Review: U3 The Final Enemy

I always enjoyed the U-series of modules. This contains some serious (and series) spoilers.

For more reviews, please see my Reviews page.

For my reviews of the previous modules:
U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh
U2 Danger at Dunwater



U3 The Final Enemy
by David J. Browne with Don Turnbull
48 pages and a 3-fold cover with maps and illustrations
TSR 1983

U3 The Final Enemy is the third and final adventure in the U1-U3 trilogy of modules.

Once the enemy has been identified, the PCs are sent out - not to destroy the foe, but to scout them out. This is a tough job as there are hundreds of sahuagin in a largely-underwater fortess. The PCs may have maps (if they handled U2 properly and didn't exterminate potential allies), NPC allies (a sea elf, lizard men, humans from town, etc.), and may be able to recruit more during this adventure if they play it right.

The module consists of a wilderness portion (either sea or land travel to the dungeon) and the dungeon itself. Kudos to a level 3-5 adventure for having a potential dragon encounter, as well! The plot explanations are, like in U2, a bit over-explained. What could have been done once in one section is done twice. But it's not as bad as in U2, and some of the exposition is really needed to make it clear how to run the adventure and what's expected of the GM and the players alike.

The dungeon is, like I said, largely underwater. This has all sorts of consequences. Magic items and spells work differently. Combat is restricted. The foes are all water-native and on their home turf. The adventure takes full advantage of this - there are sharks, fish, seaweed curtains, sahuagin with nets and tridents, and so on. It doesn't just feel like a dungeon reskinned to be underwater, but like a proper underwater adventure.

The PCs have a mission of determining the contents of the fortress, and the module spells out to them in in-game terms what's expected and lists for the GM what should count to satisfy all of parts of their scouting mission.

Another thing I like about this adventure is it continues something in the series - people make mistakes. The Sahuagin made one storing looted objects from previous intruders on the dry level, which allows a group to get a few more underwater-centric magical items to boost their chances of completing the mission.


War Stories

I only ran U3 once. It was as a solo adventure for my cousin's thief character. His mission was the one from the module - scout the sahuagin lair. He managed this quite well, and pulled off a secondary mission and assassinated the sahuagin baron with a backstab and a desperate escape. I can't recall his level and his equipment, but it was pretty high - probably in the high single digits and well equipped. Finding the underwater gear helped immensely.

I'd love to have run it for a smart and cagey group.

How is it for GURPS?

Given GURPS Magic and Dungeon Fantasy, this would be fine for GURPS. The masses of foes are less of an issue because of the mission and GURPS mages (and DF druids and wizards) are far better equipped to get people ready for underwater exploration. You wouldn't need to hand out special magic items, just make sure the PCs knew the right spells.

Overall: An excellent peak for the plot that starts in U1. Special credit has to be given for the nautical and underwater nature of the adventure, and for being a military scouting mission instead of "sack the dungeon." Excellent adventure and well worth the read.

GURPS Lite in the Classroom, Session #5

This was a shorter bit of gaming - lots of non-gaming work to do, so much that I had to cram it in.

For the previous session, click this link.

Rules Explanations

How cutting damage deals with DR, and crippling injuries, came up. So did quick contests and critical hits!

Recap

I did the short recap again. It felt like it got the ball rolling properly.

Play

When we last left, the PC was face to face with a guard in a tower full of stuff including ropes, boxes, poles, etc.

He had a lot of options - the one he chose was to yank the door closed. The guard tried to stick his foot in the way - we had a Quick Contest of DX. I stated the guard's DX was 11, and I rolled a 9, so he made it by 2. The PC rolled an 8, had a 12 DX, and made it by 4. The door was slammed.

He jumped back, waiting for the guy to open the door and be vulnerable to attack! Good idea, but the guard saw a mail-armored foe out of nowhere so I made a roll for him. He chose to bar the door and sound the alarm.

