silburnl
09-14-2009, 05:51 PM
The player knights in my game did great deeds last year and one of them successfully petitioned to be appointed as Commissioner of Ordnance to the Duke of Lindsey, so in the interest of sharing here's my write up of what this will involve for my game:
Commissioner of Ordnance (Annual Glory: 10)
This officer is responsible for ensuring that a great noble's army is properly supplied with siege equipment and skilled engineers for both offensive and defensive operations. He is also charged with verifying that the castellans appointed by his patron are properly maintaining the fabric of the fortifications that have been placed in their care. The stipend for this office is £5, which is in addition to income from other sources (such as land etc). The Commissioner is expected to maintain himself as a Rich Knight.
Duties - In order to properly discharge his responsibilities the Commissioner of Ordnance needs to roll against the following skills and traits each year during the ‘Perform Solo’ step of the winter phase – Read Latin, Stewardship, Siege, Suspicious, Energetic and Prudent.
Getting Help - The Commissioner of Ordnance can add specialist assistants to his retinue (at £1/annum each) in order to guarantee that a roll succeeds - Clerk (Read Latin, Prudent), Engineer (Siege, Energetic) and Proctor (Stewardship, Suspicious). Each assistant can only guarantee one roll per year however, so a second assistant of the same type must be employed if the Commissioner doesn’t want to leave anything to chance.
Graft –the Commissioner can elect to convert any successful skill/trait check (whether rolled or guaranteed by an assistant) to a failed check in exchange for £1d3+1 in bribes from the various suppliers and castellans that he supervises. If the Commissioner elects to engage in graft, then he gets an automatic check in Deceitful, Selfish and Worldly; if he forgoes the opportunity for easy enrichment then he can have a check in Honest and Loyalty (Lord) instead.
Consequences - Success on all rolls means that any weaknesses in the siege train and stores the Commissioner is responsible for have been made good by his diligence and energy over the course of the year, well done - he can take a check for his pains (choice of Energetic or Folklore). Each failure means that there is a Deficiency that may come to light if the siege train is put to the test. If the army that the Commissioner supports is required to make any Siege skill checks (see GPC p17) during the next campaign season then use the following procedure to resolve what happens:
1. The Commissioner rolls Battle skill, Critical or Success = make all Siege skill checks of the campaign before performing step 2; Failure or Fumble = make all Siege skill checks after performing step 2.
2. The Commissioner distributes the accrued Deficiencies amongst all of the sieges that the force he supports is involved in. If there are more Deficiencies than there are sieges, then every siege must receive one Deficiency before multiple Deficiencies can be assigned to a siege.
a. If the Commissioner got a critical in step 1, then after all Deficiencies have been allocated he can nominate one siege and remove all of the Deficiencies from that siege without allocating them elsewhere (ie he correctly guessed where the critical point was going to be and ensured that it was properly supported by stripping materiel and men from non-essential posts).
b. If the player got a fumble in step 2, then after all Deficiencies have been allocated and the siege rolls have been made, the referee can either (i) swap the assigned Deficiencies between two sieges of his choice or (ii) move any one Deficiency onto a different siege.
3. The final results are calculated for each siege, with each Deficiency that the local commander is coping with causing their roll to be degraded by one step per Deficiency (critical -> success -> failure -> fumble) and then causing their opponent’s roll to be upgraded by one step per Deficiency (fumble -> failure -> success -> critical).
Of course if there is no call for the siege train’s services in the following year, then none of these Deficiencies will be revealed and no-one will ever know of the Commissioner's failings.
Design notes
There's a flavour of Heroquest in the bump down/bump up structure in the consequences section, this is intentional (I luvs me some HQ) but also has the happy side effect of my not having to record and track stocks of siege equipment across an entire dukedom (very important that). This means I would recommend ignoring any details of siege equipment or missing castle maintenance when resolving consequences - stick to Siege skill and the base DV of fortifications only.
As currently set up there's no way that a Commissioner can do more than break even - he can't rack up Efficiencies (ie the opposite of Deficiencies) in order to go on a conquering rampage. I like this for a number of reasons (i) the Siege skill is biased in favour of the defence, so having a mechanic that can break down that defence but can't really amp up the offence seems to complement that, (ii) in a contest between the siege forces of two domains the winner is likely to be the side which 'fails least' (has fewer Deficiencies) and (iii) it means that I can point at the rash of successful sieges during the Anarchy and imply to my players that they are probably down to the moral failings of the defenders, which seems thematically appropriate.
