Reichstag game - Quartely Update
Biting off more than I can chew
Overview
Well the time has come to do the deed and report on my findings and campaign actions for the Tideland Empire game. This document will be split into two sections, detailing both the Reichstag Game and the low level mercenary game that has been running alongside it. For those interested in the time keeping observations, feel free to skip to the end of the article as that will go into depth about what have been learned so far. One with the show!
Update and Explanation of absence
So the Reichstag game ran into a few hiccups with them actual implementation. Most of these are down to my own ineptitude, and me biting off more than I can chew all at once. The main issue is that I followed the rules for high level character generation for ACKS II, and in my zeal to get the game going, didn’t think through the implications of the some of the magical items that the players were able to roll when gambling on them. The two major offenders are a **Seal of Chaos** and a **Ring of Wishes.** The other issues stem from me simply making the domains and entire setting too big. Each player has a massive domain, three 24-mile hexes, when they are only level 9 at start, and I’ve have to create magical imperial roads that allow them to travel to the capital for votes and only lose a week of out of month (they are made out of a material called DMFIATIUM that allows people with a specific enchantment on the faster than natural movement. It’s stupid and not something I would recommend anyone do). That being said, it’s not all doom and gloom. We have still managed to salvage good gaming out of it, and after some discussion with the group we are continuing in a slightly more disjointed way, at least for the time being. The February and March voting sessions were all handled in a few play-by-post sessions in my personal discord, and going forward more many of the actions done by the domain players are going to simply be handled by the abstract procedures in the Judge’s Journal. But there were issues to overcome, and they were pretty crippling for my goal of the game.
Silk Shenanigans
As I just stated previously, a big hurdle was rules fumbling. This was surfaced in the one and only non-voting session we held. If you will remember, the Arch-duke Obsidius Falx has access to a Seal of Chaos which, among many things, allows him to summon a Djinn. This player is very risk adverse, so he uses the genie in the following way:
Lock himself in a dungeon
Summon the genie
Force the genie to make all the silk he can for a single day
Dismiss the genie
In practice this means he has an extreme excess of silk, which is a mercantile good. Then, he can send his henchmen on mercantile ventures for functionally free XP, which he does. This is covered by the rules, since this silk will be treated as goods retrieved from a dungeon and compared against the base cost when calculating XP gained from the venture. However, I did not make this clear before we started the session, in which the players were all playing the henchmen of Obsidius. Through a combination of bad luck and poor decisions, they ended selling the silk at a technical loss, which means no XP. When the rules confusion was finally cleared up, we essentially had to roll back the entire session, as Obsidius had the information to avoid this situation. The only reason they sold the silk at a loss was because the player believed since it was free, his boys would get XP regardless and selling the silk at a loss to the Church was an appealing option for future policy and alliance making. His primary goal though was XP for his henchmen, particularly his Mage followers who he wants to put into the potion sweatshop as soon as possible.
While a roll-back like this is by no means unrecoverable, especially since the issue was discovered the night while we were all playing, it did lead to some further conversations about wether the session had been necessary at all. The eventual conclusion, was no, it was not. The players would rather focus on managing their domains and leave the actual resolution of their actions to dice. I am fine with this, as it allows for more solo gaming on their ends which feed into the overall setting. It did sort of sour the whole group on the game for a bit, and we took a few weeks break from looking at in favor of starting the mercenary game.
February and March
After we had cleared up a few things, the game did pick back up in a play-by-post fashion for the Reichstag sessions, here are the outcomes of those sessions (publicly available information only, there are still schemes boiling under the surface).
February
Old Business
Lord Halfin’s Casus Belli against Lord Marshal Cray was awaiting imperial sages to review the evidence presented in January
New Business
The Emperor requests volunteers to create a force to kill Sameal
The Ecclesiarch wishes to declare a new Holy Day in honor of Saint Lucca, martyred in the savage islands off the northern coasts
The leader of Hidari, Giles LeMarque, wishes to execute a rash of human prisoners caught during a massive wave of criminal activity, chalked up to migrants from the interior of the Empire
Archduke Obsidius wishes to annex some empty land to his north
Lord Captain Barca wishes to vassalize another small island domain, this one to the south of the Dwarven Reach.
