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Right, quite a few of those. We were just talking about the use of orpiment as an arrow poison in another venue. I learned about that when I almost touched the wrong part of a medieval illustrated manuscript. Avoid the yellows!
You also want to make characters with at least 3 or 4 MP, which either takes some military levels or a lot of ‘military adjacent’ levels, unless they are scholars or shamans or something.
Good question. I’d say about 20. You are looking for about 4th-6th level (counting all levels from every class combined). See what 20 gets you and report back!
I agree with you Eric II is a heel! but politics makes for strange bedfellows, especially for a small community like Stargard. Stettin seems to have explicitly racist policies toward Slavs written into their town law which is kind of unusual for that time and something i find off-putting, on top of their bullying behavior in the feud.
We are planning to put our name generator online, but it’s unfortunately stuck behind a queue of a half dozen or so other jobs for our web developer.
In the interim though I could generate a bunch of names and post a list here. I think I did post some names like that in maybe one of the Monsterberg books? Anyway I’ll post some on the forum later maybe tonight.
Yes we are actually working on this book now. It will be basically four sections: historical villains from the 15th Century, with brief historical biographies as well as stat blocks; generic NPCs as bad guys, foils etc with shorter descriptions and stat blocks (similar to the ones in Monsterberg and our other adventure modules); animals with stat blocks; and mythological creatures, spirits, beasts and monsters from Central Europe, with short descriptions and stat blocks.
It will probably be released this fall.
Wow. Ok yeah. I just found and laboriously transcribed two pages from Jan Dlugosz for his entry on 1466, which are mostly about the siege of Chojnice but mention Bytow twice. This god damn website decided to log me out in the middle of transcribing all that so when I posted it, it disappeared. Wow. I an see that Titivillus is still out to destroy me after all these years.
The short version is that according to Jan Dlugosz, Bytow was occupied by Silesians in the service of a local duke loyal to the Teutonic Order, until shortly after the fall of Chojnice to the Poles, after which it was purchased by the Polish King for the sum of 8,000 florins, and went into Polish hands.
This was two months before the end of the 13 Years War between the Teutonic Knights vs. the King of Poland and the Prussian cities (Prussian Confederation).
Once my morale levels have recovered I may try again to transcribe the passage, as it has pretty interesting details about the siege of Chojnice.
That wiki you found is solid gold. Amazingly detailed and seems to be accurate from the other sources I have checked. This ongoing feud is rich with small paramilitary actions (capturing ships and boats, blocking or clearing harbors, kidnapping and freeing merchants and so on). It would make an outstanding campaign or adventure I think. (I am team Stargard 100% by the way).
It’s really interesting to see these cases where towns are fighting each other North of the Alps. It was very common in Italy but a lot more rare up north, although you see it in Flanders and sometimes among the Hanse cities. I wonder if Lübeck’s raid against Stettin had something to do with this war.
I also really love the names of the burghers in here, these are fantastic Low German names, I’m going to put them all into my name generator: “Blecken Sultze”, “Clawes Viphper”, “Hans Jesse”, “Jakob Grosere” all gold.
As for Lauenburg and Bütow, I don’t know off hand. It will be hard to find sources with that much specificity though local people will know. I will check my sources on the Teutonic Knights and Hanseatic League, and Jan Dlugosz and see if these are mentioned. You might want to check that Nuremberg Chronicle online searchable site I linked here on the forum somewhere, you might get lucky.
Yeah the dice pool fits well with movement / attack / counterattack options in a more fluid way.
I recommend playing through a few solo combats. You can find several pre-gen characters around this site and in our modules. You should be able to play through a combat in about 10-15 minutes.
Yes this was a bit earlier, in the late 14th Century, but IIRC both Rostock, Wismar and Stettin, under pressure from the Dukes of Mecklenburg, made themselves open ports to the Victual Brothers. They basically became supply and logistics bases for the Victual Brothers in a privateering / piratical war against Denmark, and also the Hanse. The Hanse having already defeated Denmark in the first Danish-Hanseatic war had made peace and was trying to resume normal commerce in the Baltic, but the Pomeranian and Mecklenburg dukes still had a beef with the princely family that ruled Denmark (which had familial links to Pomerania) and so they wanted to continue the war, and their cities complied with this.
So not only do you have these open pirate cities but the rather odd situation where Lübeck and some of the other Hanse towns were skirmishing with Stettin, Wismar and Rostock in the Baltic and around the coastlines of Denmark and Sweden. I think Lübeck actually raided Stettin at one point and burnt their harbor.
Another interesting place to look at is Bergen in Norway, which was an unhappy place where the Hanse was taking advantage of the ‘food insecurity’ of the locals and the town itself seems to have not been adequately defended, so the Victual Brothers sacked it something like 6 times. Bergen was allegedly the inspiration for the “Pirate Jenny” song by Bertold Brecht in the Threepenny opera.
I’ll look for some links on the pirate-town alliances. It is mentioned in the English Wiki on the Victual Brothers here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victual_Brothers#History_of_the_Guild
Thanks for the tip on the article looking forward to reading that one.
I should add, you might want to also look into the pirate groups like the Victual Brothers and the Likedeelers. Their heyday was earlier in the 14th Century but they were still around in the 15th and they had strong links to a couple of the towns in that zone, I think especially Rostock and Stettin.
Another way to look at it, in terms of tactics, it’s often better to attack after your opponent has used most or all their MP. Also, a second opponent might not be in range, or might be at long range, at the beginning of the round, but might move closer in the middle or by the end. If you have a short weapon, it’s better to attack at melee range than onset range (you’ll get a higher bonus).
Depending on the Martial Feats you have, MP could also be used to move away so as to avoid a grapple (Sidestep etc.). Which is pretty important if you are outnumbered.
So first, yes you can hold on to your Martial Pool, and if you still have them at the end of the round you can then use them for an attack.
Saving MP is a good idea especially in an even fight or when you are outnumbered. You may want them for Active Defense, which is the most common thing, for Opportunity Attacks for example if someone tries to go into grapple with you, and for other things like say, drawing another weapon, changing ranges, or moving.
If you look at the three combat example transcripts we posted, (which are here on the site and also included in the appendix of the latest update of the core combat rules), you’ll see that saving MP comes up a lot.
It all depends on your own preferred strategy though of course.
