I didn't want to mention starting the
43 AD campaign for fear that I'd bring down the curse upon it again,
but we started it yesterday. Since this is a mini-review of the game
system as well as a play report, I'll try and remember to mention
what was good and bad about the game system as opposed to just what
was good and bad about playing it.
Right out of the gate Murphy's Law
struck and I didn't have access to a full copy of the rules, which I
brought with me on a flash drive, because Dalton didn't bring his
laptop, which he ordinarily brings with him everywhere. That was no
big deal though because I had printed out four player packets and a
GM packet, which included all of the stuff from the player packets
and some extra stuff that I thought might be useful, but never
actually came into play. Printing out the entire action and
encounters section would have been more useful for me as a GM, but
when I was printing those sections out three weeks ago or more I just
added one more copy to the ones I was printing for the players
without really considering that I might need access to the entire
section, as opposed to what was probably prudent for the players to
see.
Then one player, my son John, was
already committed to working over at my parent's house yesterday, so
he wasn't going to be there. Then Darryl was late getting to his
dad's house. Then Big Darryl's grandson David was invited into the
game, which I didn't really mind, but I did have to tone down the
gritty military tone and watch my language because he's only ten
years old; that said this was his introduction to RPGs and he had a
great time. Then one of the player packs just disappeared, before
Darryl Jr. even got there and I had to hand out part of my GM pack.
Damn that Murphy and his laws.
I also made the foolish assumption that
character generation and the "basic training" exercises I
had planned for them would take longer than they did. Character
generation went by quick and easy, although not everyone was thrilled
with their random rolls - Big Darryl ended up with a Syrian Freedman
who was a cursed coward, not really the type of character that suits
his personality at all. David and Darryl Jr. both got characters from
Hispania, David's a craftsman and Darryl's a farmer; Dalton ended up
with a hulking Gaulish craftsman with dreams of heroism, dreams he
can fulfill.
David got kind of short-shrift on
character generation and from me, I had Dalton overseeing him while I
caught Darryl Jr. up to where the rest of the players were at, so I
was not as aware of how to weave him into the story; plus, it being
his first time, I wasn't really sure how much I should push him to
role play. I shouldn't have worried, because as soon as the dice
started rolling he was all about the game, he didn't even seem to
mind when his shots got blocked by armor, but I'll get to that in a
bit.
For the "Basic Training" bit,
to bring everyone up to speed on how the game works, I worked in
Dalton's character's enemy the unit's Centurion, who has decided to
make his life hell because he can, but is doing it in a way that is
legal; he is forcing them to take extra weapons and unarmed combat
training because he thinks that their unit has been looking pretty
lackluster. I decided that they were an ad hoc unit of scouts for the
Century, because it kind of fits the campaign I have in mind and I
had three out of four PCs pick the Archer gear, the 4th wanted to
too, but realized that his burly Gaul would "be a better tank",
and picked the Assault Trooper gear.
The combat system itself is simple and
fast playing and very similar to one that Darryl and I designed back
in the mid 1990's when we were looking for a better system than 2nd
edition AD&D. It runs pretty smooth and is pretty realistic,
while maintaining an abstract nature; which means that it is deadly.
Characters are never going to be superheroes in this game. Armor
works in a way that you are either going to really like or really
hate, because for each point of armor you have you get 1d6 to try and
save versus the damage that a given attack causes, you save on a 6. I
like it, Darryl hates it, but he has his reasons that I'll get to.
Now, before I go any further, I'll
address a couple of issues with the character sections of the book
that we were dealing with. There are two different prices for slings,
one on the "Spending Money on Kit" page and one on the very
next page. I am assuming that the spending money on kit is something
that can only be done with your starting money at character creation,
and that it then becomes part of your kit, but it's not explicitly
stated. Also, the quiver for Javelins is stated as having a capacity
of 5, but Skirmishers are only issued 3; is one of these numbers a
typo? The "Hard to Kill" trait states that it gives on
point of natural Armor Value to a PC, but also states that they need
to roll a 1 on a d6 instead of a 6 on a d6, which can be interpreted
as getting a second saving throw for that trait versus damage; I
assume that's a typo and it merely adds the extra point of armor, but
that did become a minor point of contention. It is also stated that
all characters start with their native language at 1, which is
described as "basic understanding", rather than fluent and
foreign (non-Italian) characters have to spend their one free
Learning point on Latin, which is OK, I just think you should start
out fluent in your mother tongue. Having found a few issues in just
one session's worth of play I think it likely that we'll find more
along the way.
On the plus side, since Zozer has only
released this as a pdf so far, they have the ability to edit the
master pdf and update it, then everyone who bought it can download it
again for free from drivethrurpg.
Pictured- Legio II Augusta
OK, I then decided, despite the fact
that my adventure plan was only half baked and wholly stolen from
Simon Scarrow, right down to the fact that I put the players in the
Legio II Augusta; and I didn't have my battlemat or any of my
miniatures that we would start the real campaign, since we had so
much time left in the day. I had them go from their camp on the Rhine
to a rebellious German village that had mutilated a Roman
tax-collector. I departed from Scarrow quite a bit in the size of the
town and the forces there, because only four scouts were leading the
Century. I issued the scouts horses so they could ride on ahead of
the rest of the Century and report back. Big Darryl's character
Lucius was in command of the detachment. They got to the edge of the
woods and got a look at the village, it was on a hill overlooking the
Rhine to the east with gates to the north and south and a wooden
palisade around the rest of the village. Both gates were open, but
guarded by a pair of young Spearmen each.