Results
Lord Halfin’s Casus Belli was solved by Imperial Writ. The scribes confirmed that the evidence presented during January was genuine, and Lord Marshal Cray was arrested as traitor and his lands ceded directly to Halfin.
The most hotly debated topic was Lord Giles’ demand for a writ of execution. While most domains are generally allowed to practice law as they see fit, imperial citizens has protections from certain ancestral laws of non-native lands. The protection is mostly only invoked in response to the old Hidarian religious laws, which as viewed as extremely harsh by all the other constituent members of the Empire. Wishing to avoid a diplomatic incident with whichever lands these criminals hailed from, Giles sought the writ proactively. While most were in agreement, criminals are by no means loved in the Empire, Captain Barca decried the entire affair as farce and insult to human life. He demanded that if any criminals were found to hail from Akropotamia, they should be extradited for punishment there. Giles flatly refused such a request, as sorting that out would be basically impossible. Eventually, a concession was reached via Lord Wallac of Roderhim and Lord John Angularis of Ultimast offering to take the criminals in as a unit to be trained for use on the front. Those that survived would be forgiven of their crimes and returned to full citizenship. Lord Giles’ agreed, and even offered a unit of his swordsmen for use in transporting the prisoners as well as battle.
Lord Halfin groused about creating a new Holy Day simply for Saint Lucca, when so many good clerics and priests were being killed on the front while ministering to the troops. He saw no reason to elevate a missionary outside of the borders when there was no such remembrance of those serving the troops who keep the church safe. Lord Angularis proposed a more general day of remembrance. However, the Ecclesiarch flatly refused such an amendment. The stated reason that “Workmen clerics” were simply less important than those braving the extremes of unsettled lands.
Obsidius annexation was passed with no issues. Lord Captain Barca’s desire to vassalize the islands was postponed, after Lord Wallac cited a desire to see how the vassalizaton of the Lead Islands worked out first.
March
All business postponed until the season of war is concluded.
Mercenary Game
The mercenary game has been going much better. I started that game as a way to introduce a new player to the the glories of ACKS, and to test out a theory on time keeping. The premise is simple: I want some of the benefits of 1:1, but don’t view all the second order effects as benefits. My ground is small and consistent, and we generally don’t enjoy playing more than one or two characters at once. We also can only play on a schedule of once every other week or so. Sometime slower, sometimes faster. This means that 1:1 time’s use case of supporting high numbers of concurrent players, all with many characters and drop-in, drop-out scheduling are not major benefits. If anything, they are draw backs. However, 1:1 time does a few things that full pause time simply cannot, such as preventing shopping episodes, and enabling ACKS campaign activities to actually be feasible without eating up a whole session of play time to go through each player’s one at a time. It took a little tweaking to get to this exact formulation, at first I was doing something close to time jailing, where the amount of time passing was based on the in-gam date and the real time until the next session. That didn’t quite work, and eventually I changed over the system I have now.
The solution I came up with is very simple. 1:1 time, but only in downtime and no time jail. (I am not the first person to try this approach I am sure, and if anyone else has written about it I would love to get their input). This means that if the players spend a day going to a dungeon and back, then one day passes for that session, then two weeks in down time (since that’s our session cadence). Similarly, if they spend two weeks traveling overland, then two weeks pass in game, and then two more out of game. The calendar always advances are the speed of the party and characters are always in the present. As opposed to time jail, where sessions are occurring in the future and writing prophecy.
