Wolves on the Rhine from Dark City Games

Well, I certainly didn’t expect to be writing another entry into the blog this soon, but I have something special to share with you.

While on vacation in San Antonio in 2006, I stopped by Dibbles Hobbies during my usual whirlwind tour of shops. I had recently bought in to the excellent Tunnels & Trolls system and found a little pamphlet sized game named The Little Black Book on the counter by a company that I’d never heard of named Dark City Games. The back of the booklet promised lots of solo fun and leafing through the book showed that it is constructed in much the same manner as T&T solo adventures. I bought, took it home and put it on a shelf where it lay forgotten.

Now, it 2007, I discovered The Fantasy Trip. A simple game like T&T it had several solo adventures published for it. As it turns out, my best gaming buddy was a TFT fanatic in school and has every singe bit of everything ever published for or about TFT. I had the essential elements of TFT too. In my case, though, they were simply part of my Metagaming collection of OOP game collection. After listening to Ed go on and on about how much fun he had playing it, I decide to give it a go. I read everything an I was about to play one of the solos when Christmas got in the way.

I went to San Antonio to visit family and friends and once again found myself at Dibbles where I found The Crown of Kings from Dark City Games. This time I knew that I was looking at a solo game that had its own set of rules that were fully compatible with The Fantasy Trip. It was at that point that I remembered the game I’d bought the year before. I bought this one as well.

After the holidays, I visited DCG’s website and bought two more adventures, Wolves on the Rhine and The Dark Vale. So now I have four of the games published by DCG. This is my experience with Wolves on the Rhine.

Wolves on the Rhine is a solo (but could be GM’ed) adventure using DCG’s own Legends of the Ancient World rules which have been tweaked for Wolves on the Rhine. Most of the difference between the standard Legends and WOR Legends is the elimination of magic, WOR is an historical RPG, and the weapons, pilum instead javelins for instance.

I don’t want to give too much of the story away, so I won’t describe what happened to my party in detail, let’s just say that the game setup allows you to use a party of four to six PCs. I took four—I should have taken six.


As far as the story goes, it reads smoothly form paragraph to paragraph. I’ve found that the hardest thing for writers of these solo adventures is to make the story smoothly transition from one paragraph to the next. This author does a fairly good job of that. Of course the fact that it’s an “historical RPG” is also interesting. Though my play through the booklet ended quickly and brutally, it was fun and the nice flow allowed me to get into the story and feel the surroundings. When my party, which consisted of two legionnaires and two auxillia stepped into the cold dark woods in Germania, I was feeling it. The author spent enough effort setting up the environment in the opening paragraphs, that my imagination was fully engaged by the time I got to the meat of the story.

Note that each of the games from DCG stand on their own. They each come with a tactical map, rules, and a counter sheet. Some, like Wolves on the Rhine, have downloadable standees. The standees are drawn so that they can be cut out and assembled as tents. However, I’ve got a bunch of plastic stands for Steve Jackson Games Cardboard Heroes standees, so I used them. The plastic stands provide a little more weight and stability.


Well that’s it for this posting. I heartily recommend these Dark City Games offerings. They are a lot of and have enough replay value (I’ll be trying WOR again soon—with a bigger party this time) to make it worth the cost.

P.S.

I couldn't believe it! I was rolling the first encounter. I tossed the die into the tray. It bounced off the wall and stopped dead center in this position! I had to take a picture of the ultimate cocked die!

Melee Corrections

Since posting the Melee report, several people pointed out, here and through the TFT maillist, a couple things that I did wrong . First off, When Legolas rolled the triple ones at the start of the game, he should have done triple damage. The "to hit" roll is 3d6 against DX. A roll of 3 will always hit and does 3x damage, 4 always hits and does double damage, and 5 always hits. The other error was when the Orc rolled 17 "to hit". The Orc should have dropped his weapon. A roll of 16 always misses, 17 misses and the weapon is dropped, 18 misses and the weapon breaks.

