Category Archives: Campaign Log – Kaserne on the Borderlands

Two Ticks to Midnight

Explaining a screen shot I included in yesterday’s post:

A few months and sessions ago, I decided to steal a page from Powered by the Apocalypse mechanics. With the Challenge Tracker module for Forge, I’ve added PbtA-style progress clocks to some of the party’s major infrastructure projects in Ponikla:

Every 10 shifts of work from a project leader (i.e., a PC with some general competence in the appropriate skill or the Logistician specialty) generates one skill check. Each success fills one segment of the outer (green) ring. Each 1, however, whether natural or pushed, fills one segment of the inner (red) ring, representing breakage, wasted materials, and other problems.

When the outer ring fills, the project is complete. When the inner ring fills, the project fails and must be restarted from scratch.

Generally, inner segments are equal to 1/2 the number of outer segments. I determine the number of outer segments by GM fiat and discussion with the table, as warranted.

Downtime (14-18 October 2000)

The team heals. Some moreso than others.

Minka seethes and worries. Red is adamant that she cannot ride until her crushed foot is fully healed. There’s no way to know how the things in her blood will reassemble the bones if she keeps abusing them. But her need to get back on Wiegel, to prove to herself that he’s still her horse, is gnawing at her.

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Farmville

I recently received a reader question regarding the systems I use in Kaserne on the Borderlands for tracking the agricultural and infrastructure projects that the Ponikla PCs are undertaking. I was about to write something, but the topic sounded like something I might have written already. A bit of sniffing around my own internet backtrail led me to a three-year-old post on Kato’s forum. In the interest of having a backup, I’ve replicated the original post here.

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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.

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 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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I Used to Be a Soldier Like You (09 October 2000)

Back at the eastern approach to the hilltop village, the combined group of the PCs and the Rawa Mazowiecka militia circles up about four kilometers away. Their first move is to send in a trio of motorcycle scouts. Through their binoculars, they can see the point, about 700 to 800 meters away, at which the three riders start losing cohesion, then all sense of direction.

The group waits for the riders to regain their sense of direction and return. Then Arkadi and Alexei move in on foot. The probe confirms Arkadi’s theory of the previous day: whatever is interfering with vehicles and other machinery isn’t having a noticeable effect on the ability of personnel on foot to move and navigate.

Red, Leks, and Arkadi confer with Captain Majewski. The PCs will mount the initial assault on the village, augmented by three of Majewski’s troops. Sergeant Jablonski and two of his cousins volunteer for the detail.

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