This has several knock on effects. One, players always know how much downtime they should get and schedule appropriate actions. Two, it means that things like Enervation are still properly dangerous. Stopping the session doesn’t save you from making rolls until the next session. Finally, it doesn’t prevent us from playing more frequently for a week if we want and can. Just because the thief is planning a hijink, he can still go out and do something else. Priorities change in real life, it makes sense that sometimes something urgent comes up for your character and they need to drop what they are doing. Personally, I think this system of timekeeping is perfect for ACKS, as it allows campaign actions to take place off-screen if desired, or in the fore-front. Again nothing stops the players from spending a session bumming around a city doing hijinks and spending a lot time, since they won’t be locked out from playing for doing so. The following is a brief over view of the sessions we have played and their corresponding actions. Dates in the heading are the real life date, start and end dates are in game. “Downtime” actions are actions that required more abritration on my part, but not enough to call for a full session. Campaign Actions are those handled by the ACKS core rules.
Dramatis Personae
Kanum Tracto, Mage
Dimadome Starseer, Vaultguard
Owen Hudson,
Assassin“ranger”Odric, Fighter
Valerius, Crusader
Raskarr, Bard
Samuel, Bard
Session January 01, 2024 - [Hob]Goblin Slayer
Session Start Jan 01, 0024
Session End Jan 01, 0024
XP Earned: 247
The party, consisting of Kanum, Dimadome, Owen and Odric set out from the Keep on the Borderlands and entered the Caves of Chaos. This session saw them making handy work of a few hob goblins, mostly by virtue of bribing the Ogre to help (before turning on him at the last minute and finishing the beast off). They found 634 Gold, a bit of silver and two expensive bracelets for their troubles. They also located the Hobgoblins captives and gained themselves two henchmen, Eric and Montoya. They Also located but were unable to finish off the Hobgoblin chief.
Downtime Actions:
Owen went on a scouting mission attempted to kill a group of gnomes. Also learned the movements of the Orc tribe.
Session January 08, 2024 - Piss Clothes Mystery
Session Start 08, 0024
Session End Jan 08, 0024
XP Earned: 1898 Player, 949 Hench
Kanum, Dimadome, Owen and Odric, after spending a week in town whiling away their time (Odric laboring for copper, Kanum cooking) returned to deal with the Hobgoblin chief. However, this time the hobs were prepared and had errected barricades from which to to pepper them with arrows and slow their progress. The hobgoblins put of a valiant fight, but were eventually routed by the liberal application of Military oil, and a fire started using the disgusting clothers piled near the chief’s hiding place. The acrid smoke drove the Hobs into revealing their secret doors, and their fates were sealed. The horde retrieved was massive. Howver, once again, the chieftan and his main gaurds were able to escape elsewhere into the caves.
Campaign actions
Owen planned and executed an assignation on an unsuspecting rival adventurer, making 2000 gold in the process. Working as his own boss, he caught the attention of the local syndicate who decided to let his actions slide this time…
Session January 21, 2024 - Dead Horse Adventure
Session start January 21, 0024
Session End January 22, 0024
XP Earned: 111
Having spent their lucre on a cart and some horses, sourced from a further market than the keep, Kanum, Dimadome, Owen, Odric and the two henchmen returned to the caves, hoping to finally kill the hobgoblin cheiftan. However, their plans were sent awry when a horde of kobold ambushed them as they pulled in. Killing one the horses. Not wanting to let such an insult slide, the kobolds were hunted down to the last.
Session January 28, 2024 - Wretched Hobgoblin Hole
Sessions start January 29, 0024
Session end January 29, 0024
XP Earned: 346
This session saw a new addition in the crusader Valerius. The party once again returned to the hobgoblin’s hole, intent on putting a final end to it all. The fortifications were silent, and the hobs seemed to be hiding. However, all went horribly wrong when the blundered into a trap. The hobs had fired or forced a powerful goblin mage into their service, who proceeded to cast a powerful earth enchantment which killed Montoya outright, and left valerius exposed for a charge by the cheiftan. Valerius was sadly robbed of his manhood, and chose to take nightshade on the spot as opposed to continuing in such a state. However, after a hard fought battle, the remaining adventurer’s were finally victorious over their hated foe. They received a magic wand for their troubles.
