For the past 5 years some friends and I have gathered for a weekend of gaming. This started as Batchlormunda, one of the 5 nerdiest bachelor parties on record; went to Kill Team the next year; followed by a weekend of one-shot RPGs; and the event last year was the finale to a 3 year cyberpunk RPG campaign. This spring we started planning this year’s festivities, I put together a list of ideas and talked to the other organizers. We pretty quickly tossed out most ideas but landed on one we all liked - running a War of the Beard themed event using a skirmish/rpg ruleset and an army-scale ruleset. Our players would be dwarves fighting the filthy elves. I was interested in this in large part because in the classic fantasy archetypes, which is to say Tolkien, elves and dwarves are at each other’s throats constantly. Despite this, we rarely see them go to war against each other. The War of the Beard is a great example of full scale war between these two peoples.
I wanted two scales of conflict and pretty quickly we settled on Rangers of Shadowdeep and Warmaster. Rangers would be our skirmish-scale, rpg-lite system for games, and Warmaster would show battles of a grander scale.
Prep
Planning
We divided the tasks, I was going to paint all but three miniatures; my friend Max was to do the terrain; and my friend Will would be the primary writer, the book-binder, and paint 3 hero miniatures, one for each faction.
We also decided that there would be a central path of “main quest” missions, dealing with the elves and then “side quest” missions which would be more of a grab bag. Will would write the main quest missions, Max and I each did three side missions.
Modeling
I’ll focus on my work, for obvious reasons. The initial scope was a little silly, 3 Warmaster armies (Dwarves, Goblins, Elves), and 28mm models to cover all of those as well. The good news is I had plenty of 28mm Warhammer dwarves. The bad news was everything else.
During mission writing Warmaster was scaled back, I didn’t need to do 4000 points of dwarves, and only needed smaller goblin forces, but it was still a couple hundred models. A big last minute save was being able to borrow some 28mm High Elves from a friend saving me needing to paint about 12 models.
I painted a lot for this, about 4000 points of Warmaster, about 70 28mm models, and a few hundred plastic tiles/walls for our cave terrain. I fell short by about another 1200 points of Warmaster and 15 or so 28mm models. I got all of these primed and a few pops of color but that was all. I think I made three mistakes here. First, it was too big a goal, the original goal was 8000 Warmaster points! That’s insane, and I think if I really liked painting Warmaster it’d be possible but… Second, I found out I don’t enjoy painting Warmaster models much. It’s not awful, but I find it less fun than a lot of other models. I’d not painted a Warmaster army before this so committing to several before I learned this important lesson was a mistake. Third, I did not make consistent progress. I’d have very productive weeks or fortnights, then not touch these projects for a week or two. I really needed to plug away steadily.
In the end we had some unpainted elves and trolls for the event. For the elves I tried to airbrush them base colors and add a few details, though the fact that they’re primarily white models did lead them to look a little well, primed.
Still, I’m very happy with what I accomplished. One thing I made sure to do was finish the PCs. All the players got a 28mm dwarf, a 10mm dwarf, and we had backup models and a couple model upgrades in 10mm scale. I ended up painting 23 PC models to I think a decent standard.
Other Stuff
I’d be remiss to not discuss the non-mission, non-model prep for this. My friends are big fans of “party favors”, items for players to take home after the event. In addition to keeping their models, each player was given a Book of Grudges. The books had player character sheets and rules references pasted in, which made it really fun during the event having them lying around tables.
Oh, beards and helmets were ordered, because of course we need beards and helmets.
System Notes
I want to briefly talk about how we ran Warmaster and Rangers. Warmaster is designed as a 1v1 game, and Rangers as a co-op game with no GM. So we made a number of changes to support our event.
Warmaster Changes
The key change in Warmaster was each player’s PC was a custom hero, with some ability. And there was no general so activations passed from one player/hero to the next until everything was done.
This worked extremely well. I think if you want to run a Warmaster event where there are teams, having players control specific heroes works great. No general does mean fewer orders get off in general, plenty of ways to address that, though our players tended to have some rerolls from items found in missions.
Rangers of Shadowdeep Changes
Rangers is designed as a PvE, co-op experience. As written there is nothing for a GM to do. So our role here was part facilitator, moving all the enemies, explaining to players how turns worked, etc. But we also functioned as a balancing mechanism, at least in my games I made a lot of changes on the fly to keep things interesting.
I added extra reinforcements, I changed how alert the elves were as a mission went on, and generally tried to keep things interesting for the players. We also defined there were two classes of enemy, your typical “dumb” enemy like goblins who move according to the Rangers AI chart. But for elves and a few other things we gave them a “smart” rule to let the GM have full control.
I discuss a lot more of this below but I think this worked well.
The Event
We showed up at an Airbnb in the Poconos and were aiming to kick off at 8pm. We got a little bit of a late start but not too bad. We gave the players their characters, swag, and an initial briefing.
Round One
Our first game was starting at 8pm on a Friday night and was very much intended as a tutorial for Warmaster. Most of our players are not wargamers and Warmaster is in some ways a simple game and in some ways hard to grok. We ran two missions. I ran a battle with the dwarves reclaiming their ancient hold from the goblins, this was designed to be a pretty easy dwarf victory and it was.
