The Tower of Whitewall Watch

Broken Men of the garrison troop out, covered by crossbows from the towers; a man with a lantern tends the ready set bonfire - careful there! 

 A close up of the patrol as it leaves the keep.

The map was found on rpgnow and was about usd2.99, though it cost £12 to print and annoyingly is in several bits. Still, it's just what I wanted to be the base for my adventurers and rangers.

A close look at it makes me think of the semi Norse world of Skyrim. Food for thought.

Cheers

Math

In which divers monsters are slain

Following the brief foray underground, Ael the Ready receives a handful of the usual scum and villains fresh from the condemned cells and is told to hie himself and his men into the woods to hunt win the evil beasts that are terrorising the goats and eating people.....

And lo, as the Broken Men blunder through the thickets.....

                        Ambushed, by Gygax! By the Seven Hells! Bugbears!

The Bugbears rush forwards and a bloody melee breaks out, all finesse gone.

The Bugbear chief is the last to go, taking several hits in one turn, 

So, of 8 men and a leader, 3 men were killed and couple more were lucky.

Again a brief scrap to test my theory that OD&D / Holmes will work at 1HD / level equates to 1 wound and  1 hit inflicts a wound. It means kobolds are as easily killed as say Hobgoblins but you can allow a hobgoblin to have one final attack and the be considered as killed. That's what I did with the Bugbears here, not that it helped them much.....

So, yes OD&D / Holmes looks like a good large scale skirmish rule set. No surprise really but I wanted to proof test it.....

Cheers!

Maff

The Forgotten Dungeon of Doom

Ael the Ready and his band of Broken Men were sleeping off a hard night on the local cider when a Messenger at Arms found them and gave them sheriff's orders to "proceed to the village of Netherend and put an end to divers heathen monsters believed to be molesting the populace". 

A swift march later found the Broken Men at the Rampant Griffin inn, sleeping off another night on the cider and blearily preparing for combat. Following a trail of trampled undergrowth, vegetable plots and pieces of discarded goat (and perhaps....villager?) they reach an old tree stump with a deep hole beneath it. Uncertain noises came from the inky darkness......

Clambering down via a rope, they find themselves in a dimly lit....DUNGEON!

The dungeon in all its gloominess, the Broken Men to the left and a pack of kobolds dead ahead....

The scout lurked ahead, right into a pack of kobolds, a savage fight followed in which the scout was cut down before his fellows could support him. The broken men charged in, hacking the kobolds but not without injury....the kobolds fled.....

And a small band of foam flecked berserkers appeared around the corner....the fight is grim and another broken man is killed and another wounded before the berserkers are defeated. 

The kobolds flee but seem to activate some undead in the far distance...Jorphil of the Blue Cloak spots a staircase down the corridor, but with losses mounting, Ael the Ready decides to call it a day any leads his men out of the depths....

This was a fast little adventure fought out using Holmes basic D&D rules.

The Broken Men were level 0, AC5 htk 8, armed with a variety of swords, axes and a couple of crossbows; Ael was level 2, 14 htk, AC5. Treasure taken was minimal and 100 expts awarded overall!

The Broken Men are not rangers as such, more like the Nightswatch in GOT. I dont intend to detail each of the Broken Men, apart from Ael the Ready, treating them instead as a gaggle of henchmen, a sort of 6 headed NPC. They will however gradually increase in experience.

Cheers!

Math

The Broken Men

The Broken Men are felons, landless shamed knights and retainers of attainted traitors who really have little to expect apart from the rope, the axe or the brand (and in some cases, all three......).

Instead they are given the chance to redeem themselves defending the realm from the things that dwell in the wilder lands.

Firestorm feudal servants painted by Matt Slade, await an uncertain creeping doom.....

Cheers

Math