NCO

"N.C.O. Non-commissioned officer. A person hated more than the Germans. Tommy says his stripes are issued out with the rations, and he ought to know."

-Tommy's Dictionary of the Trenches AG Empey -1917

NCO

You are the very sinew of the army, holding what would otherwise be a mutinous band of brigands together. The brass might “strategize” back at HQ with their maps and tea pots but it’s you yelling at the lads to advance when the Boche shells are ripping them to shreds. It’s you who are the rock that remains steady when your officer has lost his mind. You might be a pre-war veteran or by some freak accident the army might have promoted you from the ranks on actual merit.  Whatever the case, you have more in common with the enlisted rabble than the nabobs in command. Not that you won’t follow whatever insane orders they might give you.

Attribute: Wisdom. The NCO must have a wisdom score of 13+ unless they come to the class via promotion.  

Rank: The NCO starts the game as a Corporal / Caporal under the command of an Officer. It is your job to make sure the Officers orders are followed. You take command of the unit if your officer is killed. You also roll to determine loot if your unit takes an enemy position.

Equipment: NCO uniform, either: rifle, light weapon, or side arm.

Skills

Duty before Dishonor – You can sacrifice 2HP to not be suppressed.

Rally – If the NCO’s unit is suppressed, they may attempt to Rally them. Roll a wisdom check versus a DC of 20 minus the unit’s morale. If successful the unit is no longer suppressed.

Mortars – The NCO can call in the Companies mortars once per mission. Make an attack roll modified by wisdom bonus to hit a target. Everyone in the same range band as the target must make a dexterity save or take 2d6 points of damage. (3d6 for 1917-1918)

Bully – The best NCO’s are feared like a stern father. You can use this to your advantage. During the Front Phase you can Bully the quivering rear echelon clerks for supplies. Roll on the following table

1 – They call your bluff, you get nothing

2-5 choose one of: Ammo, Food, Kit or Weapons

6 –Booze

The Old Man

"The Old Man" Captain of the Company. He is called "the old man" because generally his age is about 28.

-Tommy's Dictionary of the Trenches AG Empey -1917

Officer

You hold a commission in the Army. You may have gone to a military academy, or had your position secured by family connections. You start the game as a subaltern but judging by the depressing casualty rate of line officers if you can just stay alive you will probably be offered a promotion. Ostensibly, your job is to lead the men of your section to victory, while at the same time keeping strict records on the quantity and condition of whatever personnel and equipment the army sees fit to entrust you with. In reality you are constantly juggling the often times conflicting demands of HQ and the needs of your men. It’s not easy to find the right balance between shrill martinet and chummy uncle that is required of a good commander, but if you are lucky you have a sturdy NCO to help.

Attribute: Charisma. An officer must have a charisma of 13 or better unless they come to the class via promotion.

Equipment: Officers Uniform, Side Arm, Field Glass, Whistle.

Rank: The Officer starts the game as a 2nd Lieutenant / Sous Lieutenant

Skills

Soldiers – The officer has command of NPC soldiers. A Lieutenant commands a section or platoon, a Captain commands a company, and a Major or Colonel commands an entire battalion. These troops are vital on missions, and can also be used to perform task during The Front turn phase. Your duties include keeping a record of these troops on your character sheet. If a soldier under your command survives 5 missions they increase in level.

Artillery Strike – Once per Mission Phase you can request artillery support. This requires the use of a soldier who will no longer be available for the mission. Make an attack roll modified by Wisdom to determine if the coordinates are correct, then roll 2d6 plus proficiency bonus.

2-9 Requests denied

10-12 light bombardment (4d6)

13-18 heavy bombardment (6d6)

Subtract two from the roll if you request a gas attack. (1916 or later)

Inspiring Commands – The Officer may inspire his soldiers and other player characters. Each day they receive a number of inspiration dice equal to their proficiency bonus. At level 1-3 this is a d4, level 4-6 a d6, and level 6-10 a d8. By issuing an order they may also give an inspiration dice that may be added to a d20 roll.

Request Assets – You may request military assets from High Command.  Section, Platoon, and Company commanders request assets from Battalion HQ, Battalion commanders request assets from Division HQ. During The Front phase of the campaign turn make a Charisma Check vs DC 15. If successful, you may select an asset from the following table.

Battalion Assets       Regimental Assets

Food                        Same as Battalion plus  

Ammo                     Heavy MGs

Kit                           Light Artillery

Light MGs                Mortar Section

Replacements          Reassignment to Depot

Batsman / Aide - At level four the Officer is assigned an orderly to assist with administration and personal upkeep.  The Batsman is a first level Rifleman with attributes and may gain experience.

The Solitude of Command – The Officer cannot share a bond with any other players unless they too are Officers.

