BSSS - Session 14

Summary

The campaign goes on pause and the Hedgehogs of Mercy settle in after the big battle. 

• Shimsusa the Archer - 3rd Level Fighter
• Enlil - 1st Level Elementalist Sorceress
• Alorus - 1st Level Vivimancer Sorcerer
• Maru the Witch - 4th Level Diabolist Sorcerer
• Athra - 4th Level Fighter

Session Recap

After the battle produced a relatively clear victor the party got to have some Downtime in order to handle everything that happened. The first thing they did was to go inspect the Pale Portal housed in the previously unvisited section of the city, beyond the Temple District. 

Said district was itself being in the process of being utterly demolished. The Great Temple dedicated to the Pale Stillness of Justice, the Law-aligned patron of the city, had shattered by itself upon the death of the Voice of Stillness during the battle, and the subsequent magical energies released from the disrupted ritual. However, the powers of the Decomposition didn't feel like leaving things half-done, and so employed their forces to systematically level and desecrate all the temples there, permanently severing the city's connection to it's patron.

The Hedgehogs of Mercy were offered a selection of various magical items the chaos priests had found as they were doing their work, allowed to pick one as gratitude for their assistance in the battle. After some deliberation the party picked a masked iron helmet in the shape of a wolf's head. Once they walked past the new gutted gatehouse, they found themselves in the part of town unseen by most. 

The party of the city where the Pale Portal is located.

The entire section of the city was just a field, with no houses or buildings, and from wall to wall covered in the bleached bones of countless dead, along with some more recent corpses. In the middle of it all stood the Pale Portal itself, a 4ish meter tall structure of stone and bones, in the middle of which was a silvery glittering substance which seemed to block the view of anything behind it.

The Pale Portal itself.

After some experimenting and going back and forth through it, Alorus the Vivimancer decided to just go right in. First he stepped through into a dark room, and once he went back and got a lamp, stepping through a second time resulted in him falling through the portal and out into a clear sky. He was, for all intents and purposes, gone. 

Meanwhile the rest of the city was in lower c chaos too. Bel of the Lotus, the vampire noble and friend of the party, had gathered the remaining nobles of the Undying City and went on a killing spree of his own - finishing off as many of the old priests of the Pale Stillness that they could find, along with their retinues and, of course, a bunch of just random people standing by because why not? In the end he declared himself the new ruler of the Undying City, his claim backed by surviving noble houses ( who were eager to actually get back to having any real power) the Golden Fraternity (who were quite happy to have an actual noble from the actual old Empire in power) and the priests of the Decomposition (who were willing to allow him to do that since he seemed uninterested in reestablishing the city's connection with the forces of Law). 

The characters were invited to the talks, and Bel offered to essentially have the entire company of the Hedgehogs join him as his personal bodyguards and advisors. Everyone agreed, with Athra the fighter even being arranged a marriage into one of the noble houses, as an opportunity to get him into the Noble caste and from there allow him to achieve what he wanted in the long term - control over the armies of the city. 

Shimsusa the Archer, while thankful for the offer, decided to instead travel back south to the Bastion of the Raging Bull with intentions of joining the Bull Guards and Utu. When she arrived, awaiting for her at the inn the party had stayed at was an ominous threat, clearly from the invisible assassin that had slain Esho a few months ago. 

Observations

Well, this is it for now. I was planning on keeping the campaign going for another 3-4 sessions, before I have to leave for a few months and thus will be unable to run it. However, the next month and a half is shaping up to be rather busy and the situation in the campaign has gotten rather complex, with multiple factions and different elements all requiring more attention than I have available. 

My players seem to be generally okay with ending it here, especially after the high note of the big battle last session. It just makes for a natural break point. I have some plans on running Between the Serpents of Smoke & Steel for other people while I am in the US, and if that happens I will be posting recaps of that as well, however the in-person game is now on hold. Will I come back to it? I have no idea. 

I do plan on writing up some overall campaign impressions for this in the coming month or so, similar to the ones I posted about the Greylands, my previous campaign. I also have plenty of broader observations about the game - from system to setting and simple GM organizational stuff, which will hopefully be interesting for at least someone else to read!  

