Subject: MYSTARA-L Digest - 27 Aug 2005 to 28 Aug 2005 (#2005-169) From: Automatic digest processor Date: 29/08/2005, 17:00 To: Recipients of MYSTARA-L digests Reply-to: Mystara RPG Discussion There are 5 messages totalling 345 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Winter War (3) 2. Mystara d20: Races 3. Help with DA1 & DA2 Blackmoor ESD ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.pandius.com To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2005 12:54:31 +0200 From: Knud Gentz Subject: Winter War Hi all, once upon a time... I played module X10 as a player and would now like to run it for my own group of players. I have read up on the various comments and recommendations posted to the list and agree that some things will have to be changed, since in our campaign the nomads were defeated by the alliance. I am thinking about having the nomads attack in late summer, so the war will drag on into autumn and, possibly, winter. How will that change the course of the war? Obviously movement in mountains will be impossible, passes might be closed. Movement rates will generally decline. It may be easier for units to get out of supply. Attacking and besieging cities will be more difficult. By late autumn / winter the nomads will have the bulk of their army in Darokinian territory, but the allies for both sides may have a difficult time to join the battle. Any suggestions what else will be different? Who will have the greates benefit? Will it at all be possible to wage war in winter? What will happen, if the war is not decided by then? I'm not into military history and have no idea how hard it really is, to supply an army in winter in hostile territory. Thanks for any comments Knud -- The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret law - George W. Bush ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2005 05:31:04 -0700 From: Ray Allen Subject: Re: Mystara d20: Races Joaquin, It might give you a head start in your project if you base your work off of my WnW Rules. I made WnW for playing in my Mystara campaign. Take a look at..... http://home.psknet.com/allenr/Dark_Coast.html --Ray. --- Joaquin Menchaca wrote: > Hello. > > I am going to select some races to documented for the > "Known World" campaign. I wanted to get peoples ideas > for this. I wanted to do the following: > > Dwarf > Gnome > Elf > Hin > Human > > I want to detail the racial statistics, and have also > "cultural" statistics. Later in the future, I can > document specific regional traits for cultures. > > I dare not mention the half-elf, but there is > conflicting material for this. Originally, there was > no notion of a half-elf. The magical fey only beget > other magical fey. However, other especially AD&D 2nd > Edition added the existance of "half-elves". > > I wanted to avoid inserting the "half-elf" or any > other munchkin (half-satyr, half-dryad, half-ogre, > half-orc, etc.), at least for now, but I am curious as > to what the Mystara's community point of view on this. > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam > protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > > ******************************************************************** > The Other Worlds Homepage: > http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp > The Mystara Homepage: http://www.pandius.com > To unsubscribe, send email to > LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM > with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. > WAG, BFC, EBT..... Shortlines are the most interesting! ---------------------------------------------- If you have to choose between books and computers, there's no doubt which you should choose. You should choose books. --Bill Gates of Microsoft ---------------------------------------------- Geek Code: GLS$ d- s:+ a C++ UL++++ P? L++ E---- W++ N+ o-- K- w--- O? 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Mail SpamGuard. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2005 16:54:11 +0200 From: Federico Kaftal Subject: Help with DA1 & DA2 Blackmoor ESD Hi everybody, I know this is an issue Shawn Stanley is already dealing with, but at the moment there's no fix for my bugs available on the Vaults yet; so, please, excuse my broad request: It's just another couple of ESD bugs: Bug #1: DA1 Adventures in Blackmoor lacks page n. 31 Bug #2: DA2 Temple of the Frog misses page n.33 (or page n.34: the issue is not clear, as the other side of the page contains a map which is not numbered, so in fact it's better to provide both pag.33 and pag.34 to be sure) Would anybody PM me a scan of those few pages (in any common format, .pdf, .gif, .jpg...) at kaftal @ hotmail.com or else upload them on a web site for everybody's convenience? Thank you, Federico Kaftal ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2005 09:50:44 +0000 From: Rodger Burns Subject: Re: Winter War > Hi all, > > once upon a time... I played module X10 as a player and would now like to > run it for my own group of players. I have read up on the various comments > and recommendations posted to the list and agree that some things will have > to be changed, since in our campaign the nomads were defeated by the alliance. > I am thinking about having the nomads attack in late summer, so the war > will drag on into autumn and, possibly, winter. How will that change the > course of the war? Obviously movement in mountains will be impossible, > passes might be closed. Movement rates will generally decline. It may be > easier for units to get out of supply. Attacking and besieging cities will > be more difficult. By late autumn / winter the nomads will have the bulk of > their army in Darokinian territory, but the allies for both sides may have > a difficult time to join the battle. > Any suggestions what else will be different? > Who will have the greates benefit? > Will it at all be possible to wage war in winter? What will happen, if the > war is not decided by then? I'm not into military history and have no idea > how hard it really is, to supply an army in winter in hostile territory. > I suspect that the Nomads, as presented in X10, would find it nearly impossible to run a winter invasion campaign. They simply won't be able to feed themselves. The simplest, most common, and most effective way for a medieval army to supply was to forage off the land - hardly possible in winter. The alternative, bringing in supplies from home, would be incredibly difficult for the Nomads. Supply trains would have to start no closer than Sind, crossing over at least one mountain range and under constant threat of attack by partisans, adventurers serving as saboteurs, bandits and humanoids. If