Kingdom Building Part 6: Prince Oargev and the Duke of Hazards

This is the write-up I gave my PCs for the mission detailed in the last Kingdom Building post.  By "gave them" I mean they watched me write, real-time, in Google docs, waiting to see what happened next:

How it happened:
Knowing that no one on the council would be particularly excited about the prospect of the Crown Prince leading just over a hundred troops into Karrnath to find and rescue Duke Korlan, Oargev tries to mask his leaving.  He has the members of the Prince’s shield spread word around Metrol and all the way to the northern border that the Prince is embarking on yet another mercy mission to war-torn villages.  Intrigue Roll=18! Anyone who is paying attention to the Prince and his movements assume his northern trip is another mercy mission.
As the the Prince and his retinue camp in the north, they join up with one of the northern army encampments.  The plan is to sneak across the river under the cover of darkness and be deep into Karrnathi territory before anyone notices they’d gone.  Roll=13!  The crew sneaks across the river and moves deep into Karrnath.  They find a copse of trees to set up camp for the evening.
The plan is for the Order of the Prince’s Shield to travel into nearby villages and try to find out where the Duke might be held while the Warforged and Oargev hide in the woods, keeping a perimeter to make sure no one who sees them makes it out alive.  Intrigue=30 and Combat=20.  The order is barely gone one day before they return with very solid information that the Duke is being kept in the dungeons beneath the Fortress of Atur.  The one patrol that comes across your hidden camp doesn’t make it out alive.
The rescue mission moves quietly across Karrnath, through the Karrnwood to get to Atur.  Roll=19.  They make it through silently and make camp again just southeast of Atur under the cover of the mountains and trees.
The Order of the Prince’s shield sneaks into the town surrounding Atur and hits the bars, drinking with the soldiers from the castle, learning what they can about it’s design and defenses.   Roll=13!  They find the soldiers tight lipped, and return to camp, determined to take another approach.  Blade sends some of his best scouts to observe the castle over the next 24 hours, hoping they can find some weakness in their defenses that can be exploited.  Roll=11!  As far as they can tell, the fortress is impregnable.  Amidst all of the waiting, Prince Oargev and Blade discuss amongst themselves old war accounts of Atur, and try to decide on an appropriate plan of action.   Roll=17  Blade recalls a story he once heard about an Aundarian master spy who broke OUT of Atur.  Oargev and blade piece together that story with the small pieces of information the Order and the Warforged are able to deliver and come up with a plan.
The plan is a concerted assault on a hidden sally-gate they remembered from the story that will take them into the dungeon.  There they will kill the guards, grab the duke, and make their way quickly back south to Cyre.  They make the attack!  Roll=15  The fighting is brutal, and in the first assault, many members of the Order of the Prince’s shield are badly wounded, but the warforged press on, making their way into the dungeons.  The dungeon guards, totally surprised, still manage to put up a fight.  Roll=19!  They find the Duke, break him out of prison, and flee the castle back through the way they came, disappearing into the dark woods, taking their fallen companions with them.
They move quickly, hoping to beat any border reinforcements that might be summoned, staying ahead of any pursuit.  As they leave the Karrnwood, they are faced with a patrol that heard them coming.  Roll=19.  The fighting is close, and the patrol manages to contain them, but the Warforged keep fighting! Roll=17, Roll=23, Roll=12.  It looks like the patrol is just biding their time.  It seems that they might be waiting for a larger force to come up and finish the group off.  Roll=8  A much larger patrol arrives, and surrounds the warforged, the Prince, the weak duke, and what is left of the knights.  Roll=9  Things start looking very grim as the army closes around the squad. Roll=9.  The fighting becomes more and more desperate.  Roll=13  The assault from the Karrnath army breaks the circle of warforged.  Prince Oargev is knocked unconscious.

The next the Prince knows, he wakes up in a tent, with Tact and Blade standing over him.  When he asks what happened, he is told by Blade, “In the confusion, Tact and I were able to grab you and slip away from the fighting.  Only a handful of your warforged made it away with us.  We were unable to rescue any of your knights or the Duke.  I apologize for our failure.  We are back in Cyre.”

Your Mechanical Options:

• You can redo Order of the Prince’s shield to recruit a new crew of Prince’s Shield.
• You can also do a Policy of “Purchase and Train Warforged Unit from Cannith” to put together a new warforged unit.  
• The warforged unit you had has now turned into a Hero Unit (level 4) called “Prince Oargev’s Warforged Bodyguards.”  This is Blade, Tact, and 8 other warforged.

