[Review] CM1 Test of the Warlords (BECMI); Potential Energy

[Adventure/Setting]
CM 1 Test of the Warlords (1984)
Douglas Niles (TSR)
Lvl 15+

Douglas Niles is another somewhat infamous author from the TSR era, maybe the original would-be author that actually became an author later on. He has done some passable adventures including N1 Cult of the Reptile God and the very tight B5 Horror on the Hill (although I certainly would not rate it 5 stars nowadays). He also wrote the first? D&D novels, a tonne of dragonlance material, worked on the Dungoneer Survival Guide and did H1-H4. All this as a bit of context for what is going on with CM1.

I want to love CM1 and for anyone interested in high level games I think it is a fascinating artifact, brimming with potential, one of the few adventures to actually try their hand at mass combat in a way that makes it concrete and a more then hand-wavy. On the other hand, a lot of its components are slipshod, rough, you can’t look at it too closely or a lot of it feels undercooked.

CM 1 is an adventure in the broad sense and designed for domain play, set in Mystara. Like Gaz 1, it is interesting not so much because of its mind-blowing fantasy as it is for its gaming potential and utility. The idea is that if the characters keep exploring in the starting area described in the Starter set at some point they will have exhausted most potential for adventure(indeed, after the scenario in the Companion set has been run old Ludwig von Blackeagle will have been curbstomped and the region largely pacified and plundered). They are large fish in a small pond. CM 1 takes them out of that pond and propels them headlong into a larger framework.

King Ericall of Norwold, Prince of the Empire of Alphatia (which is actually Atlantis) has sent out a call for adventurers to help him tame this savage and pristine country, a sort of fantasy Colorado with tall mountain peaks, dense forests, chilling winds and ferocious inhabitants. The empire of Thyatis, a fantasy version of the Roman Empire, also has designs on the region. And so begins an adventure suitable for 5-7 sessions, taking place over TWO YEARS (using 1 month domain turns as well as finer resolution for individual adventures), where all the characters set up domains in the region, and face all manner of challenges.

A note on levels. Levels in BECMI are not quite the same as levels in AD&D. Everything is a low powered, there are no bonus spells for high ability scores, hit die are lower, character abilities are more restrained. Level 15 is about where you get to the domain part in BECMI. Despite this, you also get the feeling BECMI is a lot more liberal in its interpretation of character levels. King ericall is a 28th level fighter with 63 hp, +5 plate +3 shield and +3 weapons because of ‘training,’ the Thyatian emperor is a level 36 fighter and Alphatia is ruled by a council of 1000 level 36 Wizards yes that is not a typo. There is at least one wandering chaotic warrior challenging people to duels of level 20 without a single magic item. It feels disconnected from the more intricate progression of AD&D.

The point here is that there are stakes, big stakes. We have a wild frontier coveted by two massive empires that are so powerful they have engaged only limited warfare thus far, fearing eachothers might. You get a sedate gazzeteer, nothing like seeds or crazy ideas, no, descriptions of the terrain, the towering mountain peaks, the marshes, the pine forests, the tundra what areas may be exploited for domain choices (I refreshed my knowledge of the Companion domain rules, which are a bit sparse for my tastes) and this all paints a picture but it also makes you go, well Douglas, that’s nice and any piece of Tundra has only a 30% chance of having any resources on them but what else do you have for me?

There’s a few settlements but each one plays a significant role. Alpha is the capitol and seat of King Eric, erected on the site of an ancient fortress and renowned for its ballroom (uh…nice to have I guess), you have an unscrupulous port town inhabited by outlaws to the north that serves as a stop-point for ships travelling to the capitol ruled by the kings drunken asshole brother (who will become king if the king proper is killed, make note of this!) and then there is the Free City of Oceansend, ruled by demi-humans. All the towns have populations and completely useable stats for the armies they can muster, which WILL be used in this adventure. Niles is at page 8 and you read about scattered elf-tribes in the forests with a desultory sigh and then Niles off-handedly mentions that the island of Frosthaven is home to 2.000 Frost Giants that cross over into Norwold over the ice-bridge in Winter on Raiding expeditions and have over 4.000.000 gp of combined treasure and then you sit up. Yes that is there. Yes that is also a fully playable and somewhat realized scenario that happens during the first campaign year. How many dragons does Wyrmsteeth range have? People think there are perhaps a hundred but no there are 1.000 dragons in Wyrmsteeth range, so many that the younger ones have almost no treasure, ruled by a 23 HD behemoth with 160 hp. This thing is not fucking around.