And this is it. The Hedgehogs of Mercy (god what a ridiculous name!) are, for now, in retirement. 

BSSS - Session 13: The Battle for the Undying City

Summary

We play out the big fight between the forces of Chaos and the Undying City's defenders using a tabletop wargame that I created for the scenario. 

Session Recap

Well calling this a session might be a bit wrong, but here we go. Since I could not get a full 6 player count for the wargame, I ended up participating as well. The way I have the game structured, both Chaos and Law each have 3 distinct bands of units, the control of which was split up between the players. 

Initial setup of the scenario.

The wargame itself begins mere moments after the events of Session 11. The party has just broken open the inner Gatehouse of the Eternal Bridge, and the forces of The Decomposition and their allies have swarmed into the city. With the Ritual Procession still not actually gathered in one place (various small processions leaving from different parts of the city to gather in the middle), the Chaos forces had to figure out what their general plan was going to be. 

In the scenario Chaos has 2 victory conditions. A Minor victory if they can remove all 12 Ritual Procession counters from the board by Turn 6 of the game, and a Major one if they can kill the Voice of Stillness, the otherworldly being that controls the Undying City in the name of its master The Pale Stillness of Justice. Law, conversely, only has one Major victory condition - Complete the Ritual. 

With Turn 1, things immediately went in Law's favor. The Blue band, the one that contains all the Procession counters, the Civilians and, most importantly, the Voice of Stillness itself, had the first activation. This allowed them to pull back some of the Citizens that were in the way of the Chaos forces, and bring them safely back into the Temple District. A very important move, as the Voice of Stillness needs to sacrifice a Civilians token every time it attempts to advance the Ritual, successfully or not, and it begins the game with not having enough sacrificial victims on hand to complete it. 

From there, Chaos decided to focus on the Ritual Processions then, which both works into their minor victory condition, and also makes performing the Ritual action a bit more uncertain for the Voice of Stillness. That and breaking into the temple district is quite difficult, with all forces having to be funneled through the streets and a very easy to defend gatehouse. 

The city's defenders sent out a properly huge stack of units out into the Great Market plaza to fight off the forces of Chaos, who in turn responded by summoning a rain of acid over the entire place, reducing every single unit that was in the area. This is done by placing a Miasma counter in the area, one which saps the strength of full units (or even kills reduced ones) and stays there for 2 entire turns, suddenly making the most central space in the board, the one which most roads go through, kind of an awkward place to move through. 

The beginning of Turn 2.

As Turn 2 began, Chaos was actually not looking too hot. While they had managed to take out some parts of the procession, it was not enough to actively hinder the Ritual from being advanced, and their nuclear solution at the Grand Marketplace meant that actually going around and doing anything was difficult as their own units would have been equally affected by the miasma that still lingered.  Law was generally looking in a strong position - well defended inside the Temple District, having enough sacrificial fodder to complete the ritual, and mostly just needing to bide it's time. 

Chaos, conversely, was on the back foot. They lost some of the Slime Priests, which was a problem as they are the primary way the Chaos forces could bring in more reinforcements. 

As Turn 3 started though, things changed. the Miasma had cleared, finally, and the giant stack of slimes, oozes and jellies, lead by the horrific Slime Titan now had the chance to actually move through the central market. 

Additionally, the force of Law decided to take on the offensive and, being lead by the 3 units of High Priests, rushed out and attacked one of the last remaining units if Slime Priests. However, Law's fortunes quickly turned at that moment. With the Temple district now vastly underdefended, the Slime Titan shuffled its lesser cousins through the city, devouring everything in its wake. Soon it broke through the Temple Gatehouse, and while the Voice of Stillness was hurling magical attacks at it, it only weakened the group, rather than demolish it. 

Finally, the oozes swarmed into the Great Temple. After a quick fight everyone was dead, except for the Voice of Stillness which had been reduced in strength and had to retreat away. Things were dire, but not impossible - as long as Law got to act next, they had plenty of spells that could wipe out the big green tide, allowing them to both stabilize and severely reduce the chances of Chaos to act in future turns.

