Welcome

Shadow Over Sojenka - An Old-School Campaign

 Welcome to Shadow Over Sojenka, an old-school D&D campaign designed to explore the second oldest dungeon of all, Tonisborg! We will be ...

Friday, April 5, 2024

How to Play Chainmail

 I have posted a video about how to play Chainmail on the yootoob channel.

Any feedback is appreciated.

(Yes, I did make a couple of small mistakes...see the comments)



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Wednesday, April 3, 2024

Observations from One Year of Play

 The Campaign has reached a milestone, or two. We have had nearly 100 sessions in the past year, and one of the groups has accomplished the goal they set for themselves at the beginning. 

In this post, I'll be sharing links to observations made by some of the participants in this campaign: 

  • the players in the Tuesday group, 
  • a Downtime Player, and 
  • one from a member of Thursday's sessions. 
First of all, I would like to thank everyone, both Session Players and Downtime Players, for their participation. This Campaign was an experiment in re-creating a wargame-style RPG experience. I believe it was successful in that goal. We had three large-scale battles, with hundreds on each side, and a naval battle.

Second, I am truly moved by the thoughtfulness and effort that went into these evaluations. I am humbled and grateful.



What It Is All About

Brian, from Welcome to the Deathtrap, has been a Session Player in both of the games I've run over the past three years. He's shared some thoughts after reading the "post-mortems" from other participants, and I believe he's captured the precise spirit of what I was trying to accomplish with these games:

With Shadow Over Sojenka, Stephen was inspired by The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg to try to capture the essence of what Dungeons & Dragons must have been like when it was being run as a series of experiments by the war gaming societies in Wisconsin around 1973. Including trying to reverse-engineer some elements of play that disappeared as TTRPG culture evolved to become its own thing separate from wargaming in the early '80s.

...

One of the key things to remember about the early days of Dungeons & Dragons was that it evolved from a highly experimental wargaming group that was heavily influenced by early Free Kriegsspiel ideas. There were a lot of conventions and ideas that they used without overtly discussing it anywhere in the text of the game. They were writing D&D with the assumption that they were dealing with wargamers, and likely wargames who had already read about and were trying at home the experiments such as Braunstein in The Tactical Revue, the magazine where the rules for Chainmail and Dungeons & Dragons were first published in a piecemeal fashion.

Shadow Over Sojenka Reflections

The Post-Mortems

Each of the Tuesday Session Players has provided a recap of their experiences, with thoughtful commentary on the good and bad features of the playtest experiment.

F provided a discord post, as he is not active in social media:

I was brought into this campaign after start by Brigadine to add a more aggressive voice to the team dynamic. I am a firm believer that the team’s attitude is very important. I have played a couple games where people are intermittent at the table and the feel of games shift based on population. Leaning into this I immediately sought to produce characters that would patch holes in our skill sets. I believe my actions in this manner dramatically affected our economic situation and caused an immediate and game shifting change in our speed to scale and act militarily. As the game progressed I sought to disproportionately push for violent action and using our power to exert force on others. Towards the end I found my characters in need at the same time and we succumbed to using multiple in the same engagement as we had saw used by Thursday. 

Positive feedback: Stephen, you made an extensive world with lore, factions, and a notable style that was impressive. The work you put forward showed and was exciting. I appreciate our time and from someone that knows the effort and difficulties of making that depth, I thank you. 

Negatives (accept this as constructive only): Your market rules ad Hoc pricing and low prices for spells allowed me to exploit you. Fiddling with the markets and allowing (almost) open access to top tier markets(merely three days sail) broke any hope of balance. The size scale made travel trivial. The system we used was too broken. Unfortunately once things are set wheeling them back are difficult. Consistency, good or bad, wins out. 

Thank you for your effort and your creativity!

The other two Session Players for Tuesday are active tweeters and bloggers, so I will share the links to their commentary, then quote the constructive criticism and address these lessons as best I can in the next post.

In fairness to everyone involved, this Campaign was created with the express intention of using a limited ruleset to reproduce certain behaviors and to measure the quality and efficacy of this approach. As you shall see, even with participants who were invested in the concept of wargaming and Domain play, the simplicity and "openness" of the rules were insufficient.

Brigadine

(NOTE: Brigadine has written an excellent piece on Winning as a Player that I highly recommend!)