Campaign Actions
Kanum aided the local alchemist in brewing a potion for 212 XP.
Owen plans and executes a hijink to kill the Castellan. gains 6000 GP
Session February 11, 2024 - Mind your manners
Session start: February 12, 0024
Session end: February 12, 0024
XP Earned: 174
Odric, Owen, Dimadome, and Kanum set out from the keep, frustrated by the Justicar Lyons’, the new Castellan, actual enforcement of the Keep’s ban on weapons inside, and newly enforced gate tax. They stumbled upon a tree with a hole carved out, and a bed of leaf litter inside. Which Owen proceeded to relieve himself in. Howver the owner, a mad hermit with a pet lion, returned to find the intruder inside. A fight ensued, which was handled by Dimadome throwing some oil and forcing the hermit and lion into the tree, while Owen leapt out. The group wandered farther afield than was customary and come upon a spring inside of a sinkhole. Investigating, they followed into an old temple complex dedicated to a group of beings know simply as “the Masters.” Electing to enter one with a giant rat corpse, Dimadome was attacked by Murder Maggots. He was able to dig them out before dying, but was badly injured in the process. As they retreated, they forgot to bow before an archway which demanded adulation, and were attacked by a slime or some variety. Dimadome was downed, but quick application of Horsetail by Kanum saved him.
Campaign Actions
Dimadome spent the next two weeks healing, Kanum attending him.
Owen received a warning from the local syndicate to not pull another stunt like killing the Castellan, in the form of having his contact killed in front of him by an assassin wielding an elven Death ArroW
Session February 25, 2024 - Total Orc Death
Session start: February 26, 0024
Session end: February 27, 0024
XP Earned: 542
The group met a new companion, Raskarr, the bard. The decided to act on Owen’s uncanny knowledge of the Orc tribe and went about the business of eradicating them. This went rather well, aside from a brief initial encounter in which Owen was caught in a net trap that the Orcs set afire. After clearing out the initial guards, and catching the Orc sent to raise an alarm before he could, the stumbled upon the chieftain and his enslaved troll. After extremely unlikely negotiations, Dimadome was able to convince the troll that he should free himself from the Orc’s service and live in the Beastlands on his own (three natural 12 reactions rolls in a row plus the troll rolled under it’s INT of 5 to understand the concept of being enslaved). A short round of wet screams later, the troll vanished and the group looted for all they could. They also successfully located the secret door into the other Orc’s cave, and with surprise on their side, killed the leader and drove the rest off with his head on a pike. They also relieved themselves in and burned the Orcs barracks. With this victory, they returned to town. They recovered several magical items, including a +1 Throwing Axe, a rope of some variety, and a disgusting creature that bound itself to Dimadome’s Skin (custom item, it’s a sybiote that sets a character’s AC to 9, but disallows HP rolls on level up. Needs Dispel Curse by a level 6 or higher divine spell caster to remove).
Campaign Actions
Raskarr used lore mastery to begin identifying the rope
Session March 10, 2024 - Girl Poison
Session start: March 12, 0024
Session end: March 14, 0024
XP Earned: 902
The group decided they had enough of living under Justicar Lyons’ thumb, and so decided to travel to the city of Middlesburough, a two day trip by cart. This would give them several benefits, the most notable of them being access to a class III market, and the ability to have to get the creature fused with their dwarf. While on the way, they met other traveler’s on the road and learned that an ancient tower could be seen a half day’s journey to the southwest of Middlesburough. They decided to check it out. A decision they came to regret. Upon arriving at the complex, they found an abandonded fortress wall with a single gleaming white tower on one of its corners. They also found a barbarian woman who called herself Ssanyu poking around the ruins, looking for something called the Soul Gem. The decided to add her, for the time being, but all except Odric were unnerved by her golden eyes and pointed teeth. The teeth were of a special note, as a band of raiders from the Beastlands were known to file their teeth. She accompanied them into the complex. While she was of great help when they were ambushed by a manticore, she ended up being more a hindrance when they encountered a Basilisk that proceeded to paralyze and bite her. She was gravely injured, losing the digits on her right hand, but they made it back to town.
