Orc raid on a village with nothing but PEASANTS as defenders?

[Hobgoblin]

If you have Advanced Song of Blades rules, or the Song of Gold and Darkness expansion for the basic rules, they cover heavy armor.

Yes - though it's not quite what I was thinking of here, as it has a fairly marginal effect (one-point loss = a draw, if I remember correctly). I'm thinking more of the effect you would get in a system like Mythras, where you get massive protection from armour and it's completely disaggregated from a character's ordinary defensive and offensive capabilities.

If you have small (so low HP) orcs in good armour with fragile morale and brave, beefy (so high HP and high damage) but unarmoured villagers, you'd get an interesting dynamic and - potentially - a nice balance - especially in a system that allows critical hits to bypass armour or other special effects (again, thinking of Mythras here, though I'm sure there are some proper wargame examples).

I bow to no one in my admiration for Song of Blades, and it has the best morale system for this sort of thing, but I think the armour stuff is one area where more detailed, RPGish systems might do better.

[Hobgoblin]

I think you could also come up with a scenario in which the peasants have more scope to use terrain and other features (livestock!) to their advantage.

Perhaps cattle don't like the smell of orcs (or their wolves) and so are likely to trample them to defend their calves if let out of the pen. Or there might be dogs tethered outside the farmhouse that will be fierce in frustrating the goblins if their masters are able to let them off the leash. Stacks of haybales could be toppled, and there might be things that are easier for Men to climb than Orcs (actually, Song of Blades would do this automatically with Q4 orcs and Q3 Men). And so on ...

[jon_1066]

For it to be any kind of interest the villagers need to have a chance somehow.  It if is just orcs battering villagers left right and center then not a lot of fun for the village player.

So it either needs to be mechanics - villagers get some bonus against the orcs from morale, mobility, cover, etc - or a McGuffin -  the old hermit turns out to be a wizard, one of the villagers is a were bear, the annual district archery contest happened to be held that day, someone has a magic sword in their loft, an elder is a retired adventurer, etc.

[Deflatermouse]

For it to be any kind of interest the villagers need to have a chance somehow.  It if is just orcs battering villagers left right and center then not a lot of fun for the village player.

So it either needs to be mechanics - villagers get some bonus against the orcs from morale, mobility, cover, etc - or a McGuffin -  the old hermit turns out to be a wizard, one of the villagers is a were bear, the annual district archery contest happened to be held that day, someone has a magic sword in their loft, an elder is a retired adventurer, etc.

An excellent options of villagers.
Also should be included are the women folk as they can be pretty fierce when defending the home. I think possibly the Villagers should have a high morale/ back to the wall option.
Also terrain, a village can have lots of stone walls, wicker fences, hedges, ditches, small outhouses and middens.
Loads of obstacles to break up any raiders into much smaller groups.

[Patrice]

Lots of interesting ideas in this thread!

Check out the Town Raid Scenario discussed halfway down this page:  https://daleswargames.blogspot.com/2022/09/another-scenario-for-one-hour-skirmish.html

I'm not much in grid-based games nor in victory points-based games, but the scenario is interesting, thanks for the link.

[jon_1066]

Another factor to help the villagers - the village pub or perhaps a brewery.  If the orcs get into it they have to pass a  moral test or take to drinking the local brew with the expected results on their fighting skills.

[FramFramson]

I think if we're talking ORCS specifically, morale versus morale is going to be critical. Not only should the villagers have a "back to the wall" option, but the Orcs morale should be very brittle. Starts out high as anything, but easily cracked by losses, with more frequent and severe morale tests for a gang who thought a village would be easy pickings and finding out it's not going to be so easy as that. In the same vein, perhaps the villagers might have tougher morale tests early on, but progressively easier ones (possibly with benefits accrued) as the orcs take losses or are simply held off.

Another thing which holds potential is to invert the regular trope of orcish "hordes", whereby there are more villagers than orcs. The Orcs would be a well-armed and armoured (compared to the villagers) raiding party, but the villagers will have strength in numbers, so long as their morale holds.

[Patrice]

Another factor to help the villagers - the village pub or perhaps a brewery.  If the orcs get into it they have to pass a  moral test or take to drinking the local brew with the expected results on their fighting skills.

Yes! 

It happened to one of my Pictish raiders in a game not long ago. He dismounted and went inside a house looking for booty, and found barrels of mead. The GM told me to roll a test and it failed: the warrior fell drunk. Two other Pictish warriors entered the house, rolled succesfully the same test, and put the barrels of mead on a peasant's cart and the drunken warrior on top and tied his horse behind. 



Similar things could certainly happen to Orcs. 

[Lost Egg]

That's brilliant!

One idea that keeps popping into my mind is the villagers hastily assembling a mock up of their village including the village themselves ala Blazing Saddles  But would they get it complete in time?