A year of Old School D&D or All Hail Jabba and the Deep Ones!

Our last gaming session was the finale of an old school D&D campaign that lasted over a year. It started out with Swords & Wizardry Complete, moved to a house ruled S&W, and then switched to my take on Basic D&D Lasers & Loincloths. The game was undertaken in the spirit of old school hack and slash, focusing on dungeons and the danger that inevitably comes when players roll 3d6 in order for stats and the DM makes all the combat rolls in the open.

Eventually we grew out of the “dungeon crawl” as focus of play as the characters began to develop motivations and well, character. They became involved in the power struggle for their home city of Sanctuary, and after “saving” it took off for wider horizons. The campaign became bifurcated with one party on a Sword and Planet sci fi jaunt, and the other trying to not die in a Carcosa hex crawl. Eventually the two parties rejoined to once again save Sanctuary, this time from the unspeakable machinations of a former player character.

We played nearly every weekend for about 15 months, with brief breaks for a few other games. I estimate the campaign lasted 40 sessions.

Many great stories were made, and I think a good time was had by all. The game is now “done.” I intend to have a denouement to revisit the remaining characters just to see what they have got up to. I think perhaps the holiday of Secret Santicore might be a good time to check back in on them.

A complete chronicle of the characters, and the “plot” of the campaign are too convoluted and idiosyncratic to retell fully, (never mind that I don't remember all the details.) I do have quite a lot of data on roll20 however, so instead of recounting the complete history of the adventure how about some statistics?

Lasers & Loincloths

Number of Real Players: 12

Number of Characters Played: 31

Character Deaths: 10

Number of Characters Killed by other players: 2

Highest Ability Score: 18

Lowest Ability Score: 3

Character Race Breakdown:

Human: 20

Elf: 2

Blarka: 1

Robot: 2

Red Man of Shulim: 1 (kind of)

Bone Man of Shulim: 1

Yellow Man of Shulim: 1

Seablood: 1

Space Dwarf: 1

Alien From the Planet Kalmurga: 1

Number of Male Characters: 29

Number of Female Characters: 2

Number of Fighters: 9

Number of Clerics: 5

Number of Thieves: 3 (then 2 with Belgrators class change)

Number of Magic users: 4

Other Classes: 11

Highest Character XP total: 38, 414 (Azax)

Highest Character Level: 6

Highest Character Hit Point Total: 46 (Ibash)

Highest Level of Magic Spell Cast: 3

Highest GP total on a Record Sheet: 100000000000000000000000 gp ( La Bomba)

Highest Legitimate GP total on a Record Sheet: 5200 gp (Azax)

Character that survived the most sessions: Ibash

Character that died the quickest: Redoutable Will (died in first combat)

Number of Crits ( (a roll of 20 on a d20 followed by another roll of 20): 5

Crits on Players: 1

Crits on Monsters: 3

Number of Crits followed by a roll of 100 on the d100 Arduin Grimoire Critical Hit Chart: 1

Number of Shoggoths defeated: 1

Number of Spawn of Shub-Niggurath defeated: 2

Highest Level NPC Defeated: Level 8 Seablood (Fighter/Cleric) Jabba

Civilizations Destroyed: 2

Planets Destroyed: 1

Planets Created: at least 1

Miles Traveled: around 84 trillion

Space Ships Destroyed: 4

Space Ships Lost: 2

Number of Carcosa Hexes Traversed: 16

Dimensions Visited: 4

Magic Rituals Learned by players: 2

Magic Rituals Performed by players: 0

Number of Characters that ascended to Godhood: 1 (Bishma)

Number of Characters that married: 3

Number of Wives: 63

Number of marriage refusals: 2

Number of children fathered: 1 plus the matter created in a supernova

Number of Henchmen lost: we stopped counting at 17

With Love From the Emplacement

"Emplacement." A position made of earth or sandbags from which a machine gun is fired. It is supposed to be invisible to the enemy. They generally blow it up in the course of a couple of days, just by luck of course. 
"Tommy's Dictionary of the Trenches" by Arthur Guy Empey -1917

Gunner / Mitrailleur

Five hundred rounds a minute, a curtain of lead shadowing half a mile with death. An entire generation of young men sent to the grave with a few pulls of the trigger. You are the instrument of the future, scientific, calculated, machine oblivion. You have more firepower than an entire division of Napoleon's infantry. You can rip a man to shreds with a short burst of 8mm from the long French Chauchat or suppress an entire battalion with a well-placed field of .303 from a British Lewis gun. You are a gunner, the backbone of both the offensive and defensive strategies of your platoon. Your weapon is a heavy, complicated machine that is god awful loud and scalding hot when in use. Just like you.

