D&D campaign milestone

The weekly D&D campaign came to a dramatic milestone this week.  I don't normally post about it, but this was a significant event in the campaign and the action surprised everyone (DM and players alike), so it seems worth a mention.

Back in April of 2020 Darrell, our forever DM since we were students, offered to start a new campaign to help take our minds off COVID and lockdown.  This started by email, but soon moved to a weekly Zoom session.  In four years our party of uninspiring new recruits has been chased around a continent by every kind of opponent that was always too much for us to deal with.  We have become experts in running away from danger, whether it be armies of elves or lizardmen, invisible doppelgangers, vampires, wild baboon-elf-things that live in the forests or just being wanted for treason in all the human kingdoms.  You name it, we've run away from it.  When cornered, we fought fiercely and as a result have now reached 8th level (or 6/6 for the crazy hobbit twins).

Although hardly a force to be reckoned with in global politics, we have become capable of carrying out side missions for any faction that isn't actively trying to kill us.

So we come to this week.  When the elves invaded, one of their priestesses captured the heir of the human kingdoms and has kept him brainwashed by spells, thus creating a civil war within the humans.  As a result of some errands we ran for the temple of the Wild, we have the antidote to free him.  We have also recently discovered where they both are.  Now we just need a cunning plan to get in and rescue the rightful king.  We spent a couple of sessions planning this raid like Ocean's 11, except with more improvisation and a few problems we'll have to work out later.

It's late evening.  We arrive at the back door to the elven temple, having studied the plans of the place.  We expect the priestess to be off duty and in her quarters.  We knock on the door and demand entrance in the name of the Empress, showing off some orders that we carefully faked in advance.  The temple guards are convinced and escort us to her private rooms.  She comes out of her room, human heir in tow, to hear what the Empress wants of her.  Given the classified information, the guards are sent away to the next room.  Everything up to this point went perfectly to plan.  Then our spokesman Joshua decides to pick a fight with her over some point of etiquette, and a tense silence falls over the room.  Next thing, she calls out for the guards to get back in there.

As if he'd been expecting this, which of course was exactly what he expected, Francis steps forward and punches her on the jaw.  Garaf throws a Hold Person spell and to everyone's surprise the priestess fails her save.  Thirson uses a monk open-hand attack at the human heir, which leaves him stunned.  In two rounds of action, the opposition is out of the fight and the guards have not yet arrived.  We couldn't believe it, but we grabbed the heir and ran down the back stairs as fast as we could go.

Darrell had expected maybe three sessions of action in the temple.  Some sneaking, some fast talk and persuasion, some fights.  Instead, within half a session, we'd left the temple, magically locking the doors behind us, and were away to safety, all thanks to a ridiculous run of lucky dice.  The rightful king claimed his throne, dropped the charges of treason against us and by royal charter made us agents of the crown.

The arrival of the new king is the start of a new chapter in the campaign.  The political balance across the whole continent has changed.  We can now get to cities where we used to have a price on our heads.  We're still not capable of standing up to the real powerful characters, unless like this week we manage to get them alone and we are astoundingly lucky.  Now we just have to round up a legendary set of lost artifacts and use them to defeat the vampire lord, and then maybe we'll have to choose our own agenda for a change.

I know this stuff isn't everyone's cup of tea, but this week's session was a fitting conclusion to several plot threads, some of which started three years ago.

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.

Bad Spelling chapter 2 - rescue the logistics officer

18/11/1983 The Russians focus on advances to the North (into Holland).  5th & 3rd DDR armies occupy Hannover.  Refugees flood West.

Lt Beresford has received orders, and they're not to join the rest of his unit.  He is to gather what force he can and rescue a Major Lawrence who is being held in a section of 3-5 intact buildings near Hannover.  He'll need to take one of the vehicles off the base to reach the area.

This major is some kind of logistics officer with a briefcase, which must also be retrieved.

If the enemy are going to this much trouble, he must know about something more important than tins of corned beef, like the movement of battlefield nukes.

The enemy has 6 East German sentries, 3 guarding the target, 3 patrolling the town, all carrying AK-74s.

Motivation: 2 - these are secondary troops from DDR follow-up units, just holding an area, not here for a fight.

