Author Topic: Orcs in the Tower  (Read 1263 times)

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Offline Cpt Tiberius J. Krik

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Orcs in the Tower
« on: May 16, 2022, 05:00:46 PM »
The example in MERP 1ed with the characters approaching a ruined tower in the rain, with orcs just breaking camp.

Did anyone flesh this out as a short adventure?

Offline Frabby

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Re: Orcs in the Tower
« Reply #1 on: May 29, 2022, 01:52:00 PM »
When I first tipped my toe in the water as a GM more than three decades ago, I took this intro as an inspiration for a combat exercise. First thing I ever GMed, and I wouldn’t call it a proper adventure.

Turns out a dozen orcs is too much for four level 1 PCs (including my own char which I played while GMing).
Total party kill.
Taught me a lot about balancing as a GM though.

We rebuilt pretty much the same characters, tweaking them with the lesson we just learned. :)
Only after that exercise did we embark on our first quest, The Loons of the Long Hill.

Offline Hurin

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Re: Orcs in the Tower
« Reply #2 on: May 29, 2022, 08:16:03 PM »
Lol, good learning experience I guess! I do remember running that short adventure. I had forgotten the number of the Orcs though. That IS way too much for a 4-person party.
'Last of all, Húrin stood alone. Then he cast aside his shield, and wielded an axe two-handed'. --J.R.R. Tolkien

'Every party needs at least one insane person.'  --Aspen of the Jade Isle

Offline Vladimir

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Re: Orcs in the Tower
« Reply #3 on: May 30, 2022, 02:09:48 AM »
My game club was made up primarily of war gamers and such a scenario would be more of a test of players' discretion; whether they would know that avoiding contact would be the better option.
The idea of "balanced" scenarios goes out the window with modern warfare -If the battle is evenly matched somebody messed up.  In our wargaming campaigns, the real challenge is setting up a battle's conditions, from the site to the time to the forces involved. General Nathan Bedford Forrest said, "Git there fustest with the mostest." The American Civil War was an example where having greater numbers gave the North a marked advantage but Southern generals made a point to make up for lack of troop numbers with tactical positioning and maneuvers.
  Four 1st level human fighters may not even be a match against four orc fighters of the same levels. There are ways to even the odds, such as staging ambushes, sniping and choosing the terrain, but the only way to truly have a "balanced" scenario is to provide near identical forces to both sides on a symmetrical map. 
  At first glance I would opt for avoiding contact but if engaging the enemy is an imperative, I would shift into full guerilla mode and see how much damage I could inflict.
When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
-Lao Tzu

Offline Majyk

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Re: Orcs in the Tower
« Reply #4 on: June 02, 2022, 06:56:40 AM »
Yup.

One thing playing Blood Bowl by GW has, are Tiers for playing challenging teams **knowingly**.
Feeble stats, feeble abilities but friggin’ fun as all hell when going into a game knowing you’ll probably lose but y’wanna make take on the adversity.

Rolemaster is a very similar game system - re: party makeup - more than any other game and tactics/reasoning(Reasoning? ;)) are what will get a party away from being killed in a heartbeat.
You cannot have the usual murder hobos play this game.
They will be slaughtered time and again.

Enjoy making overwhelming odds, but dead-drop signs those aren’t ordinary foes; skirmishers; battles.
Nothing kills players faster if they don’t know they can face Kobayashi Maru situations or worse in a GM’s game world. 
Tell them ahead of time, then let them make their mistakes.  Don’t hold back…much. :)

The best part are the decades-later tales they’ll tell about narrowly surviving deathtraps because they paid attention.

Cheers to your game and hope you enjoy fleshing the adventure side-trek out the way you wanna, if not already done by others to share.