Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Piggs Are Grunting

Due to some health issues, I have to spend sometimes inordinate amounts of time in the bathroom. So naturally, I tend to run paper and pencil imaginary games for myself while stuck there.

Now the folks who've been here a few years may remember Pigg's Hollow ... a fantasy setting for my pre-gunpowder figure. Now recently, I'd been playing against a wanna-be Dark Lord. The guy never really had enough punch to conquer everybody, and the alliances against him managed to survive some treacherous break-ups. (yes, I have ... and sometimes lose ... dice in there too).

I was stuck for a way to bring the series to a conclusion I liked. While the Dark Lord rarely appeared in person at the battles, his armies could be worn down and defeated. Being a mega powerful mage, the Dark Lord could hold a few of his strongholds indefinitely. It was a bad logic loop until it occurred to me that many mages follow funny diets ... what if part of the guy's diet wasn't so much magical power as food allergy? So, three tries later, on a campaign to secure the ever important ancient ruins, a batch of biscuits cooked in peanut oil ...

Okay, the Dark Lord is gone. One by one his lieutenants have either killed each other or been driven off. But there are these areas of miasma where much of the earlier battles and long term conflicts were waged. I'd like to run a set of skirmish games for mopping up exercises, but had a brain fart.
Used to be, I could rattle off formations and officers for several Medieval armies ... and suddenly could only recall that the lance was five to six folks and mounted and that English archers basic squad was 20 folks.

So I'm interested in basic TO&E's for basic small patrol and picquets and drawing a total blank. These spots of anemia are, unfortunately, another side effect. I couldn't even remember the last name of my old friend who ran the Wackamania campaign (a very Daisy sort of D&D ,,, saving throws could be adjust by how much your playing could make Brian laugh -- my wife told me his name when I got upset).

So rather than trying to recall lost data, I'd hoped that we might have bits of trivia floating around I could steal ...
:)
Arthur