Sojenka Exit Thoughts

The economics of the game struggled to adequately support and balance the efforts taken by different members of the campaign. The DM used several different sources and game rules to put together a system for play, often caught off guard by the specific needs of the session or downtime requests at hand, which created gaps that could be exploited. This issue was almost solved by the DM asking if a swap to ACKS was the right choice earlier in the campaign. It was the right choice in hindsight but at the time we had begun to exploit the gaps and were unwilling to lose the effort that had been spent by both DM and players to cobble something workable together. We voted against it. I do not recall the other members’ of the campaign votes.

The aforementioned Frankensystem, as we so lovingly called it, ended up being quite a point of friction. It’s unreasonable to expect a DM and party of players to create a game system by cobbling pieces together from all over on the fly. We are not game designers. The Blueholme ruleset that the game started with was simply insufficient to the task that we ended up putting it to, which was beyond the scope of the original stated purpose of the campaign.

Originally, players were solicited to join a campaign to explore the megadungeon of Tonisborg and all the faction play that that would entail. Events during the game led us to press into the domain and military side of campaigning early on and the DM graciously obliged. We also perceived, fairly or not, that there was a competitive aspect to the game due to a separate group of players in the same campaign and the presence of Patrons. In retrospect, I believe we took that competition more seriously than some others.

A more dynamic environment could have been achieved with more freedom allowed between Patrons and players. Instead communication with and even the identity of Patrons was carefully monitored and restricted until very late in the game. I’m sure this was part of the experimental nature of the campaign. Everyone involved has to get comfortable with the flow of things.

We learned early on that our contemporaries in the Thursday group were playing many PCs per player during a single session. I felt then as I do now that this is an exploit. Rather than hiring henchmen for specific tasks/roles/abilities and managing a team, you can simply create the needed roles without all the headache of managing their loyalty. With very small groups of two to four members each, the DM was probably lenient about this in order to improve survivability but Tuesday only fell to this dark path in the final sessions. Even then it wasn’t necessary and I regret that we did.

Belloc

The Twitter Thread

I will share the entire thread for those who are not twit-i-fied.


Bos

A Sojenkan Postmortem

Bos writes a long, thorough, and very informative post on his experience, with a history of his Faction, its development, and lessons learned. I recommend you "read the whole thing"!

(NOTE: Bos has an excellent post on "How to Be a Good Patron" that I recommend you also read!)

Ante-scriptum: All of this is written from my own perspective, without any outside baseball knowledge of what others did. This way I can assess my mistakes and what lessons can be drawn from them, without tainting it with knowledge I did not have at the time. The beauty of these campaigns is only seeing it through the eyes of those in the campaign that you control, and I feel that the story of the Shadowed Sun goblins should be told by me from that perspective.

Last night my stint in the excellent Stephen's Shadow over Sojenka campaign ended (each word is its own link, check his stuff out!). I knew when I posted my last orders 5 hours before the Tuesday session started, that it would end either in victory or in flames. This morning I found out which of the two it was. This post, in part inspired by Stephen asking for a page or so of notes on what I learned in the campaign (which turned into six of them), was written while everything was still fresh. I asked and got access to all old chatrooms I had been part of and went through them chronologically to create a timeline of events.

First I'll lay out the events of the campaign from my perspective, and afterwards post thoughts on how I'll try to do better next time, using lessons learned in this campaign.

 Lessons Learned

Set aside time to convey actions

I am notoriously bad at making and maintaining a habit. I should've set aside an hour or so a week specifically to send my actions to Stephen. It's frustrating, looking back, seeing myself say in chat "I need to do this" and only doing so a week or two later. That Stephen never lost his patience with me over this is a testament to his good nature. This also would've given me a set moment to:

Ask the basic questions

Did you know I never asked Stephen what the fauna of my hex was like? This alone should give you pause. There is so much I could've known if I'd done things like this. Ask about the livery of things near you. Ask about the details of the places around your faction's location you'd know about. Any and all of these can fire the neurons and give you new plans. I could've tamed the wild beasts, which would've increased our numbers in battle (which we sorely needed). I could've found all sorts of magical artifacts in the dungeons in my sawmp hexes... We could've had goblins riding dinosaur howdahs. Because I forgot to ask the most basic of questions: "what do I see around me", we did not.

Document what you know

It was agonizing to go back. In the first week Stephen sent me the subhex map, complete with the hex's wandering monster tables. I saw them, forgot to note them down and therefore forgot their existence. Many of these encounters I could've and hopefully would've used. I should've added these tables to my documents so I could have used them. There was so much info I theoretically had, but never documented properly, and thus forgot about. I lost goblins in raids, and until reading back through the chat history to write this post, I'd entirely forgotten about it. Nothing about it in my documents.

