I want to write an AOM module for Dungeons and Dragons and want feedback
This is a campaign I've been discussing with my players for some time and I want community feedback on how to run it. We are going to use Roll20 VTT to run it in for simplicity, but I want to get the mechanics down so they are quick and simple. It will be a mass army campaign simulator at the core. Players will swap between playing as a Minor Deity of their choice and the Champion of that deity. The story beats are already fully written, and I want permanent upgrades to be applicable throughout the campaign. Making alliances with gods within one's own pantheon or those of a similar Domain allows you to use their upgrades and powers on your own units.
I'm taking an approach based on the Nintendo DS port of Age of Mythology (Aka Age of Empires: Mythologies), which has small population caps but maintains the Counter system much like base game; Myth units slaughter Human units gang up on Heroes overpower Myth units. But where AOEM has Light Infantry (counter-cavalry), Heavy Infantry (counter-everything BUT cavalry), Archers (Counter Light Inf), Cavalry (counter Heavy Inf, Archers and Siege), and Siege (counter Buildings), and Heroes can have these types as well, allowing a Cavalry Myth unit like the Roc to get an upper hand on a Heavy Inf Hero like Perseus, I'm devising a more intricate grid of Light units, Heavy units, and Counter-units, as well as Siege and Navy for each faction. There will be about 10 main factions throughout the campaign, maybe 12 if I can get the extra research in, and I've had my players decide whom they want to be.
The Greek player will play as Persephone, under Hades as a Major god. Her starting Champion will be Zagreus.
The Norse player wants to be Tyr, under Loki interestingly, and will have the king Beowulf as his starting Champion.
The Chinese player wants to be Sun Wukong after ascending to Buddhahood, serving Shennong. He will have Wen Zhong as his starting Champion.
So far another player is interested in playing a homebrew Celt faction as Brigid if she gets to command fairy bees, if they can make it to sessions due to IRL stuff. I'm allowing it, if they can make it, and they would have Cu Chulainn as their starting Champion.
Egyptians, Japanese, Aztecs, Atlanteans, Slavs, Mesopotamians and Hindus will also be possible. Hindus are 50/50 if I can do the proper research for their Gods, I may or may not replace them with Zoroastrian Persians if I can assemble the roster.
I'm also taking the OG civs into account for New Gods packs, Freyr will be available for Norse, Demeter for Greeks, and Nyx for Atlanteans. I'm undecided on Egyptians, especially as I cannot find good unique myth units to pair with additional gods.
I'm also attempting to shuffle some Myth Units around to have more accurate Minor God "owners", or rename them to make them make more sense in the civ they belong to. Egyptian is a good example, with the War Turtle being renamed to the Shetyw, after a turtle-like water demon commanded by Set. Their version of the Phoenix is also being renamed to the Bennu to contrast with other Phoenix-like creatures in AOM, such as the Zhuque for Chinese. Slavs also have their own Firebirds, and Persians have the Simurgh. The Anubites, as inspired by the army of Anubis in The Mummy Returns, are being rebranded to the Setem, after the title of Anubis' priests, and when serving him and his allies, are implied to be their spirits returned from the afterworld to slay the enemies of the Kingdom and embalm the fallen soldiers of Egypt. Set uses his trickery to create shadow-monsters of black sand in their image.
Another change is adding myth units for Major gods, such as Zeus gaining the Gryphon, Khronus (An amalgam of Kronos, the Titan Ruler who is actually an Agricultural deity, and Chronos, the Time God) will gain the Erinyes as his unit, Greeks and Atlanteans trade units around; Poseidon now trains Cyclopes as they are his sons; Ares now has Minotaurs, Athena has taken the Gorgona (Medusa) as she cursed the Gorgon sisters, and Hera has taken the Hydra (because she tried to kill Heracles with serpents), and Dionysus has Satyrs as part of his retinue. Instead of them, Hyperion has the Panoptes (Argus), and instead of them, Atlas now has the Ladon, a stone dragon which protected the Hesperides tree. Rheia also has the Nemean Lion due to the golden lions that drove her chariot. Aphrodite in turn has gained Lamiai, monstrous seducers.
