For session 70 of my Sunday AD&D game on Roll20 I decided to do something different.
A former player who had to drop due to personal issues had some unexpected availability due to having COVID. So far, symptoms minor.
The party plans to assault a castle that hobgoblins & goblins took from kobolds.
The kobolds worked for the dragon the party slew. The party is trying to avoid a power vacuum & have made a deal with the kobolds back at the dragon’s lair to take back the castle.
This player is going to run the castle. I have his player set on a copy of the map in Roll20. He offered to run an NPC today due to his unexpected availability. As I was planning the session, I offered him the whole thing, and he gladly took it on. This will make it more challenging for the party, and it’s not all on me.
The regular players will be on the player facing map.
I will switch between Discord calls to interact with them on audio.
If things get to the point that they can both be on the same call, I’ll have him join the main call.
My initial thoughts were that this will either be a lot of fun or a big flop….
I had to plan the fight with those in the castle. I gave the hobgoblins and goblins both shaman and witchdoctors who could have thrown a wrench in the works of the party spellcasters.
I gave the player running the castle the detailed castle map (still very general) and units of each troop type. There were just tokens with the title of what the unit was. We agreed to use the green circle for the unit count. That is number of troops in that unit.
I gave the party a crude map that their scout the party druid who often scouts ahead in the form of an eagle.
Once the PCs reached the castle, I showed them a copy of the detailed map.
The trick was to show what each side could see.
The party summoned an air elemental who was invulnerable to all attacks the castle inhabitants threw at it. It kept splattering goblins in the towers and the unit in that tower would break and run.
The bulk of the party was out of sight and out of range.
An illusion of two lines of 50 dwarves taunting the castle and firing arrows that didn’t reach the castle forced smaller units outside the castle to flee inside.
The nearly 10th level magic-user flew in invisibly with Protection From Normal Missiles and used his Wand of Fear to clear the towers of the keep.
It was about this point, about 3 or 4 round of combat that we had all players on the same voice chat looking at the same map. The fight was over 2 or 3 rounds after that.
The elf 5th level fighter/5th level magic-user flew in and cast enlarge on himself, becoming hill giant size. He cast fireball and wiped out all but one unit of goblins who kept making their morale check. He then flew in front of the gate and was the only PC to take damage from missile fire, but he got off a lightning bolt that nearly killed the hobgoblin chief and subchief and did kill most of their body guards.
At this point the castle surrendered as there was nothing else they could see to do.
It was a few minutes after the fight that the player running the castle looked at the spells of the casters and realized what he could have done.
One of the players thought that I had been working with the player running the castle for weeks. We only started working on it the night before. I put maybe an hour into it. The other player maybe a couple of hours of planning.
I like how it emulated real fog of war.
I was more in the role of a judge in the wargame sense.
The players thought it was great.
It was a little chaotic switching between Discord calls, but it was a minor inconvenience once we figured it out after the first call.
This is something I can see doing again, but coming up with a better plan on mass combat rules. We didn’t need mass combat rules as the level of magic the party had at their disposal made them and elite strike force who quickly overwhelmed their opponents.
As usual, it came down to which side won initiative and had the better attacks.
The unstoppable air elemental was a great touch. They have a brazier for commanding fire elementals but wanted to preserve the castle. They have plans….
So for Session 71 on Sunday, they begin the process of domain building. They see this as a money maker.
I made a YouTube video showing how I did this.