Mission debriefing: Talking to the warforged, they tell you that, once it was clear they had lost the battle, Blade commanded most of the surviving warforged to hold the line while they got the Prince to safety.  They also tried to bring out the Duke, but the warforged carrying him was struck down.  You get the sense that Blade is deeply saddened by the loss of the warforged, but not saying anything.  He does ask you if you plan on rebuilding the unit, commissioning more warforged from the Cannith forges.  He mentions he would be more than happy to train new recruits.

Kingdom Building Part 5: Missions

Here's the not so well kept secret: in Kingdom Building, Missions, like Policies, are just slightly modified Skill Challenges.

A sample mission:

The Duke of Hazards: Rescue Duke Korlan ir'Varak from Karrnathi imprisonment.
Level 8 Complexity 3 DC 12/16/24
Required Successes (6 moderate, 2 hard)

Intrigue: 1

Espionage: 2

Espionage or Combat: 3

Research, Observation, or Intrigue: 2

Special Rules:

• Two espionage checks vs. Easy DC count as a moderate success.

This follows many of the basic skill challenge guidelines. The DCs and required successes are set exactly as the Skill Challenge rules are laid out. "Special Rules" take the place of "Advantages" but are the exact same thing with a different name. Since Units only have 6 "skills" with which to make checks, I eliminated the rule that allows for limited successes with any given skill; in fact, I codified that rule by outlining exactly which competencies were required, and in what amounts, to win the mission.

I build a challenge by outlining exactly what the mission is supposed to be. If it should be simple for the PCs to send minions to accomplish this, I make it PC level -2. If it should be a moderate challenge, I set it to PC level+1, and if it should be practically impossible, but within reach, I set it to PC level +4. Then, to set complexity, I make a list of things they will have to accomplish to win, i.e how many checks they will need to make. This helps me gain an understanding of how complex the mission needs to be.

In the above sample, I knew that, per The Forge of War, Cyre's elite adventuring/espionage group, the Champions of the Bell, gain fame for saving Duke Korlan, so I didn't want it to be easy for the Prince and his Order to Change history; it could be possible, but not easy, so the difficulty was set at level 8 (Level 4 PC + 4). Then I set the challenges. To win, the adventurers would need to:

1. Make an excuse to be at the northern border or get permission from the Queen to invade Karrnath. (Intrigue)
2. Get out of Cyre without the rest of the military noticing (Espionage)
3. Move past the Karrnathi border patrol without engaging the army (Espionage)
4. Find out where the Duke is being held Prisoner (Research, Observation, or Intrigue)
5. Get to the prison (Espionage or Combat)
6. Figure out a way inside the prison (Research, Observation, or Intrigue)
7. Break into the Prison (Espionage or Combat)
8. Get back out of Karrnath with the Duke (Espionage or Combat)

With 8 distinct tasks, it seemed complexity 3 was perfect. I selected 2 cases of moderate success with hitting easy DC for Espionage checks because the essence of this mission was espionage: I wanted whomever attempted this mission to feel like they could at least compete, even if Espionage wasn't their main deal.

Things I still need to consider about missions:

1. How should I handle missions when a PC wants to send multiple units on a mission together? My initial reaction was to use whichever unit had the best competency for each roll, but to assign failures to both sets of stamina, no matter who made the check. I would consider opening it up, allowing the PC to pick which of the multiple units would make each check, only penalizing the unit who attempting the task, and even allowing aid-another checks, with the drawback that a failure would penalize both units. I'd love to debate the virtues of both systems with anyone who has ideas, and would also appreciate any alternate ideas anyone might have.

2. Can a PC do a mission without being attached to another unit? I have a PC whose unit ALWAYS failed missions, because dice rolls were bad and their math was never quite good enough. The PC wanted to just do the missions solo, but if just the PC were doing the mission, why not just run it? Time constraints and the desire to entertain everyone nixed that idea, but after looking at what some LARPs are experimenting with, concerning how much can be done with in-between game actions, I decided to consider ways to let individual PCs (or small groups of them) attempt missions. Should I just let them make appropriate skill challenges instead of competencies? Should I convert them into "Heroic Unit" stats somehow and let them try the mission the same way an NPC would? Would that allow me to eliminate the attachment rules I am not happy with and just let the PC's "Mission Stats" also go on the mission?

Next time in Kingdom Building: a sample mission, fully executed.