I hope that the above showed a reasonable in-depth and realistic part of a campaign, and that you are now wondering ‘How did he do that?’ A variety of ideas came together for the mechanics. Firstly, was the realisation that I could put together 100 AP DBR armies for all the major combatants of the Italian Wars (1494-1525). For those of you who are unsure what this means, DBR is the renaissance equivalent of DBA and DBM, 100 AP armies consisting of around 12 elements and hence being the equivalent of DBA. The next event was the collapse of my own play by email game ’1618-Something’. This had become too large and unwieldy for its own good and, with 30 or so players was taking too much out of my time budget to keep going. I realised I needed a simpler system if I were to run a similar game either solo or PBEM. Finally, I encountered Chris Engle’s ‘Matrix Gaming’ ideas. The idea of using a ‘character’ for a country, its leaders and even its military strategy appealed, particularly as I realised I could generate these randomly. So, how did it work? Firstly, I needed a map. A section of my world is shown above - the small continent of Earlicia - the ‘earlies’ in my time frame. This was drawn on a computer package and printed out, initially A4 size then as it grew, A3. As can be seen from the map, other continents surround it, but there is only a little contact between them. Next, I needed character generation tables. Table 1: National characteristics National Characteristics d8 d6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 Trade Agriculture Grievance Opposition abroad Isolation Religious opposition 2 Expansion Religion Neutral Aggressive Bandit/pirate Conqueror 3 Noble opposition Hostility Mercantilist Warlike Mercenary Resources 4 Absolute monarch Friendly Internal strife Peaceable Poor Market 5 Finance Alliance Federal Regionalist Wealthy Wild card 6 Manufacture War Parliament United Middle class opposition Cultured 7 Crusader Claim Fishing Oligarchic Religious opposition Fashion 8 Dynastic alliance Influence Weak government Ethnic Private armies Dynastic claim For national characteristics, 2 average dice were thrown and that number of pairs of 1D8 and 1D6 were rolled cross referencing to table 1. Lists of national characteristics were made. Some of course cancel (warlike and peaceable, for example) and some are inherently unlikely (oligarchic and absolute monarch) so some care is needed. As an example, Eteng, in my game above, has characteristics: Bandit/pirate, warlike, parliament, noble opposition and market. This means that there is a parliamentary system plus noble opposition, the nations attitude is warlike and the country is plagued by bandits (in this case - decided on a dice roll). Once national characteristics are decided, further dice rolls are made. The leadership rating of the country is rolled on 3D6, as is the countries credit rating. Any opposition leadership and credit rating is also rolled for. The whole country can thus be recorded in about two lines of text. How this is used is probably best described by an example. I decided that Prince Hal of Eteng would try to deal with his bandit problem. Dice rolls determined that the bandit activity was plaguing the merchants (‘market’ characteristic, remember?) on the Gemist frontier. Hal demanded that Gemist did something about. They refused (for internal reasons of their own). The Eteng noble opposition used the attacks to discredit the government. Hal returned this by saying it was their fault for encouraging attacks. This was resolved by each side rolling 1D20 against their leadership characteristics (8 for Hal and 14 for the opposition). Surprisingly, Hal won and the nobles were forced to do something - raising an army to escort the merchants to Gemist. Both sides rolled for strategy on a similar table to the above, the lords getting: surprise, anger, ambush and recruit, leading to their strategy of ‘We recruit rapidly and use a rich wagon train to ambush the bandits’. Black Jake got love, supply, weather, screen and skirmish, leading to their strategy of ‘Our kin (love) warn us of the plot, we will slow the train (skirmish) and capture it as the weather closes in’. These were both assessed on a scale of strength of 1-6 and rolled off - the bandits won. The terrain was chosen according to my normal random method and the battle played as described. And then things went on. Hal failed his credit roll (attempt to roll under the credit number on 1D20) so couldn’t raise an army; the nobles raised mercenaries who, not having much to do (the nobles were reluctant to follow the example of Lord Wills) intervened in the Spim war. Even beyond what is reported above, ripples are spreading, Cond and Siws are at war, with intervention by Espan and Flor and Venn have also come to blows, due largely to the tension in the continent. I have found the system to be simple, easy to create and maintain - the only changes needing making are in alliances, wars and credit rating, which decreases with defeats and increases with victories. This is easily kept track of, and is simple to pick up and put down. Even now, after having left Earlicia alone for several months, it is easy just to read the narrative, check the national characteristics and roll for the next move. Solo campaigns, on a large scale, are reduced to something quick, easy and conducive to creating interesting battles. Give it a go! A Solo World The Eteng and Spim Wars Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior #138 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Solo Wargamers Association. 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