I deploy the sentries first, then the group arrives, vacating the vehicle up to 4" from the table edge. 

Searching the buildings for the Major is just like searching for the holy cross on p33 of OHSW, but succeds on any face card draw.

The layout of town

Please excuse what passes for terrain here.  I've not done any Cold War action before, so don't have modern buildings, lamp posts etc..  There may be even worse to come in the next mission until I get hold of some relevant models.

Around the square is a group of historic buildings, including a small church.  The major should be in one of these.  Behind the church looks to be a small IBM office, and one side of the square opens onto some kind of parkland.

The Brits arrive in a corner away from the park and office block

A sentry on duty

The East German sentry at the T-junction spots them, and snaps off a quick shot at Davies, but comes nowhere near hitting him.

Davies & the Ostie trade a couple of shots.  The sound of gunfire attracts two more guards.

Green gets into position to cover the T-junction with the MG and puts down the sentry. One of the guards hits Green in return.  Harris shoots the guard and Davies runs up to finish him off.

Davies remains calm under fire

The last 2 sentries run into action and open fire, missing Davies in plain sight.

Lt Beresford rushes up to finish the other downed sentry, but then goes down himself under fire from the guards.

Davies gets back up, but Green & the Lieutenant stay down.

Harris moves in to start spraying with the SMG and puts one Ostie down. Davies & Harris go down under fire - the Brits are now heavily outnumbered

Harris is taken prisoner.

Davies gets up again, but the Ostie doesn't.  2 Brits now face 3 Germans.

Davies with Edwards just a blur in the foreground face three East Germans

There is a long pause for breath as the two sides eye each other up.  (A whole turn went by with no actions for either side).

Davies remains cool under fire from all 3 Germans, but goes down on the last shot.

Morale check - unbelievable, the defenders break!  (I pulled an Ace with 3 casualties against the DDR)

Davies gets back up again!

As the East Germans fall back, Davies & Edwards check on the rest of the squad and recover Major Lawrence from one of the buildings around the central square.

Assessment: top action yet again, and the Brits were phenomenally lucky not to all end up as prisoners.

After the fight:

• The Brits have achieved their objective.
• Of the 6 East Germans, the last one Edwards shot will be fine later, with a dramatic scar, and was carried away by his comrades. 2 were definitely killed by Davies & Beresford.
• No prisoners were taken by the Brits.
• Green is permanently injured and will be invalided home.
• Lt Beresford is mentally scarred by the memory of finishing off the sentry at the T-junction.
• Harris is seriously wounded and out of action for 18 days (back on 6/12/83)

I rolled for reinforcements and received one man with a pistol - that will be Major Lawrence joining the group.

2 more grenades have been found and will be carried somewhere among the group.

Major Lawrence turns out to be Inspiring.

Campaign events: 

• Lt Beresford is reassigned & gets his orders for some "proper" duty.
• The minimi is broken; the burst that hit Green also put one round into the firing mechanism.
• Maj Lawrence decides to add another member to the team and finds Pvt Mitchell.

Group morale: still 2 - rolled 3 good and 4 bad dice, with 1 hit on each side.

People:

• Lotte Meierling, a refugee from Hannover

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.

Bad Spelling chapter 1 - the training grounds

14/11/1983 - The Russians have invaded, 20 Armoured Brigade has moved off.  Our group of signals and base guards should be somewhere else but hasn't yet been ordered to go.

They are on a perimeter patrol when they bump into a short-handed squad of Soviets (I rolled up a military mission, in a section of prepared positions in walking distance of the base, because no transport is needed).

The enemy as rolled up has six AK-74s and one pistol.  At a guess, the RPG and PK are back at the APC and the lieutenant is taking half the squad to investigate.

Motivation: 3 (chosen on the basis of campaign history) these are recce units, scouting the flanks not here for a fight, from an elite force (3rd Shock army) in the middle of a successful offensive

The terrain setup has the Soviets arrive through the woods beyond the training ground, the British patrol just inside the fence, with two prepared trenches in easy reach.  This could turn into a long-range shooting match.

The trenches and the woods

At this stage I don't have a programmed opponent, I'm just playing both sides and doing whatever seems most useful with the turn.

The Brits get first move and rush for the prepared positions. 

