Composite Squadron

I recently acquired a copy of Dan Verssen Games’ long-delayed Eagle Leader solo wargame. I am trying to remain firm in my resolve to not play it until I finish my current North Atlantic WWIII grand campaign of Spruance Leader. However, a four-hour power outage on Saturday did give me some enforced tech-free time, part of which I used to punch out and sort the absolutely ridiculous amount of counters that are typical of DVG Leader-series games.

That, predictably, got me engaged in thinking about the game more, so I sat down that night and spent another three hours branching the code and data set of my earlier Hornet Leader random squadron generator to build one for Eagle Leader. Both are linked from the DVG games landing page of the main site.

The Mirrors and Masks of Mikolaj Krol

It’s time for another GM interjection regarding Kaserne on the Borderlands.

Sharp-eyed readers may have noted that the past couple of real-world years of gameplay have focused on the campaign’s expedition team, of which Miko was a part – but when the focus shifted back to the Ponikla team, Miko was also present. This is intentional.

In the lead-up to the Battle of Radom arc, most of my players created secondary PCs (or adopted recently-introduced NPCs, promoting them to PC status). This was to ensure everyone had someone to play in most scenes and to provide bench depth when primary PCs were down with injuries. By the time the expedition team headed south from Ponikla to validate the Broadstreet Dossier’s contents and Pettimore’s time-displaced memories, Miko’s player was the only one without a second character.

In the short term, this wasn’t an issue because we were focused exclusively on the expedition team. Whatever was happening back in Ponikla was irrelevant. However, as I started bringing the campaign closer to Czestochowa and a (partial) resolution of those questions, I knew I was going to have to address the second PC issue sooner or later, or I would have a player without a character to run when the focus returned to Ponikla.

(Among other issues, I’d inadvertently created a Miko power creep problem. To allow my players to develop their PCs as they see fit, my rule for this campaign is that XP accrues to the player, not the PC. Everyone else was spending XP on two PCs, but Miko was getting all the XP from that player. It’s not insurmountable, but it is noticeable.)

This post brings my hypothetical readers up to speed on an agreement that our table reached before we shifted back to Ponikla. For narrative purposes, the Miko with the expedition is separate from the Miko in Ponikla. As far as the other expedition members are concerned, Miko has always been with them. As far as the other Ponikla residents are concerned, Miko never left. The players, of course, are wholly cognizant of this artificiality – but the characters have no clue (and I have very good players).

I do, in fact, have a pretty good idea of what’s actually going on, but that will have to play out.

End of Summer Update

Happy equinox, everyone.

Posting frequency is likely to slow down for the next few months. Work has entered one of our busier seasons, so I’m not going to be running many game sessions in the autumn. I’ve also all but exhausted my backlog of pre-written and re-posted material, which has been a majority of the content here when I haven’t been actively blogging Kaserne on the Borderlands session reports.

Cauterization (10-13 October 2000)

It’s a long night on Horse Eater Hill. Around 0200, Red finally admits he’s done all he can for Magda. Her survival is now up to her constitution – and the microscopic geometric shapes in her bloodstream. He arranges a rotation for monitoring her condition and collapses on a clear patch of ground.

No one really rests. Miko has managed to get a campfire going, but it’s just enough to turn the fog from grey-opaque to silvery-opaque. It muffles sound, but that just means the noises that are audible are that much more jarring. Leks keeps shifting behind his gun, using the pain of his knee to stay awake through the night.

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On Horse Eater Hill (09 October 2000)

Red drops his axe and allows himself a moment to sag in exhaustion before he starts triaging. Magda’s injury is clearly the worst – a deep, ragged wound that’s pulsing blood from a nick in her brachial artery. The physician gently takes the empty P7 from her good hand and starts tourniqueting.

Leks organizes some help and manages to get Minka back on her feet. She’s hobbling on a crushed foot, but it’s not life-threatening. She checks Alexei as he stirs and moans. The East German has a few broken ribs, but he, too, appears likely to live.

Minka looks around. Red seems to have the Magda situation in hand. Her eyes fix on Miko as he saunters up, wiping blood off his recently-acquired szabla. “Miko. Help me over there.” She points.

Miko looks at Minka. Looks where she’s pointing. Looks back at her. “Are you sure you want to get close to that?”

Minka grabs his collar and pulls him in. “He’s. Still. My. Horse,” she snarls.

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The d12 Decimal System

The Girl and I moved into our current house just under a year ago. Some of our initial choices in where to put things have never been fully satisfactory. Yesterday, we began implementing a plan we’ve been discussing over the past couple of weeks.

The RPG library – which occupies approximately 60 shelf-feet of space – was previously sorted alphabetically. As part of a larger furniture rearrangement, it is now arranged by genre. This is still not entirely what I’d like, but three-dimensional bookshelves only support usable organizational schemes in two dimensions and are wholly unsuited to a rapidly-searchable multi-attribute tagging system.

Still, it’s probably more rational than sorting 40 years of RPG accumulation autobiographically.

Commentary

As an experiment, I’ve enabled commenting. This is primarily to enable my players to add their own thoughts to my session logs, but other readers (assuming I have any) are welcome to engage.

At present, all comments require admin approval. If the spam bucket gets too full, I’ll shut it down again.

The Horse Eaters (09 October 2000)

Session music: Horse Soldier, Horse Soldier – Corb Lund.

The team slowly advances along the winding road that leads up the hill toward the village. The fog grows thicker, shrouding the details of their surroundings, but what they can see is desolate. As the group once saw in the forest south of Ponikla, and as the expedition team later encountered in a deserted section of Radomsko, the village’s outskirts are in a state of decay far more advanced than the date would suggest. The asphalt of the road is cracked and buckled, and Leks’ bearers frequently have to detour around craters and potholes that would wreck the handcart. The few vehicles alongside the road sit on their steel rims, the rubber of their tires cracked and dry-rotted. Buildings, too, slump under their own weight, their load-bearing members bent or splintered.

There are bodies everywhere, too – those of the human victims of the nerve agent attack, as well as those of the scavengers who came to feed upon them. Many are already picked clean or rotted down to the bone.

Leks calls a halt. The hill’s crest is finally visible a few hundred meters ahead. A tight cluster of buildings marks the village’s center. He confers with Red and puts out flankers. Miko and Arkadi move off the road to the north; Minka and Alexei take the south. Red and Magda stay formed up on Leks’ handcart, while Zenobia and Jablonski form the rear guard.

Fog and line-of-sight effects omitted for clarity. The black arrows on the east side of the map indicate the lines of advance of each of the PCs’ elements. Map from Pulpscape on Patreon.
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