SH126 The Sally

by on July 25, 2015 at 5:25 pm
Posted In: SFB

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

Patch and I decided to turn back to SFB a little while ago, finishing off a project that our group had been stuck on for a while (more on that in a bit). This particular scenario is the third of a set of three in S2 that has Klingons vs the LDR in Y157 (pre-gatlings).

“Captain Kruze had been watching the Hydran border for months, with no activity, when word reached him that the LDR had initiated hostilities. Kruze’s frigate squadron was the northernmost on the Hydran border, and having just left the base at the angle where Klingon, LDR, and Hydran space conjoined, he was in excellent position to sally into LDR space. Kruze intended to raid LDR shipping and avoid a decisive engagement. He found what he thought was a convoy and moved to attack.”

However, Kruze had found an LDR force of armed freighters (three small phaser-armed, and two large disruptor-armed) accompanied by two police ships. It doesn’t look like much, but there’s a lot of weapons in there. The Klingon squadron consists of an F5C, F5, and E4. Both sides cannot disengage at first, with the LDR only being able to disengage at all when both F-ALs are crippled or destroyed, and any Klingon ship only being able to disengage after being crippled.

I had the LDR and decided to load the POLs and F-ALs up on transporter bombs, and started each one with a suicide shuttle armed and ready to go (leaving the three shuttles on the F-ASs for point-defense and group protection if it should come down to that). I started with everything going speed 12, while the Klingons moved in at speed 19. I started in a pretty loose formation, and then tightened it up with sideslips, but Patch split off his F5C about halfway through the first turn. I turned for the larger group, as the F5C’s shields are tougher. A little later, Patch hit with three out of four disruptors to nearly take down a shield on an F-AS (not bad at range 13 with a +1 shift!). The F5C followed up and got one point in (hull…). As he turned away, I volleyed all six disruptors at the E4 and nearly got shield 2 down on four hits. We both followed up with Ph-2 shots, but range and ECM were problems. The F-ASs finally got an internal on the E4 after firing all phasers, and got a lucky R Warp hit.


First pass.
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Forgotten Battle in the Mines

by on July 21, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: D&D

The year after Bloodstone Pass came out, H2 The Mines of Bloodstone came out. One thing had changed: This was a direct sequel to the former module, and there were definitely going to be more after this (whether they knew at this point it would be a four module series is not said).

Something else important changed: There’s no BattleSystem logo on this one. There’s one mention in the back blurb of “optional” BattleSystem scenarios. Which is entirely correct; any wargaming adventurers going through this one are in for a big let down. Instead, other newer, cooler, products are called out: the Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide and the Wilderness Survival Guide. The adventure instead featured an extremely tough dungeon environment which allowed a reversion to the typical 32-page adventure book, though it is worth noting that (contrary to usual practice) the cover was stapled to the book. There’s several maps, many of which are in the isometric format introduced in the DSG.

At this point one could wonder if the H series was just a way to show off the latest new product, and convince people they really wanted to get them. In practice, there’s no crying need for either of the new hardbacks, and the need for the WSG is very minimal. The actual need for the DSG is also fairly minimal, but at the same time it was essential to writing the module. The DSG had discussed the idea of sprawling linked cavern complexes under the entire game world, called variously ‘deepearth’ and ‘underdark’, and this module, co-authored by the author of the DSG, featured a corner of what was explicitly just that.

This is still before the Forgotten Realms became a TSR property, and the setting is ‘anywhere you wish to drop in the countries involved’. However, the background became more concrete in this installment. Vaasa was ‘ruled by a Witch-King of incredible power’ in H1, but now this is expanded upon with Vaasa being a barren wilderness until the coming of Zhengyi a little more than 10 years ago. After that comes some quick notes on the module, and the lead ins for if the players have or have not been through H1.

And that’s where the inconsistencies begin.

(Caution: I’m headed into spoiler territory here.)

Thankfully, it’s never anything really game breaking, but there’s a handful of problems throughout the module. The first one is probably the biggest: The module starts with the basic rundown of the next couple months after the end of H1, as a harsh winter settles over the valley. Thanks to all the fighting, the harvest was delayed, and now heavy rains and an early freeze have ruined some of it before it can be brought in, leaving the village short of food for the winter. But wait, H1 had a nice schedule that explicitly said the harvest was completed right before the party arrives. After all, the bandits don’t come calling until the villagers have done all the work so they can take it from them, and fighting starts at that point.

So, the first thing the DM gets to do is figure out how to short the village of food. If part of the village got torched during the fighting (likely), that can explain it. Also, if the party hired troops to help out (possible), there’s extra mouths to feed. Otherwise….

Bloodstone Village only gets three pages of detailing this time, repeating the brief profiles and random villager tables, plus an updated map. The local dwarf, centaur, and halfling communities are each introduced in a little under a page each this time, including a map, important people, BattleSystem info, and a small encounter/adventure that could happen if/when the party visits.