I say CM1 has potential because it combines scripted events taking place at fixed instances in the year with more free-flowing challenges or elements that can be employed as the GM sees fit. To wit, you come there, have to figure out what area of land you want (the map is mostly unexplored of course) and then promptly 5 rival NPCs show up to request the same areas of luck. FUCK YOU. They have horrid fantasy names like Max the Fighter, Alak Dool and Allisa Patrician and they are all level 15+ but the point is, some of them want your shit, they are going to be neighbours if not, some of them are spies or agents for Thyiatia, some of them are ruthless opportunists. I think giving some notes on their strongholds or maybe their budget would have helped make this scenario fully table ready but it is difficult to anticipate the requirements of a game like this without having tried it. As is, you know how many forces they will be able to raise during the War between Thyatia and Alphatia so it is possible to ‘cheat’ and extrapolate the buildup of their armies until that happens in case the PCs are not content to be neighbours with assholes and some sort of civil war breaks out.

So what the fuck else do you do in this game? It has explained how it is going to go down but before that, Niles does a bit of theatrics, a bit of ceremony to kick it off. A few notes on obtaining or chartering a ship to Norwold, which is not cheap to reach by any stretch of the imagination and feels appropriately remote. There is some mention of trade routes earlier but in terms of Domain rules these are window dressing, and I am not going to dig through Gaz 7 or 8 to see if they ever amended that (probably see ACKs for a thorough treatment on the subject). The point is, you get to Norworld, there’s a 2 week long spring festival complete with tourneys (tourneys are one of the major ways of gaining xp, spending gold and possibly attracting retainers or influential nobles in the domain rules), the king decides that any contested areas will be decided via TRIAL BY COMBAT and you swear to give the standard 20% of your income to the King with a 2 year exemption if you settle in the wilderness, an oath of fealty and not to traffic with the agents of the Thyatian Empire under pain of death.

Pictured: King Liam Neeson considering an application of the royal main de proxénète if the next word out of Princess Stacy’s mouth is not a ‘Yes, by god!’ while at the far end of the table, an OSR Discord moderator looks on in dumbfounded astonishment.

The adventure provides a timeline of events, with one major event each season for ease’s sake. The conditions if the characters succeed are always considered, but the consequences for failure are at times a bit undercooked. Take, for example, the Royal Wedding, which takes place midway throughout the campaign and has all the major NPCs attend the wedding of King Ericall. Everyone receives their ENGRAVED PLATINUM invitations, there is an attempted kidnapping (this is just an encounter, albeit it with nameless level 10 thieves, fighters and a 16th level magic user rocking a ring of spell turning and regeneration no less) and a ransom of 1.000.000 gp. In a world of 1000 36-level wizards this is possible I suppose. The second event is more interesting. A band of C-aligned Black Knights enters and this happens:

The intruders halt. One advances several steps beyond the others. “We are here to honor the wedding of a king to a common tramp. If you have four warriors bold enough to claim otherwise, meet us on the field of trial at dawn.”

Which is cool and all but duels in D&D where you are not allowed to cheat are a bit limited. It is a 4 vs 4 match so there is the possibility for some tactics or lending of magic items but D&D has always been about quick, swingy combat so this is not so much a contest of skill as it is one of luck but this is forgiveable. What is not great is that losing has no consequences (besides possible death). ‘A pall is cast over the wedding.’ BECMI has rules for domain loyalty. Just state everyone involved loses X loyalty and King Ericall’s kingdom loses even more loyalty, triggering further problems down the line. We end the wedding with an ominous visit by the Three Crones of Crystykk, one of the more wondrous elements in this campaign that is a set up for events in winter.

