and archers have to start selecting targets more carefully.

I don't really need to think about missile fire as fragmented actions until the second round.

I use a modified initiative system:

1. Roll for initiative. Win or lose, the player/npc that provided a bonus goes first for his team.
2. Side A proceeds down the sequence of combat.
3. Side B proceeds down the sequence of combat.
4. Side A performs any awaited actions. (Repeat 4 A-H from DMG)
5. Side B performs any awaited actions. (Repeat 4 A-H from DMG)
6. Last actions occur, such as slow monsters always striking last. If there is more than one, they are simultaneous. Do not repeat 4 A-H, it's a free-for-all.
7. Go back to one.

If a character decides to hold an arrow for some contingent event like a new opponent stepping into the battle, that is an awaited action and occurs at either 4 or 5 of the sequence above. It turns out that players who are used to the bow mechanics don't always shoot when they can. 

I have some other special rules.

• Magic trumps missile fire. Either the spell was prepared last round* and is available first or is coming from a device with no prep time. 
• Once you shoot, you can drop your bow and draw a weapon. You can't melee this round but are ready to do so in the next round. 
• Missile fire can occur while advancing at a walk (or on a mount) with no penalty. 
• An archer jogging fires at a -2. Running is a -4. Sprinting is right out. Mount speed is treated the same as character speed, so a running horse is just as bad for shooting as the player running.   
• If an enemy charges AT someone with a ready missile weapon, their AC is reduced by 2 for thrown weapons and 4 for bows and crossbows. The target is only getting bigger. 
• Shooting at a foe moving quickly across your field of view is done at a -1 for running and -2 for sprinting. This is ignored if charging a ready archer. I am pretty sure much of this is right out of Car Wars. 

Shooting into a melee is kind of interesting in my game. Instead of trying to figure out cover, size, and concealment, I merely note which guy has cover or concealment and which does not. The archer rolls two to hit dice for each arrow, because there are two targets. Typically, one will hit and one will miss and the damage is applied to the target hit. It's fun to shoot your friends in the back! 

If both dice indicate a hit, the first two points of damage are applied to the target which was providing cover or concealment. All remaining points are applied to the covered or concealed target as the completely stopped the arrow's motion. If there is nothing left to damage the second target, oh well. 20s are handled as per normal, doubling the damage to that target. 

In this method, I do not consider the flanking or back attack modifiers. It makes things too deadly and besides, the archer is at a disadvantage because he is trying to avoid one of the targets anyway. His ability to hit anyone is degraded. 

How do you handle missile fire in AD&D? 

*I do have a handful special rule for spells to make this system work. Once you prep a spell, you can hold it as long as the spell description says OR as long as you do nothing more than walk or turn, which ever is MORE restrictive. Casters can step behind barriers and pop out later with a spell prepped, but can't go prone as that requires not holding your hands correctly. 

If combat ends before the moment of casting, the caster can pull back the power in a controlled fashion, so they don't lose a prepped spell for a lack of opportunity. It saves on rest and study time.