The player had his unnamed guy run back to the first tower. He ran right past the stairs as the guard he'd bypassed was coming up. He went out the other door - and saw a guard coming at him. So he charged, figuring he could get past that guy.

He did, actually - they fenced for a few seconds, and the unnamed PC rolled a 4 and cut his foe's hand! Sadly he rolled 3 damage, minus DR, equals 3 injury. Enough to get his foe to miss, but not to put him down. He blocked a shot and then rolled and hit again - this time doing 6 damage (7 injury) and crippling his foe's hand. The guard dropped his sword, dropped to his knees (Knockdown and Stunning). The PC ran past, slammed the door and bolted it in the third tower and turned around . . . and that's where we left it.

Notes

Fun segment of gaming, here. PCs never do any of the things you expect. He could have talked, run, fought the first guard and taken rope so he could escape, jumped, fought the guard coming up the stairs . . . whatever. He chose none of those. Gaming is great.

Review: U2 Danger at Dunwater

I always enjoyed the U-series of modules. This contains some serious (and series) spoilers.

For more reviews, please see my Reviews page.



U2 Danger at Dunwater

by Dave J. Browne with Don Turnbull
TSR 1981
32 pages

U2 Danger at Dunwater is the second of the Saltmarsh trilogy. With a foe identified in U1, the PCs are sent off to deal with them.

U2 consists of a wilderness portion and a dungeon portion - plus, very likely, some heavy negotiations. The wilderness portion depends a lot on the PCs - they may go by boat or go overland. Overland is cheaper and more fraught with danger, by water is less dangerous but will cost money for a boat and crew.

The dungeon itself is well designed. There are multiple ways in - and the relatively strength of guards makes sense for those areas. There are multiple paths around the dungeon, and it is easy to trace lines from communal areas and living areas to rooms, kitchens, etc. It all makes reasonable sense and makes it feel more like entering a lair than a random monster pit.

Where U1 has a lot of explanation but it's all helpful, U2 repeats itself a lot. It spends wordcount in multiple sections explaining the main plot, the political divides in the lizard man camp, the political divides in the potential alliance members, and more. It could have been done once, more concisely. It's well-written, just over-written.

Its big flaw is that if the PCs figure out what's what, the adventure can end pretty abruptly. If they figure it out early enough, almost the whole adventure's text is set aside as you move on to U3.

Kudos to this adventure for putting a dragon in it. Seriously. How many people have played dungeons and dragons without interacting with a dragon? With them held off until later, with later meaning never? Well, there is one here and your 2nd level guys can deal with it.

War Stories

I ran this adventure once that I remember.

It was for my junior high school trio of gamers (JC, JA, JM) and their samurai (fighter), monk, and thief (eventually thief-acrobat, eventually dual-classed to magic-user). They took care of the bullywugs in a split second because two of the three had rolled up psionics (sigh) and both used Mind Blast. They decided it wasn't fun and never used their psionics powers ever again. They went on to fight the lizard men a bit and then talk to them. We didn't move on the U3 for some reason, possibly because I didn't have it yet. They loved the optional end fight, which we played out.

The flaw in U2 - you might need all of the details, you might need none of them - made playing with it tough. Unlike other modules, which when the players would read them they'd still need to deal with the actual fights and traps, this one hangs on "getting it." If you know, you pretty much kick the door down and say, "We come in peace!" and skip ahead. Since it was pretty routine when I was a kid to play with people who'd read the modules, this wasn't so useful of an adventure.

I never seriously looked at using this for GURPS, probably because of the way the GURPS games I started with U1 worked out - with total party kills. They never made it to the end of U1 nevermind to U2.

Overall: Well-written if a bit over-written. Interesting in the context of U1-U3, potentially a lot of fun with the right group, and has a well-detailed lair that can be repurposed.

Review: U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh

I always enjoyed the U-series of modules. I've used U1 to launch a number of games, either as part of the series or a one-off. This contains some spoilers.

For more reviews, please see my Reviews page.


