Fornovo 1495 by David Nicolle

The battle of Fornovo in 1495, has it's own campaign book by Osprey. There's also a good article on Wiki found here. I managed to pick this one up from the Half Price Books in Skokie for a few bones and was quite pleased with the purchase. It dovetails nicely into the reading I've been doing on the Sforza, Borgias and others in Italy at this turbulent time in history. Note the cover here is the one I have, not the current edition of the book.

Written by David Nicolle, the book clocks in at 96 pages but text wise, it's probably much smaller. There are a ton of maps, photographs, drawings, historical and those commissioned specifically for this book. The cover for example, Richard Hook, whose works can be found here.

David Nicolle that I'm aware of, but he does a great job of breaking down who the main factions are and the numerous individuals in each camp. The book has the usual breakdown including aftermath and even some ideas on how to use this material for wargaming.

The illustrations inside are of a nature similar to the cover and include many great inspirational pieces in terms of background. For example, the French artillery crossing the Cisa Pass where soldiers are pulling one of the canons up the mountain after having felled numerous tress and moved rocks out of the way. These are hard working individuals, some resting after cutting the tress down and moving them. Many with rips in their clothes for the work load. Another excellent noncombat illustration, the retreat from Novara, where the 'depleted disease-ridden French' retreated to and we see the soldier wearily resting in small groups.

In terms of 'game' ideas, there are numerous ones that pop up due to the nature of the conflict.

1. The Grand Crusade: Charles VIII wants to seize Naples not because, or not only because he's some greedy noble. Rather, he wants to use it as a staging ground for a glorious war against the Ottoman Turks. In this time, the fall of Constantinople in 1453 is very fresh in the Christian World and a leader who would dare to take up this awesome, country spanning task, needs to have grand vision. Are there faiths in your setting that do not get along and are at an uneasy peace? Are there great leaders who would shatter that piece in order to bring glory to their religion?

2. The Clash of Cultures: Here's one that's somewhat terrible in its irony. On one hand, the French have a 'knightly' virtue about them for some things. They see the rise of the footsoldier and firearms as some horrific thing that is eventually going to diminish the glory of personal hand to hand combat and personal honor. The Italians are used to being ransomed when defeated. When the two clash and say, an Italian armored knight is knocked form his horse, the polearms and axes and swords come out and go for the vulnerable points as opposed to keeping the soldier alive for ransom, unlike the Italians who were capturing those they thought were valuable.

3. Side Missions: On their way down from the mountains, the French lost some of their heavy artillery. It's easy to see a pass they couldn't get through, a rockslide, or some other natural disaster. In a fantasy game, such a cannon, and most of them have names historically, might be a powerful artifact that was lost when the group came under attack while transporting the items through the hills. The cannon is assumed lost but a huge reward or the powers of the cannon itself could be available to those bold enough to search the mountains for it.

4. Plunder: One of the biggest loses the French suffered here, wasn't in terms of men slain, but in the lose of their baggage wagons which contained some odd 180,000 gold ducats worth of funds, including royal items like a sword and crown.

5. Little Things: On their return home, the French King Charles VIII decided, honoring the principals of chivalry and knightly duties, to leave some of his forces in Pisa. This weakened his own forces and was supposedly engineered by the most 'beautiful women of Pisa' who appealed to Charles nature. Having known virtues means that people can use those virtues against you.

6. The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men: One of the things that the Italians tried to do, was a hasty crossing against the river but the night before, it had rained and mountain water was swelling the river. This caused the whole concept of rapid crossing to evaporate but there apparently wasn't time to change tactics or strategy.

7. Landscape: Another problem the horses faced, was 'fields of peebles'.  This made riding difficult to say the least.

8. Individual Actions: One of the things reported here, is that King Charles VIII himself is almost captured as he is apart from his soldiers and only has one aide with him when he comes under attack, but his black horse and lone guard give him enough time to escape. In a role playing game, it might be the specific mission of a group of characters to capture or assassinate a noble, or even someone more important. The entire battle itself might be a mere diversion to give the players that one opportunity that they'd never have otherwise.