Persephone's starting Myth Units are the Empousai, vampiric "gifts" from Hecate to attack the damned who attempt to break into Elysium, and Hades gifts her the use of his Shades, aka the Lemures, fragile kamikaze swarmers.
Tyr has Steinjotnar, or the Rock Giants that Aegir has in the base game (Here, he'll have the mermaid like Marmennill), and Loki will grant him access to the Fenrisvarg; children of Fenrir and an unnamed giant living in the Ironwood. Skoll and Hati; the wolves who chase the Sun and Moon (Sol and Mane), are children of Fenrir.
Wukong will have access to his own Monkey Disciples (Shihoutu), who are attempting to follow his path to Enlightenment. Under Shennong, he may train Pixiu, which are reverted from trade units in Retold back to their combat state in Tale of the Dragon, generating gold as they fight.
And then Brigid will be able to have her fairy-bees, as a goddess of Spring and Fertility it's only fitting. These are called Cuas-Sidhe. She is serving the god Lugh/Lugos, who adds Wyverns to her arsenal.
The plot for this campaign canonically is long after the campaigns of Age of Mythology and Retold, revolving around a recurring MacGuffin; a black comet shone in the skies one night, and broke apart, scattering fragments all over the world. These fragments caused almost all of the Gods to lose their divine power. Only those who were considered chief and primary retained the majority of their power and the others had to siphon power from them and whatever followers they still had to keep the world turning. Hecate called a council of the Olympians and nonhostile Titans to Atlantis (due to a treaty preventing the Titans from ever returning to Olympus) to discuss what to do. Around that time, warships from other nations began appearing, some of the Greeks' old allies in Midgard are among them, but also nations they aren't really sure of. Among them, Tyr and Brigid, along with their Champions, land and meet with the Olympians, stating that the Aesir and the Tuatha De have sent them to meet; gods of different pantheons are teaming up to explore the world and figure out what happened and see how the comet shards are tied to it. They then notice that the Monkey King has been overhearing from his magic cloud mount and opts to join them.
Each chapter will revolve around the players resolving the conflicts for one Pantheon at a time. Greece will be the starting point, as Khronus is taking advantage of the chaos to try and awaken Typhon to destroy all of these interloper gods in one fell swoop, using the giant Enceladus as his Champion. Persephone becomes personally involved when this amounts to a war started between Aphrodite and her daughter Melinoe. The former was relentlessly picking on the latter until, as a recently-ascended Demigoddess of Nightmares, Melinoe manifested a weakened Aphrodite's worst nightmare, which was losing her beauty and becoming an old crone. Some of the elder female gods such as Hera took Aphrodite's side against Melinoe for stepping out of line, while Athena and Artemis are siding with Persephone as they feel Aphrodite was taking her taunting too far. Unfortunately siding against Hera means she drags Zeus to get involved, and more than half of Greece is sided against everyone now. Melinoe ends up trapped in Tartarus as part of a ritual by Nyx, Thanatos, and Hypnos to put Khronus and Typhon to sleep, and the only way to free her is to set out and find relics of renewal and rebirth from the other factions to undo the damage.
The other players will have their own arcs when they get to their respective nations, which ultimately results in them obtaining new relics while destroying the shards of the comet. Tyr is bound to Loki because Loki is being blamed for the death of Baldur, and Loki proclaims innocence. Ullr and Forseti have made Loki swear an oath to find the truth or he will be imprisoned by his sons' entrails while a serpent drips poison into his eyes. Tyr is chained to Loki as a parole officer to find that truth for him while Loki is detained by the other gods. Doesn't stop Loki manifesting illusions of himself to talk to Tyr and the other Gods, however, and he has Beowulf resurrected to lead Tyr's army as a token of goodwill. When Tyr returns without proof, he will end up fighting the champions of Odin, Thor, and Freyr to prove he is still acting out of justice and isn't under Loki's control.