For OHSW terrain effects: 

• The trenches count as cover +2 cards and can be defended for 3" around a man (like the redoubt in the Zulu scenario).
• The woods are cover +1 card, and block Line of Sight unless the firer or target is within 1" of the edge of the wooded area.
• The site fences take 1 move to cross.
• The bushes block LoS, take 1 move to cross, but are not cover.

The first three Russians make it to the edge of the trees. Fraser & Adams open fire and two of them go down.

Three Russians target Adams but all miss.  At the end of the turn, one of the Russians gets back up, but the other is a casualty.

On turn two the Russians get the initiative and all fire. Adams goes down, but the turn ends quickly and he gets up again

Next turn the Brits take initiative, Adams puts one man down, but then the turn ends & he gets back up again unhurt.

Turn four, the Russians blaze away and Adams goes down and stays down.

Then follows lots of ineffective shooting in both directions.

Green puts down a Russian, Fraser & Edwards go down, but they all get back up.

Turn 7 doesn't happen (I turned a Joker for initiative) - this should trigger a special event of some kind (e.g. 5MIN p55/56), but I was caught out and didn't roll one.

The next turn Fraser & Edwards are hit; Edwards recovers, Fraser stays down.  This is looking a bit grim for the Brits.

There follows another turn of ineffective shooting.

Turn 10 the Brits have the initiative and plenty of actions.  Harris charges forward all the way to the site fence.  Davies & Huey provide covering fire, putting 2 Russians down.

Harris crosses the fence.  He moves up through the trees and finishes off one Russian.

Davies puts down another Russian.

Harris despatches 2 more Russians and opens up on the officer with his SMG. Turn over!

Harris rushing the Soviets in the woods

Davies & Green fire and the two remaining Russian riflemen go down.  The Russian officer shoots Harris, who goes down!  Edwards starts to cross the field and advance on the Russian position.

The Russian officer has to decide whether to step forward and take Harris prisoner, but expose himself to being shot at by the rest of the Brits...  He bottles out and moves to the rest of his men.

Edwards crosses the fence and is right in danger.  The Russian officer steps forward to shoot at Edwards - and misses!

Edwards finishes off a downed Russian.  The officer and Edwards shoot at each other and miss.

Davies hits the Russian officer.  Edwards runs up and captures him. Turn over!

Russian morale breaks!

It is not clear whether I should carry on and test for casualties for the two downed figures.  I do it anyway, even though I don't want Harris to become a casualty after his bold move.

Harris is fine, and so is the Russian.  Ivan surrenders (he could have run to the APC at the risk of being shot in the back, but he's not that committed).

Assessment: top action, very exciting, and only one rule broken by mistake (Harris entered melee twice in a phase).

If the Russian officer had stepped forward to grab Harris, he would probably have gone down anyway.

There were too few men for the OHSW squad break condition to arrive - a 7-man squad could take half losses (4) and still carry on 85% of turns, given this leadership.  To increase the number of men on a side, I will allow reinforcments if down below 8 men and give the enemy 5 rolls on the force table instead of 3. Each roll is effectively 1.33 men, so this should balance the two sides.

After the fight:

The Brits have achieved their objective, completely defeating the Russian squad.

Of the 7 Russians, the officer & 1 other surrendered, 4 were definitely killed by Harris & Edwards.  The remaining one is seriously wounded, but will live. 3 prisoners in all.

Fraser has a light wound is out of action for 4 days (back on 19/11/83)

Adams is seriously wounded and will be reassigned.  He's not coming back to Bad Spelling.

No reinforcements are available, because we still have 5 men in the group.  In future, I will change this to be 8, becausee OHSW really expects more than 7 men one a side.

Campaign events: Sgt Knight has died in action elsewhere around the town.

Cpt Johns has had his movement orders and is packing to leave as the patrol gets back to barracks.  He'll take the prisoners with him.  Beresford recommends Harris for another medal, if Johns will write it up.

Player action: assign Green to take a Minimi for the squad - succeeds.

Group morale: still 2 - I rolled 6 good and 2 bad dice, but was unlucky

People:

• Lotte Meierling, a refugee from Hannover

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.