This time period and this area have a lot of gaming potential. This ranges from having multiple countries invade a 'country' that consist not only of individual city states, but of 'states' within states such as the Romania and the Papal States themselves. It's a time when Spain and France and others will plunder again and again and has a lot of ideas of how wars went and they didn't go according to plan.

Anyone have a favorite history era that they find themselves returning to? I don't know how much longer I'll be delving into the whole Italy bit based on my viewing of the two different Borgia series, but I've got a few more books on the shelf already so I know it'll be a little while before I'm done with the mercenaries and various religious figures that I've grown to read of so much.

The Thousand Thrones: Once More Unto The Breach!

Last Friday, I managed to get in on another game of the 2nd edition of the Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing Game aka Warhammer FRPG. The Thousand Thrones is a massive book that details out rise of Karl, 'Sigmar Reborn' in the Empire and the various events that happen around the lad as well as the general terribleness of the Warhammer world.

In this setting, I'm playing a Troll Slayer.

I finally came into some coin in the campaign. I don't want to say it was overdue because I understand that the Warhammer FRPG isn't like Dungeons and Dragons 3rd or 4th edition where X amount of coin and equipment is assumed to be in the player's possession on a level by level basis.  I'll say though, that it was good to have some coin.

Now with the Troll Slayer, the only thing I need, in terms of 'gear' for my advanced career, Giant Slayer, is my great axe. Well, that's not quite true. I also need to kill a giant. The GM has assured me that when the time comes that won't be a problem even though there are no giants within the campaign itself.

This week's session found the group continuing our quest to discover the traitors and assassins within Karl's massive procession. There are those seeking to kill and or capture the boy. This means killing a whole bunch of people around the lad.

This time it would seem that we were against cultists of Papa Nurgle, the ruinous power of plague and disease. Someone trying to poison the soup!

Again, the efforts to find information and discover what is going on, are far more at the front of the game then they are in the big D&D. The game doesn't rely solely on combat or treasure as a method of advancement so those things aren't the focus on most games I've been in.

Mind you, I'm a Troll Slayer and well, I play the character as one whose easily bored with the various gatherings of information, often testing the sharpness of my blade against my thumb. My fellow players have joked that I've done it so many times that my whole thumb is a giant scar at this point.

But in the two combats we had this sessions, they were glad to have the giant orange mohawk there.

Our first encounter was one we essentially knew was going to end in violence as we sought out 'the Butcherer'. This individual was working with others in the camp to poison people with a magical stew of Papa's. We quickly disposed of him and brought our efforts to Karl and tried to beat some information out of the 'rat' in the nest but Karl was distraught with our methodologies and banished us!

The Game Master did note though, that despite our banishment, we were still devoted to the Karl. For those who've never played, that's because Karl is a mutant whose power is inspiring devotion to him. I made my initial Will Power roll to avoid falling under the trap initially a few sessions ago but missed it this time so I too was now planning how best to serve.

Mind you that's what I'd been doing before because the boy hired us to watch out for him and our original mission involved that anyway.

I asked the GM is we would have to sneak back into the giant encampment and work our way from there or if there were things that could happen outside that, as we were in the city of Aldorf. I can't remember if that's our final destination or not but I do know that it's a huge city and we were able to explore a bit including some shopping.

The GM even broke out the Old World Armoury because our newfound apprentice mage in the party kept looking for darts. Not in the core book and not in the Armoury. GM said, "Don't worry about it. It's a non-expensed resource, you just have to make sure you renew your supply every so often." Seemed a good solution to me.

Now again, I have all the 'trappings' I need for my next career. I did struggle with how much armor to buy. A troll slayer starts with a leather shirt, 1 armor point, and mine was destroyed by a critical hit earlier in the campaign. I'd been going shirtless since then. I weighed the whole suicidal urges of the Troll Slayer against the practicality of playing the character. In art, I'd seen Troll Slayers garbed in chain armor before and there isn't really any restriction to it.

But I stuck with leather and gave a lot of my gold to another player who fully armored himself up with it. The other players sought out leads and information unto becoming their next advanced careers and went about buying the trappings to help make that happen.