Comments, criticisms, suggested improvements etc are appreciated.
Regards
Luke
Commissioner of Ordnance (Annual Glory: 10)
This officer is responsible for ensuring that a great noble's army is properly supplied with siege equipment and skilled engineers for both offensive and defensive operations. He is also charged with verifying that the castellans appointed by his patron are properly maintaining the fabric of the fortifications that have been placed in their care. The stipend for this office is £5, which is in addition to income from other sources (such as land etc). The Commissioner is expected to maintain himself as a Rich Knight.
Duties - In order to properly discharge his responsibilities the Commissioner of Ordnance needs to roll against the following skills and traits each year during the ‘Perform Solo’ step of the winter phase – Read Latin, Stewardship, Siege, Suspicious, Energetic and Prudent.
Getting Help - The Commissioner of Ordnance can add specialist assistants to his retinue (at £1/annum each) in order to guarantee that a roll succeeds - Clerk (Read Latin, Prudent), Engineer (Siege, Energetic) and Proctor (Stewardship, Suspicious). Each assistant can only guarantee one roll per year however, so a second assistant of the same type must be employed if the Commissioner doesn’t want to leave anything to chance.
Graft –the Commissioner can elect to convert any successful skill/trait check (whether rolled or guaranteed by an assistant) to a failed check in exchange for £1d3+1 in bribes from the various suppliers and castellans that he supervises. If the Commissioner elects to engage in graft, then he gets an automatic check in Deceitful, Selfish and Worldly; if he forgoes the opportunity for easy enrichment then he can have a check in Honest and Loyalty (Lord) instead.
Consequences - Success on all rolls means that any weaknesses in the siege train and stores the Commissioner is responsible for have been made good by his diligence and energy over the course of the year, well done - he can take a check for his pains (choice of Energetic or Folklore). Each failure means that there is a Deficiency that may come to light if the siege train is put to the test. If the army that the Commissioner supports is required to make any Siege skill checks (see GPC p17) during the next campaign season then use the following procedure to resolve what happens:
1. The Commissioner rolls Battle skill, Critical or Success = make all Siege skill checks of the campaign before performing step 2; Failure or Fumble = make all Siege skill checks after performing step 2.
2. The Commissioner distributes the accrued Deficiencies amongst all of the sieges that the force he supports is involved in. If there are more Deficiencies than there are sieges, then every siege must receive one Deficiency before multiple Deficiencies can be assigned to a siege.
a. If the Commissioner got a critical in step 1, then after all Deficiencies have been allocated he can nominate one siege and remove all of the Deficiencies from that siege without allocating them elsewhere (ie he correctly guessed where the critical point was going to be and ensured that it was properly supported by stripping materiel and men from non-essential posts).
b. If the player got a fumble in step 2, then after all Deficiencies have been allocated and the siege rolls have been made, the referee can either (i) swap the assigned Deficiencies between two sieges of his choice or (ii) move any one Deficiency onto a different siege.
3. The final results are calculated for each siege, with each Deficiency that the local commander is coping with causing their roll to be degraded by one step per Deficiency (critical -> success -> failure -> fumble) and then causing their opponent’s roll to be upgraded by one step per Deficiency (fumble -> failure -> success -> critical).
Of course if there is no call for the siege train’s services in the following year, then none of these Deficiencies will be revealed and no-one will ever know of the Commissioner's failings.
Design notes
There's a flavour of Heroquest in the bump down/bump up structure in the consequences section, this is intentional (I luvs me some HQ) but also has the happy side effect of my not having to record and track stocks of siege equipment across an entire dukedom (very important that). This means I would recommend ignoring any details of siege equipment or missing castle maintenance when resolving consequences - stick to Siege skill and the base DV of fortifications only.
As currently set up there's no way that a Commissioner can do more than break even - he can't rack up Efficiencies (ie the opposite of Deficiencies) in order to go on a conquering rampage. I like this for a number of reasons (i) the Siege skill is biased in favour of the defence, so having a mechanic that can break down that defence but can't really amp up the offence seems to complement that, (ii) in a contest between the siege forces of two domains the winner is likely to be the side which 'fails least' (has fewer Deficiencies) and (iii) it means that I can point at the rash of successful sieges during the Anarchy and imply to my players that they are probably down to the moral failings of the defenders, which seems thematically appropriate.
Comments, criticisms, suggested improvements etc are appreciated.
Regards
Luke