The module purposely starts slow, with worries about the winter, wolves, and some minor annoyances before a night attack on the village attempts to jump-start the plot. It certainly provides a nice little mystery that might take a few (bloody) nights to solve. Intelligent players shouldn’t have any trouble figuring out Orcus is involved (they may not know what to make of what they’re finding, but the obvious questions will lead to answers). Making the jump to the abandoned mines (that may not have even been seen—though they are part of the background—in H1) seems tenuous to me. Okay, they were important, and they were abandoned when something evil was found in there, but does that really have anything to do with vampires and warg attacks? The fact that Bloodstone needs money, and reopening the mines would produce a lot of money, seems a safer bet to motivate the PCs to check them out, which will draw them into the rest of the adventure, but there’s no direct link.

The mines themselves are where the module gets going, but there’s minor consistency problems again. The box canyon the mine entrances are in is only mapped in H1, but that implies they’re on the north side (the compass rose is missing), but the entrances lead to the west here. Past that, there’s problems every time you go from one map to another, and the connections don’t match up right. They can all be explained easily enough, but feels like they were all written separately and then stuck together. There’s one passage that goes off-map and and off into the deepearth map in the DSG in here, but it has nothing to do with the current module, and there’s no good mechanism for steering the players straight if they divert down it (“if the PCs are still plodding along, have them meet a beholder”).

The general goal is to find the svirfneblin (gesundheit) kingdom in exile and get them to attack a duergar city in a massive diversion while the PCs sneak into the Temple of Orcus. This can be played out in BattleSystem, and stats are given, but there’s no particular need to, as the PCs are presumed off doing their high-level dungeon stuff instead of taking part.

After that, comes the main course: the Temple of Orcus. It’s big, it’s tough, it has magical protections to keep the players from short-circuiting things. (Which is generally fine; a big temple to a major demon lord should have magical protections in place. I just wish things like that were handled a bit more systematically for the world at large, instead of feeling like a band-aid.) And in classic fashion, the party arrives (one hopes) right as a ritual to summon Orcus into the world is starting! …And there’s no hint that this is about to happen in the rest of the module. I mean, what makes now special, as opposed to, oh, say, a month ago?

Okay, that’s a list of complaints and inconsistencies. In general, these are actually fairly minor to the flow of the module, but it means the module needs a bit of massaging before being truly ready to go. This is really just a bigger, badder dungeon module. It has some good pacing, with local problems escalating all the way up to a very bad, and immediate, problem. Of course, if you’re expecting something different from a high-level module (like H1), then this will be a disappointment.

Now, back above ground in the valley, the dwarves and centaurs got BattleSystem info, but the module pretty much states outright it’ll never be used. (The halflings also get BattleSystem info, but there is a small battle for them (only) to take part in.) There’s also a couple sample battle maps given for the underground that are part of the section on the big battle, but aren’t directly referenced in the text. One of them looks to be far inside the main cavern, away from any battle that would naturally get fought. I’m wondering if we’re seeing fragments of a much more complicated campaign to fight an army up to the temple so the party can get in and do their heroic thing, which got cut to make room for a really, really, big temple. The latter was probably a safer bet for the general TSR audience, but it means the module is nothing special.

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More Magic Than You Can Shake a Wand At

by on July 17, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: D&D

After three modules, it seemed that the FR series was a set of geographical supplements filling out the further reaches of the Forgotten Realms in more detail. FR4 turned it into a more general series than that, as The Magister had no geographical lore at all. It also marked the return of Ed Greenwood to the series, and the book focused on one of his main interests: magic books and items. Greenwood had been contributing articles to Dragon magazine for years, many of them dealing with items and lore from the Realms. The best of these were collected together for this volume, and all-new material added.

The all-item focus of the book meant that the cover was stapled to the interior, and the inside front cover includes a modified version of the random magic item treasure table, so these new items could be randomly rolled for. The last few pages of the book have much expanded rules for a character creating a new magic item, with a chart of (new) modifiers for the final success roll stipulated in the DMG on the inside back cover.

About half the book is descriptions of a dozen spellbooks known to be wandering the Realms, giving their appearance, known history, and the spells they contain, which generally includes two or three new ones. At the end of this section is a couple of pages that lists all the new spells from here and the DM’s Sourcebook of the Realms, with their spell levels, what book they’re in, and where to find the description. I like the spellbook descriptions, and the vast bulk of the spells are inventive and look good (though there’s some really complicated potential interactions on many), but I think there’s some missed opportunities here. Some of these new spells are ‘unique’; they’re only found in the described book. Others are known to have been copied down a few times, and might be found elsewhere. This isn’t in the table. Furthermore, I think it could have been neat to come up with a basic ‘common-uncommon-rare-unique’ scheme and not only define these spells as rare and unique, but define how widely known the bulk of the ‘normal’ spells from the Players Handbook and Unearthed Arcana are. Most low-level spells should be ‘common’, but defining a few as ‘uncommon’, and then mixing it up more at higher levels could have some very interesting effects on a campaign. It would have taken up quite a bit of space however.