the Sindhi have not been thoroughly pacified, supplies will be under attack by rebels even within Sindhi territory. Sind is not a rich country, either, and if its farms can't support the entire supply effort the next source of food is Hule. As a result, I expect that the Nomads would be pretty much incapable of waging war in the wintertime, and that their invasion would almost have to be desperate to be concluded before that point. Trap an unprepared Nomad army in the middle of Darokin in winter, and you'll be ready to cut a starving, demoralized pack of soldiers to pieces come spring. Assuming that for some bizarre reason, though, the Nomads plan to fight in Darokin through the winter (rather than the simpler plan of "Overrun everything worth taking by mid-autumn"), the following measures could potentially be taken: - Use Akesoli as a forward storehouse. If it can be captured intact with a surprise strike, extra food caravans can be sent from Sind in late summer and used to stuff its warehouses to the rafters. This reduces the resupply complexity by about half (more, if Akorros can also be neutralized, allowing water transport along Lake Amsorak). - Establish other forts and storehouses further forward in Darokin, improving the supply situation. Food would be stored in these places, and defended by soldiers; cavalry patrols might also be based out of these locations, to dissuade partisans and bandits. Effective, but requires above-average discipline and uses up troops. - Engage in intelligent foraging - rationing what's captured and storing the rest. Requires REAL discipline from the troops, probably won't serve to supply the entire army through the winter, slows the rate of advance drastically (due to the increased coordination needed in running a mobile harvesting operation) and risks starvation if the enemy burns their own crops before retreating. - Provide scrolls of _create food and water_ or similar items to magically bring in food, to clerics in each unit. Excellent mobility, but prohibitively expensive - using 3E rules for buying scrolls (the best numbers I have available without access to most of my 0E books), it costs something like *62,000* gp to acquire enough scrolls to keep just one of the Master's regular divisions (992 soldiers and 496 mounts) fed for one day. (Scribing the scrolls reduces gp costs by half, but requires the expenditure of nearly 1500 xp by somebody, as well as about two months' work.) As such, this is probably a stopgap used to keep the elite core of a unit alive, or supplement other food delivery methods. So in short: the Nomads would probably not want to keep a campaign in Darokin active past mid-autumn, and under normal circumstances could expect to be soundly beaten if they did. Special measures can be taken to improve the winter supply situation, but are costly and not guaranteed to work. There's also a lot of opportunities for adventuring teams to attack a winter supply situation, resulting in a starving Nomad army if their efforts are successful. Hope this helps! > Thanks for any comments > Knud > ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2005 16:44:33 -0400 From: Dan Eustace Subject: Re: Winter War In general, the main areas of battle are fairly temperate, although mountains are a different story. Darokin, Alfheim, and Ylaruam would not be impacted, much, IMO. The same for anything to the south - avg. winter temps for darokin from PWA3 are 35-50 F, so snowfall related effects would be minimal. Of course, food may be still be in short supply, though. For simplicity, I would stick w. the supply rules, and assume that enough stores were gathered in the fall to keep units supplied thru winter. Maybe make exceptions for units that are cut off in snowbound mts, though, since supplies could not reach them. Mountainous areas to the north (Glantri, Rockhome, N. Reaches), and Ethengar have sig. colder weather (-15-30 F) so snow cover could 1/2 movement or imbolize units even. recovery from fatigue could take twice as long. The war machine has penalties for battles on snow (-10) and nomads could take the "unfavorable envr." penalty of -25 in deep snow or temps < 20. The Ethengar GAZ may have some info n how they cope w. the winter. Units that are not equipped properly could recover casulaties slower, or not at all, or even take losses and fatigue as if they were out of food. This would be esp. true if severe winter conditions hit. The units equipment factor (part of BFR) or troop class could be a guideline as to how good their winter gear is. I'd say to make the weather as much or as little of a factor as you want. Even a few general adjustments could add some flavor over the winter months. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Knud Gentz" To: Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 6:54 AM Subject: [MYSTARA] Winter War > Hi all, > > once upon a time... I played module X10 as a player and would now like to > run it for my own group of players. I have read up on the various comments > and recommendations posted to the list and agree that some things will have > to be changed, since in our campaign the nomads were defeated by the alliance. > I am thinking about having the nomads attack in late summer, so the war > will drag on into autumn and, possibly, winter. How will that change the > course of the war? Obviously movement in mountains will be impossible, > passes might be closed. Movement rates will generally decline. It may be > easier for units to get out of supply. Attacking and besieging cities will > be more difficult. By late autumn / winter the nomads will have the bulk of > their army in Darokinian territory, but the allies for both sides may have > a difficult time to join the battle. > Any suggestions what else will be different? > Who will have the greates benefit? > Will it at all be possible to wage war in winter? What will happen, if the > war is not decided by then? I'm not into military history and have no idea > how hard it really is, to supply an army in winter in hostile territory. > > Thanks for any comments > Knud > > -- > The legislature's job is to write law. > It's the executive branch's job to interpret law > - George W. Bush > > ******************************************************************** > The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp > The Mystara Homepage: http://www.pandius.com > To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM > with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ------------------------------ End of MYSTARA-L Digest - 27 Aug 2005 to 28 Aug 2005 (#2005-169) ****************************************************************