From Idea to Tabletop: Designing a Convention Scenario with Charlotte

    I've been working on developing a series of convention scenarios for Highlander Studios. The idea is to create games that are enjoyable to play, showcase some interesting miniatures, and eventually offer the scenarios as free downloads for other gamers to use.

    The first is A Deed Worth Singing: Arthur vs. the Giant King, using Dan Mersey's Dux Bellorum rules from Osprey Publishing. It pits Arthur and his Romano-British warriors against a monstrous host of giants, trolls, ogres, and orcs. Many of the figures are from Splintered Light Miniatures.

    I decided to use ChatGPT, which I've taken to calling Charlotte, as an assistant throughout the design process. Rather than having AI create a scenario from scratch, I wanted to see how useful it could be in helping me develop my own ideas, work through rules problems, and prepare the materials for a convention game.

Starting with What I Had

    The first step was inventorying the miniatures. I wanted to build the scenario around figures I already owned rather than design armies that would require buying and painting a lot of additional troops.

    Charlotte helped organize the inventory and divide the forces into four commands: Arthur and Derfel for the Romano-British, and the Giant King and Gorlas One-Eye for the monsters.

    I wasn't particularly concerned with equal numbers of units. The Giant King would command a smaller force of powerful creatures, while Gorlas had more conventional warriors. The British would rely on their shieldwalls, cavalry, and missile troops.

    The objective was an interesting game, not necessarily a perfectly balanced one.

Adapting Dux Bellorum

    I chose Dux Bellorum partly because I like its Leadership Point system. Commanders must decide where to concentrate their efforts, and those decisions can have a considerable effect on combat.

    Charlotte and I worked through statistics for the fantasy creatures using the existing rules as our starting point. Giants became powerful individual units, trolls gained regeneration, and ogres were treated as particularly aggressive warriors.

    We also gave the giants the ability to throw rocks, although only as a relatively weak missile attack.

    There were some interesting discussions about the consequences of these changes. A single point of Protection or Cohesion can make a substantial difference.

    Charlotte wasn't always right. There were mistakes in calculations and occasional misunderstandings of the rules that I had to correct. That's worth remembering when using AI for this sort of work. It can be a useful assistant, but you still need to know your subject.

Unit Stats and Special Rules Card

Four Players, Two Armies

    The scenario was designed for four players, with two commanders on each side.

    That required some modifications to the normal command arrangements. Each player would have his own Leadership Points, with the overall commander able to lend limited support to his subordinate.

    We also decided to calculate army morale using the combined losses of both commands. I didn't want one player eliminated early while the other three continued playing.

    One of the more interesting decisions concerned victory.

    We separated Victory Points from Glory Points. Victory Points are earned by destroying enemy units and controlling battlefield objectives. Glory Points are earned only through the personal actions of a commander's own unit.

    That means the winning army and the commander who performs A Deed Worth Singing don't necessarily have to be on the same side.

Dux Bellorum QRS

Building the Battlefield

    The game uses a six-by-four-foot table with a five-by-three-foot playing area.

    The battlefield includes a stream and ford, a rise with an impassable cliff, a village, woods, and marshland.

    Charlotte helped develop several battlefield layouts, but the final arrangement changed once I actually placed the terrain and miniatures on the table.

    After deploying the armies, I noticed there wasn't much reason to use the western end of the battlefield. Moving the ford west solved that problem and opened up some additional tactical choices.

    I also positioned the village behind the rise, with the objective marker at the accessible end of the hill. That way, troops couldn't simply sit behind the cliffs and claim the objective.

    The trolls were given the ability to cross marshland without movement penalties, providing another possible route of attack.

    This was a good example of something that looked reasonable on paper but needed adjustment when the actual miniatures were deployed.

VP and Glory Awards

Preparing the Game Materials

    This is where Charlotte was particularly helpful.

    We put together individual command sheets, a rules quick-reference sheet, terrain rules, Victory and Glory charts, and a tracker for casualties and objectives.

    We also made identification tags for all 35 units, complete with abbreviated statistics, color coding for each command, and folding tabs to attach them to the bases.

    Most of these went through several revisions. I wanted readable reference sheets that wouldn't use a fortune in printer ink.

    Having Charlotte generate and revise the layouts saved a considerable amount of time, although I still had to review the statistics and rules for accuracy.

    By the time the convention arrived, I had a complete set of printed materials ready for the table.

Unit Tags

The First Convention Game

    We ran A Deed Worth Singing at the Butler VFW game day on October 24.

    The battle developed rather differently on the two flanks.

    In the east, Gorlas spent much of his time maneuvering around a wood, apparently avoiding British missile fire. Derfel's troops suffered an extraordinary series of failed activation rolls, which didn't help matters.

    The western flank saw considerably more action.

    The trolls advanced toward the ford, while Arthur and the Giant King eventually met in a bloody fight. Arthur's initial charge inflicted four hits on the Giant King, but the monster survived and eventually routed Arthur.

    The monsters won the battle 10–7, a Narrow Victory. The Giant King also earned the individual Glory award.

    It was a fitting result for a scenario called A Deed Worth Singing.

Lessons from the Game

    The game worked well overall, but a few things became apparent.

    Troll regeneration may be too powerful. One troll repeatedly recovered two points of Cohesion, absorbing a tremendous amount of punishment before finally being destroyed.

    The giants were also exceptionally difficult to eliminate, and the ogres proved a little too well protected.

    For the next playtest, we're reducing the Cohesion of the giants by one and removing the ogres' Protection bonus. I want to test troll regeneration again before deciding whether to reduce it.

    I'm not particularly concerned about the unusual player behavior or the terrible activation rolls. Those are things that happen in wargames, and I don't intend to redesign the scenario around one set of dice results.

