Cradle Incident from David Weihe on 1998-01-21 (Glorantha Digest Vol 05)

From: David Weihe <weihe_at_eagle.danetinc.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 18:17:51 -0500

> From: "Vesa Lehtinen" <akuleh_at_sci.fi>
> > From: richard <rad_at_nwpeople.com>
> > The Giant Cradle [is] an event which I would definately want my
> > adventurers involved in. I don't understand why that scenario was
> > not re-published...
> for which Lady Jane commented
> >I thought this until I actually got to read it. It's a linear-plot
> >Lunar-bash. Very tough, but requiring zero PC initiative.
> I agree for different reasons. Cradle is an all-combat scen with lots
> of troops statistics, mass combat, and zero importance for PC actions.
> And I am not fond of all-combat scens anyway

There are a number of ways that the Cradle scenario can be used, other than killing off high powered characters.

This is the starting incident of the Hero Wars, and non-Lunar PCs are wildly outnumbered. Thus, PC actions should no more affect the results than should they if you were playing Squad Leader in Dunkirk, or Dieppe.

OTOH, you can be part of the recruitment group at the beginning of the scenario, or part of a group of scroungers trying to equip the NPCs who do the actual fighting (thus, mostly, dying), or the item recovery team (ie, thieves who go in after the first battle is lost to steal everything before the Lunars do), or if you speak beautiful Darktongue, maybe you can be made liasson to the trolls in the lower desks, and help hide the would-be heroes from the Lunars.

Or, you can help get the exhausted priests (either Lunar, or Orlanthi after they start the storms) back to safety. Nothing in the scenario depends upon your success or failure after they have shot the artillary, so there is ample room for PCs affecting the outcomes. Success means that you now know a bunch of powerful, well-connected, political types, with lots of scenarios from that. Failure can get you captured by the enemy, and you get to try your "break out of jail" skills, fast.

I.e., it is a BATTLE, not a special ops mission. Treat it as backdrop, without your characters on center scene, if you aren't 200% in all your combat skills, and it works well. Try to run through the whole scenario as a heroic defender, and it is can be a boring meatgrinder, unless your GM is so skillful that you don't realize that history dictates the results.

Even then, being on the Cradle at the end of the scenario means that you are (a) rich as Croesus (b) have no place to spend the money that won't ID you to the Lunars, and (c) means that you know a wide-ranging bunch of characters who are then great future scenario generators. Plus, you can brag to your neighbors every St Crispin's Day (to paraphrase Henry V).

End of The Glorantha Digest V5 #348

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