Back in 1979 or so my friend Del made an AD&D 1 character, a half-elf fighter-wizard named Nividar. I ran for this guy a lot over the years, though he got shelved in the late eighties both due to our going separate ways at college time and because AD&D1 kind of didn't generate as much excitement for us at very high levels.

Come 3e, I'm in Michigan. Del's in Washington State en route to some graduate school in Ohio, we start playing again. 3e turns out to be fun at high levels and we have some great adventures again. What's more, Del's son Jordan is in junior high school and learning to play himself, with his father as DM. I came in as a guest star DM for Jordan's game and ran an amazing adventure, one of my best ever, converting a Call of Cthulhu dreamlands adventure to fantasy (Lemon Sails was the basis) for some 3e characters, a 1e character, and a classic Traveller character, with all math conversions done on the fly.

So anyway, it's a few years later, Del's down in Kentucky now and Jordan comes out to visit for the holidays. Nividar is 21st level now and Jordan's character Zuteri is 16th, and we need a grand finale for both campaigns. I don't know how grand it was but we had fun and I took some pictures.

Zuteri has long been the champion of Westermarch and the town of Hyrst, but of late the Empress' vicious southern commander, who we'll call Robilar, has been leading scouting parties and armies. He's replaced the commander and garrison at Bellenhook and now is sending armies eastward.

Meanwhile, the council of archmages has been disintegrating. Their leader, who we'll call Mordenkainen, found the brain of an ancient titan, and has been busily eating it, his consciousness gradually slipping the laws of this world to explore distant realms. Sometimes he locates here in two or three bodies, sometimes none, but in any case he's no longer suited to be High Archmage of Pandaimon.

Joril Feanaro, archmage of the elves, tells Nividar that the last conclave of archmagi is to be held. Nividar decides to go to pay respects to Mordenkainen (who has helped him with magical scrolls, etc. many times over the last many years) and also to bring Zuteri to the council, since Zuteri's adventuring party (as run by Del, this world has multiple GMs) was the one that fought their way down through the cleft-demons to the titan's skeleton and found Mordenkainen eating the brain.

So after taking the faerie trod from the Eldwold to the grove of Madouc, sister of Queen Ermazahd and high druid of the elves, the pair of them head over to Hyrst to meet Zuteri, only to discover that Robilar has sent a large army against the village.



Surveying the battlefield from a ruined tower by the river, Zuteri makes preparations...



Nividar's horsemen are aided by a half-cloud giant son of his, and the Eldwold has sent some griffon cavalry to aid the strapped outlanders. Prince Nividar called a whole host, in fact, but something collapsed the faerie trod behind him - foul play! Madouc identifies the agent as Xiola, a fiendish archmage, once Mordenkainen's wife, now Robilar's leman - or, perhaps, the puppeteer pulling his strings. They are cut off, and must fight with the local troops, men and dwarves of stout hearts and middling abilities, plus what the PCs can muster.







But the enemy forces contain monsters from the outer planes, as well as dragons, sinister serpent-men, and much else...



Early on in the battle, the great black dragon, spawn of Tiamat, is engaged by Madouc. The skies darken; a moon falls to earth, breaking into four parts. The largest goes north, and two go into the east, but one crashes directly into the battlefield, engulfing Madouc and her deadly foe. When the dust clears, both live, but the druid has been transformed into something strange and terrible, and she flees the battlefield, leaving Nividar to slay the dragon.



(Game note: when leaders fought leaders, we broke out into D&D 3 combat. For everything else we used Richard Borg's Command and Colors system, I statted out monster units appropriately for those rules.)

Zuteri looked on with satisfaction as the foes were swept from the field; the cloud giant scattered the frog-men on the right flank, while the archers and cavalry turned the stouter resistance on the left:



The forces of good had won the day, but the air had grown cold and misty, and the whole world seemed out of kilter with the meteor strike. Teleportation and magical communication no longer functioned at long range, and even the faerie trods were broken; time was suspended.

Further, Robilar and Xiola's resources were endless compared to those of Westermarch and tiny Hyrst, and unless they were dealt with directly, sooner or later, the free peoples of the west would be conquered.

But both Robilar and Xiola would be at the council of archmages; as would the Empress, the most powerful sorceress alive, a woman who the very gods feared to cross.

This left Zuteri and Nividar a few ways to help the Western folk: persuade Robilar, or persuade the Empress to curb her henchman once and for all, or perhaps, if all else failed, slay the two.

The conclave was called.



The first order of business was to admit one of the Empress' daughters, Merlynn, to the council. This was passed; she was of the requisite power. Mordenkainen was there, conscious enough to pass on his title if one would take it.

Meanwhile, Zuteri and Nividar bargained hard with the Empress and Robilar, but could not persuade the latter to yield power. They did, however, persuade the Empress to allow them to settle the dispute for themselves.

