While I was in my neglected hobby area yesterday to collect some things to entertain my eldest (who is still quite young) I saw something that gave me pause.

Now that, I thought, is something I want to play. Badly. The idea of Napoleonic soldiers fighting trolls just seems like so much fun. So I will run with that thought as it gives me some pleasure, and you gentle readers, have few other places to go! I will let this go on in a bit of a ramble.

I wouldn’t use the world of the Flintloque rules where different countries are frogs, or undead. Something more like the Powder Mage Trilogy, (you should check them out). Napoleonics with gunpowder, mutations, and some magic. That world doesn’t have a lot of monsters though, except for the human kind. I want to shoot a goblin in the face. Or face the undead.

Imagine Napoleon’s forces in Egypt in a dungeon crawl. They could be a formal army unit, a type of forlorn hope group outside the normal rules. I’m not sure what system I would use to game that, but I would be very happy just wargaming in such a world.

In my fantasy worlds I have Four Courts of the Fay. Maybe all of the opponents come from the Courts. A sprite maybe started off curdling milk in the Spring Court. Then luring people into a swamp. Then holding their head underwater. Then beating someone to death. Then eating a corpse and growing bigger and meaner throughout. Freaky, but good, and so giants and ogres are raised up from the smaller, tricksy creatures that inhabit the Spring Court. I like it. Dark.

Now in folklore iron is often a problem. Would it be here? If so, fighting a dude in iron would be impossib…oh. That’s why they’re back. As humans advanced through to flintlock tech, they abandoned armour. The Fay, slow to adapt, started to notice this in the wilder places and eventually attacked in full as the age of mass mobilisation arrived. Lead shot kills the Fay as much as any creature, but a troll needs several shots, and in close combat is far better than a man.

Alternate Earth? Or my own world? Either way the old forests become a danger. Bogs, ruins etc. Some Fay magic can raise the dead for a time, maybe an evening; enough time to raze a town or attack a resting army. That would be terrifying. Awake to the cries of the sentries and then the dead are among you. Fight as you can to break free with a small group. Then you come back to the area and the enemy forces are mostly gone back to the graves, discoloured dirt around. Just the bodies of the living. Who, though friends, are now liabilities. There would be significant religious implication of this and burials in the wilder places. Or everywhere! A city among fields, far from the wilderness. An old barrow mound, long built over houses an angry Fay spirit who gets free and sets the dead loose.

I think this is getting suitably dark. It also makes me think of my unfinished Dungeon of Command rules. Here is a good reason to finish those posts and to think again about What A Tanker as a basis for a fantasy skirmish game.

More in the coming days!