When Wukong returns to China, he'll find a bounty on his head as apparently he trashed the Heavens and caused mass destruction before he left. Having to prove his own innocence, following the tracks of a shifty doppelganger, he'll end up running into all number of strange demons and celestials, having a budding rivalry with the hero Nezha, and facing old friends and enemies alike from the Journey to the West, such as Ox King and Princess Iron Fan. What he does find is that when he ate the Peaches of Immortality, some of the pits fell to Earth and have started to sprout, but someone has been destroying the lands they fell into, and a strange dream world has opened in the north...
Finally for Brigid, her story will revolve around the disappearance of Dagda, her father and chief of the Celtic gods. At first his spiteful ex wife Morrigan is to blame, but she insists on it being Taranis, the Storm God. Her word can't be trusted, says Belenos, the god of light, however. The timing is impeccable, however, as Dagda's magic cauldron is exactly what Persephone needs to help save Melinoe, and when he vanished, it went with him. Meanwhile, young Cu Chulainn, son of Lugh, isn't handling being resurrected too well, and on one side of things he is being tested by Belenos with duels with the legendary Fionn MacCumhail, and his hounds Brann and Sceolang, but on the other he is being taunted by his old teacher, Scathach, who has returned in Taranis' name using his old spear, the Gae Bulg, and the stress is making it hard for him to lead Brigid's armies.
Other original storylines include the Slavic campaign being based on the Christianization of the Kievan Rus in the time of Vladimir the Great, and the story is based on his uncle and general Dobrynya Nikitich, having to choose between his lord and his faith, until the sorcerer Koschei kidnaps Vladimir's wife, and has an excuse to dip out and go save her.
The Hindu campaign will see Kali attempting to help her husband Shiva, who is stricken with nightmares where he sees everyone as an ancient demon he once vanquished, and he is engaging in the Dance of Death to try and stomp him out, which is ripping the land apart. The other gods are searching high and low for evidence of who is hexing Shiva, but to no avail.
The Egyptian campaign has fallen into civil war; Ra has grown old and senile, and is attempting to have Horus usurp him with the current Pharaoh, Thutmose III, and his mother Hatshepsut, who isn't happy about having to side against Isis. Horus lashed out at Isis as she doesn't think he is ready, and she and Osiris are siding against their son with the help of the priest Imhotep, and the resurrected Pharaoh, Ramesses, who isn't happy about having to side against Ra or Horus. Set is waiting in the wings with his own Pharaoh, Apepi, and his snivelling advisor, Nephren-Ka, to destroy both kingdoms once they have worn each other down.
The Aztec campaign, semi similar to what we got in Obsidian Mirror, except Tezcatlipoca's mirror has been struck with a shard of the comet, and it has been giving him unusual visions. He convinces Huitzilopochtli that the Fifth Sun will end soon, and the current flow of sacrifices will not be enough to stop Coyolxauhqui and the Tzitzimitl from destroying humanity with earthquakes from fallen stars, and the comet that fell and destroyed his temple was her doing. But, if he redirects his power to Xipe Totec, The Flayed One, who is a god of renewal, he may be able to create a Sixth Sun that grows back without sacrifice, and avoid losing everything. Since the other three Tezcatlipoca brothers of the four directions have tried their hand and failed to maintain the world, Huitz agrees. In the process, Huitz and Tezca start attempting to erase history and sit themselves, and Xipe Totec as the head of the world Quetzalcoatl, sees through the mirror's deception, and it tells Tezcatlipoca to be wary of him attempting to stop Xipe Totec from becoming the Sixth Sun. Xipe Totec is none the wiser to this plot, all he knows is he thought his brothers forgot about him, as the three of them ran Aztlan together and left him out, and is merely happy to be included once more.