Xiola had gotten several other archmagi to back her bid for leadership, but through cunning politics Nividar, Zuteri, and Joril got another mage, Sar Kiliene - the archmaga of Ilthar - elected to the post. At that point, Xiola stopped time and vanished, heading for the tower's vault to release horrors on the assembled wizards. Robilar tried to stall for time, and Zuteri and Nividar attacked him. Two of the archmagi, Decideon of Tarantis and Evantar of Terce, long enemies, took the opportunity to start hurling magic at one another as well, and soon the whole room broke into chaos.

The battle with Robilar was tense, but Zuteri, aided by a successful Otto's Irresistible Dance from Sar Kiliene, managed finally to kill his ancient nemesis. Decedion and Evantar killed each other; the Empress attempted to escape, but Mordenkainen blocked her use of magic. Finally she allowed her daughter to remain and stave off the trouble, and told Zuteri that if he wished to take Robilar's title to the southlands he had but to appear at her court at Solara and request it. The living goddess vanished, leaving the others to solve the problem; Mordenkainen, seeing that the council had ended, dissolved his body after saying farewell to Nividar, and even now roams the distant cosmos, a creature of pure intellect.

Meanwhile, Nividar and Joril were contending with a series of dread wraiths coming down from above:



(DM: It was really nice to throw undead at a high level party with no clerics.)

When the chaos from the conclave ended, one of the archmagi controlled them and sent them away, but it was clear that Xiola was releasing various horrible things above, and also that the tower was slipping off into the void...

After making their way up through several floors and defeating, among other things, a nightcrawler, the party arrived at a strange complex of painted metal and flashing light:



A terrible ball of swirling wings assaulted them, killing the archmage Joril almost instantly. (This was a chichimec from the epic level handbook, it was a pretty good monster.) With some clever manipulation - walls of force and an iron body spell, plus a time stop, the party managed to get around it, though not kill it. Nividar with his iron body and electrictiy resistance managed to fight the thing to a standstill - neither of the two could really hurt the other.

Meanwhile, Zuteri, Sar Kiliene, and Merlynn had made their way ahead to the ancient vaults of Mordenkainen's tower. Three Gates were opened there, from whence the chichimec and nighwalker had arrived; Xiola stared moodily out one of them, entranced by some distant piping sound in the deeps.



Zuteri shot her with three arrows; the party survived her meteor swarm in response, and then three more arrows brought her to her end. Though Nividar's politicking and prowess had brought them past the great battle and into the conclave with some hope, it was the younger Zuteri who managed to slay their two great foes without the renowned hero's help.

At this point the tower had slipped its moorings entirely and was roaming the astral plane; the air-demigod, frustrated with Nividar and without any bond to the sorceress who called it through the gate, finally fled. Nividar pulled out his Amulet of the Planes and the two surviving heroes and archmagi fled through the panel, finding themselves in a coatroom deep in the underworld.

An albino ogre greeted them, and momentarily later a dark elf: they had arrived at Dirty Dorg's. Wishing to impress the ladies, the two elven heroes spent several hundred thousand gold pieces on a meal including beholder eyestalks, psionic crab, braised infant gorgon, and many other delights.

Well, there's a lot more I could say, both at the story level and at the meta/real world level, but it gets tiring writing up these reports. Maybe if people have questions I'll say more in the comments. Thanks for reading!

Holy cow.

How long did that all take?

Very entertaining!  I'll be rereading it just as soon as the Colts game (and possibly their season) is over.

Fantastic!

I´m not sure how the campaign actually turned out: Did they "win"?

Seems to me, there´s still much left unresolved, correct?

Thanks for the kind words.

The adventure was actually pretty short, and I didn't even write up all of it here. For instance, there was a lot of stuff with Nividar in the Eldwold that was 'just roleplaying' - like the mountain goblins coming down from the hills to swear fealty to the queen of the elves - it turns out that the goblins were originally elvish bondsmen when the elves first came down from the stars, but when the elves turned away from chaos and towards a more stratified social order the goblins left them. Most of the goblins fell into darkness in the intervening millenia, but the mountain goblins stayed true to their old code, and now that Ermazahd and Nividar are planning on leading the elves to the promised land and returning the people to the 'Broken Sword' model of chaotic elven society, the goblins are returning to fight at their side.

(Which is cool, because it will let me use my air shark minis



as cavalry in some of the upcoming battles.)

But, there were only two really long 3e fights - the one with Xiola and the Chichimec and the one with Robilar and the dueling archmagi. The black wyrm was already below 250 hp by the time Nividar caught up with it and so had to face a full strength 21st level character with a dragonbane sword and a fully charged power up suite...wasn't much to it. And the nightcrawler, well, the players handed my ass to me in about 2 melee rounds.

