GenCon: Clash of Councils

I have written before about GenCon 97 and the plethora of Planescape-related evens held there. One of the games was group session of 16 or so participants called “Clash of Councils”. Clash of Councils was a rules-light free form game where the player were to take on the roles of army generals in the Blood War, for which this was a tie-in event.

The game itself was not held at a random table in the gaming hall, but in a decently-sized private conference room, the center of which was cleared of furniture. Three tables with four or five chairs each were separated from each other far enough so the players could plot their schemes. (Okay, FOUR tables, if you count the table the judges sat at, which if memory serves was Monte Cook and Colin McComb.).

The three factions where the Baatezu, the Tanar’ri, and unexpectantly the Modrons (“The Great Modron March” was previously released and had ties to the Blood War), plus a couple chairs for players of Yugoloth mercenaries. Each player was given the barest bones of a character description to a higher-up in the corresponding forces, and a pin to wear identifying which team they belonged to:

Three of the four “Clash of Council” pins given out during GenCon 97.

The Council Leaders’ mission was to look at the appropriate battle maps (actual old maps from the Planescape “Planes of…” boxed sets) in the room clearing and debate which tactics to use to dominate the battlefield.

The actual forces each Council Leader controlled were abstracted down to one or two different forces (usually between 2 to 16 units of the same type) and a dice of damage they could deal (d4 to d10, usually d6). Some had flying. It was very much a war of attrition, as both sides rolled their d6 at the same time and the opponent lost that many units.

This is where the Yugoloths came in. As part of the Council sessions, other players could try contacting the Yugoloths and “convince” them to pledge their own forces to the eternal Blood War. Of course, being Yugoloths, any agreement made was always tenuous at best.

Each player was also given a single index card with an ability that they could use at any time. Examples of such were Extra Forces waiting in Ambush, a Mephit Messenger, Teleport into a Fortress, and so on. Unfortunately, this is the part of the game I was unable to collect. They literally were handwritten 3″x5″ cards that were needed to be reused in subsequent play-throughs that day. Colin actually admitted that they were kind spun off-the-cuff and there was no official list of all the cards that I could get my hands on.

Yugoloths,
always hiding…

I, the fanboy that I was (and still am) played in both sessions. Rest assured, I waited to make sure there were empty spaces so I didn’t displace anyone playing for the first time. I played a Decaton Modron the first time, and then either as a Baatezu or Tanar’ri the second. Playing as the Modrons was the most notable, as the group of us immediately fell into a rigid flowchart of me handing a Mutual Non-Agression pact with the Yugoloth over to the Nonaton player with a “Sign This”. the Nonaton, passing on the the Octon saying “Sign This”, the Octon passing to the Septon with “Sign This”, and then it cascading back with “Here You Go”, “Here You Go”, and “Here You Go”. All very orderly and efficient. My second favorite memory from that game was then using my teleportation card and popping into the same “allied” Yugoloth’s fortress. When he cried foul and said my leader had signed a pact, I looked at it, looked at the Yugoloth, and flatly told him, “This unit does not recognize that signor” — Modrons only know one caste above them, and the Septaton was a couple beyond that. I showed that Modrons can be as devious as any Yugoloth under the right circumstance.

Can’t trust ’em as far as
you can throw one!

Monte and Colin picked the winners each round. I won the Modron session. The prize was a “Blood Wars” boxed set, but I’d already purchased one for myself, so I split it up between the three other players on my team, who seems pleased by that.

After each session, I scavenged the room for abandoned character sheets and any other paraphernalia left behind. I believe I successfully captured one of each character sheet, and so here is presented the Player Characters: Clash of Councils