U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh

by Dave J. Browne with Don Turnbull
TSR 1981
32 pages (one blank, one full-color illustration, one with PC handouts)

U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh is an adventure for 5-10 level 1-3 characters for AD&D. The setup is pretty typical - haunted house on the hill, there are monsters in it, the town will pay you cash money to go deal with it.

What I really like about U1 is its multi-part nature. If the PCs find all the threads, they get to explore a haunted house, find a sinister secret about it, and then pursue that secret into a ship-borne adventure. You go from gathering information in town to assaulting a ship in a few little hops. There is information to be had in town, too - with the option of just skipping it and losing out on what can be very helpful or accidentally misinformative.

There are some nice touches in the adventure, too - a plant by a local in cahoots with the bad guys. It's a fairly obvious one, I've never had anyone fall for it. But I have had a group make the leap to "hey, not everyone in town is on the same side!" which is more likely the actual point. The bad guys make mistakes; this is one of them and the module points that out. There is a clear link to U2 placed in the adventure, and it's another thing that needs to be ascribed to "people messed up" or "trust is an issue with the bad guys." I guess the guys in U2 dealing with the guys in U1 sure don't trust them without putting their own men on the scene. Seems fair.

The are is good, too, and depicts a few of the more interesting rooms, the house itself, the ship's nasty-looking crew, etc.

One thing I especially liked is that the "special notes" for the DM are really helpful. It covers a lot of potential PC action and gave guidelines for handling them, everything from resisting excise taxes to trying to fool their way about ship to using stealth by fairly non-stealthy PCs. As a young GM, that was very useful to me - instead of yes-ing or no-ing things out of hand, I learned how to assign a chance and let the dice dictate it. I recycled some of the bits of this adventure and those rulings in later adventures and later games. It even had specific notes about the characters losing out if the players aren't be attentive when it matters. That suits how I play now - character skill and player skill both matter.

The adventure also carefully details the ship - I've never lacked for a needed detail when running it, and it's informed how I've statted up details for ships in other games. There is a lot of text to read, though, but it's uniformly good and useful stuff. Also, there is a roster of significant foes (or at least, an appendix of stats) and the same details are where they are needed, with the encounters. It makes it easy to run and easy to run after a party comes, leaves, and the NPCs move around.

The place is a little heavy on magic items, in my opinion, but you'd have to play very well and make a lot of good decisions and good rolls to find and get them all.

War Stories

I've run U1 so many times it's hard to keep them all straight.

I remember running it for my three-player game in Junior High School. They cleaned out the haunted house and the ship, and I remember they kept a lot of the silk and brandy to have made into fine clothes and to stock their house. That same trio cleaned out a mansion in a Dragon magazine fold-out adventure and moved in. They'd eventually go on to U2, as well, but never made it to the third module.

I ran my cousin through these with a solo thief. He made it through U1, U2, and U3 as well. He eventually assassinated the sahuagin chief in a nasty backstab-started fight and escaped.

In GURPS, I used the haunted house to start one campaign. A couple players tried it, and lost a few characters in a couple of delves. The first group never found the secret of the house, and just left. The second group just got killed off by some terrible tactical choices. Memorably one guy was killed with the ol' stirge to the eye. This is an adventure very well suited to GURPS, in terms of the types and numbers of foes encountered.

I do remember more than one group strongly resisting paying excise taxes on recovered goods. Just goes to show that taxing PCs is a good way to drive people Chaotic, even if it totally and logically fits the situation.

Overall: This is one of my favorite modules, and even if you don't like to run modules, it can give you a lot of useful rulings, details, set-pieces, maps and ideas for elsewhere. The is one of the better AD&D modules.

GURPS Gamma World, 20th Homeland - Session 11 - Badders & the ruins

We played session #11 of our Gamma Terra campaign today. For the previous session, click here.

We had an unexpected cancellation (Princess) and a last mine add - Caveman! It's been a long time since Caveman's player got to the table with us.