The commands and colors system plays really fast so the tabletop battle part was only a few hours. When you play the actual game with the 'pennants' victory conditions it usually takes about an hour, but the players wanted to kill everything and we had the 3e fights between rounds, so it was a little longer.

Sett, there's lots left unresolved, but here's the thing:

- Nividar is leaving the continent/old campaign behind to lead the elves (& goblins) into the south, and a lot of those NPCs were old characters in his story, so that was the 'end' of his old D&D adventuring career, as it were;

- Zuteri has finally saved the region he's been exploring and fighting to defend at least part of the time since 1st level

- That meteor and the departure of the elves is going to permanently alter our shared campaign world, we're going to push things in more of a 'weird fantasy' direction

So a lot of things coming to an end there, it would seem. But I do think there were several different 'wins' in the course of play, both tactical and story-based.

But, Nividar's not going to be happy when the magic storm passes and he finds out he decided to make a foray into the underdark when one of the other fragments of the broken moon struck directly down on the Eldwold!

This thread is awesome.



RPGPundit

I notice what I think is a sort of a mix, terrain and scenery-wise.  There appear to be some Dwarven Forge pieces--what are the rest?

Thanks Pundit!

Zachary, the trees are woodland scenics, the rock formation and tower are scratch built painted styrofoam (different builders), the lake and river as you noted are Dwarven Forge, the felt is a Hotz Mats production (highly recommended, and the 5 inch hexes give you a mat just the right size for 28mm battlelore/commands & colors ancients/memoir 44/etc.), and the three brown hills I bought off some warhammer guy on Ebay for like 5 bucks, it was a steal given their quality.

I motion to sticky any thread that has Hotz Mats, Lemon Sails and Robilar in it!11!!!

Cali, re. Command and Colors, this works essentially like Memoir '44, yes? So, was that a "card-driven" battle? Did you have to customize/write your own cards?

Usually not. I use BattleLore for my Wilderlands-Battles, and I only need to stat the units. The cards can remain the same.

How about that. So my playing M44 might actually yield some dividend down the road...

So you like BL? Cards not driving the armchair general crazy?

Battlelore and C&C:A are card-driven, and we played with the cards as normal.

If you move back and forth between RPG skirmish for unit combat and the cards for general troop movement, the C&C:A deck is somewhat more varied - some of the special cards in C&CA become spell cards in Battlelore.

On the other hand, if you wanted to turn PCs into Battlelore leaders, you could do special decks to reflect their abilities.

But, C&CA has rules for leaders, which lets you get PC minis out on the battleboard.

In general these games are pretty interchangeable so like Sett says, you just have to stat up units for them and then pick the decks, unit types, special abilities, etc. you want.

I do sometimes long for the 'pure simulation' of moving your troops all at once - these (Borg) games are more abstract than your typical wargaming rules and less abstract than your typical Eurogame. I do define what the minis mean in terms of number of troops, etc. so we can all 'think' about it more during play, and I allow special case actions based on what makes sense to me and the other players.

In terms of scenery in the dungeon segment, there are a couple cool DF conversions (bombanat!) mixed in with the pieces below, and then the furniture is a mix of old Grenadierr stuff and mage knight scenery.

@Pierce: Hah! The cards! No, it´s not as moronic as Claymore Saga. You still have a lot of choices.
It´s very appropriate for late mediaval warfare.

Actually, a case could be made that the Great Captains of the time even had less control once the battle started.

No, Borg-Games are great GAMES and that´s it. They have their own tactics and stratagems, but are very different from real military history, just like D&D.

But they let me play a GAME in military history drags with almost anybody, and in just an hour or two. That´s a killer app, if you ask me!

Borgey-games == Wargamers WoW

Quote from: SettembriniBut they let me play a GAME in military history drags with almost anybody, and in just an hour or two. That´s a killer app, if you ask me!

Yeah, this is exactly why Borg's stuff kicks so much ass. You can also stretch it a little more in some simulation-y directions by tweaking special rules and esp. victory conditions, though it ultimately is a game in MH dress, as Sett says.

Sett, for a simulation wargame using minis for ancients or medievals, got any advice?

From my limited knowledge, I´d think DBM would be the thing to go for.

Alas, what is one going to simulate? The resut or the process?

More often than not, BorgWars can be used as a black box, who´s results are then broken down/interpreted to the sim level.

EDIT: The more I learn about Military History, the more I´m suspicous of the "Simulations" to be encountered. For example, I do not believe in Fire, Fusion & Steel anymore. Or in games where you have too much control over your units. But: I don´t think the Striker/ Command Decision route is a fun way to do things, if you know what I´m talking about.

OK, I bought the bloody thing (Memoir '44).

I also saw Tide of Iron in the store. Jesus. You can barely lift that box, and the lid keeps screaming BUY ME BUY ME BUY ME DON'T BUY MEMOIR 44 I'M BIGGER I'M BETTER I'M EXCITING PS BUY ME pps eighty dollars