On another table we kicked off the main story line, a dwarf delegation was humiliated by the elves and had to make a fighting retreat. The elf prince captures a dwarven axe, setting up future events. Here the dwarves actually did quite a bit of damage to the elves during their retreat.
1 / 2
Round Two
At the start of each round we held a war council, this was partly an excuse so we could shout “BEARDS IN FIVE!” when getting ready to start, but was also used to set up the missions for that round and let players self-select into missions.
For round two we bearded-up and gathered for war. We had three Rangers missions for the players. One group had to track down someone or something who had plundered the hold’s stores, another to liberate a dwarven tavern infested with goblins, and the final party to open the gates to the Underway, the great dwarven underground highway, now controlled by the elves.
In Throw Wide the Gates things started very well for the dwarves. But some bad luck later in the mission forced them to go all-in on completing the objective before the elves would wear them down. They squeaked by with a win.
Goblin’ Goblins at the Gha’Bul Inn looked like a lot of fun, the players infiltrated from the back, and started with the boss fight before slowly clearing out the tavern.
I ran Ogres, Trolls, and Bears, Oh My! and it was fun but the big fight was a little anti-climactic. I set the players up for a big fight with the trolls, and then completely forgot my planning had been for their new ogre allies to watch in a “let’s see what you can do” kind of way. However I had them participate and the trolls were cut down very quickly.
1 / 3
Round Three
We entered the third round with the dwarves running very hot, we’d set minor and major victory conditions for each game and the dwarves had yet to lose one, with most games major victories. This meant that we’d again have three games of Rangers, with a group of dwarves tasked with stealing elvish warplans, another clearing a goat farm of goblins, and the last investigating mysterious emanations from below the hold.
Goated with the Sauce saw the dwarves trying to defeat some goblins and wrangle some goats. The first task was easy, the second a struggle.
I ran the Counterstrike mission, my one main-line mission I ran. It ended up being a pretty funny run. The elves were not aware of the dwarves so they snuck around the edge of the board, freeing some human prisoners before getting into the elf tower to steal the warplans. Having stolen the warplans one of the players used their teleport power to escape the board, completing the objective. Not wanting to end it there I forced the remaining dwarves to exfiltrate, and the first Counterstrike photo shows how that went for some of them.
Ancestral Grudge was run by Will having traded with me this round. In this mission dwarves were investigating strange happenings under the hold and encountered the ghosts of their ancestors, holding onto this world to settle a grudge. The dwarves eventually made peace with them unlocking their support later.
1 / 4
Round Four
Part of running two game systems is it allows players to focus on what they’re more interested in. We had Warmaster games planned for rounds 1, 5, and 3 or 4 depending on how things went.
Round four had a Warmaster mission where the players were tasked with surrounding and destroying an elf army. On the Rangers front the players also needed to liberate a Gyrocopter factory and hunt down and subdue a colossal squig that was rampaging near the hold.
In The Battle of the Reaching Woods the dwarf forces performed well, but this round did have a bit of a time issue with our Warmaster game stretching a couple hours after the Rangers games and requiring us to push back round five a little.
In Found Foundry the dwarves were attempting to liberate a gyrocopter factory. This mission included a gyrocopter the players could find the keys to and fly, which they did to much acclaim.
I ran Squig Hunt, this was my most experimental mission. The players and goblins were fighting over an unkillable Colossal Squig, attempting to bring it under their control. They could take actions to try and tame it. I ended up throwing out my balance with this one and bringing semi-randomized goblin reinforcements on the table as needed. And I think it worked out great, a lot of dwarves went down but on their literal last dice roll they managed to get a final subdual point and capture the squig. My only regret is there was never a dwarf and goblin on top of the squig at the same time to fight while riding it.
1 / 4
Round Five
It was now time for the finale. This is where the Warmaster armies would clash in open combat, while a small group of dwarves sneak off to assassinate the elven prince.
I ran The Trap, the elven army marches on the dwarf hold, expecting scant resistance only to be met by the full force of the hold. We had 4 PCs and me running the elves. The elves had a very strong first few turns before I forgot to make a charge, rather than backing up the game we played through and that mistake let the dwarves recapture momentum. We’d originally planned a small goblin spoiler force for the mission but having started a little late and with the game taking a while I decided to skip it. We ended after the elf army was well and truly broken by the dwarven defenders, the hold safe.
On the other table The Last Grudge saw a party approaching the elf prince to kill him and reclaim the hold’s axe. I didn’t get to catch most of this game, but this did have our third GM enter as a spoiler force of the goblin chieftain who I believe ended up killing the elf before falling to the dwarves.
In the end it was a grand victory for our players, the hold reclaimed, their honor restored, many grudges crossed out from the book.
1 / 2
Bonus Round - Wartnose Jousting
Having painted up a clutch of squig knights, I thought it’d be a great idea to bring Wartnose Jousting to the event, as a possible way to fill time. Last year I brought Space Gits and had a ton of fun with it. Wartnose Jousting is the back of Harefoot Jousting. No, not in the back, it is the back. You turn the book over and there is a second cover, for the goblin version of the game.