Characters:
"Caveman" - demo/EOD
"Fatbox" - demo/EOD
"Hillbilly" - medical specialist
"Momma's Boy" - computer programmer
"Short Bus" - computer programmer
"Love Handles" - demo/EOD
"Oinker" - demo/EOD

In reserve:
"Princess" - cryptographer/sniper
"Barbie" - demo/EOD (MIA)

We started in Area 3, our new base, getting things organized. One of the guys who'd gotten out with Newb and the others decided to take a more active roll. (A new player joined, and another player got to pick his nickname - it was down to three, and Oinker won.) A couple of us traveled up to Mike Mike and convinced him to let us move him, his loom, his gear, etc. to Area 3. He hasn't moved yet but the plans were made. We'll set up moving material to Yexil to keep him guarding Van Buren Base. We also moved Mark VIII into our base and set him as the major domo. He was bored with his position and honestly, we need him doing more than keeping a Restorationist happy.

We took some time to get ready, and to analyze all of the various pills we found. Short Bus has Chemistry so he did that using the analytical tools in our base.

From there, we went to visit the badders. We'd dealt with some outer warrens of badders when we'd fought Pink Eye, but Softie scouted for us and found a fort on top of an old five-silo missile base. We decided to fly nearby, walk to them, and visit. We couldn't go with Plan A, which was "fly in with our Warbot, land, shoot up the area to show force, and then negotiate." Turns out Softie has standing basic orders to avoid exposing herself offensively to enemy forces. Sigh. Since badders respect strength, we needed to come off as strong.

We found their fortress and left Oinker outside covering us with his M110, walked around the side and left Momma's Boy out with his M48, and walked down in formation. The guys in back had orders to shoot if they felt like they needed to, or if we got into a fight. We put Fatbox in front of our wedge, which proved to be a momentous decision.

Because the badders sent out five of them, and decided since they put their leader in the middle, that was where ours was, too. It turned out okay, but still, we hadn't planned on him talking so we didn't get over the finer points of what we wanted.

In any case, the badders sniffed at the air and then allowed us inside their fort. We went in. Inside, a honey badder came out wearing a robe and used telepathy to talk to our leader, Fatbox. They went into a building to talk. The rest of us hung around with the other badders and ate fruit. The boss badder got impatient and set up a challenge - smaller badders posed with fruit on their heads, and the boss badder took a knife and chucked it through the fruit on its head. The poor target badder was nervous. The boss pointed at Hillbilly's knife, Hoopslayer, and gestured. Great. Hillbilly can't throw knives except at default.

So Hillbilly took our bullhorn and yelled out "It's good, don't shoot" or something like that. Then he pulled his pistol and put a 9mm round through a piece of fruit. The badders jumped. They'd never seen our weapons before. They guys outside didn't hear the warning, or did but didn't understand it. Both refrained from shooting because it was a single pistol shot. That was totally unlike how we fight. They held fire when Caveman used his SCAR-H to blow a fruit off of a nearby tree.

Eventually the leaders came out. Fatbox yelled at us, clearly feeling he'd really been promoted. But he said the boss said we needed to fight a challenge combat. "To the death?" "No, that would be barbaric." Fatbox chose Hillbilly, because I'd messed everything up by shooting and blah blah blah blah not listening because he's not actually in charge. Caveman gave him a hard time back, saying, "Did you even make Corporal?" Heh.

Hillbilly had to fight, and they called for a sword-and-shield fight. Short Bus loaned Hillbilly his shield, Love Handles his sword, and Hillbilly looked at the badder. It was armed and armored. Hillbilly could clearly see that his own armor made him invulnerable to damage. So Hillbilly gestured to the badder to take off his armor, and stripped down to his boots and camo pants to fight shirtless against his fellow badger-monsters*. The badder followed suit.

