Schrodinger's Tactician//I hacked a game to try out one-round combat.

I've not been much of a fan when it comes to dungeon game combat, because if it's all theatre of the mind, then combat becomes really weird, difficult to picture, and starts to resemble an old final fantasy game where nothing matters, especially not positioning. You just trade attacks and spells and such until the battle ends. The biggest issue for me is that there's not really much in the way of tactical thinking from the players, until the GM introduces some kind of complication, at which point, it's now extremely important. These conversations tend to go like this.

"Oh, and now a goblin is approaching from behind."
"Whoa whoa whoa. I was watching our backs."
"Okay but you never said that, all you guys have done is attack the orc boss and his men, which I said were gathered up by the north wall."
"Oh I was watching our backs. :^)"

This is, I dub, as the King of the OSR, "Shrodinger's Tactician": A player that typically is disinterested in tactical RPG play but wishes for the benefits of said style of play, usually expressed in asking for actions they aren't willing to accept happening to them.

For example, if you're a DM, you've probably had this happen:
"The Kobolds win initiative and charge!"
"Can I uh, like, uh, set up a free attack for when they come?"

While this seems like a decent thing to ask, they wouldn't accept this:

"You win initiative."
"Okay, I charge the nearest Kobold."
"Okay, uh it uh like holds up its spear for a free attack."

Shrodinger's tactician.

So I decided to hack the hell out of a game called Aketon(pronounced ack-tawn) and add my attempt at having some small measure of tactical combat while not requiring the rigors of something like 4e. If you want a truly tactical game with gobs of interesting options and very interesting encounter building, run 4e. It's great. 

Rank and Flank is not that. It still retains the simpler gameplay of OSR combat, life is cheap, henchmen are definitely the meta, etc. It adds the most important thing to cutting combats down as many rounds as possible: the combat resolution step - ironically taken from a game where resolving a battle in three real-time hours is extremely good. There's no actual ranks, by the way, just a very nebulous front and back as you fight in a type of formation that isn't just rushing pell-mell into a melee like a hollywood film, and as a DM, you need to make sure players know if their flanks are exposed and if their rear is exposed. And it works! You fight a single round of combat, tally up how it went, and then, my friends, you see who won. Bards actually contribute to the fight, by breaking ties during the combat resolution step! There's banners(although this is an abstraction, a banner can be anything from a reputation to a famous sword or armor set or just a knight of good repute) that assist in combat! 

If you lose, that side tests fear. If less than 2/3 pass, they break - they run screaming a lot of feet away, choosing directions at random, attempting to break into doors they come across even if its a dead end. The winner can choose to pursue - and if they catch their quarry, that group is destroyed ( or captured, or eaten whatever it doesnt matter). Even if you win, you have to give ground, and if you can't give ground, you automatically break. You basically want to make sure when you do commit to battle you are ready to go. Fighters matter, because in this game, a pack of wizards isn't going to be able to do jack shit, and fighters past level 1 aren't hireable. 

So yeah, troupe play and tactical play without needing minis, battles that resolve quickly but require planning, and high stakes combat. 

Take a look.

One round combat resolution using WHFB in OSE (weird playtesting stuff)

 Generally, I find that most combat in OSE and other games ends rather quickly, the longest I've seen is around 3-5 rounds, and the record for longest was 9, which was a massive pitched battle and lengthened by the advent of a player-character going insane from being possessed by an evil sword.

I always want it shorter, and I generally call for morale checks immediately after the first round.

I've also been playing WHFB(The Old World) and I decided to try using the Combat Resolution Step in games. The first test of this was in the game Aketon (review coming soon) and I have some thoughts, but first, a quick explanation.

As Aketon is a quick game where you start with 1 hit before you die, this was a great place to test this.

The general idea is this:

After one round of combat, run the Combat Resolution Step: Assign points/marks to each side based on the following;

+ 1 Ambush

+ 1 Outnumbered at end of combat round

+ 1/per Banner items (famous/magical weapons and armor)

+ 1 per wound (kills)

If there is a "Skald" or "Bard" character, win ties. If both sides have a similar character, ignored.

Loser must test morale, the typical 2d6 and try to roll under, but they add the amount they lost by. Loser must then flee, running half of their max walking movement speed, blind with terror, they will roll random directions at intersections in the dungeon. Enemies may attempt to pursue (slow moving undead, stationary enemies, and enemies locked to rooms like guardians or something will not be able to pursue). Catching a fleeing group means they are immediately and promptly destroyed or captured. 

Players really liked chasing people, they learned that sometimes it's good to not pursue, because in the final combat, they pursued into a larger room with even more enemies, and promptly ended up booking it, running into a dead end, and being slaughtered by rats. 

More testing to come.

Byzan Setting Primer #2: The Gods of Byzan

Note: This is a living document, subject to changes as I see fit/need. It is currently (March 11, 2025) incomplete.

The Gods of Byzan are extremely interested in the affairs of mortals. Many of the races in the world of Byzan were put there by the Gods, and they have vested interests in getting their "people" ahead, but intervention is costly and makes you vulnerable. They love using Champions to carry out their will.

The Rings:

The Gods are organized into three rings. This doesn't imply alliance or anything, it's mostly an organizational model for mortals.

The Calamity Ring:

Dagalur - The Great Betrayer, The 7-Eyed God

The Flenser - The Cruelty

Drjha - Lady Chaos

Govegh - The Ashen Whore

Bharraghur - Shatterer of Monuments

GhaitenGyaz - The Drakelord

Pax - The Desert called Peace

The Co-Operative Ring:

Rhia - Nature

Drjho - Lord Order

Radegh - Guardian of Oaths, Rememberer of Curses

Molly - Lady Luck Herself

The Feasters of Kheev - Patron God of Kheev

GirDaga - The Roadmaker, the Bridgebuilder

Yodhzt - The Nobless Oblige

The Wretch - Empire

The Mysteries:

Dagatmyr - Life, Cycles, Rebirth

Halci(Nergal) - Lady Death Herself

Sol - The Unconquered Sun

Lund - The Unstoppable Night

Dagnyala - ?

