Centurion Sitrep as of 4 May 2013.
The Rules: 75% written. Presently stands at 7,520 words.

Running the Game: 75% written. Presently stands at 3,560 words

Gaming in Military Settings: 100% written. Sent for editing. Presently stands at 3,182 words.

The Late Republic: 100% written. Sent for editing. Including the Late Republic, Structure of Government, Structure of Military, and the Late Republic as a Setting, presently stands at 12,558 words

The Civil Wars: 100% written. Sent for editing. Including the Civil Wars, Structure of Government, Structure of Military, and the Civil Wars as a Setting, presently stands at 6,537 words.

The Principate: In production. the Principate 0%, Structure of Government 0%, Structure of Military 25%, The Principate as a Setting 100%. Presently stands at 3,963 words.

The Crisis of the Third Century: In planning. 0% written.

The book now stands at 37,320 words of a projected 36,500 words (including the Stretch Goal of “the Crisis of the Third Century”), which is 102%. So, we have definitely hit our goal, but there is still plenty more to do.

So, for the first quarter of 2013:

Total Sales for First Quarter 2013
Albenistan
Election Day, 1
Khorforjan Gambit, 4
Qalashar Device, 4
Raid On Ashkashem, 4

Arcane Kingdoms
Arcane Kingdoms, 3
For Simple Coin, 2

Covert Forces
Covert Forces Redux, 3
In Her Majesty’s Service, 1

Other
Cyber-state Avatar Toolkit, 1
Operation Nearscape, Free Product, 12

Sword’s Edge System
Crossing the Millers, 10
Kheufer Scrolls, 10
Kiss My Axe, 17
Suffer the Witch, 4
Sword’s Edge System, Free Rules, 114
Sword Noir, 26

Total Sales to Date
Albenistan
Albenistan: Election Day (Modern Dispatch 113): 33
Khorforjan Gambit: 112
Qalashar Device: 125
Raid On Ashkashem: 166

Arcane Kingdoms
Arcane Kingdoms: 45
Gifts of the Elder Gods: 36
For Simple Coin: 59

Charity Products
Relief Effort: 55

Covert Forces
Canada’s Combined Security Reconnaissance Section: 101
Covert Forces: 100
Covert Forces Redux: 169
In Her Majesty’s Service: 140

Other
Cyber-state Avatar Toolkit: 38
Line Zero: 36
Operation Nearscape, Free Product, 337

Sword’s Edge System
Crossing the Millers, 113
Kheufer Scrolls, 160
Kiss My Axe, 164
Suffer the Witch, 85
Sword’s Edge System, Free Rules 1326
Sword Noir 391

The Black Gate article.

Too long, didn’t read? That worked out well, but I’ve learned lessons and next time will be better.

In 156 BCE (one year before the Lusitani revolt which led to the Lusitanian War), the PCs are linked to a junior tribune in V Legio based in Corduba (modern Cordoba) under Proconsul L. Aurelius Orestes. An ex-legionary now merchant in the city has been paid off by a tribal leader among the Lusitani to sell poisoned food to the Romans. At the outset, no one knows how the men are dying, but sickness is rampant and a plague is suspected. The tribune is ordered to investigate, and he turns to the PCs to find out what is going on.

The second part of my one-pager format is Places. This section refers to a couple of interesting sites that the action should take place in or around. One of the places I chose is right there in the Situation: Corduba – New Carthage. We know the place as Cordoba, and it continued to be an important part of Spanish history, so I thought it would be fun to set the adventure there, in a city that had a couple of thousand years of intrigue and political machinations in its future.

Generally, the Places in a one-pager have a hook that links them into the adventure, but both Places in the original playtest were more about general setting than special encounters or action. For Corduba, I wrote:

Corduba – capital of Hispania Ulterior (Far Hispania). As with most provincial capitals, this town has been laid out like a legion camp, so it has east-west and north-south roads, along with an earthen wall topped with a wood palisade. It exists beside the far less organized and geometric Iberian town founded by Hamilcar Barca in the late 3rd century BCE as Kartjuba. Two legions are present in Corduba under the proconsul.

