My Life As A Gamer: Time, Downtime, And The Campaign (Part Five)

(Citing the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition (AD&D1e) Player's Handbook (PHB) and Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG) as needed.)

(Monday's post is here, and Tuesday's is here, and Wednesday's is here and yesterday's is here.)

Putting It Together

A properly-run AD&D1e campaign will look like its wargame antecedents when someone reviews the after-action reports. A session of play will cover a given period of time in the campaign; that time will be noted and tracked on the campaign calendar. As sessions pass, and downtime between elapses, this resemblance to real military campaigns will become too obvious to dismiss.

To illustrate this for the curious, I shall put down an example that shows how all of these things--Recovery, Training, Spell/Item Creation, Infrastructure, Spying--comes together to fill up that calendar and make the actions of players and their characters drive the campaign's events.

The Process In Action

Earlier this past week Peter logs into Discord and gets into the campaign's server. There the Dungeon Master (DM) and the other players meet him in one of the voicechat rooms. Bob plays a Fighter, and tonight they're following up on a lead generated by his Ranger's Spying Mission.

Unfortunately, Peter's Ranger did not come back unscathed; the Spying Mission roll was a failure, and he got ambushed by the monsters he shadowed, such that all the Ranger could report was where the ambush took place and who did it. Peter's Ranger is now in hospice recovering from his wounds and a delibilitating poison that one of the ambushers inflicted.

Peter asked the DM to send his Ranger on the mission. The DM agreed, decided that trailing a monster warband was a Difficult mission, rolled a failure and then rolled the consequences for failure. Peter and the DM played out the fight over the week in the Discord server. Peter's Ranger is out for at least two weeks to recover, plus the week for the mission, for a total of three weeks locked down and unavailable to play.

Peter tells the group that his Fighter will be bringing his full warband this time. Peter's Fighter is 4th level; the Fighter directly commands 80 men, his four 2nd level Lieutenants command 20 men apiece as well as two Serjeants apiece (who command 10 men) for a combined total of 208 men (soldiers and officers combined) and had the time to muster them all for this expedition.

The DM turns his attention to Mary, playing her Magic-User this time. The Magic-User secured the services of an Alchemist this past week and spent the rest of the week moving the new Hireling to the Magic-User's estate in the city that also just finished completion after three months.

She did not succeed in finding the Sage that she'd been seeking as yet, so she hopes that this expedition proves profitable enough to continue the search before turning to potion and scroll creation. Mary's Magic-User is 7th level, and will be traveling with her Fighter Henchman and the small bodyguard of 20 men in her employ.

Mary had her Magic-User engage in seeking out the Alchemist because she wants to get into Potion creation now that the MU is able to do so. She previously recruited her Fighter as a Henchman, buying him off a gladiator school, and put him in charge of a 10-man unit that expanded to 20 after the Fighter reached 2nd level. She wants to garner some more treasure to ensure that she has the means to keep building up her spell research and item creation capacities.

Paul unmutes his microphone to reveal that he's bringing his 5th level Cleric tonight, and that his Cleric now employs a Serjeant to act as a shield-bearer and wrangling a handful of non-combatant hirelings that will be acting as camp followers and porters. He regrets that his Paladin cannot be present tonight due to his training being incomplete.

Paul's Paladin is in the middle of Training Time due to a lack of a mentor to train with, so the group will lack another burgeoning warlord in the group tonight.

The group's punitive expedition against the monsters that ambushed Peter's Ranger takes three days of time to reach the ambush spot, during which time they encounter one group of merchants traveling towards their city; this encounter provides additional information on the monsters, who are believed to be encamped at the river junction another week's march away.

Making time across the wilderness map works in their favor. They encounter bands of the monsters, who turn out to be goblins running in large raiding parties lead by hobgoblins, ranging around seeking easy prey like merchant caravans and pilgrim parties, which turn into a couple of skirmishes.

The DM marks off 10 days total, and runs two combat encounters where the goblins are overwhelmed and run after the Fighter's men charge into them and break their Morale. This is noted in the Encounter Tables for the hex wherein the Dungeon acting as the goblinoid lair. The failure of the raiding parties to return intact, coupled with the reports of surviving stragglers, put the lair and its leaders on alert.

The party and their retinue arrive, set up a secure base camp, and search for the lair. This takes a day, and another to find an entrance to the lair. The Fighter leaves one of his Lieutenants and his men as a guard, and the rest go with the party into the lair. The delve takes a full day, during which time they clear out the top level and discover that there are more--lower--levels.

The party also interrogates a survivor and learns that this band of goblinoids is in thrall to a great serpent in the forest, a place where the Magic-User has heard previously that Elves fear to tread due to what horrors lie under its shadowed bows, and one of its henchmen is their leader- and he is in the lower levels.

The Magic-User turns his Familiar invisible and bids it forth, flying down the way. Meanwhile the Fighter and Cleric tend to the wounded and begin having the men port out the treasure to the entrance, securing the route along the way. An hour later the Familiar returns, having overheard that a counterattack was coming and gathering the goblins that remained was complete. One wizard lock later and the party retreats.

The party makes it back to their base camp, which remains in good order. Time does not permit striking immediately, so they wait out a nervous night before striking the next day and marching back to the city. This too takes 10 days, during which time the DM checks for Pursuit and the party fights the goblins in one more battle- this time gaining Surprise over the monsters and wiping them out.

They take a moment to discuss resuming the expedition, but decide against it and thus return to the city 24 days after they left. The men are satisfied that they gave better than they got, the Henchmen are satisfied, and the treasure hauled back is just enough to make it profitable after the gems and art objects are assessed for value.

Peter is pleased. His Fighter earned enough Experience Points to quality for Training, and after deducting expenses for his men and general upkeep he has enough to pay for it- barely. That Fighter will be back in action sooner than later once his downtime lockdown complete.

Paul is likewise pleased, for his Cleric--after expenses--will also be able to train for 6th level.

Mary's Magic-User did not qualify for Training, but her Fighter henchman did, and that will be sufficient; she did, on the other hand, get enough profit to finish building out her research and crafting infrastructure. Now she just needs to get a reliable source of vellum.

All of the participating characters are locked down for 24 days, plus more for those undergoing Training, so those characters will be unavailable to play for just over three weeks of real time. The DM notes this on the campaign calendar.

Furthermore, Peter's Ranger and Paul's Paladin will be available for play next week. The DM gets word that Crosby will be back in town, just in time as his Druid has finished recovering from his last outing and his Training. Furthermore, Stills' Assassin will return from a two month round trip overseas to get Training after his last outing, Nash will be back now that his Illusionist finished researching a new spell, and Young's Thief will have finished recovering from near-death.

It's going to be a lot more lively around the table soon.

Commentary

Reviewing all of these gameplay procedures reveals the Kriegspiel roots of the game, and the result is that any campaign report will looks more like the various military history videos I embed or link to than anything else- including anything literary. This is proof paid that RPGs are wargames! There is no place for narrative logic in this game, and therefore in this hobby or medium; that's why it always comes off as cheating to do so.

Negating the agency of the player in this manner destroys the power of the game, ruins the experience for all participating, and betrays the purpose of the exercise. One cannot avoid developing the effective habits of a competent officer by playing this way beause that's what Kriegspiel was designed to do- and, via Little Wars and Chainmail, that is what AD&D1e (and thus all RPGs) are meant to do.

That concludes this week's series. This weekend will see me write on other topics, and next week will be another series. Thank you are for your attention.