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Welcome gentle reader. Distractions and Asides are short pieces for you to add to your games of Flintloque the Skirmish and Frontear the Skirmish. They are totally superficial and not needed in the slightest during play, as they add nothing to the ‘engine’ of the game. Then why have you created them, I hear you shout, and rightly so..... The reason is anarchy, the reason is fun; the reason is to add a chance of total ruin for one or more characters during play. These optional suggested additions are for ‘role play’, adding to the characters of your scenarios. We give you Distractions & Asides! 3. Newspapers and Tattle It is sometimes true, not not often on Valon, that the pen is mightier than the sword. When the tall tales, speeches and often downright fibbing propaganda of the enemy or another with their own agenda falls into the hands of hands of your own troops it can be real trouble for an officer. Trouble from the enemy! Slanderous mistruth and and malicious minions of a foreign power can make life hard for your brave soldiers. Newspapers printed locally that claim to tell of terrible misdeed in the homelands of your assorted troops can cause riots, a lack of loyalty and even murder. Ferach agents operating under the guise of allies often spread fake newspapers that claim to be Amerkan in origin but are printed mere miles away. Stories of Orcish red coats committing crimes against women and children of Joccian Rats or Guinalean Bog Orcs lead to hatred and even outright mutiny. These papers are left where the enemy is bound to find them or even passed around the camp! Trouble from higher powers! The preaching of non violence is rare on Valon but it does happen. Among others the Church of Albion sends missionaries to the front lines to pass out books and teaching of the ways of peace. These books can make your brave Orcs think twice before pulling the trigger; when fighting the Elves of Armorica this is never a good thing! Can your lads read a word? Sadly no. Typically most soldiers cannot read and think paper is only good for fires or wrapping tobacci in. But most officers can read and all soldiers can look at pictures or posters when they see them. Of course the educated soldiers who can read are also happy to recount the contents of newspapers to their less fortunate comrades. To see if your lads can read roll a D10 and add these modifiers, on a modified roll of 8 or more they can: Private +0
Officer +2
Senior Officer +4
Provost +6
Raw -1
Average +0
Experienced +1
Veteran +3
Elf +1
Character is ‘educated’ by schooling +4 Whither your characters can read or not is now determined, see the rules for how this will affect them in play. Please note that the Otharmann Empire and Undead forces have no need of newspapers and are not affected by these rules. How to place and use the written word on your battlefield Your imagination comes in handy here. Perhaps as part of your scenario a spy has left papers scattered around the battlefield, perhaps a print shop is the scene and the presses have copies in them. Maybe a missionary is passing out copies of the good book or your lads come across posters on a tavern wall. When placing ‘printed matter’ on your table you should note where it is and use a token to show it. You must also define what it is and who it interests, a poster showing trouble in Ostaria is unlikely to fuss an Al-Garvey Goblin. A small piece of card with ink titles then varnished does fine as a book or poster when modelling. This will tell you who the following rules apply to. Paper rules! When a character holding a printed book, newspaper or poster approaches another character and or a character comes within in to base to base contact with the paper then you must work out what happens. The following occurs ONLY if the printed material will upset the character by reading it. The player must roll a D10 (if his character can READ) as soon as his character makes base to base contact with the material. This roll must be modified by +2 if a Private, +1 if Wounded and -3 if an Officer or NCO, if 7 or more is rolled then the character is angered by his readings. The character will then attempt to tell others what he has read. This MUST be done by the controlling player in the same and next Turn. The character can tell all friendly characters within 15cm what he has learned. This same roll is repeated for each character within 15cm on a 7+ they are also angry and react the same way. Once a character has spent a Turn telling what he knows he must roll to see if he acts on it. Roll a D10, on a 1-4 its his Officer he is angry with, on 6-8 it is the nearest friendly character of another racial type (or the same if none are present), on a 9-10 he fails to do anything and continues as normal. The character MUST then attack that target for one Turn with a loaded weapon or in melee. The target character has one chance to prevent this action by prevailing to his former friends loyalty to Kyng or Emperor. Both players roll a D10 with whomever rolling the higher number deciding whither the character takes the shot or makes the attack or not. After one Turn he comes to his senses and ceases the attack; unless other members in his section in return attack him. If they do then he becomes an enemy and control of that miniature is given to the other player and that character is lost to the section for the rest of the campaign. If it is a book preaching non violence then roll as above to see if the character reacts, if he does then he DOES NOT attempt to spread the word but instead roll a D10 and divide by two rounding up. This is the number of Turns in which the character will NOT attack anyone and will only defend himself. After this he is bitten by the war bug once more. A character may only be affected by one lot of printed material per scenario. Never underestimate the power of the printed word! Webmaster's Note The above was originally posted on Alternative Armies' Notables Yahoo group in April 2008 and is reproduced here with permission. The original PDF of this article is now hosted on Orcs in the Webbe with permission from Alternative Armies, click here to download. |