Again, this is pretty much cribbed straight from Wikipedia. There wasn’t a whole heck of a lot of research that went into it. Maybe that too much of a glimpse of the sausage getting made, but I’m being honest here – historical gaming doesn’t need to be that difficult.

The second setting in Places was the province itself. I used these two in places mostly because I am not as conversant with this place and time in Roman history as I am with some others. I encapsulated what I thought was essential for my knowledge into a concise paragraph. It worked. It was all I needed.

Hispania Ulterior – Far Hispania is along the south-east and southern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The province has been at peace since Carthage’s defeat in 201 BCE. Although the Celtiberian tribes within the province have been quiet, the Romans know that they have not been fully assimilated, and so the legions remain. Raiding into the province from the Celtiberian tribes along the borders, such as the Lusitani and the Vettones.

After Places, I have People. These are the major NPCs, good-guys and bad, that are going to help move the plot forward, or support the PCs as they do so. These characters are a mix of actual historical figures (most of the Celt Iberians) and totally made-up dudes whose names might not even be historically accurate (I’m not good at identifying in which period certain names were used).

I used the history of the time and the Lusitanian Rebellion to decide who I needed to move my conspiracy forward, then I tried to decide who in the legions the PCs might consult or interrogate. There was very little difference between what I do for any other game – from D&D to Covert Forces – and what I did here, other than having history as a backdrop and inspiration.

And an important thing that I learned is that historical names can be much, much worse than any consonant-riddled, constructed fantasy name.

Given all that, here’s the cast of characters I cooked up.

1. Quintus Cincius Salvius: A legionary who retired to Corduba. He had lost his farm after a stretch of six years in the legions, and that left him pretty bitter. He left behind a wife and children in Roman Italy. He now has a wife, Sicounin of the Turduli tribe of the Lusitani, and sister of Sosinbiuru, a Turduli war-leader.

2. Sosinbiuru: A war-leader among the Turduli tribe of the Lusitani, Sosinbiuru is an ally of Viriathus, the Lusitani leader creating a confederacy to fight Rome. Sosinbiuru has a camp on the western borders of Hispania Ulterior, and his confederate, Terkinos, maintains a rebel faction within Kartjuba.

3. Terkinos: A confederate of Sosinbiuru and a warrior of the Turduli, Terkinos is Susinbiuru’s contact with Quintus and Sicounin. He passes himself off as a grain merchant, which explains his regular contact with Quintus.

4. Titus Didius Iustus: The signifier (standard-bearer) of the 1 Centuria of V Legio, he acts as the senior commissary, and is the one who deals with Quintus for grain and other food.

5. Marcus Carvilius Narses: The medic for 1 Centuria in V Legio. He’s almost 50 (not absolutely certain of his age) and has seen a lot of action. He does not believe the sickness is a plague, but the symptoms are like poisoning.

6. Urcebas of the Turduli: Urcebas is the confederate of Tureno, Susinbiuru’s rival in the Turduli tribe. He is in Kartjuba to spy on Terkinos. If he can foil Terkinos without word getting back to Sosinbiuru, he’ll do it.

7. Korribilo of the Vasconnes. Kooibilio is the chieftain of the Vasconnes, a Celtiberian tribe allied to the Romans. He commands a forces of auxiliaries attached to V Legio. His warriors are known as exceptionally capable and professional.

And there you have it. That is the total of the one-pager that I used in the first playtest. I am comfortable creating on the fly, and I had some other resources with me to help me, including lists of names for the various cultures that were interacting – Roman, Celt-Iberian, and Carthaginian.

The time spent reading to create this one-pager helped to immerse me more deeply than the one page might indicate, so while the one-pager was my guide, I also had gained a lot of knowledge of the setting and events during the prep phase. You might want to print off some of the on-line resources you used (*cough* Wikipedia *cough*) or photocopy particularly helpful pages from a physical reference you might have used, highlighting important passages.

The prep was honestly not much more than I would do for a game of Sword Noir, and about on par for the prep in my Vikings campaign that led into the creation of Kiss My Axe, so don’t get intimidated with historical gaming. A lot of the work is already done for you!

