Generating the Northern Marches

So with our warband generated, next we move on to generating the region they'll be exploring. Not being a particularly great hand at art, I went back to the source I'd used to generate the map for our previous campaign:  "Perilous Shores", a fantasy region generator. This can be found, along with other random generators for villages, one page dungeons, etc on the highly useful watabou site.

I generated a few images till I came up with a map that caught my fancy, then added a map key to it.

The basic beginnings of the Northern Marches

A heavily wooded region, with numerous swamp and fens, the centre of which was dominated by a large lake. I then added a few islands to the main lake and another to one of it's smaller cousins.

Next I rolled up the regions settlements. The dice gods gave the region one hamlet, two villages and one town. Then generating the settlement types I ended up with:

Hamlet:  Monastery

Village:  Manor

Village: Military Outpost

Town: Trading Hub

In 5 Leagues, along with all the various other monsters, marauders and maladies in the region, three enemies are considered the main dangers in the area. Forces actively trying to corrupt and overthrow the lands to their own ends. Two of these are the Foes Within, threats that lurk within human civilisation, seeking to undermine it. The other is the Foe from Without, forces from beyond the borders creeping in to infiltrate and invade.

Then, mostly determined by what miniatures I already had painted up, I settled on the Threats in the region.

The first Foe Within, and strongest threat in the region, are The Whispers from Beyond, and the crazed cultists who heed them.

The second Foe Within are the Outlaw Bands, followers of a loose alliance of robber barons and bandit chieftains. 

The encroaching Foe Without is present in the form of Duskling Warbands, fierce raiders led by marauding warlords.

In a base game of 5 Leagues each of these foes has a set Threat Level. The main foe is normal set at a starting level of six and the remaining two at level five. Reducing these threat levels, and thus eliminating the threat, is usually a main campaign goal. However in the "Paths in the Wilderness" expansion an alternate method to combating the regions threats, "Fight against Darkness" is offered, which I decided to adopt for the main threat for a bit of variety. I kept the Threat Level reduction method for the Outlaws and Dusklings, thus setting both at five.

Another concept from the "Paths in the Wilderness" I'll be adopting is that of "Local Enemies"; Threats that while undoubtedly dangerous confine themselves to certain, specific, areas of the region. To keep things on a reasonably gothic vibe, the two I settled on were:

 "The Bloodstained", the descendants and followers of a long since vanished Duke who still roam his former domain.

"The Silent Battalion", the long dead army, that fought in a forgotten war, who still haunt their final battlefields.

All these things generated, I will make two more narratively focused posts introducing our Protagonists (time will tell if they are heroes or not) and the Northern Marches(with updated map), respectively, before we get to their actual adventures later in the month.

5 Leagues Warband Creation

  As mentioned in my first post, Don and I decided to run this campaign as a co-op affair, splitting the initial warband of heroes between us – 2 heroes and one follower each. We decided to take an “avatar” each, rather than the usual one per warband, to both generate a little more backstory and add a little more “ownership” on both our parts. I initially wondered if this would give our warband too much of a power boost, but in our previous campaign it certainly didn't seem to have done so.

Another conceit we decided to add to the campaign was naming or basing the various followers our warband attracts after different people in our gaming circles. Throwing in our various friends and associates into the game as lackeys and hirelings who may, or may not, weather the trails of the harsh lands our warband travels. 

So in this post I’ll go over our initial warband creation and cover the generation of “The Northern Marches” region in the next post. Starting with our four heroes we rolled them up and equipped them from the war band's communal stash, as follows:

(Don) Sigurd, Skysworn, with the Mountain background.

 +1 Combat Skill and Toughness, +1 XP, 1 Skill: Leadership.

Fine Axe, Partial Armour, Shield, Helm. 

Avatar Background: The first time you receive a quest, immediately roll on the quest find table

(Don) Yoiss, Dwarf, with the Mountain background.

+1 Agility, +1 XP, Skill: Speech. +1 Gold Mark.

Light armour. Crossbow, light weapon, standard weapon.

(Me) Bran, Human, with the Mystic background.

Speed increase, +2 will, +1 XP. +1 Gold Mark

Light Armour, Staff.

Spells:

(Me) Gretchin, Human, with the Zealot background.

Speed increase, +1 Luck, 2 Skills: Expertise and Wits.

Partial armour, Fencing Sword.

Avatar Background: begin with +3 XP

Our two followers are:

Gregor. An wandering drifter with aspirations to becoming an artist. Armed with a self bow and a light weapon.

Bob. A little too long in the tooth to really be called an Urchin, still we recruited him begging on the street. Armed with a Staff (crutch)

5 Leagues character and warband statistics, plus basic rules

I probably won’t get completely into the weeds as far as the rules of 5 Leagues go, however the next few posts will cover a general rules overview, the base stats of our warband members,  and the mechanical region generation. At least enough to make following subsequent reports vaguely easier(I hope). I may or may not, get into some specifics in the future, as we get into the individually played out turns. 