Board games with the in-laws

Last night I went to a local boardgame group. They meet once a month in a community hall and organise a night of boardgames.  I went with my brother-in-law and we met his son-in-law there.  We played Lost Ruins of Arnak (Lee won, I came second) and The Grizzled (we all won!) and it was an evening of fun.  Would definitely go again.

At the end of the evening there was a raffle and some people won boardgames.  Not any of us, but that doesn't matter.  One of the players has had a book published and he gave away a signed copy as a prize.  The whole event struck me as well organised and the hall was full.

Lost ruins of Arnak

Lost Ruins of Arnak is a big-box mix of worker placement, card drafting (similar to Dominion) and trying to get more actions into a turn before passing, with many different strategies to score points.  It takes about 30 minutes per player.  I've now played it once, but it would need a dozen games to get a feel for the appropriate mix of scoring to use. It seems very unlikely that I will get to play it more than three times in my life, because by then someone will have bought another new game and we'll be playing that instead.  So many games come to the table once or maybe twice, in my case that includes Caverna, Tapestry, Wingspan, Wyrmspan, Planet Unknown, Sidereal Confluence, War on Terror and Root.  Some of these are probably great games, but I'll never find out because I play with people who buy new games before they've really explored the last new game they bought.

The Grizzled

The Grizzled is a short card game, with the players taking the part of French soldiers in the Great War.  The goal is to do just enough soldiering to work through the pile of "trials" without becoming overwhelmed by them.  It took about 45 minutes to a complete result.

My favourite feature is that the players undertake a mission at the front until it gets too tough, at which point each player in turn gives up and goes back to base; because the soldiers are French, a successful mission is one where all the players give up and go home.  Maybe it loses something in translation?

But here's what's been bothering me: what relation are the other two players to me and I to them?  Our English terms for relatives are not much help.  When I married my wife, her sister became my sister-in-law, and I became her brother-in-law, which is clear enough.  But my sister-in-law was already married and her husband became ... what?  I've always called him my brother-in-law, although that may overstate the closeness of our relationship.  Perhaps he's just my sister-in-law's husband?

My wife's sister has two daughters and the other boardgamer is married to one of them.  The daughters are my neices and I'm their uncle (by marriage).  But a neice's husband is ... a nephew-in-law?  That's not a term in common usage, so I have to either upgrade him to a full nephew or else accept that he's just some guy that I play boardgames with.

It was the same when we visited my wife's first cousin last month; is she my cousin too?  We don't have cousins-in-law.  And what about the cousin's husband?  I get on really well with them, and am happy to just describe them both as our cousins in Wales, but with that nagging feeling that I'm being over-familiar.

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.

Bad Spelling - Introduction

I've played quite a number of solo skirmish campaigns: 5 Leagues (the amazons), 5 Parsecs, Rangers of Shadowdeep & also this one: Bad Spelling, a Cold War gone hot campaign.

The rules

A campaign comes in two parts: the tabletop game and the campaign game.  In most of the examples I've mentioned, the two are in the same book.  However, I've played campaigns that need two separate sets of rules to be combined into the campaign, for example Joe Lengan's fine Platoon Forward campaign and scenario generator with FUBAR one-page rules on the tabletop.

I love the campaign and RPG elements of Five Men in Normandy (5MIN), but the battle on the table felt too random.  Turn after turn of dice to be rolled, with no effect.  Much of the shooting caused flinch or bail results, so the recipients fall back, then recover and move up again.  Maybe my die rolls were unlucky, but it didn't feel much like gunfire.  So I've tried several experiments to mix 5MIN's campaigns with some other tabletop rules.

Bad Spelling is one of those experiments, using 5MIN's campaign rules with One Hour Skirmish Wargames (OHSW) on the table.

Many of the campaign tables in 5MIN need to be reworked for this.  The force tables for Soviets and British are new.  Many of the specialist gear and character skills provide effects in the 5MIN combar rules that do not have equivalents in OHSW, for example special abilities that apply to 5MIN's "scurry" turns.  I've done a lazy update, changing any results that were used in the campaign while ignoring any that haven't happened.  Eventually it may become a full rewrite.

The weapons at this date are close enough to the OHSW rules for Cold War.  I've done some rough work on stats and point values for modern AFVs based on the ones that appear in OHSW and the stats they get in WRG rules, but they are not likely to appear in the campaign for a while (if ever).