Go support the Centurion: Legionaries of Rome Kickstarter campaign here.

Interested in the games mentioned in this post? Get your own copy of Covert Forces Redux, Sword Noir: a Role-Playing Game of Hardboiled Sword & Sorcery, or Kiss My Axe: Thirteen Warriors and an Angel of Death at RPG Now.

For research, Wikipedia has got you covered.

You can see the first post, “Creating Centurion Adventures: the Situation”, here.

For the first playtest of the rules – for the one that I ran – I decided I wanted to run something in the earliest period covered in the book. That’s from the Second Punic War (which started around 218 BC) to the rise of Gaius Marius (who gained his first consulship in 107 BC). I didn’t want to run a campaign during an actual, full-on war, so that excluded the Second and Third Punic Wars. I knew that after the Third Punic War, Rome gained a kind of controlling interest in Spain, so I started reading about the Roman conquest of Spain.

Where did I read about this? Wikipedia, of course.

Wikipedia is the free and accessible version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. While it is not without errors, for prepping for a game, it’s accurate enough. Don’t use it for your term paper or master’s thesis, but if you are trying to brush up on a historical period, culture or concept for your game, it’s just about perfect.

And, of course, there’s a page devoted to the Roman Conquest of Hispania, along with plenty of side articles about different aspects of that conquest. It was here that I found out about the Lusitanian Rebellion (or the Lusitanian War, whichever you’d like to call it).

There were a lot of options at that point, and I basically broke down my interest into scouting, infiltration or conspiracy. Scouting would have the PCs scouting for Celt-Iberian forces at the outset of the rebellion. Infiltration would have the PCs attempting to infiltrate the Celt-Iberian forces. Conspiracy would have the PCs involved in uncovering a plot by the Celt-Iberian rebels before the rebellion takes off.

I went with this last one. I love a good conspiracy, and this could easily lead into the other two types of adventure I envisioned. Cracking the conspiracy could lead to infiltrating the enemy and when the war actually broke out, scouting out their forces.

I decided that the PCs would be part of a newly arrived legion, and they would uncover a plot by Celt-Iberian rebels to poison the legions. Almost all of the research I did was on the internet. Again, this isn’t for some kind of academic paper, it’s just for a game. If you get stuff wrong, it’s no big deal.

Usually, when I run a game, I do it using a one page document which can be either the entirety of the plan for the game, or an encapsulation of the key points. The one-pager starts with the situation. The information I gleaned from Wikipedia and cursory research on the internet, I came up with this situation:

In 156 BCE (one year before the Lusitani revolt which led to the Lusitanian War), the PCs are linked to a junior tribune in V Legio based in Corduba (modern Cordoba) under Proconsul L. Aurelius Orestes. An ex-legionary now merchant in the city has been paid off by a tribal leader among the Lusitani to sell poisoned food to the Romans. At the outset, no one knows how the men are dying, but sickness is rampant and a plague is suspected. The tribune is ordered to investigate, and he turns to the PCs to find out what is going on.

That’s the first part of the one-pager. I’ll get into the rest in the next article.

If you want to learn more about the Centurion Kickstarter, go here.

If you want to learn more about the Roman conquest of Spain, go here.

This is it. The Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign for Centurion: Legionaries of Rome is live.

If you enjoyed Sword Noir or Kiss My Axe, you’ll love Centurion. If you are a fan of Roman history, or just dig the action from movies like Gladiator or TV series like HBO’s Rome, Centurion has got you covered. Every backer receives the current playtest document, and if this game isn’t something you are interested in, you can revoke your investment and you are out nothing.

But I have faith that you’ll dig the mechanics, and once the book is out, it will have you covered for gaming under the eagle.

Vale!

You can find the Kickstarter here.

This last weekend I was at Ottawa’s Game Summit 2013, sharing a table with the Ottawa Tabletop Game Designers (there is no secret handshake or decoder ring, I assure you). Corey Reid was present, pimping Dino Pirates of Ninja Island print edition. The Warden had both hard- and softcover copies of Killshot. Jason Pitre had a bunch of Bully Pulpit Games product, headlining the latest Jason Morningstar release, Durance. I had copies of Sword Noir and Kiss My Axe.

