Ticket To ... WAR!

As part of our recent silliness with Book of War, my oldest and I decided to do a mash-up with Ticket to Ride ... creating ... Ticket to WAR!  

Each side chooses a capital city--in the game below, the Necromancer ruled from Moscow while the living held Paris.

Battalions, represented by single miniatures, spawned from the capital cities at a cost of 5 wild cards.  Battalions could shift from one city to another by playing the necessary train cards to complete that route (e.g. 4 green).

Each turn players could choose to draw two cards or complete a route, just as in a standard game of Ticket to Ride.

When enemy armies occupied the same city, we would shift scales to table-top war game level and fight the battle out using Book of War.  Retreating forces would be displaced to an adjacent city.

Apparently there is no game, however charming and pacifist in its sensibilities, that the folks at my house cannot transform into a bloody, tooth-and-claw struggle! 

Book of War: Campaign Follow Up

About a month ago, my older daughter and I played a half-dozen sessions of Book of War, by Daniel "Delta" Collins, as part of a linked campaign set in "The Realm"--our D&D campaign milleau.


Her younger sister acted as judge as we used blind movement to shift our troops around a hex map, probing, retreating, and attempting to draw our foe into the battle of our choosing.

I played three human barons, their knights, soldiers, peasant levee, and human mercenaries, while my daughter commanded heaps of goblins, orcs, and wargs led by ogres, a minotaur, and a half-orc warlord (sent against the kingdom as mercenaries in the employ of the Master of the desert nomads).  Most fierce among her troops were her wolf-riding goblin archers, who could dash, loose arrows, and dash again, dancing out of range of my slower troops.


What made this campaign especially exciting was the shared continuity with our six-year-old D&D campaign.  If Baron Sherlane was pulled from his horse and crushed by ogres ... well, he wouldn't be around to act as the characters' patron any longer!  Likewise, if the eastern side of The Realm was overrun and its folk put to the sword by marauders, the PCs could lose homes, friends, and loved ones in our linked RPG.  We were playing for keeps!

The final results were most satisfying.  We each won two engagements (one large, one small) and rather than one faction being thoroughly broken, each of us were bloodied enough to withdraw to better ground and send out scouts--a stalemate.

What this means for our campaign world is that The Wildwood Inn, that walled compound and last bastion of civilization in the wide eastern forest, was overrun with fell folk and has become a stronghold of goblins and worse.

Further north, The Old Forest Road has been cut, further isolating Castellan's Keep where it stands upon the very border of the wild.


The barons must set a constant watch upon the margins of the wood as goblins and wolves slink out by night to terrorize isolated hamlets and many farms are abandoned as folk flee west toward safety.

These developments clearly spark adventure for our heroes!

• Castellan's Keep will need resupply soon, and swords will be needed to guard the carts
• Bounties are being offered on goblins raiding out of the wood
• Rangers are needed to dare the wood and spy out the enemy and their numbers
• A small team might be dispatched to The Wildwood Inn to capture or kill an enemy leader
• The village of The Downs has become a fortified camp and the baron's will need proven allies to oversee the building of a pallisade and day-to-day management
• Chaplains, healers, and scouts are in great demand
• Old enemies, such as the death-cult of Orcus or rebellious Baron VonHendricks, may take advantage of the crisis in the east to advance their own plans

What mass combat systems have you tried over the years and have you settled on a favorite?

Anyone else out there ever tried Book of War? 

Taking a Short Break

I volunteer weekly with the middle and high school students at our church and this week the young people were challenged to begin a month of fasting.  Some kids may choose to abstain from coffee and soda and use that craving to remind them to pursue God, others will voluntarily step away from social media for one or more weeks in an effort to replace that time with focus on God and others.

To support the students, I'm going to take a few weeks off from social media and blogging to redirect that time.

Come February I plan to check back in.  See you then.

Monsters for Christmas

My kids made out like bandits this year.  I still remember when Santa brought me the Monster Manual (Easley cover) back in the day.  

Each girl brought her copy on the car ride to Granny's house and on the way home we played a game where they would name a letter of the alphabet and I would try to guess how many creature entries there were for that letter.

We got as far as "S" before it was too dark to see anymore and I was quite pleased with myself, coming in within 1-3 of the correct answer in every case but "G" and "M".  I even got in a mini-rant about why Uncle Gary would choose to list rhinocerous separately from Herd Animal.

Having never read a Monster Manual, my wife (who is more of a board gamer), wondered aloud, "Why would anyone ever go near the water in D&D?"  I'd forgotten that practically half of the critters are aquatic (I also questioned the need for both Giant Gar and Giant Pike). 

Anyway, it was cool to see a copies of my first excursion into the AD&D product line in the hands of my hobbits.

Merry Christmas

Happy Christmas to all!

Book of War: The Dogs of War

My oldest daughter and I have been playing Daniel "Delta" Collins Book of War recently (simulating D&D combat on a mass scale where 1 figure = 10 men) and we decided to take a break from our regular campaign for a pickup game.

This time she chose to build a force composed entirely of dogs, giant wargs, and wolves!

Against her I arrayed archers, medium foot, dwarves, heavy foot and crossbow troops (visible below from left to right).

The match played quickly (simplicity and fast play are part of the appeal of Book of War) and the humans were able to drive The Great Pack off, limiting their predation of the fields men know ... at least for now.

