Unfortunately out of the major theme campaigns I ran the City Guards has the least amount of notes. But here what I have after ten years.

Note that Orc Hold is the upper right corner keep on this map

http://home.earthlink.net/~wilderlands/Map_Key.jpg


DA-5.   OVERLORD   ORC HOLD
This is the main headquarters of the City Guards. The City Guard of the City-State is over 500 men strong, it is commanded by the Senior Captain, under him are the Captains of the Gates who command the troops and patrols. Like the Overlord's army the City-Guard is divided into companies. Each gate has forty men and each tower has twenty. A hundred men are stationed at Orc Hold as a reserve in case of massive rioting. Plus there is a elite company, the Knights of the Silver Dragon, stationed to guard the Hall of the Dragon Kings where the Council of the City-State meets. Also by agreement with the Guild of Arcane Lore each company of the City-Guards has two mages assigned to it to help defend against any magical threat.

Each company of the City-Guard stationed at the gates and towers and is assigned a area of the city to patrol. A given day is divided in four watches each six hours long. Typically the day begins with the morning watch transferring the previous day's prisoners to the City Jail for processing. Then for the rest of  the day the assigned  area is patrolled. Also a standby watch is kept on alert guarding the tower. When prisoners are caught, a runner is sent to the tower to get the standby watch and they will take the prisoner back to the tower to be kept until transferred to the City-Jail. If the patrol runs into a situation they can not handle, they have a stick that all they do is snap it. This will cause the stick's pair at the tower (or gate) to snap warning the tower of danger.

The situation is much the same at the gates but there is a additional company stationed (for a total of two) whose watches do nothing but guard the gate and check incoming travelers for contraband. The standby watch mans the battlements. Typically each company of a gate rotate between gate and patrol duty.

The hundred men stationed at Orc Hold are typically patrolling the surrounding land for bandits and orcs. At any one time two companies will be out patrolling. Traditionally all lands within five leagues are under the protection of the City-Guards.

The Colors of the City-Guard is a black talbard with a white dragon on the chest. Rank is denoted by the trim, with the Corporals and Sergeants in Blue, the Lieutenants in yellow, the captains in white, and the senior captain in silver. The Silver Dragons have a silver dragon, instead of a white dragon.

The game was run using GURPS. The players were part of an alert company stationed at Orc Hold. The premise was that the City Guard decided to issue an extra alert stick to patrols in hazardous areas. If that stick is broken then the alert company will be sent. This premise was developed during a pre-game session.

The campaign consisted mostly of the players roleplaying to build up a street network to tip them off on events before they happened. When they got tipped they would take down the target before a regular patrol even had to deal with it. At first this idea was just one of many but after the party nearly died in a street fight that was an ambush they vowed never to be caught with their pants down again.

A bit of background the City-State in my campaign was conquered by the Tharians a hundred years ago. Before that City-State was Ghinorian (once a colony long ago) . The day to day affairs of the city are still run by the Ghinorian Aldermens but only troops they have is the City Guard. The Overlord has his own forces in the city but they don't do general patrols. Since City-State is the Overlord's capital a lot Tharian Noble Clans reside in city-state. They are under the Overlord justice not the city council justice.

The main problems were the Tharian nobles who considered themselves above the law (and often actually were) The Brotherhood of the Lion, a Ghinorian resistance group long since corrupted into a thieves guild. The Beggar's Guild which is a rival to the Brotherhood. The beggars are dishonored or dispossessed Tharians. They specialized in smuggling, scams, and blackmail.

The Brotherhood article is here
http://home.earthlink.net/~wilderlands/brotherhoodlion.html

The Beggar Article is here
http://home.earthlink.net/~wilderlands/beggarsguild.html

The main pieces of equipment the players used was

Knight Killer Crossbows.

The heaviest man portable crossbow a GURPS Character can carry. It was a STR 20 crossbow (3d impaling damage) The idea is that the patrol fires the crossbow once and then readies for melee. The way GURPS works one hit will put just about any character down. With five patrolmen firing somebody usually got hit. Again the crossbow was meant to be fired once and cranked up later. It took two men five minutes. One man could do it with the barrack rig used for the crossbow.

For those of you not familiar with GURPS. The damage worked like this. Plate Armor gave you a DR 8. You may have gotten up to DR 10 with layering or magic. Most fighters don't bulk up because of the expense and encumbrance penalty and wind up having a DR around 4 to 6.

With 3D impaling hitting, you would subtract off the DR and any remaining damage would be doubled. If you have the misfortunate of being hit in the vitals we are talking about tripling damage. With ST (HT in 3rd) being around 12 or so (ST= HP in GURPS for normal characters). It doesn't take much of a damage roll on 3d to take you way down.  Again with five bolt flying down range odds were good a defense roll will be blown.

The Alert Sticks

Using the magic principles of "once together always together" pairs of sticks are enchanted so that if one breaks so does the other. It a cheap enchantment that is levied on the mages guild as part of their city taxes.

Each pair is carved in a distintive manner. When a patrol goes out it will take half of one of the pair. The routes are known before the patrol heads out. So when a stick break the standy watch has a pretty good idea of where they are based on how long they left.

With the introduction of the alert company at Orc Hold each patrol now has two sets of sticks. One for the standby watch and one for the alert company. Orc Hold has runners at each barrack who listens in at the beginning of each watch and then heads back to inform the alert company of the patrol routes.

If you want to read up more on the general situation I have several campaign documents posted at http://home.earthlink.net/~wilderlands.

Enjoy
Rob Conley

Sweet! Thanks!