Attribute: Constitution. The Gunner must have a constitution score of 13+.

Rank: The Gunner starts as a Private/ Soldat 2eme , under the command of an NCO and Officer.

Kit: Infantry Uniform, Light Machine Gun (Chauchat or Lewis Gun), Ammo

Skills

Area denial – In a combat round you can create a field of fire as large as a range band that causes any unit moving into it to test for suppression. When you do this roll 1d6, on a 5-6 you are out of ammo.  

Suppressing Fire – You can make an attack against a target and if the target is wounded the targets unit must test for suppression.

Overwatch – If you are firing from a fixed or prepared position you may add +1 to initiative. It takes at least one round to prepare a position.

Fire from the Hip- You can fire a LMG in melee range.

Machine Gun Team – At level four you are assigned an assistant. . A 1st level Tommy or Poilu with attributes scores and XP. The assistant carries extra ammo and a gun mount, allowing you to use a Heavy Machine Gun. (If you can get one from Battalion)

He's gone west mate, the body snatcher got em'

“Body Snatcher.” Tommy’s term for a sniper.

-From “Tommy’s Dictionary of the Trenches” by Arthur Guy Empey - 1917

Sniper / Fusilier

One of the most telling features of the modern battlefield is its emptiness. Entire divisions burrow beneath the ground, seeking shelter from the death that fills the air.

Seeking shelter from you.

Some say that killing a man who doesn’t see it coming is not fighting fair, that concealing your position and shooting from a distance is somehow dishonorable. They don’t get it. To them war is a game, to you it is an art.

Despite initial disdain for the practice, eventually most of the belligerents of the war had specialized schools for snipers. The German snipers in particular were feared because of their superior optics.

Attribute: Dexterity. The Sniper must have a dexterity score of 13+.

Rank: The Sniper starts the game as a Private 1st Class/ Soldat 1.eme, under the command of an NCO and Officer.

Equipment: Infantry Uniform, Rifle, Field Glass

Skills

Marksman – You are skilled at long distance shooting, able to anticipate movement, lead targets, calculate windage , drop, and control your breath. At long range rather than a penalty you get a +1 to hit with Rifles and can add your DEX bonus to damage.

Camouflage – You know how to conceal yourself on the battlefield and take positions that do not reveal your shots. You get an advantage when hiding. You know where to look for enemy snipers, you get an advantage when searching for them.

Fear – A good sniper is capable of singlehandedly suppressing an enemy unit. If you take one round to spot an enemy officer or other conspicuous target, on the next round you automatically win initiative. If your shot causes a wound then the unit the target belongs to must test for suppression.  

Observer Team – At 4th level, the sniper is assigned an observer. A 1st level Tommy or Poilu with attributes scores and XP. If the sniper has an observer with him and they study a target for a round the sniper can make a shot at an advantage. (Note: This allows the sniper team to take an extra round to make the shot for the Fear ability at an advantage.)

(fusante №1)

Continuing post about character classes from my in progress WW1 game, Lead & Steel.

Bomber / Grenadier

The British SMLE rifle has an effective range of a mile; the French Soixante-Quinze artillery can fire a 12lb High Explosive shell over five miles. The thing is, when Ftitzs is snug in a trench you can fire as much lead as you want from a mile away, and when you poke in to survey the scene guess what? They will still be waiting. It’s a funny thing this war, we can theoretically kill more efficiently from further away than ever before, but theories don’t seem to get the job done.

You do.

You are a Grenadier, part of a tradition that predates even the days of the mustachioed bomb lobbers of the Sun King. You are trained to clear a path in the blind corners of the enemy trench with your F1 Grenades or Mills Bombs, and then close the distance and finish the Hun the old fashioned way, with cold steel.

Attribute: Strength. A Bomber must have strength of 13+.

Rank: The Grenadier starts the game as a Private / Soldat 2.eme, under the command of an NCO and Officer.

Equipment: Infantry Uniform with bomber/grenadier badge, Satchel of Grenades (6), trench knife or club.

Skills

Raider – You are trained and skilled at infiltrating enemy trenches. You get an advantage when sneaking on the battlefield. If you make a melee attack against a foe while hidden multiply damage by your level.

Bomber – You are skilled at throwing grenades. +1 to Hit with thrown weapons and you can throw grenades at short range without disadvantage.  In addition, you do not fumble grenades.

Sister Steel – You are skilled at melee combat. +1 to hit with melee weapons. In a single melee round you may attack a number of 1st level foes equal to your level.

A Night in Paris – At fourth level, in recognition of your service you receive one leave pass.

Posthuman and Proud

I typically don’t write about actual games of Lasers & Loincloths. The campaign has been going on too long for it to make much sense to anyone who hasn’t played in it. Too many asides, setting idiosyncrasies, and old stories.