The Frost Giant Raid is better. They have a plan of action, a movement rate, the 2000 break up into raiding parties of Frost Giants with a BR (battle rating) and there are fairly comprehensive statistics for all the armed forces in Norwold, there’s even an environmental condition meaning the Frost Giants move normally while all the armies are at half speed because of the thick snow (good idea), and the bay of Alpha freezes over. See here the power of a map vs theatre of the mind abstraction bullshit. So you could run this, the Warmachine system in BECMI is actually reasonably flexible, allows for factors such as battle fatigue and different tactics and can be used to resolve battles between armies with a single dice-roll. There are two major shortcomings. Both are arguably more inherent problems with the system then pertaining to the adventure specifically but Niles should have specified what the system did not fill in: There are rules for an army running out of food but no rules for an army pillaging, living off the land or the range of supply lines. This is forgiveable but adding logistics would make the system more interesting. The other case is paramount: It is stated that if the Frost Giants Raid ‘decreases Norwolds population’ but there is no fixed drop in population for a raid on your domain, which is a shame since #peasants directly corresponds to your monthly income. Warmachine should have rules for laying waste the land. In before someone in the comments posts the ACKs already Does This meme.

There’s some dungeons and these are arguably the weaker part of the adventure. On the order of 5 room dungeons only instead of Orcs you put a Drolem, Beholder, Powerful undead creature or Old Red Dragon in each of them.

Ruins of Alinor at least indulges in some foreshadowing with Frost giants running away in panic from the cave, having unearthed some terror from the ancient ruins of a prior civilization, and the ruined palace at the end of this thing does have a hint of fantastic grandeur. Two golems fighting in more or less single combat is not much to go by. Doling out the treasure in the form of a rod of splendor and two doors made of solid gold worth and weighting 20.000 gp each is cute.

Dungeon of Kwyll is just a high level monster hotel where you have to rescue some prisoners, once belonging to an evil cleric who is now a Drujj. There is nothing particularly inspired or interesting about it. The conceit that monsters will respond intelligently to fights with other monsters and use tactics prevents it from becoming an entirely brain dead exercise. The dragon will be reinforced by the Trolls, the Druj leaves the dungeon and will attack the characters at night if possible, everyone converges on the fight with the Beholder, the Fire Giants attack while one opens a cage that unleashes the Hell hounds etc. The hoard at the end has gemstones worth 150.000 gp (with the total value well over 200k) and a tonne of magic items, consumables and so on so at least your players are not going to leave it feeling like they wasted their time.

Another of BECMI’s conceits is the existence of the Mad Wizard Gargantua, and his retinue of GIGANTIC MONSTERS. which might be the most straightforward way to use low level monsters in your high level game ever. JUST MAKE THEM VERY BIG AND DO A LOT OF DAMAGE. In this case a clan of dwarves beseeches you for aid, offering rewards appropriate to the scale of the adventure (100.000 gp in gemstones) and a one-time favor to call on their aid (they are a dwarf clan of 2.500, complete with an army) and ask you to please recover their ancestral home from these ruffians. Good reward, great reward. Gargantua himself does not show up, but you do have 3 32 HD gargoyles attacking you in a giant 200 foot cave to start with which counts for something I suppose. The encounters are almost goofy because they use the same tricks you would expect in an adventure of levels 1-3 but the size makes it ridiculous. A 25 HD carrion crawler leaps from a giant pile of debris. A Gigantic Gargoyle releases two Basiliks from a cage and then attempts to circle around. A 51 HD gigantic Troll attacks the characters in a room filled with crystalline stalactices, making it appear as though they are attacked by 12 Gigantic Trolls. I don’t mind this one so much. The gigantic thing is goofy if used regularly but there is some intelligence to the encounters and the reward is good.

There’s a few encounters that are more abstract. One involves a chance meeting with wandering barbarian tribes and a chance to earn their friendship by liberal use of the wrestling rules. I am not sure if the inclusion of the summoned Earth elemental sent to provoke the barbarians is any better and I am getting wary of the Lvl 22 chieftain in leather armor wielding a non-magical bastardsword but okay, fuck it, you can win their friendship through a contest of STRENGTH and then call on them at the appointed hour. Good idea, lacklustre execution.

Maybe the best encounter is with the Witches of Crystykk, three ancient crones and powerful clerics, one of Law, one of Neutrality and one of Chaos, who spend their days delivering prophesies of cryptic doom and gazing into the crystal at the heart of their cave. They begin by sending the characters ominous dreams (that are on a d6 table but whatever).

