Ante-scriptum: All of this is written from my own perspective, without any outside baseball knowledge of what others did. This way I can assess my mistakes and what lessons can be drawn from them, without tainting it with knowledge I did not have at the time. The beauty of these campaigns is only seeing it through the eyes of those in the campaign that you control, and I feel that the story of the Shadowed Sun goblins should be told by me from that perspective.

Last night my stint in the excellent Stephen's Shadow over Sojenka campaign ended (each word is its own link, check his stuff out!). I knew when I posted my last orders 5 hours before the Tuesday session started, that it would end either in victory or in flames. This morning I found out which of the two it was. This post, in part inspired by Stephen asking for a page or so of notes on what I learned in the campaign (which turned into six of them), was written while everything was still fresh. I asked and got access to all old chatrooms I had been part of and went through them chronologically to create a timeline of events.

First I'll lay out the events of the campaign from my perspective, and afterwards post thoughts on how I'll try to do better next time, using lessons learned in this campaign.

Pre-patronage

When Stephen sent the call for Patrons out back in June of 2023 I was eager to join. I'd not yet been part of a campaign as a patron player at that time. He suggested a few different factions, but he knew what he was doing:

If you feel like getting into a big battle I could use a goblin chieftain.

This is as close to railroading you can get in this style of play. It was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I jumped on the opportunity.

Before reading this document I'd thought about making the tribe led by a goblin equivalent of Spartacus a previously enslaved goblin that had escaped and wished to free the other goblins in Sojenka. However, as Stephen sent me the mini-module he had intended to base these goblins on before he gave them to a patron, I changed my mind. A tribe of goblins that worshipped a abomination that lived in a well. I ran with that because I thought it would be more interesting, should players ever go there. I added to this, saying that they believed that if they'd feed their God enough he would grow and eventually eat the sun, plunging the land into eternal darkness where the Goblins would reign supreme.

Me setting up took a week or two, getting acquainted, feeling things out, getting loads of information. Rolling how many goblins I had, drawing a subhex map of my swamp hex, and setting up a document in which to maintain my bookkeeping, current actions and ongoing ideas.

The annals of the Goblins of the Shadowed Sun

June 2023 was mostly spent in construction. The camp the goblins had was dilapidated and, should people start prodding and poking me, hard to defend. I drew the original map on paper and noted ongoing construction. Shoring up walls, adding some guard towers, spiked defences in front of the gates. I also started work on an outpost which I intended to use as a scouting base, on top of a ruined bit of aqueduct on the edge of my territory. Meanwhile, I also started doing some groundwork on patrolling my territory.

Then came July, and with it the victory that probably led to me eventual defeat. Another tribe of Goblins, the Wyvern's Sting, had told me that a nearby ruined village had cost them two bands of 15 goblins. They didn't know what was there, and I decided to make my presence known early and strong. I forged an alliance with this tribe and sent a combined force of a hundred or so goblins to this "Ghost Town" and see what's what.

The battle itself has already been documented on Stephen's blog, so I won't go into too much detail. I did make one vital mistake however; I could have probably ended the entire war before it began right then and there. I had killed everyone on the surface. A few horsemen got away though, and while I did find a newly built structure with a sturdy iron door, I feared them returning with a large force, so we sneaked away away into the night. Little did I know that behind that door, down an elevator shaft, the Sons of Mithra were scheming. If I had I may have attempted to force the door and smoke them out in their dark little hole. However, I didn't.

After winning that small victory I spent too much time consolidating. I sent out scouts across the lands to find more tribes I could ally. I'd been getting reports from my patrols and scouts of large bands of cavalry and other forces moving about, bigger than my entire warband. I needed allies to grow my forces so I could compete with these in my eyes way bigger players. While searching for those I raided human lands for prisoners and sacrifices.

By August I should and could've known that I needed to do something. Ghost town was being rebuilt, and stronger. I didn't act on this knowledge, however. I expanded my base, adding more rooms and some escape tunnels. Up until October I raided, built my base and scouted out the areas, but I did little to actually hinder the foes I had made. Then, in the last week of October though I got news that the Wyvern's Sting tribe had been wiped out. I sent scouts to check Ghost Town, and emissaries to two other tribes of goblins I had found.

It took me up to halfway through November to get my arse back into gear. I had scouted out the remains of the Wyvern's Sting and found that humans were camping up there. I organised a war council with the tribe of Goblins that was amenable to an alliance, the Boring Ants, and by Christmas we attacked in force, wiping them out completely. All we left of them were fetishes made from their bones.

