It was a typical smoke-filled tavern in the heart of one of the Empire's cities. Nobody paid any particular attention to the group of men huddled around a table in one corner, chewing their gristly stew and slurping their sour, watery wine. But if anyone had, they'd have overheard statements like "…overthrow the Emperor…", "invading barbarians…", "…rebellious governor…" - treasonous words indeed. That was the sort of talk that could see men executed. Detail from Trajan's Column The Idea As it happened, the tavern wasn't smoke-filled, and the wine wasn't watery or sour. The stew wasn't so good, though. Oh yeah, and it was Wollongong in April 1997. Some Canberra wargamers were down in Wollongong for a competition, and along with some locals, we were discussing campaigns. We'd just finished a campaign based on the Mongol invasions of Europe, and were looking for something different. Not only a different setting, but a different type of campaign. Campaign Conundrums There were two major problems with the types of campaigns we'd played before: What happens if someone important doesn't turn up on campaign night? How do you keep someone interested if they're losing? The previous campaign had answered both questions by putting people in teams, with each team controlling a group of countries. It was unlikely that everyone in a team would be unavailable, and anyway, someone from an uninvolved team could always help in a game if necessary. And it was unlikely that all a team's countries would be conquered. Still, there were a few people unhappy with how that campaign had run. So we decided to look at something different. The first decision was that the campaign had to be based around Rome somehow. Through the course of the evening, we swung between late Republic and early Empire. In the end, the nature of the campaign determined that the late Republic was more appropriate. This wasn't a political decision. Rather, it was simply that Rome was at its most aggressive in the 1st century BC. As I go on, you'll realise that the type of campaign I'm about to describe will work equally well with any single expansionist power, whether it's the Ottoman Turks of the 15th centur y or the Imperial French of the early 19th. So let's get back to the two questions above. In the case of the first question, the campaign had to be able to work no matter how many people turned up on campaign night. And in the case of the second question, the campaign had to be able to interest people right to the end. When we faced the truth, we realised that what we wanted was a battle generator - something that guaranteed that everyone who turned up at the club for the campaign could have one good battle that night. Nobody wanted to come along, make a move or two, then go home without playing a game; that was a waste of an evening. We toyed around with a system similar to that in the boardgame "Junta", with one player being the Emperor, and assigning everyone else to positions as provincial governors, who'd then sic the local barbarians on to each other. Those governors unengaged by foreign interlopers would have the option of marching on Rome to try to become Emperor. But the system didn't look right. Then came one of those moments best expressed in the cartoons by a little light blinking into existence above the head of the person having a bright idea. Make every player a Roman, and set the campaign in the era when rich Romans would buy the right from the Senate to lead an expeditionary force against one of Rome's neighbours. Under this system, players would bid for the right to lead Roman armies against the barbarians (a handy term for "non-Roman"). Those who were successful would lead the Roman armies, while those who were unsuccessful would lead the barbarian armies. But the right to lead Roman armies would have to entail risks as well as benefits. In a process borrowed from the Clans in the game "Battletech", the right to lead a Roman army went to the player who was willing to lead a smaller army than anyone else. The result was a sort of reverse auction in which players would offer to lead progressively smaller armies against a particular enemy, until someone's bid remained unchallenged. Players would then fight their battles, with victory points earned only by the Roman player. And at the end of ten turns (the agreed length of the campaign), whoever had the most victory points would be the winner. The rest was just packaging. The campaign setting in more detail As it turned out, setting the campaign in the late Roman Republic was inspired, as it gave the Romans a vast range of armies to fight against. I drew the map of the campaign out to slightly beyond the limit of the Empire in the 1st century AD, thus encompassing both the Mediterranean world and the European mainland. In western Europe were Germany, Gaul, Spain and Britain. In Africa were Numidia, Libya, Cyrene (a Greek colony) and Ptolemaic Egypt. In eastern Europe were Illyria, Thrace, Dacia, Sarmatia and the Bosporan kingdom. In Asia Minor were Bithynia, Pontus, Armenia, Galatia, Commagene and Cappadocia. In Asia were Parthia, the Seleucid kingdom, Judea and Nabatea. A greater range of armies would be hard to find. For each kingdom I drew up army lists - mostly fixed, but with a small amount of flexibility. Army sizes were about one-third of competition size. This allowed battles to be finished in about two hours. In addition to the army lists, I drew up a gazetteer of the kingdoms (can you guess I'm a public servant?). For each kingdom I specified the size of its army, and the size of its reserve. The reserve gave a good indication of how easy it'd be to conquer the kingdom. This sort of information was used by the players to determine which kingdoms would be attacked, and affected the way the players would bid - because players earned more victory points if their victory led to conquest, there was an incentive to attack weak kingdoms, particularly those likely to surrender. Of course, this meant you had to be willing to lead a smaller army than anyone else was willing to lead, which would make victory harder to achieve. Such are the problems facing those whose main obstacle to conquering the world is the other people in their own country who want that glory for themselves. The Turn in More Detail The number of battles fought each turn equalled half the number of players present. If there was an odd number of players present, I took the last barbarian army. Therefore, the number of kingdoms Rome attacked equalled the number of battles to be fought (except in the case of kingdoms occasionally attacking Rome). Each player nominated a number of kingdoms equal to the number of battles to be fought, representing the kingdoms he thought should be attacked that turn. The