Instead, the second half of the book is taken up with about fifty magic items, with especial attention to shields, cloaks, harps, wands and swords. Again, these are generally well done, and if you need any sort of inspiration for magic items, this is a very good book. There’s a lot of potential complex interactions detailed again, which says something about the mess of different uncategorized effects AD&D had, but this also means that all these items have had some true thought given to them.

Just about all of these spell books and items have lore attached to them. The past history (as far as it is known) is given for almost all of these items (a couple are just mentioned as being relatively common). But these histories often don’t have a lot of detail. “Named for the legendary mage…”, but nothing about this person is given. How long ago? Why is he legendary? This is fine for a DM who is adapting these ideas to his own campaign, but considering that we are now dealing with a supplement for a particular setting, some more details would nice. And then there’s things like the Orb of Holiness, which has application outside of normal adventuring (“usually found at the heart of a temple, grove, or other holy place…”). It would be nice to have info like this show up someplace talking about places like that (though they are ‘rare’ even there, so having a temple without one isn’t a big problem). So, it’s a bunch of color, some not really linked to anything else known about the setting, some of it with potential wide-spread implications that I don’t think have ever been repeated elsewhere.

The title of the book is explained in about a third of a page in the introduction: the Magister is the goddess Mystra’s champion of magic. This was a subject that would be revisited in Secrets of the Magister.

Still, it’s a good collection of items. It makes a good source of inspiration for any high-magic fantasy setting, under any rules, though you’ll have to do a lot more mechanical work as you move away from 1e AD&D. And if you’re running a D&D-style campaign, the spellbooks should inspire you to think a lot more about the books the magic-user is always carrying around. I don’t recommend paying a lot for this, but it’s worth having, as there’s a lot of ideas in here.

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The Thief

by on July 12, 2015 at 9:53 am
Posted In: Books

Megan Whalen Turner’s The Thief is set in some sort of post-Ancient-Greek fantasyland. I imagine the references to megarons and peplos are lost on a lot of people, and I recommend reading up a little on Greek myths and the Mycenean age so as to have a firmer grasp of the imagery she is conjuring up.

But don’t read too much. Turner was heavily inspired by Greece, but this is not a work of deep, thoughtful world-building. And time has moved on here at any rate, with guns and pocketwatches. These end up feeling out of place, since even with all the time that has obviously passed since buildings of Cyclopean masonry have been built, it still mostly feels like a small, pre-medieval world.

And there’s eucalyptus trees.

But it works. The mythology is her own, but the gods and goddesses, and the stories of them feel very Greek.

As for the story itself, it also works. It’s essentially a caper story, with self-professed master-thief Gen being pulled out prison to steal the unstealable. Much of the early part of the book moves slowly, as the party makes their way to an unrevealed destination. Gen narrates the entire book, and it would be so easy for his childish antics to become too disagreeable, but he maintains a light-hearted enough tone to keep the reader engaged. As the story continues, and Gen physically recovers from his time in prison, thing pick up a little, and the landscape gets more interesting. And then they arrive, and things really pick up, with the last few chapters passing in a blur.

What I had not picked up on is that Gen is not an entirely reliable narrator. I don’t think he ever lies in the book, but there are things not said. I could see where the plot was going, and it predictably ended up there; there was one spot near the end that what had happened was blindingly obvious. And yet, I was still taken by surprise.

Let’s say I saw what Gen was doing, but I didn’t see who he was. It’s a well worthwhile book, and everything I see says it gets better in the sequels.

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Bloodstone Battles

by on July 10, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: D&D

Right after TSR released BattleSystem, they provided it with a fairly extensive scenario package/AD&D adventure, re-using what had been the original name of the project: Bloodstone Pass. This also kicked off the H-series modules for ‘High-level’ AD&D parties. From the designation, it was probably envisioned as another anthology series like ‘N’ and ‘I’ with no concrete settings, however, the H-series ended up only hosting the direct sequels to this adventure involving the barony of Bloodstone.

As was typical in 1985, no setting was specified, and in fact the surrounding lands of Vaasa and Damara were created specifically for it. However, it was also assumed that it would be in the world of Greyhawk like all the other contemporary modules (“The greatest show on Oerth is playing here for three days only!”), but again, Vaasa and Damara are not pre-existing parts of that setting, and I’ve seen no one speculating on good places to fit them in. Of course, the reason for that is they are now part of the Forgotten Realms setting. Part of the Great Glacier was eliminated from Greenwood’s original version (and eventually some history of the melting of the glacier added) to make room for these  new countries, and the final module in the series carried a Forgotten Realms logo.