In proper D&D fashion, we talked about the skirmish on later truck rides and let story emerge as a product of gameplay (rather than a script to be followed).  This was cool because we got to discover it together.  

It turns out that the mastermind behind The Great Pack is this little guy ("Napoleon" by name).  

He's one of those little dogs who is firmly convinced that he's a big dog.  What's more, the little fellow is gifted with a notion of politics and enough savvy to manipulate larger, dumber dogs into throwing off their collars and turning upon the two-legged oppressors.  

So driven is Napoleon in his quest for domination that he has even convinced his mastiff henchmen to ally themselves with their traditional enemies: the wolves ("After all, aren't we truly all part of one breed?  And who benefits from our animosity?  Isn't it the two-legs who set us against each other?!").  Though Napoleon's forces suffered a defeat, we are sure that we haven't heard the last of him or The Great Pack.

Has anyone else tried out Book of War?
Do you have another game or system that you use to simulate mass combat in D&D?

Dwimmermount Season Two: Holiday Spirit

Two characters survived our last delve into Dwimmermount, but with cold season in full swing neither player attended club this week.  Instead we began with six brand new characters (it was the first time in the dungeon for one player--her older sister invited her to join).  We rolled the fresh PCs up in minutes and I rattled off the ability modifiers.

I've streamlined character generation in several ways to accommodate Dwimmermount's appetite for blood and the shorter attention span of my middle school players:

• Roll 3d6 in order with no class prerequisites -- if you want to play a clumsy thief or weakling fighter, that's your business!

• I've loosen up on class names, letting players describe characters however they wish.  This go we had a "brute" and two "archers" (each statted as a fighter) along with a "prophet" (magic-user/cleric)

• Starting gear is simplified to "pick up to 5 things you want to bring with you" and players are given about five minutes before I call time.  A bundle of torches or a quiver of arrows are a "thing" of course, as is a set of armor.  This session two of my players chose a large, aggressive dog as one of their "things"-- "Markiplier" and "Magc" by name.

Things took a funky turn when player Virginia declared, "I'm playing a snowman," but I'm all about bringing new players into the hobby, and if that means I have to expand my fantasy world a bit, then so be it.  Afterall, flying fire-breathing lizards are right in the title of the game ... what's so hard to swallow about a magical ice-construct who sets off to seek adventure in the wide world?

Inspired, another young lady decided that she wanted to play a reindeer.  

"Sure.  She can't do anything that requires thumbs, but she's fast and can gore with her antlers in a fight."

I drew the line at a glowing nose.

Starting hit point rolls were not kind to my six players.  There were two rolls of 1 and a 2.  Curiously though, only one of the six players opted to equip their characters with any armor whatsoever, instead focusing on ranged weapons and tools for exploration.

Quincy, a veteran with over 15 hours at my table, took on the job of mapping and performed admirably, being both quick and precise.  Eric, playing his third session ever, had the only armored character and so took the front rank and the job of "party leader."  Basically he would choose what direction to turn at intersections and when to backtrack ... not quite a party "caller" but a role that really kept things moving and possibly reduced the ever-present temptation to split the party.

To further bolster my sanity, I insisted that players seat themselves according to their three-rank marching order, with the rear rank the furthest from me ... if they shifted for more than the time it took for someone to pick a lock or listen at a door then they would have to physically swap seats with the other players.  

The group was very efficient for a party of six, exploring 8 different rooms in about an hour of play.  They tinkered around with strange pipes, tried to interact with some psychic phantoms of long-dead soldiers and avoided areas that gave Eric "a bad feeling."

To my surprise, the dogs added considerably to play.  I found that I could shift the dungeon mood by having them alert, growl, nose around in curiosity, or seem disinterested, opening up another channel of information flow to the group.  Of course the dogs didn't always agree with the explorers about what was important!  At one point Markiplier became intensely interested in something and when given some lead went so far as to start rolling in what proved in the end to be monster poo, triggering a trip back to the chamber with the leaky pipes to try and wash him up a bit.

"Hey, that will cover up our scent.  Maybe we should use the monster poo so that they can't smell us coming."

"So ... you all are going to smear yourselves with poo?"

"Yeah!"

"No!"

Other interactions were less clear.  Though the psychic phantoms were cause for interest and alarm by the party-members, after only a moment the dogs completely ignored the scentless, silent shapes.  Did this mean they were harmless, or just incomprehensible to dogs?

Despite liberal wandering monster and restocking rolls the session ended with but a single monster encounter--one in which the characters actually arranged themselves in an ambush and waited some time to see what would come prowling along.  

In this case it was a half-dozen porcine beastmen, led by a large sow.  Wary of the dogs, the beastmen kept their distance and attempted a parlay until Eric's character hurled a handaxe at one, killing it dead on the spot.  

I expected half the party to die in the initial clash (recall, half of them had 2 hp or less with no armor to speak of) and this seemed even more likely when two characters focused on keeping their dogs out of the fight rather than battling enemies, but the dice loved them, the pig-men soon routed, and in the end the last creature was run down and speared.  

The sow was stripped of a pair of garnet-studded bracers and the group went proudly galumphing back to Muntburg without so much as a scratch ... where they happily began purchasing weapons with scarcely a thought about trying to buy any armor (except perhaps for the dogs).