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Miniphracts: Silver and Gold

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[Jump to factions and abilities][Jump to timeline]

Summary

If you know what I've been up to, you might think this is about the game I just finished running. It isn't. I'm a whole game behind. As such this is a little messy, even for one of my blog posts.

The rules I used can be found here. The main changes I made are:

Overall, though, it was mostly base Cataphracts.

I'll start by going over my conclusions and then discuss the game in detail, because I'm not sure everyone is interested in the full game report.

Short summary

There were three factions: the Kingdom of Azi, who controlled the river valley, the Mountain Kingdom, who controlled a smaller river valley, and what I will just call the pirates.

The Mountain Kingdom had a more offensively oriented goal (take a city from the Kingdom of Azi) as well as the goal of holding onto three relics, the Kingdom of Azi had a loot related goal (more defensive) as well as a goal of finding and getting back a relic that the Mountain Kingdom had. The pirates were broken into three subfactions in a three way competition to get the most loot, while at the same time protecting and avenging any other pirate.

Everyone was given a hand-drawn, incomplete map. It gave detailed information of their own territory and limited information otherwise.

Things that worked well

I actually was pleasantly surprised at how well the sea faction with competing goals worked; they did basically exactly what I hoped for, which was to subtly undermine each other but unite in the face of external threats.

I made a game expectation doc and I think nobody was really surprised by what type of game it was. This could just be because it's a smaller game, maybe drawing from a smaller community, and thus I would have had to deal with fewer expectation clashes regardless.

Having slightly different names for different locations depending on which faction you were from was fun, and caused surprisingly little confusion. Likewise, giving everyone different maps worked quite well.

Having evocative titles (which I mostly chose in order to try and invent some plausible gender-neutral titles) went a long way towards getting everyone on the same page about the setting and culture despite the fact I did almost no worldbuilding.

The boat rules I think worked really well. The barges were not used all that much, but didn't cause problems either. Three hexes a day on the sea felt plenty, and while in some ways they were nerfed compared to base cataphracts, I think rules for raiding the coast without disembarking made the pirates feel fun, thematic, and less mentally cumbersome for both the refs and the players. They were loosely based on the war canoe from various cultures, which did take some explaining.

Reduced supply worked very well. I had there be about 3/4 of the supply needed by all the armies in the first forage. About 1/2 of the way through people were having to make decisions about foraging twice.

Operations were I think easier to manage than they can be in a larger game. Likewise, tactics were not really a big problem, although I did two things to make them manageable: you only get to do them if you know a battle is coming a day in advance, and I wasn't very generous with the bonuses.

I think I did a good job of using terrain to make a very small map feel a bit bigger.

Looking back it had a charming wackiness. I don't know how much of that was wonky rules, unbalanced teams or players not spread as thin, or even just the relative newness of the experience. It was more work than my previous game, maybe less "fair", but there were more surprises, more twists and turns, more memorable stories.

Things that went less well

I think the map was maybe too small (though actually I might revisit this thought in the next blog post, where I made the map bigger.) A very dense map makes for a lot of work for the ref. It is possible for everyone's scouting ranges to overlap, and I like to sort of mentally separate the players into clusters of scouting ranges and process them by cluster. It also doesn't force decisiveness, as players feel they have a lot of time to achieve their goals.

Mercenaries as player characters is not a good experience, probably even more so than base cataphracts. You are almost certainly not going to be hired until it's very late in the game, and you have the usual problems of having less clear motivations.

DPR was right about his rules, especially harrying being bad, needing to cap morale, needing to remove the benefit of having multiple commanders in one battle, and army size not mattering enough.

If you don't give people the goal of defending their cities they might not do it.

A fixed end time and a short game meant people tried to game things a bit too much, often to their detriment. I think it's probably better to try and achieve your objectives early and hold onto them.

It was a pretty big time commitment to run for the size of the game. The second game I ran though was a lot lower of a time commitment - some of that was improving my processes, some of that was a bigger map and thus fewer battles and less player interaction, some of that might have been just getting used to it.

The Factions

We started off with three main factions, one of which had three subfactions.

The Mountain Kingdom:

Once the gods walked down from their mountain and created a kingdom here. Now all have forgotten. All but you, who guard the artifacts they have left behind, whose priests guard their ancient secrets. Now the great valley is overtaken by proud kings who toss their gold into the sea, whose knights terrorize the countryside, who desecrate the first temples of the gods. But the priests have interpreted the calendars. This is a year of catastrophe and rebirth. Pirates are massing on the horizon. The last of the Holy Artifacts has come back to you. It is time to march on the people of the valley.

[Faction doc]

Special abilities:

Goals:

Artifacts:

Kingdom of the Azi River

The Kingdom has grown rich and powerful. The fields are rich with crops, the mines and forests and workshops are busy. The priests have consulted the oracles, and all agree: the god Azi must be thanked for this good fortune with the greatest temple the world has seen, and the Princep must be seen to stand before their people bearing the Silver Crown to put to rest any rumours that they may be losing the favour of the gods…

[Faction doc]

Special abilities:

Goals:

Children of the Sea and Sky

In a month's time is the celebration of Lady Meswe, the goddess which is the source of all life and to which all lives return. Her festival marks new beginnings: spring, a new year, and this year, the beginning of another 12 year cycle. You will bedeck her altars in stolen gold and find what House this year shows the most courage, daring, and cunning, who is most worthy to rule for the next 12 years.