[Vagabond]

There's some interesting ideas here for scenarios, last week we played a viking raid on another viking village,  it was a revenge thing.
The attackers had to do the usual including burning and pillaging,  points beging allocared for each, then they had to escape back to their ship.  No escape no points. Carrying loot slowed you down.

There were a few men and women in the village when the attack started but as the alarm went out more and more villagers returned from the fields and then their neighbours started arriving.

The attackers had been held up initially by a brave defence then lost time doing what Vikings did and then held onto the loot too long trying to win points. They were cut off from the ship, outnumbered and only a clever bit of thinking saved them.

We played the game cooperatively against the village but competitively for loot and destruction points. It got quite scary when we realised we needed to run to escape but couldn't disengage from the enemy and run.

[ced1106]

You can make this a "fog of war" scenario, where the peasants are familiar with the terrain, and the orcs are not. In fact, "fog of war", where one side (eg. defenders, or scouts) has better knowledge of the terrain would be the norm. But in wargames, it's accepted that both sides have perfect knowledge of the terrain (ie. both players can see the game board), which is rarely the case in actual combat (hence, the random die roll, I suppose).

Anyway, particularly for those in the UK who want their peasants (: RPE miniatures just started their "Villagers and Pillagers" KS, and it includes an add-on for peasant militia.
"Add-on 1: Peasant Militia set of 4 (DSA miniatures, with integral round base)  £10
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rpeminiatures/villagers-and-pillagers-28mm-metal-townsfolk-and-henchmen

[Metternich]

A few other possibilities:
     The village was founded with land grants to time-expired soldiers, who have brought some "souvenirs" with them.  The village is the home of hard rock miners who work a nearby iron mine - tough men with tough tools.  The village is the home of lumberjacks who work the nearby forest - tough men with axes.  The village is the seat of an order of religious fanatics.

[Hobgoblin]

A few other possibilities:
     The village was founded with land grants to time-expired soldiers, who have brought some "souvenirs" with them.  The village is the home of hard rock miners who work a nearby iron mine - tough men with tough tools.  The village is the home of lumberjacks who work the nearby forest - tough men with axes.  The village is the seat of an order of religious fanatics.

Great ideas! For the first, you could have the weapons and armour cached in various spots that only the villager players know about ("there's a sword hidden in the rafters of the house with the red roof; there's a suit of plate armour in the main hall; there are crossed spears on the wall of the inn ...").

That might give a nice "swing" to the game; unarmoured villagers might be no match for well-armed orcs in hand-to-hand combat - but might be more than a match for them when tooled up. So you'd have a sort of race to get the defenders to their gear as the orcs launch a surprise attack. If you combined that with opportunities for improvising (releasing and stampeding herd animals; setting up traps with fishing nets; or toppling totem poles) and don't have enough regular weapons to go round, you could fuel all sorts of interesting cooperative play and inventiveness.

[has.been]

Great ideas! For the first, you could have the weapons and armour cached in various spots that only the villager players know about ("there's a sword hidden in the rafters of the house with the red roof; there's a suit of plate armour in the main hall; there are crossed spears on the wall of the inn ...").

That might give a nice "swing" to the game; unarmoured villagers might be no match for well-armed orcs in hand-to-hand combat - but might be more than a match for them when tooled up. So you'd have a sort of race to get the defenders to their gear as the orcs launch a surprise attack. If you combined that with opportunities for improvising (releasing and stampeding herd animals; setting up traps with fishing nets; or toppling totem poles) and don't have enough regular weapons to go round, you could fuel all sorts of interesting cooperative play and inventiveness.

 

Take the idea a little further.
1) Make it a co-operative game
2) All the players are...villagers
3) Weapons are, as suggested, dotted around the village.
4) It is the night of a great festival/booze up/party, & gather them at the Tavern.
5) Don't tell the players about the Orcs/Vikings etc.
    Just explain it is a drinking/dancing/wenching game.
    Players will lose face if they fall behind with the drinking etc.
    If they can't pay for their round they can always swap that old
    sword/helmet/shield etc that they NEVER use.
6) When all the players are in a right old state...
    Bring on the Orcs/Vikings etc.
     
Cue things like, 'Dat's my swwwoord! Giz it back!!'
                       ' Shoot that Orc!' 'Whych one??? I see three'
                       'Whhoooze got me shield?'

These ideas are from a game I never managed to get a copy of, 'Saki & Samurai'
   

[Citizen Sade]

Great & inspirational thread.

The idea of co-op gaming has legs. Making it competitive and giving the players some choices could be a lark. For example, the local big man and toadies - well fed, trained & equipped - can grab their weapons and join the fray quickly or take more time to gear up properly by putting their armour on. Victory conditions could punish them for holding back and not leaping to the defence of the locals. However, doing so would make them a tougher nut for the raiders to crack.