(Fatbox's player put on "Amok Time" and we got going)

The fight went badly. First, Hillbilly critically failed and dropped his sword. Then the badder pinged his shield. They took turns trying to hit each other, but even so, Hillbilly was barely hitting and barely blocking. Eventually, the badder Feinted and Hillbilly got hit - I rolled a 12 against a 14, and that wasn't close. He got sliced from shoulder to hip and took a serious wound. ("Ooooh, he really gets you. How many HP do you have? "23." "Oh, you're just badly wounded.") He fell, and the badder won.

Still, Hillbilly earned some respect. He could have won out of hand just by being immune to their hits, but honestly, that's lame. No one wants a trophy for winning at bowling with gutter blockers. The badders helped stitch his wounds. Once Hillbilly could walk, he presented an extensible baton to the badder champion and seemed to earn even more respect.

The friendship became more like an alliance - they could freely come and go from our territory, we'd like to trade, we'd help each other against our enemies (we offered to go do that right now, but they didn't have any in mind), we'd treat each other with mutual respect, etc. Fatbox offered our grafefulness in return for any ID cards they could find, but didn't specify what that would be.

We'd brought them gifts, and left them with salt, pepper, ketchup, hot sauce, and mustard. We had a big party with our new Ewok badder friends, and left in the morning with hangovers.

Next up, the Robot Farm.

Softie gave us composite shots of the area:


There is a robot ferry that goes back and forth across the lake, still, all these years later. The plan was, Softie drops us off on the ferry and we go in. She waits underwater, since she can't go into town, and can retrieve us on the way back. But the ferry goes right through a zone of high radiation.

We decided we hated the idea of going through a radiation zone (the red circle on the map.) So we made a boat out of wood thanks to Love Handles's Carpentry skills. We took a week to familiarize ourselves with the boat. Caveman's influence showed here - we stocked the boat, tried different loadings, rolled the boat to test its self-righting ability and our rigging, etc. "And if a week isn't enough to satisfy us we're ready, we spend another week." Yeah, that's Caveman.

Once this was settled, we took two weeks worth of food, five gallons of water each, some spare gear all packed in lead-lined medical disposal boxes, and went on with it.

Warbot dropped us off next to the ferry, then submerged. We lashed onto the ferry and towed behind. Caveman and Hillbilly stayed on the boat while the others formed three groups to explore the ferry. It was covered with plants - every wind-blown speck of dirt had eventually been seeded and overgrown. On the bottom level, amidst rows of parked car hulks, were a dozen or more sword-bushes - bushes with sword-like frond and throwable spikes. They riddled Love Handles and Fatbox. Their torso armor was proof against their spikes as were their gas masks but they took some damage on the limbs - Love Handles had a biceps speared right through and a thigh nearly so. Their gunfire did little except clip leaves. Fatbox drew his chain-sword and went to town. He cut up a couple but took more damage, eventually getting an arm crippled. Meanwhile, Momma's Boy came running down from the upper level with the headlights - the force field generator and laser we'd found on the obb-killed corpse a while back. He fanned a laser across the plants and cut off a lot of fronds. Eventually he managed to get in front of Fatbox since his armor was heavy enough to be immune to the plants. He lased a few more, then swapped for Fatbox's sword and just spent a good 10-15 minutes chopping all of the hostile plants into bits.

"Great, we just massacred the morning commuters." - Fatbox. "Never forget 5/7."

That ended the excitement on the ferry. We reached shore and concealed the boat near a 2000' space needle looking thing. It hummed with power - and we found our battery-charged objects were just charging up. Momma's Boy could use the laser and force field with no energy cost, too, off of the ambient charge. Oooh, broadcast power. Neat.

We bushwacked though some old ruins, wasting a good hour or two searching for "treasure" in the ruins. We found a stuffed tiger/panda looking toy. We eventually worked our way to a clear road and moved down it, Caveman and Hillbilly carrying the boxed supplies between them.