When you have a character concept, how far will you go against the grain of that concept to insure some level of survivability? Would anyone have bought the chain shirt and said screw the leather? Should I have just went without any armor?

The good news, is that the leather soon proved it's use as agents of caravan from various factions where in the city and a fight broke out between some of them. We assisted those we thought were the 'good' guys based on our previous research, although this being Warhammer, it's possible all of them were chaos cultists.

After that fight we gathered a bit more information and the GM called a halt to the session. We still haven't finished the chapter though, so no XP! Argh! That's okay, one of the 'swing' parts of Warhammer and it's random character creation, is as a Troll Slayer, I have a LOT of advances to take. Most of the other players? Not so much.

Looking forward to the next session.

Kobold Press on the Cheap: Review the makers of Dungeons and Dragons 5th ed Adventures without going broke!

With the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons coming out, Wizards of the Coast has made the unusual move of farming out the adventures to a third party. In this case, Kobold Press. I've owned several of Kobold Press products and helped on a Kickstarter of theirs.

I wasn't around for their 'original patron project, which was proto-Kickstarter. The master of that house was quite wise in seeing how the tides were turning as patron funded projects, both in Kickstarter and in various webcomic circles through things like Patreon.

The two adventurers coming out for 5th edition are Hoard of the Dragon Queen and The Rise of Tiamat. They suffer some of that 'weirdness' in Amazon pricing in that the discount is good, but now awesome. Still, $22 bones each isn't terrible considering what the average book is running these days.
   

But what if you're curious to know what type of game design Kobold Press does in the first place?

DrivethruRPG is having their 10th anniversary sale. While I know that the PDF format isn't everyone's cup of tea, if you want to see what Kobold Press is capable of doing, the 10th anniversary bundle 2, includes Midgard campaign setting. This PDF in and of itself is normally $19.99. It's also an Ennies nominated setting for 2013. It also clocks in at 298 pages. Yeah, I know once you cut the cover and stuff out it probably falls into the 'readable' It includes Pathfinder and AGE rules (which I'm guessing is Dragon Age rules from Green Ronin) so you can see how they handle a few different types of systems.

If you don't want to spent the $10 on that, there's a free preview.

See what the future holds for the writing in Dungeons and Dragons next.

Young Justice Season One

When it comes to my favorite genres, fantasy is at the forefront of things. Even with the various Middle Earth movies, it still doesn't get a lot of airplay on the big screen.

Super heroes, my second favorite genre though, has been. This ranges from special done in one movies like the recently released Justice League War to the plethora of movies that Marvel has successfully launched, or Marvel properties, like X-Men and Spider Man, that have taken up real estate. DC seems to be limping along in the movie aspect but that's apparently allowed them time to do some great television shows like Young Justice.

This cast of characters are the 'sidekicks' of the more experienced heroes of the DC setting. They are also some of the 'newer' incarnations in some instances and allow the story to take place in a larger environment because of it.

For example, way back in the day when I was first collecting comics, Superboy was a young Superman. After the original Crisis of Infinite Earths comic event and things were rebooted to ground zero, Superman was never Superbody but DC managed to sneak a Superboy in as a clone during the whole 'Reign of the Superman' storyline that took place after the huge event 'The Death of Superman'.

There have been all sorts of legal wrangling back and forth with the Superboy character and those discussions are well outside my brief ramblings about Young Justice, but those interested to see how legalities can possibly be seen to effect the comics that are made should look into it.

Other characters are familiar like Robin and Kid Flash, appearing in their 'iconic' versions here.

Miss Martian is a relatively newcomer to the DC in general and was a member of the Teen Titans. Her role her is that of the still learning to be human, learning to be a hero, learning to fit along with everyone else while having her own issues and secrets. It makes her one of the more likable characters as despite her vast array of abilities and powers, she still has much to learn.

Aqualad is a strange one. One of Aquaman's trusted aides, he apparently has all of the heightened abilities of an Atlantian, but he also has some technomagic equipment that allows him to use water as objects, manipulating it as the Invisible Woman might manipulate her force barriers, ranging from shields and maces to other physical weapons and protection.