That, however, did not happen. With Chaos still being on the initiative, and the Hedgehogs of Mercy, the band of player characters in the Between the Serpents of Smoke & Steel, having quietly also made their way into the Great Temple, the time of Law had come to an end. The Hedgehogs seeing the chance to end this Ritual for good summoned forth a spell and struck down the Voice of Stillness, shattering the control of Law over the Undying City. The game finished only halfway through Turn 3. 

Final state of the game as of Turn 3. The Voice of Stillness was in the Temple District Area which has a unit of yellow Archers in it.

Observations

This, I think, was a rousing success. While I am generally very pleased with how the wargame itself works, and have had several people now tell me that it just works really well as a stand alone wargame (and even 2 of my players expressed an interest in playing it again in the future, just as its own thing!), it is always nice that it actually worked on the one "official" playthrough that it was designed for.

The game definitely took way longer to play as a 3v3 team game, rather than a simple 1v1 game as I've played it so far in my playtesting sessions with other people. As people were still learning how to play this and also consulting with their team mates, there was a lot of time spent simply discussing potential moves rather than making them. That's fine, though it did mean that a 2 and a half turn game took nearly 4 hours, when 1v1 playtests I've done before took about 2 hours to complete the game (usually going up to Turn 5 or so).

The bit of game design I am most proud of, and one which my players also appreciated in having really captured the spirit of things, was how the Hedgehogs of Mercy were used in the game, being a sort of strike team that Chaos or Law can use to mess with the other side, plus the absolutely perfect storytelling beat of having the Hedgehogs themselves be the ones to land the decisive killing blow on the Voice of Stillness also really helped. 

So, with this I am now happy to have the game just be something I can play with friends now and again if I want to, and I think this helped make my campaign a fun and interesting experience for everyone involved. While the BSSS campaign is going to be winding down soon, due to other obligations on my time, it will always have this high point to look back on! 

How I made a tabletop wargame in about a week

 As a direct result of the actions of the players in my current campaign, the Undying City now has a fairly sizeable strike force (calling them an army might be giving them too much credit) of Chaos-aligned cultists that serve the Chaos Lord known as The Decomposition, along with allies they have managed to rally to their cause. And what is that cause? To disrupt the ritual currently being performed in the Undying City which will transform every living being in the city into undead, and in the process (and of actual concern to these Chaos cultists) will completely cement the city as a stronghold of Law in this plane of existence.

Initially, my plan was to simply have the fighting on the city streets happening either in the background or maybe even having the party directly participating in it. However my players have been reluctant to really pick a direct course of action, their current stance mostly being that they want to wait and see which way the fight will go, and if possible try and stop both forces from actually keeping control of the city. 

So I was left in a bit of a dilemma, where in order to logically progress with the game, the battle for the city had to be resolved at least to some degree. Well, I didn't really want to just come up with a way for it to go, or come up with some broad strokes system to simulate it and then just tell my players how it went. Because, after all, this is a gaming campaign. The point is to game!

That got me thinking - I really enjoy tabletop/boardgame wargames. So couldn't I come up with a quick and dirty one to allow my players to actually play out the battle as the commanders of Chaos and Law, and then let them zoom back in on their characters and have them react to the situation? Well yes. Yes I could. And so I did. 

Concepting and Design

So, first things first I had to figure out what the system for this game was going to be. I personally enjoy card-driven wargames, but that would involve way way too many cards to have to design and make, and I did not feel like that was a productive way of doing it. After some quick and rough brainstorming, I settled on using the main combat system (and from there, unit stats) from Brotherhood and Unity, which I've played a couple of times and quite enjoyed and found to be pretty straightforward and light for a tabletop wargame. 

With that I had to determine how the map of the city will be traversed. Initially I was going to use areas similar to the board game Dual Powers, but after actually trying to draw that as a map it just looked way too cluttered and hard to read. Instead I just went with point to point movement, another staple of tabletop wargames, except the ones that use hexes of course. 

