The Famous Feud

[Two orcs]

Two noble families in the periphery of the kingdom advertise far and wide for capable commanders, promising a lot in victory. They have hacked and poisoned each other's family trees, root and branch, till only gnarled stumps and rotten fruit remain. Their hatred spans generations and their loyal subjects too have been caught up having spent so many generations doing vile deeds petty and great in the name of their lords.

Strike the beak from the hated Hawk and recieve my daughter's hand and all my lands when I retire, for I am old and crooked and wealthy.

Fell the foul Fawn for his fortress is fabulous and free for you my friend if you fain to favor my fighting force!

The invitation accepted the only road passes by a final inn before the war torn and festering Feudlands. There, another band of adventurers (cagey about their mission) have accepted the opposing invitation (or they are like the players likely are, keeping their options open). They have some minor trouble and will be grateful if helped, some friendly games had to pass the time before night, stories swapped of previous adventure.

Then you meet your employer who has called his banners in anticipation of your arrival, anxious to attack. On the field you face off against your new friends, who if the players behaved decently and honorably in their encounter, will avoid killing them in battle if it can be helped and set generous ransom if capturing them.

Note: This is another of my attempts to create the perfect generic mass-combat scenario for ACKS at the levels before the Conqueror tier. This could also easily be scaled up, baronies becoming counties, hundreds of men becoming thousands.

 

[Two orcs]

Both sides will be morally repugnant in their bone headed persistence of the feud, wiping out either or both is no moral blot on the players' conscience. Picking a side is a meaningful choice as the rewards offered is different (in both cases the lands of Fawn though either by marriage or conquest) and if you do your job thoroughly for the Fawn both domains are yours. If you side with the Hawk you will end up with him as a neigbor!

Another difference is tactical, their force composition varies. Though exactly the same in culture Fawn is wealthy and can train and equip good soldiers while Hawk I imagine has larger but less productive lands and as such has less equipped troops mixed with untrained rabble (and their hunting dogs! not wardogs, hunting dogs for going after bagders). Perhaps the Feud started out griping about status, should wealth or land area confer the most status? Anyway, it's possible to mechanically optimize for your characters, strategically inclined (INT/WIS) characters in ACKS make better use of high quality troops and especially cavalry while leadership oriented (CHA, Fighter) make better use of massed troops and shore up their poor morale. The opposing officers will be balanced so either army suits them.

The strongholds are in disrepair from countless earlier assaults, this is a battle module not a siege module. The armies, while they hate each other, do not wish to make any last stands in such untenable positions.

 

[Two orcs]

So, to calculate the forces involved...

I'll start by building the army lists, then see what kind of estates and income are necessary to produce such troops. I suspect the domains will end up quite large with the possibility for the players to grow into them or even divide them.

 

[squeen]

A worthy goal and a tidy little set-up. Have your player been enjoying ACKS mass combat?

 

[Two orcs]

They have studiously avioded it. I have enjoyed it as a player and in tournament form, but tournaments lack the bite of character death and glory.

 

[Beoric]

They have studiously avioded it. I have enjoyed it as a player and in tournament form, but tournaments lack the bite of character death and glory.

Ah, yes. As DMs we build the campaigns we wish we could play in, only to be foiled by our players who refuse to play that way.

 

[Two orcs]

The Feudlands, as you travel closer you learn more about them. The people there are regarded as insane and dangerous though not unpleasant or uncouth. Some would suspect supernatural manipulations behind a generation spanning low level war but it´s instead the humans who pull the supernatural into their service. Evil spirits and curses abound, but in the service of magic using Feudlanders. Demi-humans and beastmen take part in the skirmishes, but as mercenaries invited and then enchanted by the magnificent hatred. Why is the final fight nearing, how can the people be sure that the breath the Feuding parties draw will be those that blow out the life of their enemy? The previous layers of defense have been laid to waste. The valiant sons of the Fawn sprawled over banquet tables, a poison brew of finally caught up with them. The outer watchtower of the Hawk have been reduced to rubble, their foundations undermined by dwarven mercenaries.

Would writing them as Fawne and Hawke read more interesting or less interesting?

There are no clerics in the Feudlands, the Gods have long given up on this conflict.

Do you get to pick the battlefield? The stony hills of the Hawklands or behedged fields of the Fawnlands? The toppled watchtower by the ford? The hill of the derelict church? What happens afterwards? Would the victorious soldiers accept not pillaging the vanquished side down to the last door nail? How do you treat the vanquished lord, do you finish the feud or wash your hands of it?

 

[Two orcs]

The rival party will be competent, strong. As usual I think that sleepwalking into an adventure you should fail or at least suffer sadly. They will not be optimized as commanders but rather showcase the different battlefield roles available to leveled characters, frontline champion, leader, strategist, spellcaster. At platoon scale the Fireball is suitably monstrous, usally taking out half a platoon and routing the other half. But note the singular! With a mass of units it's a surgical tool to kill heroes and knights. Thieves have a clear role on the strategic level, they are not prominent here by virtue of their class.

I ran a high powered tournament. Cup & ball games with Dispel vs. real and summoned dragons. Invisible assassins polymorphed into wyverns. Hasted cloud giants throwing rocks at elven sorcerers on flying carpets, a division war elephants routing an army on their own. A lamia covered the entire deployment zone in illusions but a strafing dragon with an aura of fear cut through it. In short it was epic and silly in a genuine D&D way. This module must be cool, the lesson must be that battles are cool, but the masses of men are necessary to make the heroes and monsters stand out. Plus, if you get caught out of position as a hero and engaged by a regular unit you suffer 1-3 attacks of 5d6 damage (2d6*10 at the full scale!).

No, restraint is important. The regular units will need color and personality and be fantastic in and of themselves. You are commanding the Stag Knights with their horned helm and white saddles. You are commanding Rabble from Stony Hill, who casually carve their clubs just in time for battle. The Common speaking Gnolls of the Broken Tribe here to seek vengeance on the Silver Mountain dwarves on the other side. Should I allow myself a single big monster? No, the players will take the sole role of deciding champions. There used to be others, but they are fead in the feud. Their graves should be clearly visible, warriors raising their swords in salute as they march past.

 

[Two orcs]

This forum makes me post in Bryce's style neological typos and all.

 

[squeen]

After my players showed little interest in the ACKS mass combat, I decided to go another route to handle the big battles. I started writing an application (Linux) that would allow you to specify the units in strictly AD&D terms and then the give a few basic orders to each unit as the commander. The simulation would then work out each segment/round results by the 1e AD&D rules (initiative, morale, attack probabilities, movement rate, damage-by-weapon, HP, etc.). Commanding happens each turn (=10 rounds). You'd be able to select which commanders/sub-commanders were manual and which were on "automatic" (controlled by AI). The DM could command the baddies. I could even make it a server-client network game so each side/player could have it's own input device.

One advantage is that there would be no conversion. An orc is an orc. A 2nd-level fighter is what he is, spells have their usual effects etc. and you could have mixed units, including heroes. Even AD&D Weapon-vs-AC could be enabled.

The other plus would be during game-time everything would play out fast for my players and get appropriate results using the same rules as regular PC/NPC/monster AD&D.

Here's as far as I got before work swamped me:

cmail.mp4

drive.google.com

The red are orcs and the blues are (IIRC) 3rd-level human fighters. Fun fact: I randomly rolled every combatant's dexterity, strength and hp.

Someday I'll finish it. A shorter term goal would be just to get it adequately functional before our next big battle (summer 2022?).

 

[Two orcs]

That's a cool project! Group them into units and incorporate morale rolls and you would see some really organic looking fights.