| Lee Hanna |
A partial game report, no player fatalities.
Last night, we played session 25 of my game, set in the world of Birthright, so the names and places have been changed from the Kingmaker AP. I'm a mishmash of Books 3 and 4, so that Armag's Tomb is where Vordekai's lair is, Varn is the guy turning into Armag, and Vordekai got taken out a few sessions ago. Varn dragged the missing citizens of Varnhold off into the mountains to dig out the tomb.
Where it started to get strange: Our oracle, while investigating the Oculus, consulted with her immortal patron, who is Lawful Evil. She had no objection to the use of the eye, and the oracle was already (partly) blinded by her class. So, she accepted her fate and popped it in.
Not so strange: The party led their army into Varn's land, and we set up for a battle using the mass combat rules from Ultimate Campaign. We had played with these once before, against Hargulka's troll kingdom, and some players didn't like them at all-- with Small and Medium armies, it was too easy to one-shot-kill a whole army. Which happened to 2/3 of the realm's armies. This time, we built up so that all of the units were Medium or Large. Once I laid out the armies (I made a card for each unit, so that all could perhaps visualize who was fighting whom), then it got weird.
Strange: the player who most strongly objected to the system, did it because there is no visible tactical maneuver: the cards don't move around to fight. I thought this strange, since he'd objected (years ago when he was DM) to my trying to use tactics in a game. A debate broke out, and we decided to not play this out as a battle. It will be played out, just for fun and education, at some later time. BTW, a 10th-level barbarian looks like she should carve her way through a Large army of warrior-1s all by herself.
More strange: the night before the battle, our Oracle walked out of camp, near to the enemy camp, and used the haunting call effect of the Oculus to "Don't trust the priests" among Armag's army. I ruled that this would disrupt the loyalties and combat effectiveness of Varn's/Armag's armies enough that they fought poorly the next day, and were quickly overwhelmed by the PCs and their armies.
We went on to play into half of the Armag's Tomb dungeon, suspending the game with the golem's defeat.