Bandits, nomads and alternatives

[thorswulf]

I was re-reading book two at work today, and I had some inspiration about Men as monsters. I like bandits, but as they are encountered in such large numbers, I figured they must have some base of operations like a castle. This is hardly a huge, new innovation, but it does create some very interesting possibilities.

Consider a bandit group that takes over a mining, or refining town/village. Now these bandits have access to lots of metal, and possibly workers of metal. I decided to use this idea for a mini campaign. I call these bandit the Iron Men. All of them wear at least chainmail, and the heavier horse are actually wearing plate mail. the Iron Men are the scourge of the land. They enslave the weak to work in their mines ( Boo! Hiss!), the skilled to work metal while their loved ones are under the threat of death if the refuse to cooperate(The Rotters!),and sell their ill gotten goods to orc tribes(Gasp! Say it aint so!)! Not your run of the mill bandits any more!

I like nomads too, but they tend to be of the Hun, Mongol, or Arabic model. The Goths were nomads too. How about a bunch of nomads that are organised like the Steppe nomads listed but look more like vikings or Saxons on horses! Or what if they are riding camels like the Tauregs? Now the nomad begins to look a little different! Or how about plains nomads that live like the Lakota or other plains tribes. Eastern europe of the dark ages and middle ages are good sources of ispiration as well. Pechenegs, and or other Slavic horsemen would be good switch ups as well.

And then we have pirates. I don't like pirates as listed. It seems to me that classic S&S pirates are either viking types or some kind of bireme/trireme non Hellenistic raiders. I like Belit and her crew of black pirates onboard the Tigress. Think Zulus on biremes with a barbarian skipper and you get the picture. I suppose if you wanted to break awya from the traditions you couild have pirates from a chinese flavored country on junks, or malays or dayaks for exotic pirates on prahus. Definately different!

[Finarvyn]

Well, if you look at any of the "number appearing" numbers for monsters you'll see that they are absurd and clearly not designed for "Joe Adventurer" to encounter in a dark alleyway. It would be interesting to see what party size was expected to handle, for example, 30-300* Orcs.

Perhaps the philosophy was that you would take a caravan to the dungeon, pillage it, and then have to use the caravan to fight your way home? Or, maybe characters were not meant to fight everything they encountered. You encounter 300 orcs (or bandits, or whatever) and then have a whole adventure whereby you might sneak past the perimeter guards or avoid advanced scouts or ...

This certainly does change the way we think about the campaign. :-)

______________
* Odd that they never say how to acquire these numbers. Do I roll 30d10 or 1d10*30, or what? One method gives a number near 165 each time while the other method gives an equal chance of 30 as 300.

[snorri]

Nov 23, 2008 9:43:31 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

maybe characters were not meant to fight everything they encountered.

Maybe I even hope so!

[badger2305]

Dear Fin - I think you are right about this. Generally speaking, running into 30-300 Orcs would ruin most any player-character's day. That having been said, I suspect the original mechanic was: roll 1d20, divide by 2, and then multiply by 30 (though really, any method for getting 30-300 would work).

But let's delve into this a little deeper. A quote from Book One helps clarify some of this: "In all probability the referee will find it beneficial to allow participants in the campaign to "hire into service" one or more characters. At times this may be nothing more than a band of mercenaries hired to participate in and share the profits from some adventure. However it is likely that players will be desirous of acquiring a regular entourage of various character types, monsters, and an army of some form." (pg. 12)

Say you have a party of ten player-characters, tough enough to go into the wilderness. What would this party look like? Let's assume that the party is relatively balanced in character types, but with enough fighting men to protect the spellcasters. So we can assume that there might be (and I'm thinking out loud here, so bear with me):

1 6th level fighter - probably with a magical weapon and armor
2 5th level fighters - magical weapon and/or armor
2 4th level fighters - well armed and armored

1 6th level magic-user - with a wand or staff
1 5th level magic-user - scrolls and some potions
1 3rd level magic-user - a scroll or two (he's the replacement character for someone who got killed earlier, see).

1 6th level cleric - magic weapon, decent armor
1 4th level cleric - decent arms and armor

Then they might have some hirelings:

The 6th level fighting man has:
- a 3rd level squire (fighter)
- two 2nd level "trusty men" (fighter)
- a 3rd level thief (if you allow that sort of thing)

The 6th level magic-user has:
- a 2nd level apprentice (magic-user)

The 6th level cleric has:
- two 1st level acolytes (clerics)

In addition, the party has two wagons and about a baker's dozen porters, muleskinners and the like used to working with the military and adventurers. To round it off, providing protection for this would be 40 heavy foot soldiers (200 gp a month) and 20 light cavalry (200 gp a month).

