A king’s bounty: the scepter wars

The scepter war

The scepter itself – A potent magical artifact that was shattered into six pieces 1000 years ago and hidden away from the hands of mortals. Now, 1000 years after it was shattered, the 4 other artifacts have been rediscovered, and the scepter is needed to battle the use and misuse of their powers, the scepter’s holder will gain 3 powers; immortality unless their head should be cut off, the spells: teleport without error, Finger of lightning, speak with dragons, and finally, if they should be killed, cursed is the line who performs the act until the family lineage is extinct. Such a vastly powerful artifact has given rise to a war that engulfs the whole of the empire. The emperor, Justinius the sixth, has sent a call for  heros to rise, offering lands and titles to those who find even one piece of the scepter of dragons.

4 magical items are said to point the way to the scepter.

The anchor of steadfastness – grants naval recruitment
The crystal of perspective – effectively a palantir
The shield of potence – Grants greater damage resist to an army
The ring of necessity – Grants foresight three times each game

Someone who finds all of these will know the locations of the scepter pieces as if by magic. Players may be of either alignment, either for the empire, or for themselves. Players must be an intelligent humanoid race that is tech using and has society.

The empire stretches over five huge islands.

Saharia – Desert and mountains
Continenta – Plains and rivers
Tropica – Rain forest and volcanos
Barrowpine – Forests and mountains
Augustia – Plains and mountains, imperial seat

Leaders have four stats.
Last – How much hitting power you have and grant to followers
Focus – How much magic power you have and grant to followers
Stay – How much endurance you have and grant to followers
Leadership – Charisma, luck, and number of followers you can have

Dice
xd10 is used to control units, where x is the number of brigades within a unit, up to 5.
xd100 is used for recruiting and money treasure up to 10d100.
xd20 is used for magical treasures during an attempt to find them, up to 2d20. This is also used for direct magic attempts and unit commands. Higher number wins.
xd8 is used for ranged attacks, up to 4d8, determining how many brigades shoot.
xd6 is used for ranged magic attacks, up to 3d6, and determines how many times the spell was successfully cast.
xdy is used for casualties, where x is the number of units that were successfully hit and y is the number of actual bodies. In other words, a strong arrow attack might inflict 3d12 casualties.

The benefits of being good and bad
Good characters always start out with a ring of leadership and have a royal favor hidden stat, which determines whether or not volunteers occur and how villagers react to a characters presence.
Evil characters don’t start out with a ring of leadership or royal favor. Instead, they start out with 1d4 hideouts which count as both resources and a place to let their search-intensity stat decrease.

The benefits of magic and non-magic characters
Magic characters may use direct casting against a targeted enemy force, expending one counter of any spell they chose, however, people fear magic and magic users will always be less successful at calling up volunteers or instituting drafts.
Non magical characters may set their units to ‘Defend the lord’ or ‘Charge’ rather than the more normal settings, these settings are explained a little later.

Example leaders and armies
Phaedra the holy
Distinguishing features: Halo above her head, long blond hair, white eyes, mostly white clothes.
Last: 27
Focus: 59
Stay: 31
Leadership: 63
Army notes: Some volunteers, many pilgrims, some peasants, a multitude of gnomes

Gruntthump the berserk
Distinguishing features: Over 10 feet tall, huge beard, orange tinted eyes and red skin.
Last: 53
Focus: 24
Stay: 45
Leadership: 37
Army notes: A lot of giants, some trolls, some nomads, a multitude of berserkers

Louis the moneywise
Distinguishing features: clean shaven, wears a money-changer’s scales, elvish ears
Last: 31
Focus: 43
Stay: 37
Leadership: 80
Army notes: A lot of volunteers, some knights, some pikemen, a multitude of elves, some peasants, a multitude of druids

Sir Brightlance
Distinguishing features: Carries a magic spear, wears plate armor, brown beard
Last: 65
Focus: 27
Stay: 42
Leadership: 30
Army notes: Some knights, A lot of archers, A lot of Pikemen, A lot of peasants

Mathias the literate
Distinguishing features: Glasses, glowing skullcap, quills and inkpots on his belt
Last: 39
Focus: 57
Stay: 34
Leadership: 50
Army notes: A lot of mages, A lot of druids, a multitude of Elementalists, some peasants

Unit settings
Distance – uses a ranged attack rather than engaging in melee. Wizards and shooters automatically enter combat set to this.
Probe – Fake engaging in melee then withdraw.
Raid – Engage with about 1/10th of a force
Skirmish – Engage with 5/10ths of a force
Fight to last – engage with full force until either your unit or theirs is dead
Pillage – destroy buildings to convert them into supplies
Feint – Move one march in a direction then return to original square
Charge – Move straight towards the enemy
Defend the lord – form up around the leader

Special effects
Flight – Move via flight
Blaster – Attack with the spells acid rain, mage catapult, rain of phosphor, or tar bomb.
Teleport – Move via magical transportation
Turn undead – Destroy an undead unit
Rising again – Some kills rise as undead
Demoralize – Some engages cause enemies to randomly flee
Regenerate – Unit heals itself automatically
Elemental magic – use of Fire ball, Ice bolt, Call Lightning, Sudden quake, or Tornado spells
Destroyer – Unit can kill fortifications
Trample – Unit can kill some types of ground units simply by moving over them
Enraged – Immune to demoralize, .5 of all damage added again against virtually anything
Immune vs – Immune to any one of the special effects

What spells actually do
Fire ball / Ice bolt – Hits a single unit with either a rain of fire balls or an indirect volley of ice bolts.
Call Lightning – Cuts a single target’s brigades by up to half.
Sudden quake – Hits three random areas of the map with destroy.
Tornado – Hits three random areas of the map with a tornado, inflicting Pillage or damage.
Acid rain – Rains an indirect volley of acidic liquid on an enemy unit.
Mage catapult – Hits with catapult shot against an enemy unit.
Rain of phosphor – Rains white phosphorous inflicting destroy and damage.
Tar bomb – Bombs an area with huge masses of bubbling tar, inflicting slowdown, damage, and reducing resistance to fire by 90% on 3 squares.
Turn undead – Inflicts casualties against undead units with holy power.
Teleport – move anywhere on the board for free once per battle.

Like calls to like
If a player, good or bad, comes upon units that are of their same type, i.e. a giant leader finds giants, a knight leader finds knights, a mage leader finds mages, etc, that unit is purchased at half gold cost.

Liberating items
Liberating items and gold have two options. Disbursing it to the people, which increases leadership, or sending it to the royal vaults, which increases royal favor. Thirdly, one may chose to make it a pay chest, and use it to pay units or purchase new ones. Evil characters may bribe to win favor as well and typically do this instead of the royal vaults option.

Improving and promoting
Improving grants 1 new skill and is trained at cost. Promoting changes one type to another, example, mage promotes to druid, peasant promotes to pikeman, archer promotes to sniper, etc. This is left deliberately vague so storytellers can make their own promotion charts. Examples of improvement include: changing an archer’s arrows to fire arrows, giving peasants armor tunics, training flying mounts for knights, etc.

Junior Commanders
Other adventurers can be hired as junior commanders, and can be put on either field or garrison duty. Leaving them in garrison duty for very long is high risk however, since they may defect or dis-align themselves from you.

Ultimate goal of the game
Good character – Rise to the rank of Lord or Lady Protector of the realm, claim all six pieces of the scepter.
Evil character – Seize the throne, either by installing a puppet or by directly claiming it.