Oberholt After Action Report
Brigstein 1, 8/28/23 - 9/24/23
In my living ACKS campaign of Oberholt, there’s an explicit setting of political tension and imminent civil war within the settled portions of the map. While the PCs in the game have adventured in and around this tension, it never really seemed to impact anything. I was driven sometime over the summer to do something about that.
It was always my intention to have something happen on a large scale. At first, I thought that I would have permanent Patrons installed in these various factions and the conflict would arise organically but I failed to put forth the time or effort to recruit the players needed to do such a thing. I was going to need to run an event to get the in-game conflict that I wanted. I could either run it myself as a series of battles or I could do something more ambitious.
I had recently had the opportunity to play in Mollison’s Decembork and Belloc_Poitiers’ Hundreds of Cambria, two Braunstein style wargames that were inspirational to my choice to run the event in the way that I did. Decembork had weekly orders with varying starting resources/locations, environmental locations of interest, and a scoring system to determine the winner. Cambria had orders submitted every two days with fixed starting resources and faction based objectives to determine the winner. Both games had combat resolved by the DM, Decembork by CRT and Cambria by Chainmail.
I cherry picked the parts of the two games that I thought I liked the most. I was incorrect in some instances which I’ll go into more detail about later. I really wanted the faction leaders to have as much control as possible over their day to day operations, including the existing Patron level players within the game. Oberholt is run at 1:1 time and is effectively “always on” so I felt it best to plug in the faction leaders on that same scale. We would have orders submitted daily.
I chose to allow open communication between factions, both to encourage shit talking in public and to reduce my workload. I could not act as a mailman on top of running recon and battles. It seemed to work well and was popular with the players.
I developed the weather a month in advance using the weather rules in the Greyhawk boxed set from 1984. It’s as good now as it was then, if a little weird to parse at first. I posted it the day of so that actions would be hampered by the weather without the ability to know it was coming. Contingency orders were used at times to account for this. Another strategic wrinkle for the boys to consider.
While the game had been live for a year and a half and nearly 50 sessions, many of the factions involved were mostly broad strokes on the page. I had not generated their armies or fortresses and only had a few sentences on some regarding their relationship to the setting at large. I chose to have the faction leaders build their armies on a fixed budget across the board based on the relative power levels of those factions that I did have that information on.
I may not have had much in the way of statistical information on the various factions, but I did have some setting information. I knew the strife and tension between them that would lead to conflict, much of it generated from the emergent play of the PC parties during sessions. I chose a scoring system with points awarded for winning battles, taking territory, and achieving faction-specific goals.
Finally, I hemmed and hawed over how to run battles. I knew for daily orders that I needed a way to do it quickly and I was really intrigued by using a CRT or group of CRTs for various scenarios. After building and scrapping a few tables, I remembered the ever-applicable “ACKS Already Does That” meme. I chose to just use the abstracted mass combat resolution system from Domains at War: Campaigns, with some adjustments made to streamline it a bit for the faction leaders that were completely new to ACKS. This would also provide the backbone for supply, recon, and magic rules that I would use, always with an eye towards streamlining for simplicity. I really did not want to bog the game down with mechanical pixel-bitching.
The rules were set. Now I needed players. The beauty of the online gaming space is that there is a wide, deep pool of players from which to recruit. The horror of the online gaming space is that there is a wide, deep pool of players from which to recruit. I had intended to cast a net and select players from the applicants, but then I realized that I personally knew some of the coolest dudes in the game. So I started with private invitations and was fortunate enough to fill the factions with frenz.
The Cast in no particular order:
Arbrethil: Lord Eros Tyring of Blackhold, Crusader of Hextor and Disturber of Shit. Recent hostilities with Deinwick by allying with Talston. Vassal to Valestrian but outgrowing that relationship. Primary objective was to kill Issac.
Macho_Mandalf: Lord Nathan Talston, recently ascended to leadership with a mysterious oracle guiding his path to power. The death of his father was under suspicious circumstances. Recent hostilities with Deinwick. Primary objective was to kill Deinwick.
Boldvay: Lord Grueller Deinwick, aggrieved lord of the west with the mad extraplanar wizard Teutch the Alchemist across the river to the west and the insufferable offense of (allegedly) stolen ancestral land held by Talston to the east. Recent hostilities with Talston/Tyring. Primary objective was to kill Talston.
Irish Bob: Marshal Eli Hummel, newly raised Lord of Loch Lucerne. Rewarded for his part in quashing a rebellion over taxes. Lucerne suffered in the event, the city's in shambles and many nobles are resentful of the outsider and the Baron. Primary objective was to take and hold two locations from Valestrian by the end of the event.
Hollyfelled: Lord Burbank Valestrian, the deceptively docile lord of the east ignored by most others as nothing more than an up-jumped farmer. Opportunistic and the uneasy liege lord of Eros Tyring. Primary objective was to take and hold two locations from Hummel by the end of the event.