After finishing round 5 three of us played a game of Wartnose and it was a lot of fun. I’d forgotten to print roster sheets so they were hand written but it’s a wacky game of randomized template movement. Our 3 player game ended up coming down to the wire, and I’d be happy to play more of this game, it even has pretty extensive campaign rules.
Lessons Learned
What Worked Well?
The Companion Buffet
Having companions for Rangers was great, it let players pick a team of guys to accompany their hero. It also allowed us to unlock new ones. Literally a week before the event I proposed a 1 in 6 chance of companion death when they go down in a mission and I’m very glad I did. Only one player character died across the event, but having companion deaths felt like it raised stakes and introduced consequences in a set of missions the players won pretty handily.
The Physical Materials
Having cards for everything was great. The books didn’t have a ton of relevant pages and were mostly used for character sheets but they looked good and people didn’t lose them. Tape was added so you could use dry erase on the character sheets and that worked pretty well. I’ll also say, I’m glad we didn’t get cards professionally printed, the idea came up and was ditched due to time. In the end they were printed on paper, cut out by hand, and stuck into card sleeves. And I think that worked fine and we didn’t need to spend $40 on printing some cards that would never be used again.
Two Systems
I had Warmaster concerns at several points before and during the event, but at the end of the day I think it went well. Players could self-select so if not interested in Warmaster they only played in the short round one game. Meanwhile two of the people involved are now working on or planning a Warmaster army, so clearly the game did something right. I also liked making and giving everyone a tiny player character, and a slightly less tiny one, feels like it gave a good sense of scale.
Rangers of Shadowdeep
I think Rangers went pretty well as a system, not without issue, but if nothing else it being a d20 system was great. D20s are swingy and that really sped up games, and made for exciting moments. Rangers also offered a good structure for items, leveling up, etc. Likewise, having event tables was good and something I want to keep in mind for future non-Rangers event-style games.
Areas for Improvement?
Planning and Event Prep
I think one lesson here is that collaborating, even with good friends, is an inexact science. There were quite a few cases where what I thought we were going to do, and what we did, didn’t line up. And this is no fault of anyone, it’s just the nature of the beast. I think if we didn’t have jobs, and we had daily standups, some of this wouldn’t have happened. But we do have jobs. Two examples that stand out in my mind, the first is the terrain. I did not expect Max to go quite this hard with half a dozen large structures and countless smaller ones. Extremely cool result, just not something I expected after our planning meeting, I’d sorta thought the terrain would be a lighter lift. The other example that comes to mind is I’d envisioned 8000 points of Warmaster minis (lol), and didn’t read the mission packet Will wrote to see that it’d been reduced to more in the 5000 range until I’d painted some goblin stuff we didn’t need. Not the end of the world, but again a surprise to me.
Sticking with the hobby front, I think we overcommitted. I think we could have planned for a little less, it would have still been a great event, and more would have been finished, and less time would have been spent with my co-organizers trapped in their basements.
Another area, that I don’t think was exactly a problem, but is something to keep an eye on is game length. It varied pretty wildly across rounds, and people were happy to hang out and shoot the shit, but it’d have been nice if it was closer. Some of this was due to Warmaster vs Rangers, some mission design, some luck.
Rangers of Shadowdeep
I think the system was a lot of fun. However it’s really designed around having playtested missions, there is no points system for balance. And frankly speaking we didn’t have the time or energy to playtest every mission. I liked Rangers a lot, and would happily include Frostgrave or Stargrave in one of these events in the future, but I think for PvE missions I want a points system in the future.
Event Tracking
One thing that I didn’t hear any player complaints about, but I think we could improve on is having a better idea of how things are going. We had a branching mission path but I’m not sure if the players noticed, and in general having a report card or score tally would be fun.
Player Involvement Pre-Event
I know players don’t like homework. And I don’t want to give them homework. But I want to think about ways to get them excited and involved before the event. One way I want to do this is have some opt-in hobby components. Not sure how this will work yet but we have some people who like hobbying and I’d love for them to be involved, so if it’s optional having a few people do some small projects for next year would be nice. Likewise, I’d love to figure out a way to build interest in the world we’re building before the event, I have some ideas there for next year.
Final Thoughts and Looking to Next Year
This event was a blast, I had a lot of fun planning it, and a lot of fun during it. Player feedback seemed really positive too. We’re keeping this tradition going. I spoke to the other organizers and we all agreed that having a heavy mini component is nice, we play a lot of RPGs together online, so having something that only works in person is cool. The other upside is we did 5 rounds of miniature games and it was a pretty relaxed schedule. Five RPG sessions in a weekend would not be relaxed.
We’ve started planning for next year, and I think that’s a good idea. One organizer is probably taking a step back, another is having a child, so we’ll need plenty of time to prepare. But next year look forward to reports from…
A Final Note
P.S. I also want to do more on the fly stuff in the future, one of my favorite things was making this necklace for our slayer after he’d slain some trolls. He was really broken up the next mission when he didn’t get to keep any elf trophies, I’d planned on updating the card if he did.
