This was huge. What was intended to be a small-scale experiment in a new way of playing turned into a huge 6.5 hour event that radically altered both the campaign world and the way I think about managing my game. Thank you Jeffro!
My Gameworld had a problem. The campaign was intended to be a colonial excursion to reclaim a lost city and re-establish the imperial presence in this foggy, equatorial New World. But the abandoned city they came to retake was not really abandoned. It was occupied with ORCS. Initially my intention had been to have this be the first "dungeon" to clear, reclaiming the city via raiding by adventurers. But then I realized that this was a STUPID idea. An imperial expedition with hundreds of soldiers, a high-level wizard and a great big mortar would not leave the taking of a city to 10-15 men raids! I was foolishly letting my presuppositions about how to play D&D colour my intentions for how the game would play out. What made much more sense was to have a wargaming event that would adjudicate how this was all gonna go down. I needed a Braunstein. So I look at the map.
The only relevant parties that are relevant to this conflict are the orcs holding the ruined city and the expeditionary force. Two players does not an interesting conflict make, methinks. Fortunately, I had already established three smaller factions within the expeditionary force to explain the presence of different player options, namely some mercenaries, a holy order, and a research detachment from the wizards university. Three smaller factions up against a single entrenched faction made me think fondly of Fortress America, one of the better Risk-Style board games on the market. Thus, Fortress Orkmerica was born.
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| America is even green in the classic game! |
FACTION LEADERS
Barotha Carvalloman: The fickle elvish aristocrat making all of this possible, he did not engage directly with the invasion and remained on the ship, doing who knows what. Nonetheless, his money and legitimate authority will be relevant when the game approaches its end, so it is worth it to mention him.
Osman Rausch: Head of the mercenary company, commanding a few hundred men, split roughly even between heavy and armoured foot, as well as a small detachment of elvish archers and a mortar. His objectives? Seize the keep and drive the orcs out. Failing that, his secondary objective was to establish a proper siege camp and starve the orcs out. He was the only player on the imperial side who did not have objectives at odds with his allies.
Archpriest Gilderoy Loutherbourg: A cleric with a small detachment of holy warriors and some peasants. His objective was to take control of the abandoned church in town and fortify it against further attack. His secondary objective was to make Siegfried's apprentices "disappear". Fr. Loutherbourg is secretly aware of Vemmelmordt's Chaotic and Necromantic ways, but on account of the wizard's favour with Lord Carvalloman, cannot confront him directly.
Siegfried von Vemmelmordt: 11th level magic-user with two 2nd level apprentices. His primary objective? Take control of the church before Gilderoy does in order to gain access to the ossuary beneath. Plenty of bones to animate down there. Barring this outcome, he intends to kill Gilderoy so that the power vacuum causes enough confusion that he can do "research" in the catacombs without pesky clerics bothering him about "desecration of the dead" and "violation of natural law". This is all part of his larger scheme, to raise enough undead and enslave enough orcs that he can establish himself permanently and safely in the Library of Shuga-Koth.
Big Chief Gorkamoley: The leader of a large contingent of orcs holding the city, he had three warchiefs working under him to help manage the troops. Teefeata, Bonesmasha, and MOGMOGMOG all had different unique abilities pertaining to troop morale, but in the event of no warchief present orcs would have to check morale before doing anything, per the peasant rules in Chainmail. Gorkamoley was supposed to be played by the DM of the other game our group plays (A wonderful frontier-based hexcrawl in fantasy Canada) but personal affairs rendered him unavailable. Stepping in to save the day, one of the regular players from my game. I was initially hesitant to let a player see the inner workings of the "bad guys" he would normally be fighting against, but then I realized this was dumb and I needed to have some faith that my friend would be able to separate the two and play fairly. He had very simple goals: kill humans, keep them out. He was a great choice for this role as he is very familiar with Fortress America, especially as an America player and was more than comfortable with the asymmetric 3v1 setup of this game. The Orcs were mostly composed of light foot, which will normally get eviscerated in melee with armoured and heavy foot. To offset this, I gave him the ability to send a unit into the jungle. In 1d6 days it would return with 2d6 units of light foot, and if this 2d6 roll contained a 1 this would refer instead to an ogre. He asked how many times he could do this, I said 3d6 (we rolled a 13) he sent all of them on day one.