[Faction doc]

Special abilities:

Goals:

Osre's scholar ability: Riders on the Storm: Once every seven days, when at sea and visibility is reduced due to weather, you can disappear from your current location and instantly reappear in a location in the sea up to 4 hexes away. You must have previously seen that location.

Cosrat's scholar ability: The Kraken’s Song: Once, you can summon The Kraken. You must be at sea, or adjacent to the sea. It will take several hours to arrive. You aren’t totally sure what will happen when it does. (spoiler: it attacks everyone in range)

The Timeline

I wish I'd written this as I went, it's a lot harder to follow now that it's all in threads, but I'll do my best.

Princeps Sidok, the lead commander of Azi, starts off by recruiting Edart and Arit. Edart goes to explore what's over the mountains.

Viceroy Earu, of the mountain kingdom, represented by the pokemon Xatu, heads south.

Of the pirates, Eyrete heads south, Reynira heads to the peninsula west, and Osre Caytren heads around the peninsula, exploring as far as possible. They all leave a garrison, which they eventually forget to feed.

Edart runs into Earu, they have a nice conversation, and Earu decides to go on a pilgrimage (?) or something (?) to the holy river. My rules require that a garrison that is sufficiently large has a commander, forcing Earu to recruit a new commander, Eopai, who is instructed to guard the location more or less indefinitely.

Meanwhile, Eyrete pillages the stronghold of Ipeha.

By the end of the first week, The Azi kingdom recruited another commander (Narp), explored their southern forest, as well as some of the lands across the mountains.

Reynira loots the stronghold on the peninsula, brings it back to town and then continues around.

Eyrete loots the closest stronghold and gets so much loot she recruits Rayslen to help bring it back

Sidok spots the pirates, but there is no battle for now. Osre discovers a small hidden stronghold.

Earu hangs out with a tiny army with Arit, much to everyone's confusion, including my own. Eopai has the patience of a saint but is increasingly confused and dismayed, sending letters and getting no responses, wondering if maybe letters cannot traverse the mountains or something. She meets Edart and they get along great (remember this for later).

Eopai, having been ordered to stay put, technically fulfills her orders by recruiting another commander (Eomeo) to go free their city to the north.

Sidok attempts to attack the city and fails, joining back up with Edart.

Osre meanwhile, having asked the garrsion to send her mail every day, learns they are running low on supply. She considers just taking over all the loot at the end of the game that other people brought back.

Sidok travels back around, runs into Earu, and they try and find out if there is a way for them to mutually win. Sidok almost just kills Earu several times, and Earu manages to vaguely stall and not do anything.

Narp notices there is a ton of loot in Buvik, doesn't know why, and does an operation to find out a bunch of stuff about the mountain kingdom as well as his faction objectives.

By the 21st, the mountain kingdom has fought back, against Earu's orders. They used their relatively small army to launch a surprise attack of the pirate stronghold and suddenly become extremely rich. In fact, Eomeo ends the game with the most loot despite being from the only faction with no loot-related goals.

Pirates torching let me try my new rebellion rules. The pirates hit their first real resistance in the form of Duxe Narp.

The Azi kingdom realize they need to get serious about their goal of moving a lot of loot to their city by the ocean.

By the 21st, the mountain kingdom has fought back, against Earu's orders. They used their relatively small army to launch a surprise attack of the pirate stronghold and suddenly become extremely rich. In fact, Eomeo ends the game with the most loot despite being from the only faction with no loot-related goals.

Pirates torching let me try my new rebellion rules. The pirates hit their first real resistance in the form of Duxe Narp.

The Azi kingdom realize they need to get serious about their goal of moving a lot of loot to their city by the ocean.

Then things really heat up. Cosrat summons a kraken with his scholar ability and over the next few days of him not fleeing at all, it pulls his entire fleet bit by bit under the waves. Eomeo hires a mercenary who decides they don't want any part of this kraken fight, sails off and captures that one little island with the town on it. This doesn't stop Eomeo from bringing back an absurd amount of loot, after buying a lot of ships to do so.

Reynira makes what ends up being the absolutely critical decision of recruiting someone just to bring the loot home.

Cosrat succums to the kraken, after several days of being attacked.

My dearest Osre, I have done my best and I fear it was not enough, or rather, I fear it was TOO MUCH. I once asked to come witness what I was doing at the mouth of the Fork River but now I’m warning to stay awaaaaAAAAHHHHHGGGHH Blub blub blub brlblbrlblbbbbb

The "torment hexagon" phase of the game begins, as there is a massive daily battle with three or more armies as the pirates clash with the Azi kingdom.

Then the dramatic end of game. Eopai admits to Edart that the Viceroy will betray him. Edart makes some desperate moves to try and salvage the situation, is captured and executed, and writes a real life song to commemorate the occasion called "I May Have Made A Huge Mistake". Earu feels guilty enough to pay for a memorial.

Eomeo meanwhile thorws a msasive party with Eopai.

An endless series of battles result in Eyerete getting captured, all the pirates focusing on getting them back, and after many, many, battles, the Kingdom of Azi almost entirely being destroyed. Reynira executes Sidok, Edart is captured but not executed. Arit manages to get almost all the supply to its destiation in time, thus becoming the new Princeps by defaut.t. This is, incidentally, the part that convinces me to adopt DPR's rules.

Viceroy Earu launches a successful suprise attack at the last minute. Meawhile, Murai manages to go recapture the one stronghold at the very last minute.

In the end

Written July 10, 2026