We sought out the first of the active electrical sources - it turned out to be a piece of modern art in front of the Sector 30 Bank. Well, bank, bridal shop, and glass collectibles shop. It opened and let us in. Long story short, folks looted the bridal shop of a gown and some wine (hundreds of years old, it was just sludge and dust), failed to convince the self-service bank vault or ATMs to open, and otherwise putzed around. Oinker tried to open a bank account, didn't have personal ID on him, and was shown were the police station would be if hadn't been nuked down centuries ago.

Then our outside scouts reported six Uggies - what we named these little kimono-and-sandal clad sword-and-shield armed dwarves with twin-lobed heads. Hillbilly tried to talk to them with his megaphone but they startled at his voice. He tried Spanish and Bal'Kree, but they wouldn't respond. Two of them looked at each other and fled. Another pointed a big crossbow at us, aiming at each person in turn as if not sure who to aim at. Hillbilly said, "Ignore them." That's pretty much what we did. We probably startled them because we speak Robot, aka English, aka the language of the ancient machines. The hope was they'd get more people and either we'd have a big grenade-worthy battle or they'd talk.

We got back to work on the bank. Momma's Boy lased open an ATM and damaged the power receivers, because the building power started to fade. He lased open the other two and we took out a good 2500 domars.

We tried the bank vault with the laser - no good. Hoopslayer could scratch it, but even lasing the scratch didn't do anything. Not a surprise, we'll come back to it sometime if we need it.

We moved on to the ferry depot, which would make a good base and emergency escape point. But as we did, those four braver Uggies ran into the bank. We headed back. Hillbilly's idea was, let's get close and talk. We got close - and one of them used some kind of Psi attack on Momma's Boy. MB is impulsive and angry, so he said, "One of them attacked me!" We switched to combat time. Hillbilly called out "We come in peace!" but MB shot at one as did Oinker. The fight was on. We eventually shot up two of them, but not before they got Oinker with some pyrokinetic power and started to heat him up from within. Once we'd killed off that pair, it went quiet. Oinker stabbed himself with a healing pen, and then Hillbilly, Fatbox, Short Bus, and Momma's Boy moved up from either side so we could see inside the bank. Short Bus and Fatbox spotted two crouched down in the back. One tried some psionic attack (I think) but in two seconds Short Bus put three rounds from his 9mm into one, then three rounds into the other. Fight over.

Two of them were alive but bleeding out. Fatbox face stomped them to death, and we found they had two brains apiece. Neat. Their gear was well-made but low-tech. We took their crossbow, Momma's Boy tried to let the bank scan one's head (no effect) before the power was completely dry, and then we moved back to the ferry terminal and bushwacked our way inside.

We ended there.


* Hillbilly comes from the Fry school of negotiation. "My fellow fish-monsters, far be it for me to question your stupid civilization or its dumb customs . . . "

Notes:


- Hillbilly is the medical specialist, but that just means he has Diagnosis and has learned Electronic Operations (Medical Devices). Yet some people call him, "the doctor here" and complain when he's only as good at First Aid as they are. Yeah, he's not a doctor, he does triage and bandaging. He's a doctor like the EOD guys are bomb designers or the computer guys are electronic engineers.

- I leveled up again this session, since this was my 10th session. I rolled a +1 to ST, which is what I'd have asked for anyway. ST 16! I've got 4 points saved, earned MVP, and will get 5 more. So, 4 points to raise Wrestling to DX+2 and 6 more to improve skills I use, or go right for ST 17, my eventual goal? Tough call, I need to think about it. The skills makes more sense, but raising ST has been really helpful in oh-so-many ways. And I prefer big buys. But more Boating, more Wrestling, more Electronics Operation, etc. might be helpful.

- Momma's Boy rolled Arm DX +1 for one arm only, his right. Heh. Appropriate.

- Turns out the Badders are more bad ass than I'd thought. Neat. Hopefully we can keep building friendly relations with them, get some trade going, recruit some of them to fight if we get a war going. I was disappointed when they asked for our help smashing their enemies and didn't have one handy.

