War. It's the source of much conflict.

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

When I was bogged down with planning plots for this campaign of mine, War was a constant theme. I started with the intent of creating a "specialist" unit in the legion (refer to the first campaign dispatch); unfortunately things didn't turn out quite the way I intended. The adventures I ran the PCs through are many, but it was only as I was running through the lemon tree that I tripped over a root of a problem. I was gaming every day - that is to say that each and every game day I had something for the PCs to do, and the game was being bogged down by the minutia. Now minutia is fine and good, but there has to be more. And role-playing minutia is boring (it's let's-sit-and-listen-to-the-gm time folks!) for the PCs.

So I had to change things. First I gave the PCs 20 days off. I gave everyone the handout for the month of Halane and said - look it over and tell me what you do in that time. The following game everyone had a few minutes of solo play. Then I launched into a new adventure with a new handout for the new month : Savor. In this new handout, I didn't explain what the events were - instead I just gave the dates, temperatures and times of the events. Granted it's not very realistic for PCs to know when something's going to happen - but it helps me avoid the minutia.

BTW - the handouts were created using a The Weather Generator 2.1 by Gary Ashburn. It is available for download off the HârnPage under Applications & Utilities, MS-DOS. I take the monthly output, port it into Excel and then save to HTML. It takes a bit of cleaning to remove the Excel/Microsoft proprietary coding, and then I use Macromedia Dreamweaver 3.01 to import an HTML template to put the page in a certain style.

Now with this in place, I can script events. I've stopped caring if the PCs actually happen to partake in all the events I list. They are, after all - serving in an outpost with 4 full cohorts.

And that's another thing I've been up to. Remember the Alternate Army articles by Jonathan M. Davidson? Well I've been writing a modified version of them. The first attempt (Tenacus) wasn't quite what I intended, so I started at the other end. Items marked with a * come from the Alternate Army articles (either they are summized, or cut whole cloth):

Legion : Making a Legionnaire in HMC, Equipment, Recruitment information, Naming*, Organization*, History and Duties and Obligations.

Cohort: History, Naming*, Payment (Crimes, Punishments etc), Organization*, Tactics, Duties and Obligations, and Adventure Ideas. Sub articles: Legatus, Manus Legatus, Triberties, Triberties Primus

Maniple: ... Sub Article: Manus

Tenacus: Naming, Crime and Punishment, Organization, History, Equipment, Tactics, Duties and Obligations, and Adventure Ideas. Sub Articles: Milities Primus, Milities Linari, Milities Fabrica

Tala: ... Sub Articles: Tala Gravis, Tala Sagitorium, Sexton

Auxilliari: ... Sub article: Skirmishers, Archerers, Compartes, Urbani, Coranan Urbani (Archers), Shiran Urbani (Boatmen)

The Legion, Cohort and Tenacus are almost done as I write this; Legion needs a little correcting, Cohorts has to have its sidebar-info added (and the Manus article has to be written) and Tenacus still needs some ironing out. But, once completed, they will be my version of Thardic Militiary - with everything you need to know about each rank, and grouping.

Because the articles are still in flux, I'm only offering them in PDF. If you really-really need them in html, contact me and I'll see what I can do.

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