Write down the important things. Keep lists of things you need to check out, or answers you've obtained. You cannot act on what you don't remember.

Have proper strategic objectives

This one bothers me to no end. In my initial document I'd written down my strategic objectives; 1: Expand my base of power, 2: sate our God and 3: keep our camp safe. Now, I did mostly chase these. However, I never properly reconsidered them as the situation changed. Furthermore, the actions I took to achieve these objectives were on the whole less than sufficient, and the prioritisation was wrong. I spent too much time expanding my village and its defences, when in the end no one had attacked it until that last day, and by that point the forces against me were so great that none of it would've mattered in the first place.

I misprioritized all throughout the first year, and frankly if I did so in the second year it hardly mattered anymore, given how far I was behind by then. My initial outreach to tribes was good, but I never set up a way to have these villages mutually defend one another. This allowed the Sons of Mithra to defeat me in detail.

Use all of your available assets

In part this failure was caused by me not properly documenting everything. I had a tribe of goblins. I had a troll. I used these big pawns relatively well. However, I entirely forgot about all other things I could've used. I had a reasonably high level cleric, and a mage/alchemist. Most of these spent their days picking their nose, when they could've been crafting scrolls, casting high levels spells to aid me in my scouting. I had 19 hobgoblins, many named. I could've sent these into a dungeon I knew was nearby, gain levels and bring back more loot. I had massive dragonflies my goblins could ride, and half the time I entirely forgot to use them to scout further afield.

I wasn't just playing at a disadvantage, I was doing so not realizing I'd tied my own shoelaces together.

Never let up the pressure

After all of my successes, I retreated and let off pressure with the intent to reconsolidate. This was a mistake. The false flag idea would've been great, if I'd done so directly after for example the attack in July '23. They were weakened, and if I'd managed to get other factions against them I would've taken the heat off of myself. Hell, I also could've just set up raids on their supply lines, which at the very least would've forced their resources there instead of into more expansion. All I did was weaken them, anger them to no end, and then give them time to recuperate and plan their revenge.

Respect the Fog of War

You think you respect it, but you don't respect it enough. This is a Hofstadter's Law situation. You don't respect the Fog of War enough, even if you keep this rule in mind. I had scouts patrolling, and I'm fairly sure I have no idea what was going on at all, even with the frequent updates I was given. I saw massive movements of troops just outside my swamp, and never figured out who they were, where they were going or where they came from. I've seen freak weather occurrences undoubtedly caused by someone. No clue who. Hell, the biggest one? I thought until a month or so ago I could still act in a guerilla/insurgent fashion and get away with it, while the actual campaign state was that I should've been doing preparations for open warfare four months before that. You might worry about the known unknowns, but the real things you should be worried about are the unknown unknowns.


What I Have Learned From This Experiment

 Dungeons & Dragons is a Wargame.

When you put the Campaign first, amazing things happen!

There are a few more lessons I'd like to share, but I wanted to get this out for the community to check out and comment on. I would love to get any feedback or questions you might have, so that I can put together some intelligent answers in the follow-up to this exercise.

I am looking forward to the conversation!


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Wednesday, February 7, 2024

How 1:1 Downtime Pacesetting Works in this Campaign

 YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN

IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT.

Gary Gygax, 1st Edition DMG

I use a method of strict, uniform timekeeping in this campaign. It is tied to the real-world calendar. This video gives practical examples from actual player activities. I call this 1:1 Downtime Pacesetting to avoid any confusion with the idea that time is measured on a 1:1 basis IN A GAME SESSION. 

IT IS NOT.

Time will flow at whatever pace is needed during a session, and I try to avoid having any players get more than about two weeks "into the future". 

Notes on Comments and further examinations of the 1:1 Pacing concept are found below the embedded video.

 Please share any comments or question below, I will be glad to elaborate further if needed.

THIS POST IS STILL UNDER DEVELOPMENT. I will be adding more examples and descriptions to illustrate the principles I am talking about.





 

Why Use 1:1 Downtime Pacing?

I advocate playing D&D as a Wargame Campaign & survival horror RPG.

It's my sincere belief that if people alter their perspective, away from the method-acting, self-insert style that is most prominent, they might discover previously unimaginable possibilities for the hobby.


It does say "medieval wargames campaigns" right on the cover...