You awaken in a black room. You run to a window and discover that you are atop a tall, black tower. The entire
continent sprawls out below you. Suddenly, you know where you are! The crones! Three crooked old women have locked you here! Through the bars on the window, you can see your home. To reach it would take days! As you look out the window, the land below seems to move. Massive ripples, rising up like great ocean swells, cross the land. Huge cracks appear in the earth, as buildings, trees, and people fall helplessly into the earth. Your tower sways and begins to fall, but before it strikes the ground, you
catch one last glimpse of Norwold, as a gaping fissure splits the land in two

Then they attempt to steal your most powerful item each via Aerial Servants. And then you venture to them and they attempt to best you in combat (large list of preparations/tactics befitting high level spellcasters). If you defeat them they offer information about the future (in this case major campaign events), if you lose they will raise any of the slain but they are forced to give up one item of magic each, and 6 months of service each for a total period of 5 years, doing mostly mundane chores. Great idea. Fine potential for recurring encounters.

Major campaign event is the invasion of Thyatis. Damn close to a proper wargaming scenario, time to break out the Hexmap and the chits. The characters (as the most capable) are put in charge of the Alphatian troops. Some domains will ally with the Thyatian invaders. You have a site of an initial landing, a major army arriving 1d4 weeks after the advance force, and both sides have definite victory conditions, as well as a possibility for allied reinforcements if the war continues for long. How playable War-machine is and how well the various troop counters actually lend themselves to the scenario as outlined is something I cannot make out from a casual readthrough so Caveat Emptor. The trickiest part would be to handle both large scale battle and individual character actions (i.e a concealed attack on the camp using a carpet of flying, invisibility and a necklace of fireballs f.e.). Of course, the opposing armies also have high level commanders, so steam-rolling is unlikely.

To give you an idea of Warmachine, this is a partial list of modifiers for any particular battle, and this does not even cover the calculation of the armies base BR or its movement, forced marching rules, the rock-paper-scissors tactics or whathaveyou.

The adventure ends with a list of suggestions for follow up adventures, the Dragons attack, the Frost Giants come back for revenge, additional frontiers, the Crones come up with another Test. Its all very generic, but they are not wrong. As an illustration of high level play with a domain management component, CM1 is a rare example of an attempt at such a feat. Adventures like this are of interest to the OSR because unlike something like G3, there is herein ample room for improvement. Does ACKs have something like this? Because ACKs needs something like this.

There is, in the back, a d20 random encounter table for the entire region, a bizarre oversimplification when perfectly suitable regionally dependent tables are available in Expert. A minor modification to those tables would have sufficed to give it body. 1-4 different encounter in the Marsh, with one of them motherfucking Tarn Oakleaf? You run into Tarn Oakleaf the 23 level druid two times per day in every damn corner of the Marsh you visit? No no no. The monsters on the Norwold RET are too strong. The idea is to provide a challenge for high level characters but having them appear in such frequency would make human life in Norwold impossible.

With this one, the question is going to come down to the game. Can you actually play Companion BECMI. Is it even real? Some people are mildly positive about the Warmachine rules, others found the domain level stuff boring and the levels too spread out. How much would you need to adjust or improvise to run it if not.

If this were yet another B/X dungeon adventure for levels 1-3 (because you see, we don’t have enough of the fucking things) I would be brimming with blistering invective and furious rage but considering the few examples of high level adventures let alone high level DOMAIN adventures I am more inclined to leniency. Niles comes across as someone who gets the concepts but puts insufficient effort into the execution thereof. This is a sweeping scenario, grand in scope, with major events but it is barely given the gravitas that it demands. We are left with blue balls of the highest order.

Edit: A critical detail. The module has a library of Pre-mades available, with a considerable loadout. 200.000 gp in gemstones, random items, 4-9 potions, misc. magic items, rings etc and 1-4 loyal henchmen if the character desires. Pretty good. Backgrounds are pretty lame but workable. You could probably give the same loadout to any of the rival NPCs.

Somewhere between a ** and a ***. Playable more or less with some elaborations from the GM in question, and certainly of interest for those seeking to incorporate mass battles into their campaigns, but definite room for improvement with immense potential. If any adventure is due for a remake with improvement, or genre is due for a ressurection this must be it.