So far as far as actual gameplay goes, I'm testing unit mechanics. I have charted a "playstyle" for each civ based on factors, such as the Greeks being the base Balance in terms of stats and costs. Egyptians are cheaper, but weaker, Chinese infantry are even cheaper and weaker overall, but their archers and siege is very powerful. Norse are all power and no armour, and Atlanteans are expensive and powerful. Other nations are different mixes of these factors.
The styles of units include the 3x3 grid of Light, Heavy and Counter Infantry, Missile, and Cavalry units, the three Ships and two Naval Myth units, a close and long-ranged siege weapon, Hero units, and an elite soldier, usually a powerful Infantry or Cavalry, trainable from the Castle structure.
All units have a base attack die, and can roll an extra die for each type they Counter. Heavy units counter all Light units, and Counter units only counter the same type as themselves.
Greek Light Inf is clearly the Hoplite, they are only good against Cavalry but are cheap and efficient melee warriors.
Heavy Inf is the Myrmidon, they are strong against all Light units because they are Heavy, they are also strong against Missile units and Siege weapons.
Counter Inf are the Ekdromoi, which the AOM Hypaspist is based on. They are Hoplites with smaller shields who use larger shortswords to break phalanx formations. They are only good at stabbing other infantry in the face.
Missile units are usually sorted into Foot Archers, Mounted Archers or Heavy Archers, and Anti-Archers. The Greek Foot Archer is the Toxotes, which is mainly strong against non-Heavy melee units. The Heavy Archer is the Gastraphetoros, with a powerful crossbow for extended range, and is good against any non-mounted unit as well as the Scout by proxy of Heavy > Light class, and the Anti-Archer is the Peltast, a shield-carrying javelineer.
On a play grid, missile units usually have a range of 3-4 tiles. Mounted Archers usually don't have the +1 range like Heavy Archers, but have the speed of Cavalry for guerilla warfare instead. Anti-Archers have -1 range than the base Archer, but resist all Missile attacks, including from defensive buildings, and can run 1 tile faster as well.
Cavalry are sorted between Scouts, Knights, and Chariots, or Heavy and Light Cavalry if that civilization doesn't use Chariots. Scouts are super weak attackers, but have the fastest movement and longest sight range. Knights, or Heavy Cav, are slow, but powerful, and usually expensive. A "Chariot" or Light Cavalry unit is usually equipped with polearms or a designated weapon to dismount other riders or cripple mounts while staying out of reach of the enemy rider's weapon.
The Greek Scout is the Prodromoi, while the Knight is the Hippeus. The "Chariot" is the Hetairos, who historically was a lancer. Cavalry units also have the ability to move through the spaces occupied by enemy foot units while attacking them during the same turn. However, Spear Infantry such as the Hoplite will stop the Cavalry in their tracks and make the first strike, forcing the cavalry to counterattack. This "Trample" action counts as making an attack while Disengaging, so the unit won't be able to Trample a group of archers to break formation, and then attack a different enemy. They can keep moving until they run out of movement on that turn, but otherwise can't act.
Heavy-class units are usually the strongest and most expensive of their respective types, Light-class the weakest and cheapest, and Counter/Anti units are a middle ground closer in strength to a Light unit while closer in cost to a Heavy unit, so they are not cost-efficient to train in bulk, unless your enemy is using only one type, such as fielding Hetairos alongside Hoplites against a mass cavalry charge, because someone who spams cavalry will want to mass archers to take out the Light Infantry, but the Hetairos will still do bonus damage to the archers because it is Cavalry.