Aqualad is different than the original Aqualad I believe, who was 'Garth' who later became Tempest. This works out great because it gives Atlantis some more characters to play with, and allows the writers to put this Aqualad into situations that don't necessarily correspond to the massive library of events that Garth went through.

Artemis, the female archer, is a replacement for 'Speedy' who quickly goes onto become Red Arrow in this series. Artemis has her own issues with trust and with proving her abilities but as a skilled archer with trick arrows, she does fine. One of the nice things about Artemis appearance here though, is that it initially at least, seems that she's still learning as Red Arrow proves to be a better archer and show cases that these members of 'Young Justice' are here to learn.

The series takes a weird premises. These younger heroes, will do 'shadow' work. They will do recon and spying style missions. On one hand, the theory is to keep them out of the way of the heavy hitters. On the other, while some like Robin and Miss Martian have perfect abilities to match this type of work, others, like Superboy and Aqualad, do not. All in all, it works well enough to keep the team moving on from mission to mission while giving them an overarching goal of 'joining' the Justice League.

The fact that so many of the characters have issues ranging from keeping their weaknesses secret to keeping their species secret, provides much fodder for the series which it doles out slowly but with a great payoff. The series also lets us see how things might look for some of the adult versions of the Justice League.

For example, Superman is often portrayed as being all on the up and up. Here though he has a real hard time with just the existence of Superboy and keeps his dealings with Superboy to a minimal. Superboy on the other hand, has been created to fill in for Superman should the Kryptonoian ever fall so to be ignored and shunned by him is most troubling. Superboy is also not a pure clone and is missing some of the big S powers like flight and heat vision. This makes him have to 'work' harder on his missions.

Another good example, is Shazam, the big red cheese himself. Unknown to most, the 'man' behind Shazam is just a kid, Billy, and the series does a great job of showing how Billy prefers to hang around with Young Justice as opposed to the regular team mates.

The DC mythology is for the most part treated with respect but the authors aren't afraid to play with some of the bits and elements when it allows them to tell a better story. For example, Starro, is, in my opinion, one of the silly villains. The Starfish Conqueror? Please.

In the series though, they use one of his tendrils, frozen in ice for millions of years, to give Starro more of a 'Old One' feel and use genetic modifications to create the star fish that allow the control of others. That works surprisingly well as opposed to using Starro himself.

The only bad thing? Only season one is available to stream on Netflix so it'll be a while before I catch up on season two.

If you're running a Champions campaign or a Mutants & Masterminds campaign and want to see how a team adventure can be easily run that has complications ranging from hidden identities to family members that are villains, Young Justice is a great inspiration.

The Tigress of Forli by Elizabeth Lev

One of the characters that made an appearance in both versions of the Borgia series I've seen, was Caterina Sforza, a woman whose name on this book goes by Caterina Riario Sforza De'Medici. How's that for a mouthful.

Her Wiki entry has some of the nuts and bolts of her life. This book takes such nuts and bolts and expands them greatly. Elizabeth Lev does a nice job of making a book that's at once readable and one filled with notes from dozens if not hundreds of other resources which curious readers can go further on and read.

In terms of gaming, there is much to mine here.

1. Background. Caterina is raised to enjoy hunting and the military arts. The author notes that this was because unlike other nobles of the time, Caterina comes from a mercenary family that rose to prominence on the strength of their sword arm so raising all the children to fight was only normal and natural as opposed to segregating them into different roles.

2. People: Caterina has eight kids by three different husbands. Two of those husbands had powerful alliances to other families of the time. This doesn't count Caterina's own family and the rise and fall of status dependent upon not only your own abilities as a ruler or with diplomacy, but on the rise and fall of others that you may have no direct control over.

3. Rapid Reversal: There are several times throughout the scene that Elizabeth Lev sets, where one is assured that based on X, Y should happen. Nope. For example, when assassins kill her second husband, they think that they will be greeted with a hero's welcome. They are killed by the dozens instead. This happens a few times where people hear, "Oh, this is a problem is it? I shall solve it and all shall love me." only to find out that yeah, that was pretty much idle talk and acting on it was really stupid.