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| It was a beautiful day, we gamed with the garage open all afternoon |
Prior to initiating the first turn I met with each player 1-on-1 to cover any questions they had about their data sheet, objectives, and to get an idea of what they were going to attempt first. Did this while working the BBQ, so when I was done we had a batch of burgers ready to go. Lunch was eaten, cold ones were cracked, and the game began.
TURN ONE: May 11th
The turns were structured as being a 24 hour period, from dawn to dawn. The team sent a small detachment to take the beach, and scout the area. Fr. Gilderoy used "Speak with Plants" and "Speak with Animals" to gather intel about the orcs. The trees said "Big Chief sends runners into the jungle, up the mountain". The big chief had nearly halved his garrison sending runners out for reinforcements, a decisive assault would have ruined him. A decisive assault, however, did not come. Siegfried cast "Hallucinatory Terrain" to create a dense jungle on the beach that would obscure the arrival of the rest of the army in the following days. Big Chief Gorkamoley had his forces divided. Some were lurking in the streets of the city looking to pick off scouts. Some were in a watchtower on the perimeter of the city with an Ogre. Some were holding the keep. A small camp in the jungle just along the beach was lurking, spying the arrival of the humans (This camp was snitched on by the talking animals). MOGMOGMOG, the toughest and most brootal of all the orcs (Some say... some say even more bruutal than the Big Chief himself) was camped behind the city, poised to reinforce any area that needed it. Most interestingly though, was that Big Chief Gorkamoley was lurking deep in the jungle west of the city, and that he had more units with him than any other location. All was quiet.
TURN TWO: May 12th
The Humans sent their detachment into the jungle to take on the orcish scouting camp, but found it completely deserted. They were able to waltz right in and take control of a watchtower along the defunct, nearly absent city wall. Rausch deployed the remainder of his troops to the beach, hidden by Siegfried's hallucinatory jungle. The orcs received reinforcements, and sent nearly all of them to Big Chief's secret camp in the western jungle. They sent a goblin to parley with the humans.
"His Corpulent Majesty Gorkamoley bids you welcome, and wishes more than anything else to understand why, why would you encroach on us like this? Not only have we done you no harm, we do not understand the FOOLISHNESS it would take for people as SMALL and PINK and SQUISHY as you to assault the Mighty Gorkamoley. Surely you have some reason to challenge his might despite your obvious weakness and pathetic bone density?"
The goblin was Charmed, taken hostage and named Arnold. What Siegfried intends to do with him remains unknown.
TURN THREE: May 13th
In the morning, the watchtower crew surveyed the city, and the mercenaries sent scouts into the streets. However, the orcs had received orders to vanish, hide, take no hostile action and not set foot in the streets. It was an apparent ghost-town. In the afternoon, Siegfried placed new hallucinatory terrain closer to the city to hide the advancing of the army and mortar. The superstitious orcs failed some rolls and remained afraid to enter woods that seemingly appeared from thin air (Though the Orc Player did not think to actually attempt to enter these woods). The clerics cut down jungle wood and began putting up palisades on the beach to more easily protect the flank of the advancing army. They left a small cluster of troops to keep the watchtower, but sent most of the force back to link up with the main army. The day was quiet and uneventful, but the orc player had orders for after the sun set.