The campaign

Bad Spelling itself is a fictional town, 5km from Paderborn where the British 20 Armoured Brigade was based.  The name comes from the spa waters (Bad means bath) at the source of the river Spelle, with a grand spa hotel at the site.  There is a BAOR signals training establishment in the town, along with a firing range and a British army golf club.

There is a fascinating discussion of how WW3 might have gone if it started in 1983 after NATO's joint exercise "Able Archer", including a full timeline, by Giobastia here [click].  I'm using it as the background to the campaign.

As big events unfold, a few signals personnel and base guards are left behind in Bad Spelling.  They should be fighting, but are still waiting for orders to rejoin their units.

The initial group of Brits left behind consists of:

• Lt Beresford (with his dog, Charlie) - Leader(1) - white collar professional just here with the TA, but seen battle before (Aden & North Yemen 64-70 before demob)
• Pvt "Dangerous" Davies with L1A1 SLR - Guts, from a mining family. Inexperienced
• Pvt "Eddie the eagle" Edwards with L1A1 SLR. Inexperienced
• Pvt "Doomed" Fraser with L1A1 SLR - Guts, grew up on a farm. Inexperienced
• Pvt "Huey" Green with L1A1 SLR. Been in battle before (Falklands)
• L.Cpl Adams with L7A2 GPMG. Inexperienced
• Cpl "Bomber" Harris (loader) with a Sterling SMG. Been to hell & back in Ulster & Falklands (1982). Choice of skill: Lucky

L to R: Beresford, Dangerous, Eddie, Fraser, Huey, Adams, Bomber

Group morale: 2

3 people that the group have met:

• Cpt Johns, the Company commander
• Sgt Knight, REME
• Lotte Meierling, a refugee from Hannover

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.

Music Monday - Yes at the Royal Albert Hall

This was a surprise.  My friend Trevor had somehow double-booked himself, getting a prime ticket to see Yes at the Royal Albert Hall in the same week he arranged to go to Normandy for the 80th anniversary of D-Day.  When I saw him on the last weekend in May he was waving a ticket and asking whether anyone was into Yes. I jumped at the chance.

Machine Messiah - Steve, Geoff & Jon

Second surprise: when I went to book a room for the night (the last train to my home in the back end of nowhere leaves London at about 9pm), booking.com offered me an option for under £20.  It was a bunk-bed in a hostel, just 300m from the RAH and closer than the Queens Arms, which is the usual spot for a pre-concert drink.  That's £100 less than the room I used last time, so I decided to take a chance.

The hostel was clean, a bit too hot (even with the window open) but perfectly functional.  Security seemed good, with card keys from the staircase onto the 4th floor and again to enter the dorm.  For some reason they put me in a women's dorm (with my reputation?) but I was hardly aware of the other occupants.  I just dropped my gear in my locker, said hello to a couple of the neighbours and went out for dinner and a pint before the concert.  By the time I got back, the lights were off, so I just changed in the bathroom and settled down to sleep.  Someone woke me up by shining a phone in my face, probably Elena trying to find the empty bunk with her name on it.  That was it until Hannah's alarm in the bunk above me went off at 6am, which woke me too, especially when she started rummaging in her locker right next to my head, so I made an early start for the journey home.

Like a mug, I'd got an off-peak ticket up to London (travelling up in the afternoon), so I couldn't leave Waterloo until 9am.  Breakfast filled part of the time.  Out of nostalgia, I stood by the Windrush monument and watched the crowds of people rushing off to their day's work, thinking how that used to be me.  I only recognised one of my old colleagues stomping through the concourse (hello, Simon F) but he was too far away to try to say anything.

Post-pandemic, the crowd seemed thinner, with fewer suits and briefcases, more shirt sleeves and laptops in rucksacks, unless that's just the switchover to summer uniform.

I'm pleased to say that Trevor missed a cracking show.  Steve Howe is still very lively on guitar, despite his 77 years.  The current line-up works well (Geoff Downes on the keyboards, Jon Davison singing, Billy Sherwood on bass & Jay Schellen on drums) although of course it would be nice to see Jon Anderson & Rick Wakeman in the band again. That's partly because I first got into Yes with Going for the One, Close to the Edge and Yessongs, rather than 90125 or The Ladder.