This turned out to be only the first of the battles in the Serpentine. In the first week of January the Boring Ants sent word they'd been attacked. We scouted out the place, found that they were reinforcing the switchback with a series of towers. Using my allies and their Giant Ants, we tunnelled under their base, killing many and capturing roughly 80 of their workers around the start of February.

Now, if I hadn't pissed the Ghost Town humans off before I certainly had now. Not long after they went on a punitive raid and killed most of the Boring Ants, with just 30 survivors and 64 ants making it over to me. I started housing them in the hills close to my swamp, but things were moving faster and faster and I was in over my head. The Sons of Mithra, as I learned my enemies called themselves, had been excellent at killing off my allies one by one, and I hadn't responded in time to stop any of it. My numbers had remained more or less stagnant, between attrition from my victories and raids, and natural growth. Meanwhile they now outnumbered me at least three to one.

I feebly started plans to spread misinformation, obtaining livery of several factions of humans around in order to start some false flags attacks, but it was too little and too late. These plans would've been successfull had I set them in motion in August last year, when the Sons of Mithra were still a minor power. By this point in time I'm not sure if any of the factions could've done much against them by now.

One thing did go in my favor: another Patron started at this time, the King of Gnolls, and I moved to ally myself with them, since they too had been raided by the Sons of Mithra. We made some plans to to this effect, as the Sons of Mithra kept incurring further and further into both my and their lands, this time with a flying ship. Hell, even the switchback I cleared was once again manned by these vile humans. Any time I eradicated any of them they came back in even greater numbers.

Sadly, due to real life concerns the Gnoll King had to drop out. Stephen was kind enough to give me control over the army they'd built and was underway. 900 Gnolls, 400 Cyclopeans, a ton of siege equipment. Adding these to my roughly 280 goblins warriors and assorted allies, I moved to form a plan of attack. The omens sent by my God told me we were in for a hard fight given their numbers, so outright besieging them was out. We'd set up a defensive line, using the digging power of the ants and the goblins to dig trenches and build walls, and use the catapults to make them come to us. I sent Stephen my plans and went to bed, knowing that either way, things would be over by the time I woke up.

And boy, they were... While my troops were crossing the river and moving to their fort, the Mithrans had boarded their airship and had gone for my little village, emptied of everything but the goblin women and children. They killed my god. They de-sanctified the grounds, flew back, and absolutely annihilated my combined forces. I have some details on their actions and the battle, but this is not my story to tell. This was their session, and their victory.

Except for one thing, namely that I want to note their winning move: they cast Mass Invisibility on their airship, moving over my army unseen and raining down hell from above. I'm not sure I would've won even if they hadn't done this disgustingly brilliant tactic, but with this move? Near a quarter of the army was gone instantly, and the rest fled. The Goblin King was dead, the Gnoll King was dead, and the remainders of the tribes and clans were easy pickings.

The Aftermath

The Goblin King is dead, all hail the Goblin King. I tip my hat to the Sons of Mithra. They outplayed me at (nearly) every turn, and the small wins I did have were like mosquito bites to a raging elephant. I attempted to play in the big leagues, and found that I was a halfling amongst giants, squashed in about nine months.

Lessons learned

But learn I did. Looking back, frankly I'm shocked at what I did and didn't do. It's like watching some other person inexpertly attempting to juggle plates, apparently not realizing he's standing in a field of broken shards.

Now, recently I wrote a blogpost in which I went over some pointers on what Downtime Players should be doing (and table players and referees too, but they don't factor into this too much). I committed all of the mistakes I talked about there to some degree or another. However, these were mostly about how to be a good Patron Player. The lessons learned below are about how to be an effective and successful one.

To pre-empt anything else: all of these are my mistakes. I blame no-one else for my failure. That's not only just childish tantrum behaviour, but also counterproductive. Take that hit on the chin, go down and look back on what you did that got you into that situation, so next time either you're not there to take that blow, or not to be the one getting knocked down.

Set aside time to convey actions

I am notoriously bad at making and maintaining a habit. I should've set aside an hour or so a week specifically to send my actions to Stephen. It's frustrating, looking back, seeing myself say in chat "I need to do this" and only doing so a week or two later. That Stephen never lost his patience with me over this is a testament to his good nature. This also would've given me a set moment to:

Ask the basic questions

Did you know I never asked Stephen what the fauna of my hex was like? This alone should give you pause. There is so much I could've known if I'd done things like this. Ask about the livery of things near you. Ask about the details of the places around your faction's location you'd know about. Any and all of these can fire the neurons and give you new plans. I could've tamed the wild beasts, which would've increased our numbers in battle (which we sorely needed). I could've found all sorts of magical artifacts in the dungeons in my sawmp hexes... We could've had goblins riding dinosaur howdahs. Because I forgot to ask the most basic of questions: "what do I see around me", we did not.