A brief example. After making it back through the Ghooric Zone that wards the rest of the galaxy from their home planet of Abbith, the half of the characters that are in space finally reached their destination. A defunct and ancient yeti robot that now orbits their home planet in silent decay. One of the party clerics, a Samarajyan man named Bishma sought this old machine as the source of the transmission that beamed down to the planet's surface, transmissions that over the millennium a holy order had been founded on.

While inside the robot, (which of course was a dungeon thanks to Joshua Burnetts fantastic entry to the  2011 one page dungeon contest http://bernietheflumph.blogspot.com/) the party encountered a a pool of quicksilver with a dead yeti floating in it. This desiccated yeti was wired to the brain/control center and it was clear to the players that this was how the robot was controlled.

I wanted to give the players a hint that the quicksilver pool would affect anyone entering it, so I had the Wizard Azax’s flying armadillo familiar enter the pool. I rolled on the god seed table and whadda know, Chai the familiar gained superpowers.

Of course the rest of the party now wanted a dip in the god seed.

The wizard Azax went first, and out of the other side of the pool a clone of him emerged, only the clone had a goatee and arched black eyebrows and so was obviously evil. The party won initiative and wizards are squishy so “good Azax” blasted “evil Azax” with Bolt of the Vaccum. Evil Azax didn’t even live long enough to question the philosophical implications of his existence.

The intelligent bipedal she-weasel Skreek went next, her shtick is that she puts nearly everything in her mouth. And as a Blarka or weasel person she will only live to 8th level. (A re-skinned b/x halfling.) Roll on the god-seed table and she is now immortal and no longer needs to eat.

Finally Jesh, the farm boy come fighter come husband of a Djinn Princess decides to have a go. In is sci-fi exo-suit with the hilt of a cursed blade protruding from his chest he steps into the pool. 1d6 versus god seed table, and Jesh’s equipment falls to the floor as he evolves into a being of pure energy. Strangely appropriate for a man that love’s a genie spirit of fire.

The whole affair of the god seed table speaks directly to what I have referred to as the “deep universal thing” that happens in rpgs when you embrace the random number generation. Sure I chose the table, and we use our biased imaginations to make conjectures of how the results are meaningful. Conjectures that are predisposed to make logical narratives out of the “randomness” but damn, the results of letting the dice fall where they may where uncannily appropriate this time.

I dunno.

So now I have an immortal weasel to deal with who is already asking if level limits still apply. (We won't worry about that until she actually hits the limit.) I also have a 6th level fighter who became a being of pure energy. This required some extemporaneous rulings, I told him he was basically Dr Manhattan and he rolled with it reasoning that Dr Manhattan was Dr. Jon Osterman a nuclear physicist but Jesh was a farm boy and warrior so the understanding of “pure energy” would be different. He wouldn’t immediately become a post human god for instance, a feat that took Physicist Osterman some time to work up to anyway.

Kudos to Jesh’s player for the solid interpretation. I owe him some actual mechanics.

Being of Pure Energy.

"World line" by SVG version: K. Aainsqatsi at en.wikipediaOriginal PNG version: Stib at en.wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia.(Original text : self-made). Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons -

The being of pure energy will eventually evolve to transcend “mortal” interest to exist in all places at all time subject only to entropy on a cosmic scale.

They no longer accumulate experience points. Rather they subtract the experience points they would normally gain until they reach 0 xp, the null state where they simply merge with space-time.

They retain the Hit Dice, HP total , Ability Scores,To hit bonus, and Saving Throw of their previous state. Armor class is equal to 14 plus DEX bonus.

They lose any special class abilities but gain others.

Entropy - Between the experience point total they had when they evolved and zero xp The Being of Pure Energy slowly loses their mortal identity and finds it difficult to interact with mundane reality. In order to physically interact with the world they must make a saving throw. Success indicates they can interact with reality, but they do so at the cost of 1HD worth of damage per round. Failure means their particles scatter across the universe and it takes a number of rounds equal to their hit dice to reform them.

Fission - The Being of Pure Energy can project gamma rays as a missile or melee attack for damage equal to half of their hit dice. They can forgo this attack in a combat round to increase their armor class by an amount equal to their hit dice.

Nucleosynthesis - Magical and energy attacks such as from laser weapons heal the Being of Pure Energy. They still take damage from mundane physical force. When a Being of Pure energy reaches 0 HP they simply dissipate into sub atomic particles. They may reform after a number of rounds equal to their hit dice have passed.

Hypersurface of the Present - While in a physical state the Being of Pure Energy may fly and communicate via telepathy. They are immune to any environmental effects. When not in a physical form they may teleport to any location they can perceive.