4. Different Perspectives: One of the other characters that made an appearance in both Borgia series was Savonarola, the initial inspiration for the bonfire of the vanity. Apparently he and Caterina had exchanged correspondence and it left an impact on Caterina that would follow her for the rest of her days. In this exchange, Savonarola doesn't' get much page time, but he does sound rather sane and reasonable unlike how he was portrayed in either series. For one person, an ally might seem saintly and full of vigor and vim and for another person, an adversary of devastating cunning and ability.

5. Disease: Since this is a book about the Renaissance and the various French invasions of Italy, we have to have some mention of 'The French Disease', along with Malaria, and the Bubonic Plague, all of which make their appearance in this historical. Indeed, is is no sword or poison that ends Caterina's life, but rather disease.

6. Social Combat: Initially there are many celebrations and honors given to Caterina upon her initial marriage as that was to a 'cousin' (some say illegitimate bastard) of the Pope of the time, Pope Sixtus IV. Thanks to that connection, Caterina has social advantage and ability that many in her time lacked and the parties that followed allowed for a lot of intermingling that could have consequences lasting well past the initial meetings.

7. Instability: When a pope dies in Rome, the citizens go a little crazy and form into unruly mobs. This can be a situation in a standard game as well when a well loved figure dies and there is a time of mourning as well as individuals using these situations to their advantage. Easier to send in the assassins while the city burns then attack the front gates.

8. Esoteric Hobbies: Among the many things that Caterina enjoy, hunting in the gaming grounds of the city Pavia, as well as breeding and riding horses, she was reknown for her herbalist skills and even had a book published on her findings. Some have even referred to her skills as 'alchemy'. In a fantasy campaign, it's easy to imagine Caterina having levels of Noble, Alchemists, and Fighter among others.


There are so many characters that Caterina interacts with or is there to see rising, that it gives the whole of the Renaissance itself a greater feel, like some massive tapestry that cannot be seen in one viewing and must be taken in from various angels.

Roleplaying and the Lack of Inclusive Characters

Over at http://blackroleplayersorganization.blogspot.com/ , the author has many a note on how race and roleplaying fall together for him. Its interesting reading and I wander over there every now and again to see what is being written about. Another good one for fantasy and race is the chronicles of harriet, http://chroniclesofharriet.com/.

I've mentioned it before but I think getting more authors and creators of content of various ethnicities will bring far more diversity than other white people creating more 'token' pictures and places. I think that for a company, a corporation, like WoTC to be more inclusive they've got to have a 'show me the money' moment as sales of say, Nyambe and other non-standard European knight settings tend to be flat or poor.

Studies and other benefits of how inclusion is awesome for morale and confidence levels are all well and good, but if there's no MORE money to be had from it, a company whose making a new edition to make money off of the old edition fans, isn't probably worried about that. Then there's the 'lame horse' argument that the company 'has to get it right' so that they're not accused of using racist portraits and stylings in the first place. 

In terms of successful African styled fantasy games and popularity, or lack of, this isn't always the case though. Recently Spears of the Dawn, an OSR style project on 'fantasy' Africa, ran a fairly successful kickstarter and delivered ahead of time!

This isn't necessarily just a RPG problem as much as a 'geek' problem. How about comics? I remember reading Milestone when they first came out. Hardware and Icon were some of my favorites but that imprint didn't last and DC's later efforts to incorporate it into the mainstream have fallen flat every time. 

The fact that the initial imprint didn't last, I believe, has more to do with comic glut, the failure of new comics in general, and well, DC being a bone head about things. If you're name isn't Deadpool and you started out in the 90's and are still around now as a comic character with your own title, good work!

Take Hardware for example. Marvel has three movies about a rich guy in a suit. If there was anyone looking for a character like Iron Man in the DC universe, they don't have a lot of options there. Hardware would also give DC another rich person who wasn't Bruce Wayne or Lex Luthor and more opportunity to play with the tech side of the universe. 

In terms of fiction, even one of the original non-Caucasian fantasy heroes, Imaro, couldn't have his initial series published by Night Shade Books through all the way through and had to take the last two volumes self publishing. If you're one of the people who wants to see more inclusion in fiction and other mediums, you have to support it when it's available to start off with so guy buy a copy of Griots, a sword and soul anthology and speak with your wallet. Show your support with money, not internet posts talking about what you want. 