Lucius considered a stealthy approach,
but the daylight and couple of hundred yards of cleared fields around
the village made him decide to have the men ride together to hailing
distance and be the voice of Rome come seeking retribution for their
wronged official. I reasoned that these German boys, being from a
hostile village, probably weren't Latin speakers to any degree; so
one of them ran inside and started calling for their leader and the
other stood there and spit on the ground when Roma got mentioned one
too many times. Darryl Jr.'s character Gaius Marcellus Cicero, the
poor Hispanian farmer with the fancy name, decided that this
indicated that the tribe was in fact in open revolt against Rome and
charged the poor lad.
Lucius fired his bow at the boy and
dropped him before Gaius could get to him, but Dalton's war mad Gaul
Vergix had backed Gaius and charged too. Lucius ordered Titus to ride
back to the Century and tell them what was going on. Gaius and Vergix
followed the other boy through the gate at a charge and Vergix ended
him and his German caterwauling by shattering his skull with his
sword. They stopped short though when they saw a force of Germans
assembling in the village center, some armed with javelins and one a
fairly richly appointed warrior. Lucius rode up within bow shot, but
Gaius took over negotiations. I am guessing that after two easy kills
and seeing only thirteen other warriors, half of whom were unarmored
Spearmen, he figured this would be an easy fight and he did mention
wanting a chance to loot this village some before the rest of the
Century got there. This was well within character because he had a
starving family back home in Hispania. He goaded the richly appointed
warrior into saying that it was German land and he was the King
there, so then he was legally in open revolt against Rome.
The German King issued a challenge for
personal combat to Gaius and stepped forward, but Gaius decided that
fighting fair was for suckers and charged him on horseback, Vergix
and Lucius followed his lead and attacked too, Vergix with a charge
into the unprepared German Spearmen and Lucius firing an arrow into
the mass of Germans. I don't remember all of the details of the
fighting, it was fast and furious, I think Gaius took down the King
with a tremendous blow to the head that left him unconscious, then I
know he died the next round when he was struck by two javelins thrown
from the back rank of Germans. Titus decided to turn around when he
reached the edge of the woods and saw that his friends were inside
the German town and heard the sounds of battle. Vergix danced his
horse around and kept the Germans engaged on the street while Lucius
and, eventually, Titus shot them up with arrows; not that he wasn't
an effective killer too. His might of 6 while mounted was a huge
advantage and his Assault Trooper armor kept him virtually unwounded,
a couple of nicks made it through is all.
Pictured-Germanic Tribesmen, probably the very boxed set I would have used for this game.
Eventually a German made it past Vergix
though and charged the Archers, and while both archers concentrated
fire on him for two rounds, his helmet and shield saved him from
death. He then managed to deal a serious leg wound to Lucius, then
Lucius cut him open pretty bad and ordered a retreat from the
village. The Germans initially charged the retreating horsemen, but
after a round of getting peppered by arrows realized they could never
catch them and ran back towards their village, the Romans charged
them and finished them off just inside the gate.
Now, what I liked about this skirmish:
It was pretty fast, despite the fact that we had never tried archery
and we were all new to the system, so it's only going to get quicker.
I just have to figure out how to remember my total "add" to
my 2d6 roll, and to roll for armor every time an NPC gets hit, also
that they have Fate too. The King could have spent 2 Fate points to
"shrug off" the knock out effect of his head wound and stay
in the battle, and another 1 to "shrug off" the
incapacitation, then he'd have just been down 10 Hits, a bad wound,
but he'd have still been in the game and their best fighter. I also
liked that most of the downed enemy weren't dead, merely
incapacitated or unconscious or both, that's far more realistic than
D&D's flood of corpses. A lot of these Germans could survive,
they're in their own village with their own women and healers to tend
them, now that the three surviving Romans are firmly in charge they
don't want them dead. They are probably going to crucify the King,
but they're waiting for the Centurion for that decision.
What I didn't like: Arrows. Holy crap
are they deadly. This seems anachronistic to the setting really. One
arrow every round is a pretty good rate of fire, and you are going to
run out pretty quick, since you only get twelve shots a piece, but
Slingers were more common as Auxiliary troops than Archers, so I just
assumed that the bows of the era weren't as good or something; but
these guys were pin-cushioning my poor bloody Germans; and the rule
about fighting with an arrow stuck in you means that if you stop to
pull the arrow out, you cause a further 2 Hits on yourself, but if
you don't you suffer a combat penalty equal to the damage that the
arrow caused 1d6+2. So if you are hit by an arrow and pull it out so
you can keep fighting, you suffer a minimum of 5 Hits and a maximum
of 10 Hits, given that I was using an average guy template based on
the Legionary Character Creation Example - Tiberius - for the bulk of
my Germans, since I hadn't printed out the NPC portion of the book
and Dalton didn't bring his laptop, that guy has 12 Hits. The Archers
kept rolling 5s and 6s for damage, when you drop to 3 Hits (or less)
you are incapacitated, dead at 0 Hits, I had a bunch of battle mad
Germans take themselves out of the fight trying to pull arrows, it
was either that or fight at -7 or worse, which is a real killer. This
may just be sour grapes on my part though, I don't know.
What the players and the characters
don't know yet: They failed a fate check on the road and missed a
blocking force waiting to ambush their main column, also there is a
reserve force of allied Germans moving in from the north. I did this
so I could stress test the battle rules that came in the Warband
supplement, but we had to leave because Ashli needed her medication.
That's the real reason there were so few men in the village.
Pros about the game- Doesn't need
miniatures, simple and fast paced. Could be played as a miniature
skirmish game, if you were so inclined.
Cons about the game- Some poor editing,
and a few unclear spots in the rules require interpretation.