There are some other errors as well: When ST falls to 1, the figure is unconscious. The orc took more than 5 hits in turn one, and will have a -2 adjDX in turn 2. Legolas cannot shoot and ready a new weapon. He can shoot and drop the bow, but he will have to ready the weapon in the next turn. Both Lurtz and Boromir appear to have taken 5 hits in turn 2 and should be -2 DX in turn 3. Again, Lurtz will be -2 DX in turn 4.

Thanks to everyone for helping me correct these errors and learn the mechanics. My goal for this game was to familiarize myself with combat so that I can play through solo adventures smoothly.

Melee

Melee comes with counters but I used GW Lord of the Rings figures

Melee is a game long out of print which was published by Metagaming back in the '70s. It is a simple combat game played on a hex grid. Melee eventually was joined by a companion game named Wizard, a game of dueling wizards. Melee and Wizards eventually became the combat amd magic system of a roleplaying game called The Fantasy Trip, TFT for short.

While TFT is no longer published and the owner of the copyright cannot be found, there is a simple from of TFT available from Dark City Games for free. Their simplifed TFT supports the solo adventues which they publish.

Download the rules and the same adventures and have a go at them on a quiet evening between your regular gaming sessions.

What follows is a blow by blow of the Melee game I played this morning.

The starting positions

Step up: Aragorn (ST=14, DX=10, MA=10) , Boromir (ST=14, DX=10, MA=10) and Legolas (ST=10, DX=14, MA=12) enter a clearing and are surprised to see three Uruks on the other side. The Uruk-hai: Lurtz (ST=14, DX=10, MA=10), an archer (ST=10, DX=14, MA=10) and an warrior (ST=14, DX=10, MA=10) as just a surprised so no one has an advantage. However since all were being cautious, all combatants have their primary weapons readied.

The stat sheet fits on the yellow stickies seen here.

Round one: The two side roll for initiative and the good guys get it. They advance toward the orcs cautiously so they only move half their adjMA (adjusted Movement Allowance), four hexes. Legolas wanting to shoot, only moves one hex forward. The bad guys have the same idea and mirror the good guys so as not to give them an advantage. Nobody can reach any other for sword play, but the two opposing archers can shoot. Legolas gets to go first because his is the higher adjDX and shoots at the other archer. As luck would have it, Legolas rolls 1+1+1 (three ones always hits) and then 8 (6+2) for Damage. The Orc archer’s leather armor absorbs 2 hits so his ST is reduced by 6 to 4. The Orc no longer decide it might be better to try to gang up with Lurtz on Aragorn so he drops his bow instead of shooting and readies his secondary weapon, a dagger. Legolas can shoot twice per round (his adjDX is 16 because he’s a very special Elf) and looses his second arrow at the hapless Orc archer. Legolas rolls 2+2+1 against his DX (-1 for the distance) so he hits the Orc again. This time he rolls 3+2 for 5 damage points. The Orc archer only has leather armor so damage is reduced by 2 for a total of 3 leaving ST=1. This round is over.

Round Two: The good guys win the initiative again. Aragorn and Boromir decide to slowly advance again while Legolas, pleased with himself takes a step forward and nocks another arrow. The Orcs meet the men and the bowless archer runs up to help his comrades. Even though the Orc bowman is engaging Aragorn, Legolas still has a clear shot and the highest DX of anyone so he goes first, rolling 2+2+1 (hit) followed by 5+2=7 for damage. Even with the Orc’s leather armor, this is much than is needed to drop him in his tracks. The melee then continues with Aragon and Bormir facing off one on one with the remaining Orcs. All have the same adjDX so they all must dice to determine the combat sequence. Aragon goes first, then the Orc facing Boromir, then Boromir, and Lurtz facing Aragorn is last. Aragorn hits Lurtz with 2+4+3 and does 6+4=10 damage. 2 are absorbed by Lurtz’ armor and 1 by his shield so Lurtz is down to ST=7. The Orc warrior hits Boromir with 4+4+1 and 2+3=5 damage. Boromir’s leather armor absorbs 2 and his shield 1 so his ST=12. Boromir tries to respond but rolls 6+4+5 and misses the Orc Warrior. Lurtz now swings with a 2+5+5 and hits Aragorn for 4+1=5 damage. Aragron’s armor takes 2 of the damage but he has no shield so his ST=11. Legolas still has an arrow left but he has no target so he drops his bow and readies his Elven blade (cutlass). This ends the round.