Navy and Siege are very similar to how AOM works, there is an Arrow Ship, Siege Ship, and Fighting Ship. The Trireme and Pentekonter return, the Juggernaut is renamed to Polyreme as Juggernaut is not a Greek term. The Scylla and Carcinos return as well, with their special features. Triremes are roughly as fast as, and have the range of, a Toxotes, but are more durable like a Gastrapheteros. Pentekonters are melee ships that are as fast as cavalry, but vulnerable to missile attacks except for those of Siege attacks, which they gain the ability to Evade. Polyremes have very long range, up to 5 tiles, and are heavily armoured, but are very slow.
The Helepolis tower is the close-ranged Siege weapon, with a melee attack only useable against Structures, but a Missile Foot unit can garrison the weapon and attack from within. Petrobolos are the standard catapult, with the same range as the Polyreme, but both siege weapons are equally slow. Massive, heavy weapons like these usually move around 3 tiles on the map, most foot units manage around 4-6 depending on weight, Cavalry have a speed of 6-8.
Terrain becomes an important feature on the grid, taken from the DS version. Plains are the majority of a grid, and have no changes. A Road or Bridge tile allows units to move 1 extra tile per 3 tiles moved, but an open road makes for an obvious target and slightly reduces defence. Fighting in forests and ruins gives bonus defence from hiding positions, but reduces range and speed, costing 2 points of movement per tile. Hills increase the range of ranged units on it by 1 tile, and units on hills have bonus defence from ranged attacks. Rivers can be crossed by units, but not only slow movement like Forests and Ruins, but greatly reduce defence. Mountains and Sea tiles are impassable for non-flying units.
Food and Gold are primary resources, capturing Forage and Mineral nodes on the map by building a Depot on them, either a Plantation or a Mine. A Depot can build up to 6 expansions, Farms for a Plantation or Shafts for a Mine, each increases the Depot's income by 25%. Players share resources, with their shared Town Center generating a small amount of Food, Gold, and Favour on their turn. Each Depot owned by a player generates its own resources. Players can then use those resources to build buildings, such as a Barracks for Infantry units, Targetry for Missile units, Temples to summon Myth Units and revive Heroes/Champions.
Walls, Gates and Towers can even be built. Outposts are watch towers used to keep line of sight on a perimiter, but building them onto a Wall or within range of the Town Center turns it into a Tower, gaining a missile attack. A Gate can be built into a wall to allow ally passage. Building walls on River tiles turns it into a destructible Bridge, and turning those walls into a Gate allows ships to pass through. Missile units and Ranged Siege can station on top of walls for bonus defence and +1 range.
In terms of combat, when one unit engages, it will roll a d20 to hit, and if it goes above the target's armour, it will deal full damage. If it rolls under, the total damage will be reduced to 10%, minimum of 0. A mechanic I want to use from AOEM is that a unit, which represents a troop of individuals, has a Strength based on how many individuals are alive within the troop. Small units, mainly foot soldiers, have 5 members of the troop, Medium units, such as cavalry, are numbered in threes, and Large units are solo monsters.
A unit has Strength equal to its current live members, and if it takes X amount of damage, one of those members dies and its Strength is reduced by 1. Strength cannot be regained through healing, another unit of the same kind with low Strength has to Merge with it. Weakened units can only Merge up to a Strength of +1 over their maximum, so if two Hoplites of Strength 3/5 merge, they can Merge into a 6/5 Strength unit. If two 4/5 Toxotes Merge, they only Merge up to a 6/5 Toxotes. Two 2/3 Minotaurs can Merge into a 4/3 Minotaur, and so on. A unit can be destroyed outright without going to 0hp if its Strength is reduced to 0, some Myth unit abilities or God Powers will directly reduce Strength without affecting hitpoints. Solo units are powerful because they cannot have Strength Reduced, and can only be instakilled by effects that exceed their max HP, such as the Bolt power. Taking more than half of the unit's HP in a single attack, and not going to 0hp, will break morale and the unit will flee against player control, making Morale saves at the start of each turn to regroup and become controllable again. Some abilities will break morale without HP loss.
All in all it's not the perfect system, but it's cohesive on paper. What does anyone think?