To show the narrative game process, I’m going to game out the campaign in the Valle del Cielo, between the Campilesia Independent Forces and the invading Sur-Marais Army. This post will set up the game. The next post will play it out.

The Map

I took the map I had previously created for The General of the Pen and I added a hex overlay. It’s thicker than I would have liked, but it’s what I could do quickly. Clearly, the map is not set up for the hex overlay, as cities and villages are not quite centered, but again, I did this pretty quickly.

Each hex is roughly ten miles from center to center.

The Rules

This game is going to track how fast units move about the valley. Each round is one day.

Units

Every unit on the map is going to represent one independent formation, moving under by the decisions of one commanding officer. This could be as small as a squadron of 300 soldiers, or an entire army corps of 30,000.

Each unit has a movement speed, which represents how fast the unit can move about in one day. This speed will be limited to the slowest formation in its order of battle, either infantry (foot and wagon speed) or cavalry (mounted horse speed).

The units will not have the same speed necessarily. The well-drilled Sur-Marais infantry can pack up and march quicker than the newly raised Campilesian volunteers. On the other hand, while the Campilesian cavalry is not well-drilled, they are all expert horsemen, so they will move the same speed as their professional counterparts.

Faction	Unit	Speed
Sur-Marais	Infantry	2 hexes
Sur-Marais	Cavalry	3 hexes
Campilesian	Infantry	1 hex
Campilesian	Cavalry	3 hexes

Unit composition

Other than changing the movement, the composition of any unit on the field will have several other influeces.

• The unit commander’s knowledge of strength will inform their deicisons.
• A unit with cavalry can ‘scout’ the nearby hexes to find out what is nearby.
• Larger units will eat up supply quicker. While I’m not tracking supply by numbers, it will something to keep under consideration for narrative purposes.

Messengers

It’ll be important to remember that in this world, there are no radios or telephones. There are telegraphs, but they exist only between major cities, so they won’t have much of an impact on this game. Narratively, that any information known in San Martin (the capital city of the valley) is known to the greater Campilesian movement beyond, which may have an impact. I’m giving myself that options.

A message dispatched by an officer will move up to 50 miles (5 hexes) in one day. This is a bit messier to track, but important to know when certain officers know about events further down the valley. And it’ll be one more reason to have the character try to build a telegraph down the valley.

Commander Choices

Finally, I need to make the choices for each unit from the viewpoint of the commander of that unit, at that time an place. I want to take into account:

• Their education and training
• Their skill and talent (or lack thereof)
• What they know
• Their mission
• Their biases and personality.

Starting Positions

In this step, I set units about the battlefield and decide what their current composition it. I figured out most of this in earlier blog posts where I built the armies, but now I get to see it on the map.

The Sur-Marais force is in the west, at the large town / small city of Santa Catrina. Here, I’m going to place two markers. One represents the force sent to pacify the valley. An army corps, supplemented by two additional cavalry brigades. Around 20,000 men at arms, all told. The second marker represents the garrison force of Santa Catrina, to guard the supplies. I’ll say this is a brigade of infantry, some artillery, and a lot of supply clerks. Maybe 4,000 men, all counted. They won’t do much, except represent the enemy ‘base.’

The Campilesians are spread out. They have a brigade at San Martin in the east (three battalions of infantry and an artillery battery, 2,600 men). And a brigade I will put at the crossroads (also three battalions and a battery, but only at 1,800 men). There are also about seven hundred scouting the west. I will put three tokens down, for each of the three scouting units, representing where they’re focused on looking.

I’m also going to add markers for the main characters of the story, at least as far as they make it into the game. One for the allied commander, Major General Alonso de Mendoza, and one for the POV character, Gerhard Van Rumm.

Beginning the Game

I’ve got the tables for each unit on the board, with their subordinate units and some notes on their commanders.

I have the starting places for the units.

I have the established rules.

Starting the next blog post, I will begin playing the game.