From there, I had figure out how to model the two forces involved. The Chaos incursion were easy, as I had previous already written up their numbers and so just used those as a base for my units. With Law I had to finally sit down and figure out just what forces they actually had in the city. 

An interesting design challenge was how to handle all the damn magic-users running around the place. Between the party, the leaders of the Chaos force and the ruler of the city (an otherworldly being known as the Voice of Stillness, and the individual actually casting the ritual of undeath) there were a lot of magical types around. In the end I took another idea from a game I like - Dragon Pass. In that game magical units have a sort of spirit that they project that can be used to perform attacks on other enemies.

In my game this ended up simulating the combined magical attacks or defenses of a unit of magicians. I also came up with Spell Cards, which players can play and usually require a magical unit to be near the target to actually do the spell. 

This whole thing took about 3 days of on and off writing and rewriting of ideas.

Designing the Game Pieces

Next up came probably the most fun part of the project - designing and drawing all the game elements that I would need for the game. In my case that meant creating unit counters, spell attack counters, a playing board, spell cards, activation cards (which I ended up using to determine play order) and then reference sheets for unit special abilities and general game rules. 

One of 3 counter sheets of units for the game.

The unit art is also a direct inspiration and reference to William Church's wonderful and evocative art on the counters of White Bear and Red Moon/Dragon Pass and Nomad Gods. The units themselves are relatively simple (by wargaming standards) as you can see. They have a name, artwork, and then 3 stats - Attack, Health and Movement (a star over one of those indicates some special rule assocaited with it that is listed on the reference sheet). A white bar indicates that the unit is an Individual (as opposed to a group of similar people or creatures), and on the reverse side the counter has a grey bar across it to show that a unit is of Reduced strength. 

The actual game board, representing the Undying City as a series of locations connected by pathways, all broadly aligned with the map of the city I had already drawn.

The board took a few tries to get it looking right, but I am personally pleased with the final result. The color of the location's artwork indicates which part of town it's in (which doesn't really matter for gameplay purposes, but was just a nice visual element), the bar on the bottom indicates what type of Terrain it counts as, as well as the number of non-Individual units that can be stacked in it at the end of an activation. 

Then I included a turn tracker, a Ritual tracker and a chart for terrain and combat for ease of reference during play, along with supply boxes for both sides. There could have been other elements that are worth including in the map, and I might eventually get those printed and pasted onto it at a later date, but for now it has been quite serviceable. 

Spell cards

The drawing and design of the elements took a couple of days of very intense work, and the kind of work I absolutely adore as an artist. Of being completely in the zone, thinking at any given moment about simply opening photoshop again and doing more art! 

Making the physical components 

And next came the hardest part -actually getting these made. In total I made 160+ unit and special counters, and those took a lot of work to cut, a lot of them ended up kind of crooked (inevitable when cutting by hand), but I am generally pleased with them. The board and tokens are also quite large, in fact almost absurdly so by the standards of most commercial tabletop wargames, however it makes them a lot easier to handle when one considers the game can be played with up to 6 players, and it would be helpful if they could actually see what is going on. 

A slightly blurry photo of the board and counters all set up.

This whole process took 2 and a half, almost 3 days total to actually do, mostly because at one point I had to just force myself to take a break since cutting the counters was giving my left arm a very painful muscle cramp (which took about a week to completely clear off).

Playtesting

The final, and often most important, step of any game design is of course playtesting. I played a couple of games by myself, which helped iron out some of the rougher ideas in the activation system, the actions each band of units takes during their activation, and so on. 

I have so far also done two playtest sessions with a fellow wargamer friend of mine, and while there have been minor tweaks in special abilities here and there, the game more or less works quite well, provides various ways for each side to achieve it's victory conditions and offers several not-so-obvious avenues for strategy. I consider all of that a success of design! 

The true and final test, of course, will be once I actually run the game for the players in my campaign. That will happen this upcoming Sunday, and I absolutely plan on writing up a session report for it, though it will of course be rather different than the usual one. But even after that, I am pleased enough with the game (and have had enough of a positive response from my friend) that I will likely keep playing it as a game in and of itself in the future too.