Hiding in ruined houses, lurking in the streets under cover of darkness, the orcs assaulted the now largely un-defended watchtower. War Chief Teefeata, 2 ogres and a large mob of orcs advanced on the tower. This would be the first use of Chainmail any of us have ever played, so it did take a while. We learned a couple things from this battle. Most importantly we learned that light foot, even in greatly superior numbers, gets absolutely eviscerated by armoured foot. The 5 infantry units of humans, 2 armoured and 3 heavy, ran the 15 units of light foot orcs through a meat grinder, though in the end the Ogres ended the plucky humans. Following this, and hearing the advance of human reinforcements, War Chief Teefeata and his ogres ran away to fight another day, joining up with the Big Chief. After all, even more orcs arrived from the jungle that day, and they were promptly sent to Gorkamoley's camp. A seriously large army was amassing in the jungle.
TURN 4: May 14th
This one was for all the marbles. War Chief MOGMOGMOG got aspirations of grandeur. After all, he is surely the toughest and meanest of all the orcs! He placed Big Chief Gorkamoley's throne in the courtyard of the keep, and opened the gates, awaiting a detachment that he felt sure was going to march up main street today. Hidden behind the open doors, in the wings of the courtyard, a mob of orc heavies lead by War Chief Bonesmasha. The plan was simple, bait the humans into entering the courtyard, and then slam the doors shut, cutting the force in half and attacking those inside the keep from the flanks. An elegant, if daring, scheme. There were two things that MOGMOGMOG was not expecting in his gamble.
1. That Osman Rausch would be marching his ENTIRE army up the main street to assault the keep. This meant that when the doors pinched the gate shut, halving the army, the courtyard would still have humans outnumbering orcs nearly 3:1.
2. That Osman Rausch would fire artillery directly at MOGMOGMOG on his throne before directing his troops to enter the keep. The arrogant War Chief and his immediately surrounding attendants was slain by a mortar before the fight even truly began.
But Bonesmasha and his men made their morale checks, and stuck to the plan. They waited, and when 9 units of armoured foot entered followed by 9 units of heavy foot, the gates were slammed shut, the humans were being attacked from the rear! The time it took the humans to about face was enough time for the orcs to tear through the heavy foot, but the armoured foot made short work of the orcs and War Chief Bonesmasha fled, scrambling over the wall with his life barely intact.
In a staggering display of tactical brilliance, Big Chief Gorkamoley did not bring his (At this point truly enormous) army to flank the rest of the army stuck outside the keep, so once the orcs inside were killed the humans simply opened the gate and secured the keep. But there was a question: What were the wizards up to during all this? The clerics were marching with the army, but Siegfried and his apprentices were nowhere to be seen.
They had gone to the church, under the cover of invisibility spells. They animated some 34 skeletons from the ossuary and set them to work barricading the doors with pews. Siegfried explained his plan of action should Fr. Gilderoy try and take the church. The plan was for him and his two apprentices to cast 3 instances of Charm Person on the leader of the clerics, and if that failed retreat into the ossuary while the doors were cleared and cast Cloudkill on the stairs. This is where things got a little bit messy.
TURN 5: May 15th
I made a huge error and it nearly ended the game on a very sour note. Big Chief Gorkamoley realized he had lost, and moved all remaining troops to the Big Camp in the jungle. He gave me orders for the coming weeks, mostly kidnappings, assassinations and raids under cover of darkness. The city ruins once housed thousands, and now are being held by a mere 500 souls. Unable to compete with the weapons and armour tech of the expedition, the orcs intend to wage guerilla warfare and wear down the morale of the humans. More people may come from the Old World in time, but those already in the new world will live in the shadow of constant, needling threat from the jungle.
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| His mass pulling of forces from the jungles and mountains did not go unnoticed, and he is not the only faction of humanoids in this misty land... |
The humans had their own problems to worry about. Fr. Gilderoy marched his men to the church, and, finding it barricaded, set about breaking in. Through peepholes, the Charm Person spells went off. He failed all three saves, or rather, he SHOULD have. I looked at the dice and got it in my head that saving throws are "Roll Under", as per another system our group used to play. He should have been completely under Siegfried's control, but I didn't convey this to the player. So the issue of cloudkill was being debated and things were getting bleak, it didn't seem like many of the clerics would get out of this situation alive. You see, the cleric player didn't know what level Siegfried was, and believed that he was out of high-grade spell slots. This was not the case, and now conversations were flying about bricking up the door to the ossuary stairs, starving him out, etc. It was at this point that I realized the error I had made.
