Random Links for 3/12/21

Random stuff for Friday!

- Library in Miniature

Holy Grud that's awesome!

- So you want to fight an army? Delta has thoughts.

Running Mass Fights in Classic D&D

The critical elements in that article to me are:

* PCs should be attacking leaders.

* Morale must be involved.

Otherwise, how do you fight 200, 300, or 400 foes? You could bring an army but you should be able to do it with a smaller warband. And Isle of the Ape with its better-than-1st-level army? If you want to beat your enemies by killing every single one of them, first the weakest and then work up to the boss like in some video game fight, you are being foolish to my mind. You should try to hit the enemy's center of gravity . . . and that might be the leaders. Even if it is not, that's a good place to start. It's just too bad the AD&D morale system isn't the very simple and elegant one used in Basic D&D.

- So you think you know about iron?

Collections: Iron Part I

I like the approach here - what you think you know is so inaccurate we're just going to toss it all aside and start from first principles. That's remarkably like how I train people. Beginner, self-described expert, actual expert - I start off from first principles and build up so we don't have gaps where I think you have knowledge appropriate to the task. Yes, I'm pedantic and annoying in my other career, too. I'm a little nicer than I am as a GM, though.

- I like downtime activities that let you roll to see what happens in a mechanistic fashion. "Mini-games" are really enjoyable to me. So I like this one on Spying:

Downtime Activity: Gathering Intelligence and Spying

D&D-based games really lend themselves to mathematical encounter analysis. Anthony at The Blue Bard does some encounter balance calculations in this post:

Design Principles

It reminds me of the calculations of Delta (see above) and by Len Lakofka in Dragon (and as a reprise in Gygax Magazine #1).

- Haha, two weapons. I know, the Lone Wolf books did that for a reason . . . but nomads carried multiple bows, multiple spears, and assorted other weapons. Two is a low number for just about any historical warrior who expects to move/travel and then fight.