Round Three: The bad guys win the initiative but they are locked in combat. They’ve taken more damage than the good guys and are a man down…but being Orcs and not wanting to tick Sauman they stick around and go toe to toe. Legolas runs up to join the fight. He barely has enough MA to get into it and still be able to make an attack. Legolas has the highest DX so he tries to hit Lurtz. Leglaos rolls poorly but just makes it under his DX with 6+5+4 then rolls 6+4-2=8 for damage. Lurtz’ armor and shield take 3 way so now Lurtz’ ST=2. All the others have the same DX so they dice to determine combat order. The order is: Orc Warrior, Aragorn, Boromir, and then Lurtz. The Orc warrior swings at Boromir with a roll of 6+4+2 and misses. Aragron swings at Lurtz with 5+3+5 and misses. Then Boromir, still smarting for the last round swings at the Orc warrior with 6+1+2 and just misses him. Lurtz snarls and swing at Aragorn with a 6+2+2 and misses. Everyone but Legolas missed their targets In the swirling melee and it continues to the next round.

Round four: No need to roll initiative – everyone’s in it to the end! Legolas swings first and with 4+3+5 connects with Lurtz. Legolas Eleven blade does 2+1-2=1 damage with is all aborbed by Lurtz armor and shield. The combat order, after dicing, becomes: Boromir, Orc warrior, Lurtz and Aragorn. Boromir finally connects with the Orc facing him (third time’s a charm) and does 3+2=5 damage, 3 of which are taken by armor and shield so the Orc’s ST=12. The Orc attempts to strike back with 6+6+5 and catches nothing but air as Boromir deftly evades the blow. Lurtz, not looking too healthy at the moment, swings at Aragon with 6+2+1 and connects for 2+4=6 damage, 2 of which are taken by the Ranger’s leather jerkin. Aragorn’s ST=7. Aragorn responds with 1+3+5 and finds his target for 3+5=8, minus 3 for armor and shield, 5 points of damage which does Lurtz in. The doomed Orc Warrior is too busy with Boromir and too afraid of Sauman’s wrath to quit so he fights on into the next round.

Round five: The good guys win initiative so Legolas move around to the remaining Orc’s rear and Aragon moves in on his side. Legolas now has a +4 DX advantage and Aragon a +2 DX. Legolas goes first (naturally) and since his adjDX is now 20 he can’t miss except with a roll of 18 (6+6+6 always is a miss) which he does even come close to. Legolas does 4+2-2=4 damage but the Orc can’t use his shield to the rear so only deducts 2. The Orc’s ST=10. The combat order is Aragorn, Boromir and the Orc. Aragorn thrusts at the Orc’s side with 6+1+1 and strikes home for 5+2=7 damage. The Orc’s jerkin takes 2 damage so the ST=5. Borormir has a good chance to finish the fight and makes a thrust with 5+3+2+10 and just manages to miss! The Orc strikes at Boromir and hits him with 3+1+4 for 6+1=7 damage. Fortunately for Boromir, his armor and shield absorb 3 and so he only really takes 4. Boromir’s ST=8. The Orc Warrior is tenacious and has lasted another round.

Round Six: Legolas doesn’t roll al 6’s (6+6+2) so he hits the Orc for 5+3=8 damage, but the Orc’s armor barely misses saving him by taking away only 2 damage. The Orc staggers and sinks to the ground with his ST reduced to exactly zero.