My purpose and goal is to discern the Core Principles of the "Wargame Approach" and experiment with ways to incorporate them with other RPG systems and procedures. It's my belief that 1:1 pacing is necessary to create (i.e., provide suitable conditions to mechanically facilitate) opportunities for an expanded type of RPG. A real "old-school" RPG, with:

... different player/character groups operating in the same area.

... armies, bandit groups, and tribes of humanoids/nomads moving around the map all at the same time.

... characters performing Spy missions in downtime between sessions,

... prepping for a Heist in downtime between sessions, 

... chasing down rumors and secrets of treasure hoards.

Some RPG enthusiasts claim 1:1 Pacing is NOT necessary, because they don't do these sort of activities in their games. I think a lot of these people look at timekeeping as a function of the campaign rules, rather than the campaign becomes a function of the timekeeping rules.

For me it's not a question of, "1:1 pacing can work IF you play this one particular way", it's addressing the timekeeping from the perspective that we're using 1:1 pacing for the specific purpose of intentionally playing this one particular way.

What About the Story?

The game was indeed glommed by Theater Kids from the beginning. That's not meant to be disparaging, that's what they called themselves. Arguments about Method-acting vs Wargame Campaigns are in the earliest issues of Dragon magazine.

Played as intended, and originally approached, the players get to participate in a creative endeavor, where "The Story" is observed, not scripted. It emerges from the choices made by the players, and by their responses to random events.

Today many games do high-fantasy Heroplay much better than the older versions of D&D. They also do it better than the latest edition of D&D, which is marketed and supported as a story game. My sincere recommendation, for those gamers who prefer a more scripted, narrative (or "collaborative storytelling"-style) game is to try one of the others & see if it works better.

In fact, that is the essence of what I am doing with this campaign, testing ideas and gaming theories in an ongoing, actual-play environment. The concepts discussed in these pages are not "theory crafting". The players in the two sessions are actively involved in testing out these ideas and seeing just how far they can go!

1:1 Downtime Pacing solves many problems and creates many opportunities, that pause-time gamers might not be aware of, or accept as simply part of the game.

Before we go too much further, I recommend that you get this book (Tony Bath's Ancient Wargaming) as an additional reference manual. 



It is a valuable resource for best practices:
  • for learning the basic, fundamental procedures of Mass Combat
  • for Logistics and Resource Management
  • for an example of how a Wargame Campaign can be played
This book is a large part of the source material for the gaming traditions Gygax used to create AD&D. In fact, he considered these principles so basic and ubiquitous, that he glossed over many of them in writing the rules. For example, principles of formations in massed combat, or the effects of morale on large units of troops.

The Hyborian Campaign session reports are a valuable example of what kind of game is possible.


CORE PRINCIPLES

Multiple Characters for each  Player

The STRUCTURE of 1:1 time ENCOURAGES the creation of multiple characters & participation in multiple groups. It offers the opportunity for characters to participate in activities between sessions such as spying, training, trading, shopping for special items, and more. These activities can devour valuable session time, and take away from the experience of other players at the table. When you move these activities out of the session, and into the time between sessions, it makes the table time more productive and rewarding.

"...each character as a faction itself" is a core principle, not a side effect, of playing D&D, or other RPGs, as a wargame campaign. There is a reason the older versions of the game have extensive rules for attracting Hirelings, Henchmen, and men at arms: because this is how a Player Character develops a Faction of their own, starting with session one!

A first-level Fighter can act as a Sergeant, commanding up to 10 men at arms. This is a massive force multiplier for small or beginning character groups. Many players view the Magic-User as a one-trick pony at low levels, bemoaning the fact that they only have one spell at first level and when it's gone the character is dead weight. Nothing could be further from the truth when the game is played as it is described in the rules! A first-level Magic-User gets their spell book for free, included as part of their character class. this would otherwise be an enormous expense. The starting MU does not need to buy weapons or armor for themselves. This means they can recruit and equip men at arms to help do their fighting for them! A couple of men with spears, swords, and bows in light armor are extremely versatile in terms of aiding the party in combat or overcoming other obstacles.

Prime Requisites and XP bonuses

Characters with high Ability Scores gain bonuses to gained experience. This bonus is 5% or 10%, which does not seem like much, and I have seen blog posts where people have done the math and determined the effect of the bonus to be negligible, based on a regular schedule of session play.

In the 1:1 Downtime Pacing, multi-player-character style of play, some PCs will be active in more game sessions than others. Some players will be more active than others as some might participate every week, while others every other week., or less

A PC with a 10% bonus who adventures twice as often as a PC without a bonus will advance quite a bit faster! A player who shows up every week, and only runs his PC out <7 days, gets to adventure (earn XP) every week. Somebody that takes longer trips in-game, and maybe only shows up to play once or twice a month or so, is going to get left way behind.