So your average band of about 150-160 Orcs might think twice before tangling with a group like this, consisting of nearly 100 people - especially since the first round would see at least one Fireball and several Sleep spells. There might be some overlap, but you don't get to 6th level by not coordinating your defenses.

[dwayanu]

Yeah, a wilderness expedition should usually not travel light!

Here's a hint as to what large bands might be up to, from Life on a Mediaeval Barony by William Stearns Davis:

When you consider the number of tolls levied everywhere upon commerce -- a fee on about every load that crosses a bridge, traverses a stretch of river or highway, passes a castle, etc. -- the wonder grows that it seems worth while to transport goods at all. The fees are small, but how they multiply on even a short journey! Along the Loire between Roanne and Nantes are about seventy-four places where something must be paid. Things are as bad by land. Clergy and knights are usually exempt, but merchants have to travel almost with one hand in their pockets to satisfy the collectors of the local seigneurs. The result is that almost nothing is brought from a distance which is not fairly portable and for which there is a demand not readily met by the local workshops.

[Finarvyn]

I always found it interesting that the rulebooks hint at large parties adventuring around the map, and campaigns like Blackmoor seem to reinforce this, yet my own gaming group never got "into" that style of play.

And we were huge fans of Chainmail and did a lot of miniatures battles on the sand table. (And later on my friend's pool table.)

It's just that we had more of a character-scale focus in our adventures, but when a character became a Baron or King then we'd break out the armies and wage these big wars.

So ... we never really made use of the "number appearing" numbers as listed.

[thorswulf]

Well, I originally intended this post as a sounding board to see what others had done, but these observations are pretty cool too! Regarding the problems medieval merchants had, a particularly good fictionalization of this can be found in The Walking Drum by Louis L'amour. The section mentioning the attacks from armed monks who holed up in their fortified monastaries was very eye opening. So maybe those encounter tables are not too far off the mark! Personally I was of the impression that the number appearing referred to outdoor encounters when dealing with 300 of anything, unless you stumbled into the creatures lair.

[dwayanu]

Note to self: Check out The Walking Drum!

How about Hussite types with battle wagons?

Or (recalling an illo from Holmes Basic) marauders on big lizards? Maybe with packs of little lizards?

Riverine bandits are another possibility. I think of the Vikings in Russia, and the fellows who (IIRC) pulled down London Bridge.

Rebels with populist demagoguery could be a change of pace.

The mention of monks reminds me of the fighting factions on Mt. Hiei.

There could be a really big and internationally powerful syndicate like the Hansa.

[kesher]

The Walking Drum is an excellent book! I've read it twice. It was the book in high school that really opened my eyes to the civilizations flourishing in the rest of the world in the early Middle Ages, especially the Arabic countries. Kerbouchard inspired a whole run of AD&D fighters for me, and I pasted copies of the world map up on my bedroom wall. Unless I'm misremembering, it's the Hansa he gets involved with (before or after he learns Farsi and is initiated as a Sufi, I can't quite recall...)

[jjarvis]

Corsairs - A bunch of scimitar and cutlass wielding folk of all nationalities with a higher portion of dark southerners and coastal Arabic analogs.

Amazons- pick a stereotype and run with it. Maybe different populations of amazons have different behaviors. Archer maidens, horse riders, man hating cultists led by a bald headed priestess order.

Pygmies- they are small they are primitive but they may know secrets hidden in the jungles and scrub-lands others can't even guess at. Arm a portion of them with an exotic weapon, give the rest spears and handaxes.

Lotus Eaters- annoying hippy types that can corrupt the youth of an area with lotus fueled fantasies of a more peaceful life.

Lepers- gotta have some lepers, forced to wander from place to place living on charity or maybe forced to borderlands and left to die. They could be mournful, sources of lore or angry.

[thorswulf]

Regarding lepers: Make them the keepers of some relic (magic item) that the characters need to off the dragon/evil high priest/demon, or whatever. better yet make the fantasy lepers contagious..... (Insert evil, maniacal laugh here!)

I like the riverine viking pirates/corsairs. Maybe a bad reaction check gets you boarded, while a good one gets some trading done!

Amazons... well, I personally like the awful stereotypes from swords and sorcery yarns, but consider a few other ideas. What about amazons who are viking types? Basic berserks, or are they some kind of fighting order like the Jomsvikings? Or maybe they are the warrior women who train champions ala Skatha from the CuChulain stories. Now these women are definately not stereotypes!

Pirates/Corsairs: what if these guys ARE the legitamite traders of the country, somewhat akin to the mafia? That might thwart would be pirate hunters. I'd like to see their faces when a squadron of warships shows up to defend the pirates.....

[dwayanu]

I'm thinking of the hoax of (IIRC) the "Tasaday tribe" in the Philippines ... civilized folk who pretended to be stone-age savages. I'll bet the general idea could profitably be turned to fantastic application.