added Monthly Campaign Events WIP

issue06/information

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 .H1
-Information in Campaign Games
+Information and 
+Reconnaissance 
+in Domain Games
+.2C
 .PP
+From September 2024 to April 2025 I ran a diplomacy style game to
+spice up the last season of our
+.I "Grenzland OD&D Campaign" .
+We had twelve faction players, playing various human factions, 
+two elven clans, one halfling clan, one dwarven clan, two orcish
+tribes, snake people, reptile men and a faction from outer space. 
+There were a couple of dragons, too. 
+At the same time we had the regular player characters
+moving around the campaign map and doing their usual dungeon
+exploring and hex crawling games. All told the diplomacy game
+went on for 18 weekly turns.
+.PP
+For me as the referee this game was one of the most intense
+gaming experiences I've had so far. It took me about eight hours
+of paper work per week: book keeping, tracing movements on maps,
+estimating encounter likelihood and so forth, and then sending 
+back the results to each player. Depending on the situation we
+then scheduled actual gaming sessions to resolve any possibly
+unfriendly encounters, clocking in at another two to four hours
+per session. One week needed three resolving sessions, but the
+average was probably a bit less than one per week.
+.KF
 .PSPIC img/samo.eps
-.Au
-lkh
+.ce 5
+.ll -1
+.in +1
+.I
+Samo the Magician as imagined by one of the players.
+.R
+.ce 0
+.sp
+.KE
+.PP
+For the first couple of weeks I also tried to diligently weave in
+random encounters as they occured, but I had to skip those more
+then once due to time constraints. Most random encounters were
+resolved in play by post fashion.
+.PP
+Intense and very time consuming as it was, this game was also
+.I "so interesting" ,
+sometimes baffeling and eye opening. And fear not my fellow
+gamers, I attribute the fact, that I am still kind of recovering
+from running this game to the entirely unconnected coincidence of
+some very challenging changes in my day job, which happend to
+occur as our game came to it's closing weeks.
+.H2
+It was raining all the time!
+.PP
+One of the most pertinent critiques I received about the game was
+lack of information. Players repeatedly complained that they did
+not know enough about other factions and their whereabouts. In
+fact until the very last moves
+.I "no faction"
+was even aware of every other faction in the game.
+.PP
+At the same time I noticed this lack of information early on, as
+I could watch the "gaming board" with a birds eye view and see
+how sometimes troops moved past each other, a single hex of six
+miles apart without taking notice or even knowing about
+each others existance. Naturally the bad visibiltiy due to the
+continous rain did not help in this respect, but I was decided
+early on that information gathering should be an 
+.I "in game issue" .
+Maybe I should have communicated this more clearly.
+.PP
+Speaking of the continous rain, here's the thing that puzzled me
+the most: literally in every single weekly update I stated that
+it's continously raining over a larger part of the campaign map.
+However only very late in the game, a small group of adventurers
+decided to 
+.I 
+finally ask the question, gather 
+.B information
+and investigate the cause.
+.R
+It took them three delves into a hitherto somewhat neglected
+dungeon, but what they found had the potential for a huge
+strategic benefit. Even when after 16 weeks of play I finally
+annouced "It has stopped raining", hardly any questions were
+asked about it.
+.PP
+Apparently most players just took the continously bad weather for
+granted, and if there were any earlier conjectures about the
+rain, those were wrong and never investigated in any serious
+manner.
+.H2
+Expanding the Map
+.PP
+One player decided to take to the sea and explore, moving away
+from the centre of the campaign map. While initially this was 
+due to fear of annihilation by the chaotic forces, I'm afraid it was 
+also due to some degree of boredom, as at that time the game was 
+beginning to loose some momentum. At any rate, it led
+to me expanding the campaign map, since I tried hard to not curb
+this free movement in any way. Obviously no information about
+other factions could be gained by moving away from them, but the player
+managed to come back with some extra ships and reenforcements
+which were useful later on, when his faction returned to the
+final battle ground of the campaign.
+.H2
+Faulty Intelligence
+.PP
+Another player started gathering intelligence rather
+systematically from the get go, monitoring the river and
+coastlines of his orcish lands. He also started diplomatic
+relations with a neighboring dwarwen clan, along which
+information could be traded. However, paranoia from
+stories about terrible undead (those stories were true), mixed
+with a false rumor about an impeding invasion of human war ships
+into the orcish lands, led to the wrong conclusions.  When a couple
+of pirate ships were spotted on the horizon, the Orcs decided to
+flee up river and leave their meticulously trapped and fortified 
+village behind, thus also moving away from the central area of
+the campaign, avoiding contact to other factions and thus making
+their information gathering much more difficult (the pirate ships
+were a random encounter. They were not headed for the orcs).
+.PP
+On another occasion two large factions managed to move around
+each other in full circle without noticing, only to find their
+previously established locales deserted.
+.PP
+Of course in the end, a bunch of stalwart player characters had
+put together enough information to infiltrate the lair of their
+nemesis, the Evil High Cleric
+.I "Evangus Tardus"
+in a commando style action. This bereft the undead forces from
+their command and brought about the final important turn of the 
+game. It is true, this was probably the only way to defeat the
+evil forces. Out in the field the lawful and neutral factions
+just did not have a chance against an army of Spectres.
+I want to point out that this decisive incursion of the 
+.I "good guys"
+would likely have failed, had the Evil High Cleric invested more 
+into information gathering. Maybe he was too convinced of his
+superiority.
+.H2
+What were we lacking?
+.PP
+Looking back I feel I should have included some important hints
+into the player information sheet I sent out to every one:
+.BU
+Information gathering is crucial! Trying to learn what the other
+faction knows should be one of the most important intentions of
+interacting with other players in game, in fact of playing your
+factions roles!
+.BU
+Information can be traded \[em] for gold, other assets and alliances.
+.BU
+The gaming world is large and there may be more factions than you
+think!
+.BU
+Remember that intelligence can be faulty, remember that you and
+others can plant misinformation.
+.BU
+How about a faction of rumor mongers? Maybe even a news outlet?
+.BU
+How about a faction running some kind of postal service?
+.PP
+While I now would advise to establish those latter
+factions with setting up the game, every player should be aware
+that they may well establish a postal service and an information
+brokering service themselves. Maybe even competing mail services
+and conflicing news outlets. It's all part of the game! 
+.PP
+So are you looking forward to your next faction game? Ready to play a 
+postal game about mail services? Ha! I sure am!
+.Au lkh