Corey stole the show with his salesmanship and showmanship. I sold a couple of books to a single customer whom Corey had attracted. I am not cut out for selling at cons. I’m not much of a salesman (ironic, given a long time working retail while in school).

Lessons were learned, but rather than simply reiterate what other wiser minds have written, go read Corey and The Warden’s take on the weekend.

You can read Corey’s thoughts here.

You can read the Warden’s thoughts here.

You can find Dino-Pirates of Ninja Island here.

You can find Killshot here.

Jason Pitre sometimes hangs out here.

You can find Bully Pulpit Games here.

I wanted to have 75 to 80% of the writing for Centurion done by the time I started crowd-funding it. Let’s see how that’s going.

Sitrep as of 27 Jan 2013.
The Rules: 100% written, but not 100% tested. If the crowd-funding campaign is successful, it will need to go through a third-party editor. Presently stands at 7,520 words.

Running the Game: 75% written. Presently stands at 3,560 words

Gaming in Military Settings: 100% written. Presently stands at 3,130 words.

The Late Republic: Structure of Government 10% done, Structure of Military 10% done, The Late Republic as a Setting 100% written. Presently stands at 4,260 words

The Civil Wars: Events and Personages 0%, The Government and Military 0%, The Civil Wars as a Setting 100% written. Presently stands at 3,390 words.

The Principate: Structure of Government 0%, Structure of Military 0%, The Principate as a Setting 100% written. Presently stands at 3,360 words.

Bottom Line: The project now stands at 25,220 words. At the standard 250 words per page, that’s 100 pages. A better metric – for me – is that Sword Noir was around 32,670 words, and the size of Sword Noir is the minimum for which I am aiming. Given a target of 33,000 words, I’m 76% there. This means I’ve hit the minimum amount of writing I wanted done before I would go to crowd-funding.

Strap on your helmets, people. We’re going to crowd-fund this bee-yatch.

Still won’t be starting until March, but rest assured we will be starting.

Here are the reward levels I’m considering.

1. $ 10 – Legionary. The Centurion PDF, including any stretch goal additions

2. $ 25 – Centurion. The Centurion print and PDF (maximum of 200)

3. $ 65 – Primus Pilus. Everything for Centurion level plus the opportunity to name one of the example characters used throughout Centurion and contribute to the example text, with final edit being done by the author. (maximum of 5)

4. $ 75 – Praefectus Cohortis. Everything for the Centurion level plus the opportunity to create one of the iconic characters for the Late Republic, Civil Wars, and Principate period settings that will be included in Centurion as an NPC. (maximum of 3 per period setting)

5. $100 – Praefectus Castrorum. Everything at the Centurion level, plus the opportunity to participate in a Centurion one-shot run by Fraser Ronald over Skype. (requires the use of Skype and a willingness to be flexible for scheduling) (maximum of 12)

6. $150 – Tribunus Laticlavius. Everything at the Centurion level, plus the opportunity to participate in a Centurion one-shot run by Fraser Ronald at Gen Con Indy 2013. (requires attendance in Indianapolis, Indiana at a date and time specified by Fraser Ronald between August 15 and August 18, 2013) (maximum of 10)

Doing the math, if all the maximum levels of support in the various tiers are met, I’d only need 6 backers at the Legionary level to fund. If everyone chooses the Legionary level, I would need 560 backers to fund.

The raw numbers also make worried about selling at a price higher than the reward levels cost post-crowd-funding. It will likely end up with be a modicum higher (like the PDF for $10.95 or something like that), but if I lower the reward level costs, the numbers required to fund become beyond what I believe I can reach.

There is still about 5 weeks before this begins, and while that might seem like a while, it isn’t. I’m already moving on things like fulfillment and preparing the project page. I’ll have to start locking things down soon, and reward levels is one of those elements.

Also, I need to finish editing episode 83 of the Accidental Survivors Podcast, which should have been up today.

Back to work!

More information on D&D Next here.

More information on Game Summit here.

More information on “Get Tamodar,” including registration, here.

You can find the Accidental Survivors here.