BloodstonePhysically, the module is unique, coming in an oversized slim box that contained the main adventure book, a BattleSystem roster book, a sheet of counters (that match ones that came with the BattleSystem set, but with fancier artwork), and several sheets for fold up buildings and characters. These last items make a complete set quite rare today, and I’m a little sad that I cannot find any photos of these last in action online. Since the bulk of the action is around the village of Bloodstone, the 3D buildings are meant to set up the entire village in BattleSystem scale: The bulk of small buildings were handled with just a few reversible facades that could also show burned ruins or woods. Four notable shops got identical buildings, though fences and troughs could be added to make each one a little different. Larger and more complicated were the centerpieces for character interaction: the Dancing Clown Inn, the Abbey of St. Solars the Twice-Martyred (not really an abbey), and the baron’s manor. Finally, there was a well, fountain, gallows, and a section of town wall. As I recall, they were fairly well designed and went together well, though there were a lot of small complex parts in places. (Sadly, they also take up a fair amount of room assembled, and mine were abandoned in a move; likely a common fate.) There’s also a sheet of ten NPCs in TSR’s typical triangular stand-up pattern.

(Note: there are minor spoilers of the plot from here on, though I’ve kept them fairly oblique.)

The initial hook has the (presumably 15th level) characters as refugees (along with a lot of other people) of the breakup and conquest of Damara after its army was routed last summer. The module recommends that characters be limited to about 100 gp and three magic items apiece, with assurances that high-level characters build up so many limited items that this won’t draw many protests. Someone has an amazingly generous view of the acquisitive nature of most players. Or the pre-generated characters could be used (that seems safer to me). A little scene setting, and a few moderately tough monsters later, and the characters have impressed a couple of boys who make the first job offer they’ve heard in some time, “We can pay five silver pieces a day to each of you!”

Well, that may not sound attractive to high-level adventurers, but most players should be willing to at least talk to them, and once it becomes clear that this is headed to a Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven scenario (if the DM didn’t pitch it as such to begin with), most parties should be willing to buy into it. The journey from Valls (where the adventure opens) to Bloodstone Pass is well-covered, with a rough map outlining where the party will end up each day, with a number of optional encounters that can be randomly rolled for (mostly refugees and the like early on, shifting to specific non-human encounters near the destination).

The village itself gets six pages of description, plus a couple maps, one of which is designed to be laid out on a 4’x8′ table for miniatures combat (using all the 3D buildings, of course). It’s not the best presented town ever, but thumbnails of some prominent people are given, and there’s a nice set of tables for generating random villagers when needed. The few interior plans given are more functional and schematic than meant for detailed play (after all, the main encounters will be outside with armies!), but the plans given for the baronial manor need a complete re-do. There’s one flub in the descriptions which refers to there being more rooms than there are, but most importantly, it’s all crammed into one floor, when by the 3D paper version, there should be two or three floors. And even given the somewhat abbreviated functional nature of the plans, there’s no accounting for the wall thickness inherent in someplace as well fortified as the manor looks. That said, the features given are about right, and the exact layout can either be ignored, or just shifting the given one around a bunch. The model has some large windows, and no arrow slits, while otherwise looking fairly solid. And there’s no indications of the windows shown on the model in the floor plans (which would help).

A solid timetable is provided for the DM to figure out how much time the PCs have to get the villagers behind them, organize the available forces, and work on defenses. A couple new BattleSystem rules are presented for ramparts and ditches, and guidelines for the time it takes to construct them and do training. A number of optional sub-plots are presented, and I’d call a couple of them effectively mandatory, considering their effect on other events. There will be a small number of battles, escalating in size and intensity, and the DM is advised (rightly so!) to get help with the opposition for the climax as there will be a fair amount of high-level magic flying around.

Like with I14, using this module demands a group that’s willing to command troops in a miniatures battle as well as adventure, but it is much better focused, and doesn’t imply a campaign that keeps switching gears; this adventure warns you large-scale combat is coming, and then ratchets it up to a climatic confrontation (it is also much more up front about the tie-in with the large BattleSystem logo on the cover). The first battles should be fairly manageable, but the action scales up fast, and non-wargaming players (and DM!) may get overwhelmed by the end. However, if you really have a group that’s adventured up to about 15th level, they should be fairly well prepared to handle the powerful NPCs that also show up to complicate things (there is one encounter—in the middle of other events—with one right solution). Cutting everything back to bare bones, I could see this taking about four longish sessions, with most of the role-playing/sub-plots sacrificed. More likely, there’d be two or three sessions before any battles at all, with at least one more session per battle afterward (there could also be non-battle sessions in between). The module wraps up with a good synopsis of of what happens after, win or lose, and sets up for further adventures.

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