After discussing it with the players, we agreed to a retcon. I was fairly adamant about this, letting a result stand from a blatant inversion of what the rules should have been was not something I wanted. However, the players were somewhat invested in the political upheaval of the erroneous results. We worked out a retcon that preserved this "Cold War" endstate while still reverting the die results to be what they should have been. Play by the rules! Do not fudge dice!
The End-State of the Braunstein
Gilderoy (Under magical direction), to the great protests of his acolytes, demands that Siegfried be left to his devices in the ossuary, and that no one is to enter or leave it without his permission. His underlings are furious, and suspect corruption on the part of their superior. Worse, we decide we need to figure out what Lord Carvalloman's opinion of all this is. I get curious, and roll up what spells he has access to as an 8th level magic-user. In a freak outcome of the dice, well over half of his spellbook coincides directly with the spells Siegfried has. It was established early in the game that the Elf-Lord considers Siegfried a dear friend, but this was compounded now by the implication that Siegfried likely tutored the Elf in the ways of magic. It was extremely unlikely that secular authourity would intervene on behalf of the Unwilling to face the powerful wizard on their own or oppose their ecclesiastic superior, they draft a letter to the Archbishop explaining the dreadful conditions and blatant desecration occurring. Will the Inquisition be dispatched? Almost certainly.
Siegfried has uncovered that the ossuary is connected to a larger underground network, there is a dungeon beneath the city! He intends to find a way to surreptitiously raise, equip and relocate as many skeleton warriors as he can to the Library of Shuga-Koth, to defend him and his apprentices as they plumb the vile snake-cult secrets of that vast arcane archive. Perhaps he will use Arnold, his goblin henchman, to open up relations with the orcs, perhaps not. Most importantly, he was alive and in a secure location on the 15th, which means he was able to receive intel and dispense payment with the adventurers from Session 003's dungeon expedition. Time Paradox Evaded!
Osman Rausch does not care if the wizard wants to poke around in the catacombs and as long as the Lord Carvalloman keeps paying he has no interest in using his mercenaries against the wizard. The vote of the war-chest vetoes any potential religious sentiments of the soldiers, at least for now. The open secret of Siegfried's necromancy remains a source of tension, but not outright conflict as things currently stand. They got what they wanted, they secured the keep and killed hundreds of orcs. Life is going pretty much exactly how they want it to.
This game was a blast, I had so much fun running it, and I was perpetually amazed at how the fog of war really tampers with the predictability of scenarios. More than once the movement of troops meant that, like ships in the night, two armies would evade each other without even knowing it. Looking at the state of things now, things are a powder keg in a way that would have been an enormous slog and terrible cognitive load for me to generate and track on my own as a conventional DM. We have a huge force of orcs plotting asymmetric warfare in the jungle, and despite the way that things were initially set up, we see a vision of Gorkamoley not necessarily as the strongest of the orcs but rather the smartest. Leading his force in a head-on collision with Rausch's army would have been a pyrrhic victory at best, there is just no situation were light-foot is likely to succeed against armoured foot with artillery. His uninvolvement becomes construed as a patient leader, knowing when to fold em, when to hold em, when to walk away and when to run. This makes him much more interesting as a "villain" and I never would have thought to run him this way.
Having the Lawful (Clerics) and Chaotic (Wizards) factions living directly on top of each other in a Cold War state is fantastic, especially considering it is the Neutral (Mercenaries) faction that is actually maintaining security and order for the rest of the town. Neutral law enforcement/security is great because they are bribable, as more people arrive from the Old World we can get some urban hijinks and corruption going on. One has to ask though, if this town is large enough to have once housed thousands, where did they all go? What happened 130 years ago that saw them all killed and cut off from their colonial parent-state? The only way to find out is to keep playing the game!
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