Document what you know

It was agonizing to go back. In the first week Stephen sent me the subhex map, complete with the hex's wandering monster tables. I saw them, forgot to note them down and therefore forgot their existence. Many of these encounters I could've and hopefully would've used. I should've added these tables to my documents so I could have used them. There was so much info I theoretically had, but never documented properly, and thus forgot about. I lost goblins in raids, and until reading back through the chat history to write this post, I'd entirely forgotten about it. Nothing about it in my documents.

Write down the important things. Keep lists of things you need to check out, or answers you've obtained. You cannot act on what you don't remember.

Have proper strategic objectives

This one bothers me to no end. In my initial document I'd written down my strategic objectives; 1: Expand my base of power, 2: sate our God and 3: keep our camp safe. Now, I did mostly chase these. However, I never properly reconsidered them as the situation changed. Furthermore, the actions I took to achieve these objectives were on the whole less than sufficient, and the prioritisation was wrong. I spent too much time expanding my village and its defences, when in the end no one had attacked it until that last day, and by that point the forces against me were so great that none of it would've mattered in the first place.

I misprioritized all throughout the first year, and frankly if I did so in the second year it hardly mattered anymore, given how far I was behind by then. My initial outreach to tribes was good, but I never set up a way to have these villages mutually defend one another. This allowed the Sons of Mithra to defeat me in detail.

Use all of your available assets

In part this failure was caused by me not properly documenting everything. I had a tribe of goblins. I had a troll. I used these big pawns relatively well. However, I entirely forgot about all other things I could've used. I had a reasonably high level cleric, and a mage/alchemist. Most of these spent their days picking their nose, when they could've been crafting scrolls, casting high levels spells to aid me in my scouting. I had 19 hobgoblins, many named. I could've sent these into a dungeon I knew was nearby, gain levels and bring back more loot. I had massive dragonflies my goblins could ride, and half the time I entirely forgot to use them to scout further afield.

I wasn't just playing at a disadvantage, I was doing so not realizing I'd tied my own shoelaces together.

Never let up pressure

After all of my successes I retreated and lett off pressure with the intent to reconsolidate. This was a mistake. The false flag idea would've been great, if I'd done so directly after for example the attack in July '23. They were weakened, and if I'd managed to get other factions against them I would've taken the heat off of myself. Hell, I also could've just set up raids on their supply lines, which at the very least would've forced their resources there instead of into more expansion. All I did was weaken them, angered them to no end, and then gave them time to recuperate and plan their revenge.

Respect the Fog of War

You think you respect it, but you don't respect it enough. This is a Hofstadter's Law situation. You don't respect the Fog of War enough, even if you keep this rule in mind. I had scouts patrolling, and I'm fairly sure I have no idea what was going on at all, even with the frequent updates I was given. I saw massive movements of troops just outside my swamp, and never figured out who they were, where they were going or where they came from. I've seen freak weather occurrences undoubtedly caused by someone. No clue who. Hell, the biggest one? I thought until a month or so ago I could still act in a guerilla/insurgent fashion and get away with it, while the actual campaign state was that I should've been doing preparations for open warfare four months before that. You might worry about the known unknowns, but the real things you should be worried about are the unknown unknowns.

A word of Thanks

At least for now my involvement in Sojenka is over. I need to go read through other perspectives still, and see the stories I wasn't privy to. Maybe at some later date, after licking my wounds and recuperating, maybe I'll join as some different faction once again.

I want to thank the people involved in this. Brigadine, Charles, Hobbs, Hanastasia, Finnthan, Bellow Poitiers, thank you for being my opponents. Taylor: thank you for being my ally. Mason: thanks for those goblins you freed (and our discussion on Malazan). I'm sorry I got those goblins killed within a year, nor that we never managed to meet after. The rest of the patrons and the Thursday group: thank you, even though I (to my knowledge) had little direct interaction with all of you. All of you made for a richer world, of which I was only a tiny speck.

And of course I had to save the best for last: Stephen, you magnificent bastard. You set all of this up, you let us inhabit and shape the fate of your world. Thanks for teaching me, thanks for your patience all the times I made you wait until the last possible moment with sending you vital information you needed. For providing a listening ear to my ramblings whenever I had to write out my thoughts in order to decide on a course of action. Thanks for letting me be part of this.

All of you, until next time: count your torches, and keep mapping!