Control - Homes, Hearths, Eternal Mountains, Promised Lands

Catche - ?

Byzan Setting Primer #1: The Empire

Note: This is a living document, that is always subject to change.

The Kharmlund Campaign continues. It's been going for almost two years now, and there's not much in the way of any indication that the players are getting bored. It helps enormously that my players aren't boring people to run games for, but that's another topic for another post. Today, I just wanted to get some of the 'lore' down, something I've kept loosey and goosey for the purpose of being able to slot in things that are and aren't needed. I like to use miniatures in my game and I pick and choose as I please what to include. 

However.

The setting is meant to 'feel' very Greco and Roman, and I've massively increased my reading load since then, I am in fact reading The Illiad, and will continue with The Odyssey and The Aenid and various other things alongside many many many history books. For all of the hatred towards Dr. Beard, she has written Emperor of Rome, which is easily one of the best books about the Emperors, what the position entailed, etc that I've ever read. Mind you I've only read around ~15 books on Rome so who knows, I may be ignorant. There's more great books on Rome than I will ever read.

Anyway, let's go.

The Empire: 

The Empire is Rome, for sure, and meant to feel like it in all but name only. However, it isn't called Rome, and doesn't have an official name besides Byzan which is kind of a word for cattle in the name of the Vosdht, the people that rule the Empire and benefit the most from it's conquests. 

Byzan is ruled by the Khulmar, an Emperor-figure, and they are, in my current campaign, reaching the end of what can be fairly called the princeps model, a citizen-Emperor who is meant to seem(but isn't) accessible to the common man. Myths are put out about this all of the time, and there are overtures to being willing to listen to what you'd call a senate, however the Khulmar does whatever it wants and only needs to fear reprisals from assassinations and usurpers and uprisings and such, the Khulmar more or less just needs to balance the anger of the citizens versus the anger of the nobility and their own personal wants and needs. Not every Khulmar is a selfish bastard, but make no mistake, these are autocrats, and even the kindest Khulmar is a monster by most standards. 

The Vosdht are orcs. In a pinch, Orcs are a great visual short-hand, however I sort of just designed them to be like the Aumaua from the Pillars franchise. They are very tall, averaging 6-8 feet. Large sharp teeth. Boisterous, deadly in combat, and deeply arrogant. Not as a racial trait mind you, but when you have the largest empire ever seen, well...

Byzan has managed to spread with a rapidity that impresses most, and they do so due to a mixture of slave labor, and the Dorfngir, or the Dwarves. As per my previous post, Dwarves are weird peoples, and care little else for anything but finding their bazngir and then working at it forever - they also live forever doing this, so like ant colonies, they eventually reach a critical mass of work to be done, and then future Dwarves born are sent out to the wide world to find work to do. The Vosdht are very okay with this, since to them, many of their infrastructure acheivements are just done by Dwarven hands. The Dwarves, toiling endlessly and happily has given the Vosdht a strong philosophical basis for the justification of slavery - look at the Dwarves, that's an entire people that exists to be a slave for others. The fact that Dwarves typically don't consider themselves slaves, and will do this work for basically anyone they come across isn't openly acknowledged, and Dwarves rarely bother to speak with other peoples except to place orders for materials, tools, bitch them out for erecting scaffolding incorrectly, etc. 

So the Empire conquers. It spreads, and each successive Khulmar is required to be more aggressive, violent and conquest-lusty to stay in power. Where will it end?

The Forges: 

Byzan built these all over their Empire, with the help of their Dwarven subjects. They are massive towers and approaching them is forbidden on pain of death. Important: they are generally assumed to be cursed by anyone that discusses them with the Empire, and nothing wipes a smile off the typically jovial Vosdht than bringing them up.

The Races of the Empire:

The Vosdht are the first and primary citizens of the Empire. They live everywhere, populate the regions they conquer with colonies, protection from their legions and so on. The second largest demographic is the Dorfngir, or Dwarves. They're anywhere they're a public works/engineering project, and they tend to form colonies around them. The average "inn on the road" is actually just a Dwarven colony that also services travelers while being built around servicing and maintaining several miles of road. These colonies are called kharmgir, or, "home for work" or "work-house" whatever you want. The Epigones(or Elves) are smattered everywhere. They will get their own post soon, but needless to say, the 'race' of Elves insert themselves everywhere. Halflings are more rare, and generally despised by other races, as most acknowledge them as being the 'children' of the moon, the evil god Lund. However, they are often enslaved as jesters and pets and other things. There are still some places here and there the Halflings simply live normal lives under the Imperial yolk, but their future is in doubt. 

Finally, there are the Men. Men are wandering tribal bands of nomads. They have a shared language, religion (worshipping Radegh, the Keeper of Oaths) and generally find themselves doing merc work if they're not farming for the Empire. In many battles in these ages after several devastating plagues, some note there's more Men fighting in and against Byzan than anyone else! 

The Eastern Provinces:

The East is a smattering of major cities and other provinces. Well developed Vosdht cities, many men live here, and the Empire is often called a different culture entirely. There's meant to be parallells here to the East of Rome, and they do have easterner allies that are constantly causing them problems, but there's no worshipping of the culture and philosophy of the people here. The Byzan did not write an Aenid which exists to prop up the legitimacy of them as some kind of super-successor state that also functions as a literal sequel to famous eastern poems. The East will be developed later, but that's the general idea.