Belloc_Poitiers: Baron Heinrik of Donwal, "the Bloodletter", Lord of Bellport and ruler of Oberholt. Earned his seat by defeating the invading beastman army at the Teesar Torrent roughly 11 years ago. First among equals rather than a true overlord. Ferocious reputation. Recently sacked Loch Lucerne and replaced the ruling noble house with Hummel. Primary objective was to ensure that the starting territory of his vassals Issac and Hummel and his own were still in their possession by the end of the event.
KyleOconner: Lord Issac de Molay of Riverstride, Crusader of Heironeous, paragon of justice, and full-time Patron of Oberholt. Newly sworn directly to Bellport rather than Talston after sketchy circumstances of Lord Nathan's rise to power. Primary objective was to kill Tyring.
S1AL: Volrag the Unhinged, Fire Giant overlord of the Butzkrag driven away in disgrace by Lord Issac. Primary objective was to take one of any 5 of the main castles. Bellport, Talston, Deinwick, Valestrian, or Loch Lucerne.
Bdubs: Teutch the Alchemist, an off-world wizard and full-time Patron in Oberholt that resides in a purple tower fortress west of Deinwick across the Teesar. His intentions are hardly ever straight forward or make a lot of sense to anyone but him.
FinnThann: Player that runs both Redcorn the Cleric and Bigtoe the Machinist in the campaign. Bigtoe got called up by his liege lord Teutch and Redcorn had some quantum conversations going on that I probably should have nixed but I had a lot on my plate and missed it.
How it started:
Only half of the participants had any experience with ACKS as a system. In hindsight, it would have been best to either use a simpler system or have a longer lead-in time to the start of the event for players to familiarize themselves with the rules. An important trait of these online pop-up events is keeping interest high. If there’s too much homework, it’s harder to recruit for, so it’s important to find that balance. I think we did ok with a rules summary prior to the game and the guys were great about asking questions.
I had them build their armies the week prior based on a budget but the C&C portions of ACKS are unique to the system and I suspect it was a little confusing for some. I liked the budget build out, but I missed some of the economic concerns that tie into sieges and supply. Sacrifices were made for the sake of streamlining the process. I modeled my revised supply line system after Belloc’s in Cambria and overall it worked ok.
The strategies for building armies were interesting:
Heinrik built an infantry heavy force and worked closely with Issac and several others pre-game, leaning more into the diplomatic side of things than preparing for head to head combat. He ended up loaning an entire division of longbowmen to Issac along with some additional captains to add to Issac’s C&C capabilities and presumably strengthen the border guard along the river against the certain encroachment from Volrag.
Issac was the only full-time, established Patron from the campaign that I intended to include in the event. This decision was based solely on the military strength available to him. None of the other Patrons could punch at this level on the battlefield and I didn’t want to make them the targets of bullies. Issac’s force was built over a year of recruitment and wilderness battles. He’d already reclaimed Northbridge from beastmen and bested Volrag in combat once, at the Butzkrag. He had some gaps in C&C for combining everything together into a single force, but solid diplomacy got him there with a little help from his friends.
Hummel built a very balanced force and split them in two, personally leading one to the fighting while the other guarded the home base. His territory was situated far to the east so he was a bit removed from most of the other factions and it would take a while for him to get involved.
Deinwick went for balance, with three evenly built armies sitting at each of his potential border points. It seemed to me like he wanted to test the waters a little and cover himself once he decided to move. He also had a dedicated scout division of light cav that he intended to use to screen his march.
Talston built a very strong, balanced core of veteran units as a primary army, then garrisoned his secondary towns with some lighter units that included light catapults. Since we were using the simplified siege rules from D@W:C, siege equipment was a bargain due to adding significantly to the unit count during a siege. This allowed him to hold his less important positions with a deceptively strong and inexpensive garrison.
Valestrian went entirely light cavalry and horse archers, with a strong core of officers to give him flexibility. It was clear he valued speed above all and he would flex that muscle throughout the game. It was interesting as this was the second army I’d seen Hollyfelled build this way. The man’s a speed demon.
Tyring leaned in a bit to his character’s subversive ways, hiring a core of cavalry that he would personally lead then fielding the rest as conscripts that he could call up as needed instead of having a massive standing army that would get him undue attention. He was also the only one to invest big in heavy trebuchets, absolute monsters in abstract battle and siege resolution.
Vorag was an outlier, the only beastman army in the mix and starting across a reasonably well defended river. He built a balanced force with a little siege equipment himself. He had the advantage of uncertainty among the humans about what he might do or where he might strike.
Teutch the Alchemist was not originally intended to be part of the event. He just didn’t have the military strength to tangle at the level the others did. But it was foolish of me to think that he would sit it out. The wizard would get involved later in the event, along with some of the PCs, most notably Redcorn the Cleric of Team A, infamous for his part in the Wounded Ear Fiasco.
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