Campaign Actions
Kanum attended to Ssanyu
Odric stained by Ssanyu’s side and was infected with Lycanthropy (were-tiger). His first transformation was on the 22nd
Raskarr Identified the rope as a Rope of Ascent
Session March 24, 2024 - #@$% Wizards!
Session start: March 28, 0024
Session End: March 29, 0024
XP earned: 2362
Odric, Raskarr, Kanum and Dimadome returned to the tower complex, along with Ssanyu to look for the soul gem. They encountered a Rust Beast and slew it, utilizing Ssanyu’s primitve bone daggers. In a stroke of stupid genius, they used the beasts Dusty offsheddings as a sort of magical acid to melt into the locked door in the center of the complex. However, doing so also melted a strange key that Odric was carrying, taking him down and permantly crippling one of his legs. They entered the center of the complex and ascended a tower that should not have been there. This they accomplished by way of a torch tied to a long pole, scaring a slime that was hiding in the ladder chute. They reached a the next level, which was crowded in fog. Dimadome, while searching around, was disctracted by a pile of loot, until he stopped by a sphinx. The beast roared, and sent the party scattering to the four winds. However, as Kanum recovered his senses, he was able to notice that the beast was sealed magically, and by an old seal no longer used for monster binding. He offered to remove it for the beast. The beast agreed, on the condition that if it didn’t work, he could vivisect Kanum. Howver, such a grizzly fate was avoided, as the sphinx was freed. In thanks, he helped the party escape the tower, as they were trapped in the distant past while there. As they returned to their time, they all had new memories form of a sphinx of great renown, Tatun Wizard Slayer, who killed the wizard who attempted to imprison him, and then went out into the beastlands never to be seen again.
Campaign Actions
Odric had a solo session where he and Ssanyu returned to the were-tiger village of Uzipho
Kanuma assisted Raskarr in identifying a potion
Dimadom had the symbiote removed finally.
Conclusions
I’ve been happy with the outcomes of the Mercenary game so far, the Reichstag game not as much, for reasons of my own making. It is likle they the crusade we play out is going to the end of that game, and the setting as it stands currently. Everything is far too large right now. The Mercenaries have recently come into a fair bit of money and starting to consider where to build a base, and one the players in the Reichstag game has a reveal that will basically put the empire into a cold civil war. This is good, I think. Everything will shrink down to the level that ACKS is actually built around, and the new powers rising up from the Mercenary game will meet the old powers on their way down. This is as it should be.
I enjoy this method of time keeping. I think it provides a good balance of what 1:1 offers, without meaning my group has to dedicate literally every day to it. It won’t work for multiple groups, for obvious reasons. There could be a session where the travel time was extremely long, and it wouldn’t be right to jump all groups forward. If you simply keep a running tally on each group, you run into lot’s of other issues. How to deal with overlap and time paradoxes being the biggest one, but also how do you handle group interactions, etc etc. It’s not something I particularly want to solve, if I ever decide to run a big game like that I will just use proper 1:1 time, it’s just the best tool for the job in that case. But 1:1 in between, or hybrid time as I’ve been calling it, give me a lot more bang for my buck with the current group. So that’s what I am sticking with for now. With that, I am signing off.
Sail On,
-ShockTohp
PS
The rest of the Adventure site reviews are coming. I’ve been stuck on-site for the past month and this report was my priority. I will finish them and post my final rankings and thoughts on why I didn’t win. See you then!