Long Trips are an Opportunity for Further Play


Some people have been asking about specifically how you handle long journeys with 1:1 Pacing, while others, well, seem to misunderstand:


Week 1: we get on the boat to far-away-land YAY!

Week 2: do we get to play this week - Nope you are on a boat that is all you do, go home.

Week 3 - 8: do we get to play this week - Nope you are still on a boat that is all you do, go home.

Week 9: you can now play your character - Oh man, I can't even remember what we were doing 2 months ago!

People can play like this, but, I personally do not want to play vs. a freezing time wall where I am forced to stop.

This is an incorrect view of the procedure, and of the Wargame Campaign mindset.

EXAMPLE: If a party embarks on a ship for a long journey, say 6 weeks, I would get them started with some encounter checks for the first week. This can be done in a short time, in-session.
then, at each successive weekly session, use 10-15 mins to check in with the players for those characters:
  • Resolve encounter checks (that you notified them of prior to the next session)
  • disease/illness checks,
  • random maladies, etc.
If an encounter seems particularly challenging, or just interesting, the PCs may want to detour or spend a larger portion of a session on it.
In the meantime, the rest of each session is spent with the Players' other characters, doing whatever they want to do, and pursuing their own goals.

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Thursday, February 1, 2024

February 1024 Events

 Each month I will post the randomly generated Campaign Events that take place, as well as any public activities of the Downtime- or Session Players.


1 Feb 1024

Domain events:

The Goblin Slave market has come upon hard times. The supply of new Goblin captives was at a trickle, and seems to have come to a halt. The price of trained Goblin Slaves has jumped to 70-85 GP.


A large caravan of over 100 refugees from Argos has entered the province. They are fleeing the conflict between Argos and Shem. They are easy to spot, with their unusual clothing styles and accents. Many of the lodgings are booked solid with these refugees.

8 Feb 1024

"Adventurers Interested in an opportunity involving danger & riches, see  Sons of Mithra Secretary at their Kastav office."

12 Feb 1024 

The Red Prince is rumored to be sending a great Champion to the Demon-gate, while the Governor has just send a cadre of his most experienced warriors and his Imperial Sorcerer to confront the demons!

They left the city in a great parade, behind a choir of singers and a bevy of brightly-clothed musicians. (

20 Feb 1024 

The vile creatures of the Gateway Fortress have been defeated! Many of the captured women were rescued, and in the the care of the Imperial Pantheon, for healing and recuperation.

The black-winged creatures were no demons, but flesh-and-blood monsters of a kind never seen before.

The corpses of these creatures are being mounted on great spikes at the walls of Samichi, and will soon adorn the walls of every settlement in Kordun!

A mighty Paladin of Hades rode into Samichi at the head of the victorious forces, displaying the head of the wicked queen of the evil beings on a long pike. The cries of joy and praise to great Hades rose to the skies in peals.

Governor Asharem has declared 19 Feb to be the great Holy Day of the Order of Hades, and a festival shall take place in Sojenka from 22-24 February.

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Monday, January 1, 2024

January 1024 Events

 Starting this year I will be posting the random Campaign and Domain Events generated for the game, plus any Downtime- or Session Player activities that have visible, public effects.


4 January 1024

Another proclamation is made by Governor Asharem, "Every effort is being made to fight the demons marauding from the north! The Company of the Golden Lion will be joining in the fight against these foul creatures!

Just after noon the Company of the Golden Lions rides out of Sojenka, in a grand parade, and once more the streets are thronged with people cheering and praying. The bells of every temple ring!

7 Jan 1024

The Silver Stags return to Samichi in terrible shape! A story runs like wildfire through town that they encountered an entire army of armored skeletons who were nigh invincible. Half of their number died in the battle and most of the rest are wounded.

9 Jan 1024

Every archer and crossbowman in the province has been conscripted to guard Samichi. The weaponsmiths are working overtime forging cold-iron and silver points! (edited)

26 Jan 1024

Criers move through the markets and the streets of every quarter calling out a message and a call to arms!

"The Keepers of the Keys are seeking a brave cleric willing to take on a quest to shut the maw of the demonic portal. Those that accept will be presented with a legendary Flail, the Spiked Censer of Alastor, noted for its capabilities against demons. Those interested should contact the Keepers of the Keys where they can be prepared to take on the quest."

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