





Game day, Session 2 was horrible on my part. I had one goal, and that was to playtest a mass combat system that I had floating around in my brain for several months. We had some loose ends to tie up; the party was chasing the surviving orcs which I had set up as an old-fashion gulch shoot out. We really needed miniatures, but I refused, and instead ended up having to describe the same battlefield 4 times per round, it turned into a giant mess, and nothing but a hack-n-slash session where I was rolling for 30 orcs who couldn’t hit anything unless I rolled a 20. I got bored, of it. My intention was to slowly introduce more powerful orcs, but we started play with 12th level characters, a level that is way outside of my comfort level. The result was chaos and no challenge whatsoever.





I had expected eight players and only five showed. I really messed up with one character who I thought for sure was going to be there, so I pregenerated an awesome character, and gave him information that the party needed to continue the story. . . I know better, I do! I just really thought that he would show up, so when he didn’t, I had this DM character on my hands that I really don’t want to play. I reduced his active hit points to bare minimum, and then got ready for the next encounter, which in my head was awesome! It was going to be a chase through the Stonelands, I had 20 horses, each with two orcs. One orc shooting a bow, the other armed with a lance. I still didn’t want to use miniatures because I didn’t have them ready, so I set up the dry erase board to use magnets and such, and once I was finished, I started the encounter and between the Ranger and the Cleric, they used only two spells to wipe my entire army out before they could even engage them. . . WHAT!?! The spells, these 12 lvl spells are kicking my butt and I can’t plan for them! I am totally in over my head, if I had started the campaign at 1st level, then I could grow as a DM with the characters, but then I would had lost my story, but I should had started the party off at first level, because now I have no idea how to prep for them, but we have reached a decision, the players are going to write down complete spell lists so that I can have a chance at properly prepping for them. They want to play at the best of their abilities, and so do I. We haven’t played at this level for years, and I have never DMed a campaign this high before. Yes, I know how to do it, but I am just overwhelmed and have become a slave to the story.





There comes a time when you are just too irritated to contenue DMing, you know that what you had prepped isn’t going to work, and you are on the spot. I was sick of throwing dice, and the spells defeating large armies anyway, so what the hell am I supposed to do?





I wanted to quit, but we only get to play once per month, so the show must go on, as crappy and as pointless as the show might be, the horrible thing MUST go on! But I did say, screw it. No role-playing, lets just jump right into the action! I want to play test the battle system I came up with.





Now according to my story, I had given the players the option going south to a major city, or east to a border town, and they chose to go east. My orcs were set to begin their take-over. The major army was taking the major city to the south, to use as a base of operations for further conquest, and a smaller weaker army had to prove themselves worthy of joining by taking out this border town and enslaving the population to work in a mine that they had taken from mindflayers. The Black Network is still cooperating with the orcs and had done an excellent job providing intel on exactly how many troops were protecting the bordertown (850), so they were supplied with a sufficient number to take it, (1,200), I had originally set up a third aid to the orcs consisting of a mountain giant acting as a catapult, and protected by ogres as he bashed the wall down with bolders, but I nixed it because I wanted to test the battle system which couldn’t support that.





My original plan was to have the players use armies represented by poker chips, and use the hit vs. ac method pulled from the 2e Battle System, which has mechanics that are beyond our level of play. We’ve never played mass combat or war games beyond the board game RISK. While we were playing the scene with the mountain giant, we also determine what is happening at the gate by doing theatre of the mind battles with pokerchips, but by this point I didn’t want to do that at all, so I nixed the mountain giant and started setting up an orcish army using the poker chips. It didn’t work, it was just throwing even more dice and we ended up stopping the game and having a huge brainstorming session where we are home-brewing our own mass combat game.





We aren’t grognards, we need a game that grows with us so we are going as basic as one can go. I’ve got 5 different colors of chips to represent 5 different kinds of troops that can be on the board at once, and while my original idea was to eliminate movement rules, that has proven to be impossible. Over all it was a very productive night, but not in the way that I had intended. I fell on my face, which happens, but I did get the players to tell me exactly what we want to do.





SO! I am modifying the story. The orcs have taken over their half of Cormyr and want to take over the other half, which should happen in a wave. The players are beyond this phase of the game, and instead are going to investigate the Mine of Sorrow and try to figure out what is going on and close the mine. At the mine, the orcs are going to be of much higher level, I’m scrapping the level limits put upon them by the core rules. This game will be much easier to prep as it provides a better structure. Last game was just get to town and defend it, and there was no real way for me to even put it into danger. I had prepped two different armies and, well, I’ll quit whining.





Next game we’ll play an old fashioned hex crawl, that hopefully leads to a classic dungeon. I’m going to throw all I can at the party and see what sticks. Episode 2 was a bust :/