Turn of the century - Steve & the new Jon

Some of the recent tours have included complete performances of the band's classic albums, so I wondered whether they would do something for the 50th anniversary of Tales from Topographic Oceans.  I'd not listened to that album for about a decade, and so listened to the album on repeat all day to get it back into my head.  I suspect it suffers a bit from the band recording their parts separately so the complex rhythms don't quite work, but a live performance would be tighter.  Anyway, they compressed the best bits of a double-LP into about 20 minutes, including slipping Leaves of Green into the gap between disc 1 & disc 2.  IMO It was a big improvement on the original album.

Starship Trooper to finish

The setlist has been published on setlist.fm [click] for anyone who missed it or like me can't remember what was played in which order.  Some kind souls filmed parts of the performance on their phones and there are some really good videos on youtube.  Although the condensed Topographic Oceans hasn't appeared, there is footage of it being performed in Birmingham three days earlier.

I was surprised that the security teams no longer seem to try to stop people filming or recording the concert.  The only thing they seemed to want to stop were several of the ladies who stood up and started to dance during the encore (disgraceful behaviour, they're not supposed to be having fun).  That and Steve Howe wagging his finger at anyone taking pictures with flash; quite right, it's distracting for him and the flash doesn't even work at that distance. 

All in all, a great night out.

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.

Fighting Talk #1 - The Hobby Spectrum

One source of friction in our hobby is that there is not a single hobby.  Like the name of this blog, it includes both toys and games.

A panzer

At one end of the spectrum there are modellers.  They make and collect models of military subjects (soldiers, tanks, aircraft).

A panzer division

At the other end are boardgamers.  They play games on military subjects, using counters to represent the armies.

In the middle are the miniature wargamers, playing games with model soldiers.

Beyond the spectrum are the railway modellers and poker players.

It surprises me how many individuals don't acknowledge this range of interests within a single hobby.  People posting on discussion boards frequently assert that their favoured part of the spectrum is the entire hobby and tell people with different preferences to shut up with their "off-topic" posts.  Modellers ridicule hex & chit gamers and demand people post pictures of what they have been painting, while the insult "nogames" is thrown at anyone who is modelling but not playing with their models.

My own interests started with models (Britains, Timpo and Airfix 1/32 scale), with me telling stories about what they were doing.  My grandchildren do the same sort of thing with their Duplo people.  A school friend introduced me to simple skirmish rules when we were 9.  SPI boardgames took over my attention 2 years later.  And then D&D at age 14.  So my interests have always been games, with the modelling aspect being just an incidental thing to create the pieces that go on the table.  Usually that's just a quick slap of paint onto some models and get on with the game.  Since I turned 18 the role-playing games have mostly been "theatre of the mind" with spare dice representing the characters and painted models optional.

By the way, there does seem to be some sort of magic, where a model represents an actual person in a child's mind.  Children will talk about what the man in the blue hat is doing and why he is going to drive the ambulance now.  I suspect that some of this spills over into miniature wargaming, which may explain why figure gamers find cardboard counters so unsatisfactory.

Where is your natural home on the spectrum?

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.

Music Monday - Zero She Flies

 I was having a wander down memory lane & listening to Al Stewart's "To Whom it May Concern", a compilation of his first three albums.  This record takes me back to my first job, before I had anywhere to live, so for two weeks I was sleeping on Pete's sofa.  He had a selection of Al Stewart's early songs on tape and quickly got tired of me asking to listen to it.  Also of me wanting weaker coffee in the mornings, so there was a slight race to be the one to set the machine going.  But I digress.  Pete was a really good friend and it's a shame that we didn't see much of each other after we took jobs in different cities.

As this wave of nostalgia was coming to an end, I discovered that the last track on my double CD boxset wouldn't play properly.  On closer inspection, the disc has some sort of milky appearance toward the rim.  CDs play from the centre to the rim, the opposite way round from vinyl LPs, so this is the trouble with the final track.

click to enlarge, trouble at 4 o'clock

The problem wouldn't wash off, so I turned to the Internet for clues.  It turns out that disc rot [click] is a well-known problem essentially caused by inadequate manufacture.  So I felt no guilt in finding a copy of the unplayable track in some dodgy corner of the Web and saving it as a replacement.

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.