After much silence, and a mailbox with nearly 7000 messages from you lot, I thought it was time to speak.
Question: What's the most figures you've ever used in a roleplaying game? Can anyone beat 150?
I've been running a series of games (I can't really call it a campaign yet, as I'm still not sure what year I'm setting it in) for a couple of months now. I'm an old RQII player/GM and I'm really impressed with the new system. I used the standard rules to run a battle with about 75 per side, where outlaws were trying to capture someone, and had reached the main stead. I staged a pitched battle in front of the gates (for dramatic effect), with the PC's and a small fyrd on one side, and the outlaws and a few heavy NPC villains on the other. The main warband for the clan was away, so only the PC's, some old grizzled veterans and a few inexperienced warriors remained. They managed to call up a few allies, but were still outnumbered.
I ran the battle using the standard Orlanthi format, which was very dramatic when our PC champion had to be rescued after he lost the fight, and used extended or simple contests depending on the situation for the warriors and fyrd stages. For the main fyrd battle I pitched our PC warband leader's Warband Tactics against the opposing leader's Warband Tactics, and used the result as a bonus when deciding the fyrd battle.
In the end, a good roll by one of the PC's, where he (and some followers) managed to take out six of the enemy at a crucial time, plus a good roll from the leader's Warband Tactics, turned the battle at a crucial stage and the players clan won, even though I was hoping they'd lose, for some fun next week.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that a good flexible attitude to what sort of contest should be run at what time, plus lots of dramatic twists and turns in the tide of the battle made for a cracking game. The best thing was that the whole thing only took about three hours. In the old RQII, I did a similar thing, but with half the numbers, and it took three nights. Everyone had a good time and the rules as they stand were flexible enough to cope with the demands of the game. After discussing the battle afterwards, I can still think of loads of ways I could have done it differently, depending on whether we had more or less time for the gaming session. I wanted to get it done in one night, as it would have been a pig to set up again where we left off, if it spanned two sessions.
So well done Issaries,for the best game system I played with so far and, of course, Glorantha.
Harivig the Red.
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