Is there a potential audience that they could be missing? As role playing games shrink in total, the potential buyers of any type shrink. Could more inclusive art reverse that? Well beyond my scope but...

I don't think that's what WoTC is betting on. I think WoTC is betting on, "We've bent over backwards to show how OSR like we are and how cool we are despite you know, not having any of the old artists or losing so many of the old writers but hey, OSR feel in the rules amirght?"

You want real inclusiveness? Get Charles Saunders to write a book for WoTC or Paizo. 

More importantly though, with the low cost to content creation, and the cost getting lower all the time, if you want to see something, if you rely on the corporations to bring it to you, you may be waiting a long time. Paizo makes good use of the OGL license and other people can build on that success or do material like Spears of the Dawn with a different take on things altogether.

All my own opinion and subject to change and be expanded upon as the topic goes back and forth. The internet is at best a poor substitute for 'real' communication.

Until Death Do Us Part Volume 1

I've heard noise in the 'Net that Amazon was trying to shake down a book publisher. Ironically, some of the things Amazon has been accused of, include NOT discounting the companies titles. You know, if you're relying on Amazon to discount your product to move it in the first place, you might be pricing it too high.

Anyway, I see that Barnes and Nobles and a few other companies are trying to 'take advantage' of this situation by offering huge discounts and other benefits like buy two, get one free. If they're not making profit from this maneuver, it's stupid. As has been shown, consumers who are buying online in the first place, don't have loyalty, they have price loyalty. If you're not making any money on the thought that these loss leaders will get people to stick with you online, you've already lost.

Again, anyway, one of the titles that Amazon in it's evilness does have on sale, is Until Death Do Us Part, volume 1. This is set in modern times that utilizes a lot of super tech and low psychic abilities, or at least the first volume does. For $2.99, I was more than willing to give it a read.



I dig the art style. I don't want to say 'standard manga', but well, it's not done in the humorous style and it's done in a manner that allows the high action to be told quickly and with lots of movement and energy so for me, it's fairly standard.

The story is also interesting. The wiki entry over here goes into it a bit more.

The main character, Mamoru Hijikata, is a modern day Zatoichi, a blind swordsman with his own sword cane. The writers make it a little more modern though, giving Mamoru glasses that allow him to 'see' things in grid patterns with no depth or detail but good enough to see people, buildings, and hell, even moving bullets. His katana? It's a mono-katana capable of cutting through almost anything with devastating precision. His initial purpose? He works for an organization of wealthy benefactors who themselves have suffered harm from criminal elements and have pooled their resources to fight crime with technology, but they are vigilantes.

By making the character blind, but competent with a katana, and limitations on his 'sight', the author creates a character with limitations but one whose martial appeal is strong. He's in part an underdog thanks to his limitations.

The whole benefactor angel makes for a great modern campaign. It allows for the Game Master to throw a variety of equipment into the campaign that shouldn't exist in the current era, but thanks to those advances funded with super wealth, are real toys for the characters.

The other main character, Haruka Tōyama, is a young woman who we initially see as a prisoner for a yakuza group that wants to exploit her psychic abilities. In this case, Haruka is able to see the future, or many futures, and find the path most likely to happen. When she meets Mamoru, she knows that he is the one who can free her from the Yakuza and that starts their relationship.

Mamoru's relationship with his organization puts him in contact with a lot of other people. Such a collective would be useful in role playing games as it could allow for new players and new characters to be brought in if old ones die or players have to leave the campaign for a while. The rotating cell nature allows for a lot of flexibility which is great for a campaign. 

One of the twists on the villains in the series, is that the organization 'Plunderers', are not out for lofty ideals, political change, or wealth, but are out for intellectual property. They too are out for the high tech of this near future world and it makes them dangerous.

If the other volumes ever come down in price or I feel like making a physical purchase, which given my limited space, I might be tempted to take advantage of Barnes & Nobles sale as I see they have the first six volumes.