most popular targets were the kingdoms attacked. For example, if there were six players present that night, there'd be three battles, and each of the six players would nominate three kingdoms to be the target of Rome's expansionist aims. We now went through the auction process. For each kingdom to be attacked, the players made bids of decreasing army size for the right to lead the Roman army to attack that kingdom. Once the bidding reached a certain point, players sacrificed victory points instead of army size. This was to prevent players attacking with absurdly small armies. Once all commands had been assigned, the players who'd been unsuccessful with their bids were randomly assigned to command the barbarian armies. I set up the terrain, the players organised their armies, and then they fought their battles. I then collected and collated the results of the battles. If Roman armies won, there was a chance the defeated barbarians would surrender, thus earning extra victory points for that Roman player. In the fortnight between campaign turns, I updated the campaign map, the status of the barbarians and the Roman army, and produced a turn sheet. Barbarian Attitudes Although the campaign was designed as a battle generator, I wanted to include a bit of additional material, as I thought this would add some colour to the campaign. Firstly, the barbarian kingdoms had diplomatic relations with Rome. Secondly, they had relations with each other. Thirdly, they had economies. I kept these matters simple, but if nothing else, it gave me an extra involvement in the campaign (it was my luck that I fought only one battle in the campaign - in nine out of ten weeks, there was an even number of players!). All barbarian kingdoms adjacent to Roman territory had an attitude toward Rome. At first contact, this was always neutral (except for two kingdoms hostile to Rome and one friendly). Attitudes could change each turn on the basis of a dice roll. There were six possible attitudes: hostile, unfriendly, neutral, friendly, allied and absorbed. A hostile kingdom would attack Roman territory, automatically conquering it unless the players defended it. An allied kingdom's troops were available to the Romans for nearby battles if they were wanted in place of Roman troops. If absorbed, the army of the kingdom was added to the Roman army, and its territory incorporated. A kingdom's attitude was unaffected by Rome's actions towards it - the players could attack a friendly kingdom without making it unfriendly. However, if a kingdom sur rendered to Rome, it automatically became friendly. This didn't mean the locals liked the Romans, merely that the Romans had put some compliant politicians or princes in charge. Rome wasn't the only expansionist power in that part of the world at the time - kingdoms all over the place were fighting each other. To simulate this, and to place an added random drain on the kingdoms' manpower, I diced for each kingdom to see if it attacked any of its neighbours. Once results were determined, I checked to see if any of these battles led one kingdom to surrender to another. I mentioned earlier how kingdoms had armies and reserves. As the barbarian armies took losses, I transferred troops from the reserves to the armies to stock them up. These losses, combined with losses from inter-barbarian battles, depleted the kingdoms' reserves. However, I stocked the reserves up by allowing for population growth. Each turn, I increased the size of the reserves by 1%, assigning them randomly on the basis of current reserve size. This meant kingdoms with large reserves tended to get more replacements than kingdoms with small reserves. If a kingdom's reserve was depleted, and its army defeated and destroyed, it collapsed, and it was automatically absorbed. This generated victory points as though it had surrendered. By these factors, I made the campaign a dynamic thing. It was possible that the players would weaken a kingdom to the point where it was ripe for conquest or collapse, only for it to pick a fight with a neighbour and be conquered by the neighbour. Alternatively, it might get lucky, and increase its population, giving it a reserve it didn't have before, and thus making it a less palatable target. Once I'd organised all the information, I summarised it on a turn sheet. This included a map, showing the extent of Rome's territory, and listed all barbarian kingdoms. The idea was to provide information to the players to help them determine the best places to attack next turn. But it didn't always work out that way. Sometimes a kingdom would sit, teetering on the edge of collapse, but the players would lose interest, and decide to attack somewhere else. I sometimes wondered what the players were thinking. But then, maybe that's what happens when you let domestic politics dictate foreign policy. Doing It All Again If I was to run this campaign again, there are some things I'd change. Firstly, obviously, the setting would change. As I mentioned above, this campaign works in any setting where one power was offensive against its weaker neighbours. My proposed next setting is the Mongol conquests of the 13th century. Secondly, the process for deciding the size of the attacker's army needs to be simplified. I originally kept track of the size of the Roman army, using this as a restriction on the amount of troops the players could use. But it made extra work for no reason - after a couple of disasters, the players came close to running out of troops, something that didn't happen historically. Next time I intend that all armies will be the same size, and players will only bid in victory points for the right to lead an attacking army. Thirdly, I'll probably allow players to gain and lose victory points as the defender. This will give them a greater incentive to do well. But it will also affect the way players approach the decision on how much to bid to lead an attacker's army: if there's a danger you could be placed in command of a pathetic defending army, it might be better to bid more than you can win as an attacker, simply in order to get an attacking army. You may lose a lot more if you're the defender. Summary To summarise this style of campaign, there are a few main elements: Everyone is on the same side (the "attacker"). The number of games equals half the players present that night. The players determine who the attackers will attack. The players determine who gets to lead the attacker's armies by an auction process. The players not leading attacking armies are randomly assigned to lead defending armies. Back to Table of Contents -- Kriegspieler #8 To Kriegspieler List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Kriegspieler Publications. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com