- Shucking my armor for the fight was fun. Hillbilly didn't fight well, but he fought a cool fight. The badder beat him, they can feel good about their melee prowess, and Hillbilly got to fight stripped down to his combat boots and camo pants in a howling circle of post-apocalyptic mutants. WOOOOOOOO! Either win decisively or fight cool, that's how you impress people in a duel. Make it win-win for yourself.

- I'm sorry the cornering of the Uggies lead to a firefight. Momma's Boy is vengeful and impulsive. Had we been able to just get some communication I'd have been happy. It was a mistake, in Hillbilly's mind, to corner them. We could have made them dead at any time; it didn't help us to do that. It's much less likely we'll get a peaceful co-existence with them now.

- Next session it's unlikely Caveman will be able to make it, but Princess might. So we ruled he's on the boat, and we can just go get him next time and have Caveman guard our ferry base. It was good having Caveman back even if just for a guest appearance.

Gamma Terra notes

We had a good game tonight. We:

- had a guest appearance by Caveman

- added a new PC

- had a duel fought surrounding by howling mutants!

- made peace with our fellow badger-monsters

- made a bought

- fought sword-bushes

- broke a bank

- and shot up some poor guys.

Overall, good session. I'll get the summary up tomorrow.

What is the Enemy of my Enemy? (Gamma Terra plotting)

Sunday is Gamma Terra. We've got a number of plans going. Not the least of which is heading to a robot manufacturing sight to try and negotiate with the robots there. But also, to try to find the badders we had such a nasty fight with back in Session 1 and Session 2 and talk to them.

Why?

The way I see it, the badders are potential friends. Or at least potential allies. They were our foes when they were being controlled by one of the Bonapartists, But now? They're probably effectively directionless. They're be welcome members of the new state we're forging. If I can think of something to give them, I'm going to bring gifts. Momma Hillbilly said the best way to make friends is to bring pies to the housewarming.

We've got some groups around us we've messed with, and whom we'll eventually fight. We bloodied the Iron Men (mutant humans), the Bonapartists (mutant animals), and we're eyeing the Knights of Genetic Purity (pure strain humans). We have to exercise some care in who we fight and we ally with.

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

The way I see it, the enemy of my enemy is my potential ally. There isn't anything here more than a shared interest in reducing an obstacle. We may or may not even have a shared interest in the ultimate outcome - I may just want my enemy's teeth drawn, my enemy's enemy may want total destruction.

I've made this mistake before - you get so wedded to allying with your allies you think you're friends. Or you think if someone hates your enemy, they must like you. Not necessarily true. You can get hypnotized by the rewards of giving them what they want and having them thank you - this is as big of a mistake as thinking you're a total badass and negotiating from incorrectly assumed strengths.

So I think we'll need to be careful. We need to figure out who our strongest enemy is, ally with their enemies, and make sure aren't weakening our own position in the process. Basically work with A to kick down B without making A stronger than us in the process.

Seek to befriend potential friends, and ally with potential allies.

Nothing deep there. We have to find out who are our actual potential friends. The badders, maybe the robots, Crow, the Triumvirate, possibly others - we need to find people who will live nicely with us. Figuring our who is an ally will be trickier, in a way - we need to know who will benefit us short or long term but who isn't going the same way as us.

Ally with those distant, fight those close by.

Just basic stuff I learned from playing way too much Nobunaga's Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Europa Universalis II. Secure your flanks, ally with guys who you couldn't reach to fight with. If you ally with close up folks, you are just surrounding yourself with friends and cutting off your own ability to expand.

Not that we really need to expand, exactly, just make our proto-state secure. We can't do that by merely being friends with the strong and aggressive cryptic alliance states close by and hoping they don't turn left after wiping out their foes to the right.


All of that said, if we just wandered the wastes like Caine in Kung Fu, doing good, I'd be even happier. But our GM is lazy and doesn't want to detail all of North America down to the individual mutant and domars. Heh.