Grenzland-Zine/issue06/information

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.H1
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
.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