After that I'll round it out with a narrative summary before starting the ongoing chronicle.

Anyway, in this post I'll begin with a general summary of some basic stats for warband members and rules.

Warband Statistics

Agility: determines when the character acts during the round. At the start of each round of a battle a number of d6 are rolled equal to warband members on the field before assigning individual dice to the different characters. Any character assigned a die equal or below their agility will act in the quick action phase. The remaining warband members will act in the slow phase, after the Enemy Action Phase.

Speed: this has two values, the first is the character’s base movement (in inches on the tabletop). The second is the additional distance that can be gained by dashing

Combat Skill: the character’s fighting ability. Added to a D6 roll

Toughness: the character’s resilience to harm. When hit in combat, rolling greater than Toughness indicates an incapacitating injury.

Characters can also accumulate Will and Luck points. Will can be spent help with re-rolls, gain an additional move and other “clutch moment” acts. Luck can spent to avoid a gruesome death in the Borderlands, but are a one use spend. Another Ability, used by Mystic characters (which our warband does not currently contain) is Casting, which is used in.. you guessed it… spell casting. 

On top of this characters can also possess skills that help with various proficiency tests during their adventures, such as Leadership skill helping with any future recruiting to the warband, or the Path-wise skill helping navigate around travel obstacles.

The warband as a whole can also have Story Points, which are used to smooth over the vagaries of the dice gods with re-rolls, or to improve the narrative. They can also accumulate Adventure Points which can be spent to help in various campaign milestones, from reducing any enemy threat in the region, to attempting to bolster and upgrade a settlement.

The Basics of Combat

Melee combat is a series of up to three exchanges, using an opposed D6 roll, with both combatants adding their Combat Skill. 

Assuming the attacker wins, with a higher score, then they inflict a hit on the opponent.

If the defender has the higher score, they win and become the attacker in the next exchange.

On a draw, the defender retreats 1" from the combat and the melee ends.

Any hits are resolved by first rolling to Overcome Armour, assuming their target has any, then if that is successful they roll to Overcome Toughness.

Missile attacks are made against a fixed number, the shooter only adding their Combat Skill if they have remained stationary that round. They then follow the procedure of rolling versus the targets armour and toughness.

Certain weapons (and other effects) can modify these rolls. For example a warband member wielding a bastard sword gets +1 on their roll to overcome an opponents toughness. Foes encountered by the warband may have their own bonuses to overcoming our heroes armour or toughness as part of their stat entry.

There are plenty of other rules, but that should at least give you an overview of the mechanics for combat resolution if you are completely unfamiliar with the game.

The Northern Marches; An introductory preamble

Some time ago I had the pleasure of playing a co-op campaign of the excellent "5 Leagues from the Borderlands" (3rd edition). Sadly the campaign eventually fizzled due to a combination of various time eating circumstances.  A recent change in my working hours has allowed me the time to resurrect 5 Leagues from the ashes. The game is very much a mix of skirmish wargame with RPG like narrative elements, in a blend that I find very appealing. Rather than revisit a campaign that was already 30 turns in, but has been un-played for over a year I decided to start afresh. Once again I'll be linking up with the friend I played the last campaign with, whom I will hence forth refer to as Don and running this campaign as a co-op affair. So going forward I thought I'd start a blog to cover the campaign. I'm aiming to set up the introductory posts, then begin actually playing the campaign in the New Year. We should be getting in a game session at least once every month, but hopefully more.

For those not familiar, 5 Leagues from the Borderlands is a set of miniature agnostic solo (and co-op) wargame rules, with a procedurally generated campaign world, where you take on the role of a band of heroes (?) and adventurers exploring the game world. The feel I get from it is of a Low Fantasy world with a certain level of darkness to it. If that sounds like your sort of thing I highly recommend you take a look. If Sc-Fi is more to your taste, Ivan Sorensen (the designer), has also made "5 Parsecs from Home". Both games are currently being published as rather nice hardbacks by Modiphius Entertainment. Ivan's other games can be found by searching for his company, Nordic Weasel, on Wargames Vault. He's a highly prolific designer with numerous titles under his belt. Being a fairly big Post-Apocalyptic fan, I certainly aim to check out "5 Klicks from the Zone" at a future date.

Things may expand in scale at a later date to potentially cover other  related aspects, as I try to gather more terrain, and even shock myself with painting a few miniatures - striving to improve the look of our games. I'm hoping the fun of playing 5 Leagues again will generate some much needed impetus to kick my arse into painting some of the numerous fantasy miniatures I have, and hopefully knock out some terrain to match. Potentially a broader accounting of some of my trials and tribulations in various gaming hobbies may appear some time down the line.

For now I'll start with the chronicle of our warband's journey 5 Leagues from the Borderlands, then potentially add in the details of a solo campaign of Rangers of Shadow Deep campaign I'm planning to run if scheduling slows down the pace of the 5 Leagues games. Anyway I hope my own hack writing doesn't put me off, and we'll see where we go...