A Quest into the Bad Land Part 1

I’ve been working on a random scenario generator for Sellswords and Spellslingers.  It’s really a series of tables with some scenario ideas for each aspect of a scenario.  In this scenario, I rolled a “recovery” mission.   Of these types of scenarios, it could be a single item or as many items as the party can find.  I gave it a 50-50 and ended up with recovery of 1 item.  There are D3+1 search locations.  I ended up with 3.  When a character searches the first location there is a 1-2 on a D6 chance of finding the item.  For the second location searched, there is a 50-50 chance.  If it is not in the first 2, then it is in the last one, of course.  I rolled hilly terrain and for a special location I ended up with ruins.  So there are 3 major ruined buildings the party must search.  The character spends an action.  The die is rolled.  Regardless of whether the item is found or not, D3 minions jump out and attack.  The party entered via the road that lead directly into the city.  As they advanced, Maynard the Wise (Wizard) noticed something of value on the statue near the main road.  Sir John and Bertie Wainwright moved ahead to scout out the first building.  Hordes immediatly spotted the advancing party and attacked Maynard and Jack the Swift.  Jack was equal to the task and easily dispatched all three hordlings.  He also spotted the Orc brute in the town and put 2 arrows into him.  5 consecutive hits!  At this point, the scenario event was pulled which revealed a rival Orc faction.   2 Hordes and 1 brute.  3 hordlings have bows and immediatly fired at Bertie scoring 1 hit.

 

The scenario event occurred already. Rival faction including 3 Orc archers. Bertie is hit once.

Sir John had already gone into the first ruin and fell on his face tripping over a trip wire (Trap).  The wounded brute charged after him.  His trusty squire Bertie jumped in and over Sir John delivering a knife throw to the Orc Brute’s throat.  Outside, Maynard causes some mayhem of his own.

Maynard uses his trusty fireball and kills 4 hordlings and badly wounds the brute.

Despite the successes, Maynard is ambushed.  He dispatches this foe.  He is then beset upon by 3 more (They are at our back!) and dispatches those in turn.  This guy is pretty good!  Jack the swift is also ambushed and fairs worse taking 1 wound.  The wounded Orc brute advances and knocks Jack down!   Things are not looking good!

PCs keep failing activation and the hordes advance.

Finally the Orc brute advances on Maynard but Maynard is not impressed and finishes the Brute off.  Maynard moves back toward Jack and finds he was only unconscious and had only 1 wound.  (At this point I found an error in the book.  18 on the out of action table is not covered.  I made the best result an 18-20 but maybe I should have made the next lower result 15-18 instead.  Whatever)

Back in the ruined temple, Bertie and Sir John managed to get there act together.  As Bertie finished off the last hordling, Sir John found something.  3 Orcs.  A wild melee ensued.  Bertie took his second wound as Sir John finished off 2 of the Orcs.  The last one fell to Bertie’s short sword.   Not a moment sooner the party heard the blast of Orc war horns.

More hordes appear on the horizon. 13 to be exact!

At this point, I called it for the night.  Tomorrow shall be the conclusion of the Search for the Lost Treasure.

The Stolen Gold

My son and I recently tested out a scenario for Sellswords and Spellslingers.  It is an adaptation of the fantasy scenario from Don Featherstones Skirmish Wargaming book.  I was originally going to use one group and we would take a couple of characters each but he, instead made a “super” ranger of 40 points so we played as 2 players and upped the firepower a bit.  The game is played on a map that has a road going north south.  There is a goblin raiding party on the road with the stolen gold.  The object?  To recapture the gold and move it off the map along the road north.  The player may split the party, entering half from the south map on the road while the balance remain on the road to the north.  The goblins are setup with a goblin hero (we used the stats for the orc brute but hobgoblin might be better) a horde of 3 goblin archers and a horde of 3 goblins carrying the treasure.  Below is an overview of the map with the setup.

Looking from the North end of the road.

The goblins may move when the appropriate card is drawn.  The treasure bearers will move directly toward the Southeast corner which is the direction of Goblintown.  Peter Jackson made me name it!    There is a scenario event.  If the event card is drawn, a troll appears in the ruins.  He is a rather intelligent troll and moves like most other monsters, not randomly moving about when characters are near.

The game played well enough despite some bad luck on my part.

The Northern group

The enemy battle line. I seem to have cut off the treasure bearers.

The ranger in the south. Not a great shot. This guy was 3D printed.

The ranger was beset upon by a couple of goblin groups including one 5 member group.  Jack had to move away and then start sniping.  The northern group, my characters seemed to roll either 0 or 1 action on 2 dice which meant that I started the game with a prolonged melee.

Cleaning up, this was the last of about 6 goblins in 3 groups.

The last of Jack’s goblins. These were a horde but one had 2 hit points (a random event) so split off from the main body.

While Jack was finishing off the southern horde, I sent my barbarian to finish the treasure bearers. The barbarian had a penalty of 1 on movement for being laden with treasure.

The troll emerged from the ruins (scenario event card drawn) and the chase was on. I decided to roll all 3 dice.

4 actions! That makes up for all those failures I rolled early on. The barbarian RUNS for safety!

It wasn’t all that simple.  There was at least one ambush and 2 other reinforcements that had to be dealt with.  Jack hit a teleportation trap that ended up moving him up the road a small amount.  Essentially it provided his ranger with an extra move.  Lucky us.  In the end…

Home sweet home!

JTT trees.  Hills are from some old company who made GW style hills.  The tower was purchased from Michael’s.  The ruins are Microtactix card stock buildings.  The roads were made by a gent selling these at the flea market at Cold Wars.  The troll is GW.  The game figures in the north are mostly Caesar with the goth archer from New Line designs 1/72 scale Goth range.   The ranger is a scaled down 3D print of Dutchmogul’s 28mm ranger on thingiverse.  The goblins are from Goblin factory, now carried by an Australian company (I think).