VP, Glory, and Army Loss Tracker

What Did I Learn About Working with AI?

    Charlotte was most useful as a sounding board, organizer, and production assistant.

    I could propose a rule, discuss its possible effects, compare alternatives, and keep track of decisions without having to rewrite everything myself. Once the design was reasonably settled, she could turn that information into printable materials.

    There were also limitations. Some suggestions weren't practical, some rules needed correcting, and the battlefield diagrams weren't always accurate.

    The important thing was that I remained the designer. Charlotte helped me work through the process, but the decisions were mine.

    I think that's probably the best way to approach AI for a project like this.

Where We Go from Here

    The next step is additional playtesting and a few adjustments to the monster statistics.

    Once I'm satisfied with the scenario, Charlotte and I will work on a publication package with the final battlefield layout, army lists, special rules, victory conditions, and printable reference sheets.

    The plan is to make it available as a downloadable Highlander Studios scenario so other gamers can run it themselves.

    I'll cover that part of the process when we get there.

    For now, we've gone from an idea about Arthur fighting giants to a complete convention game, and the first outing produced a battle worth remembering.

    That's a pretty good start.

---

Highlander Studios, Inc.

Dux Bellorum by Dan Mersey, published by Osprey Publishing. Miniatures include figures from Splintered Light Miniatures and Ral Partha.

A Day Well Wasted: Butler Wargames Day III

    I'm not an early morning person unless there is a bit of hunting to be done or perhaps a bit of gaming. So when the alarm went off at 5:00 AM after only four hours of sleep, I dragged my tired butt out of bed, grabbed a shower, and headed downstairs for coffee.

    There was packing to finish. So, coffee in hand, I headed to the basement to sort the last few items I was taking to sell and finish packing the game I was running.

    My previous post outlines the scenario and the rules to be played. Here are some last-minute photos of the table layout and the opposing armies.

A Deed Worth Singing Map

Giant King's Forces

Arthur's Forces

    Anyway, back to the morning.

    I do a lot of traveling with a buddy who doesn't always have the best sense of time. He arrives for things at what my wife likes to call "Don O'clock." I run on the philosophy that early is on time and on time is late. This disconnect causes me a good bit of consternation, but somehow things always work out.

    Don O'clock rolled around, we packed the car, and hit the road for the VFW post in Butler. We arrived with forty minutes to spare before things officially started.

    The guys who run this (I'm looking at you, Brad and Cullen) are great at facilitating setup and making people feel welcome. Brad I've known for almost 40 years, and Cullen I'm sure I've seen at Circle of Swords events, but I've never had the pleasure of actually meeting him.

    The car was unpacked, table covers thrown on the tables, and the Dux Bellorum game laid out by 9:01 AM, a minute later than the start of the event. A Deed Worth Singing was ready to play for the 10:00 AM slot.

Highlander Studios

    A friend I hadn't seen in several years was signed up for my game. Brad and two others joined to complete the four-player command structure. The rules were hastily explained, and play started. By the third turn, these guys really could have run things themselves.

A Deed Worth Singing - start

    Dux Bellorum is a precursor to Daniel Mersey's popular Lion Rampant game, and it shares a lot of DNA. It's a roll-to-activate system that can be modified by Leadership Points, which also play an important role in combat.

    The Derfel player, Arthur's sub-commander, was plagued with poor activation rolls, and it took him most of the game to even get his troops into position. He did, however, have the option to place two or three of his units in forward positions to guard key objectives at the start of the game.

    Gorlas, the Giant King's sub-commander, had the same deployment option to make early strikes on objectives. His orcs spent most of the game running around one of the patches of woods.

    Arthur and the Giant King decided to face off against each other and go for the early Glory Point grab. Arthur's companion cavalry smashed into the King, dealing several wounds on the first turn. However, he couldn't catch a break after that.

A Deed Worth Singing - end

    At the end of the game, Arthur had lost all of his cavalry and a couple of regular foot units. The Giant King had lost one troll. It was still only a narrow victory for the monsters, 10–7 in Victory Points, since the humans held the bluff overlooking the stream and village.

    The Giant King was the only commander to accumulate any glory. With five Glory Points to his name, the bards will be singing of his deeds.

    I was there as a vendor as well. I had a lot of good conversations, sales were good, and there was the usual interest in the Space Pals line of figures I sell.

    I didn't join in any of the afternoon games, but I was able to get photos of a lot of them. There was a good selection of scales, scopes, and genres represented.

Baron's War

Black Powder Epic ACW

Cruel Seas

Gangs of Rome

Micro Mech

OOPFOR Demo

One Page Rules Grimdark Future

    This was a long day, a good day, and not a wasted day as the title would imply. I couldn't have asked for a better group to game with, and the other attendees were friendly and willing to spend time explaining the games they were running.

    It was good to hang out with old friends and even better to meet new acquaintances that I can see becoming friends in the future. Again, a huge thank you to Brad and Cullen for organizing this and helping to make this a really fun day all around.

    I look forward to seeing them at the next conventions and game days I attend.

Arthur vs the Giants: Dux Bellorum

    I have a love for the warriors of Dark Age Britain, especially the legend and lore of Arthur. So it was an exciting opportunity when this guy walked up to my table at one of the HMGS East conventions and asked if I could sculpt 15mm Romano-British for his new company. After a short conversation about my basic working conditions and my desire to use Bernard Cornwell's Arthurian series as inspiration, I was hired for the job. That guy was David McBride, and that company was Splintered Light Miniatures.

    Many years and many more miniatures later, I was looking back on a fairly sizeable body of work. I sculpted most of David's Dark Age Britain lines and parts of several others. Each project pushed the limits a little bit further, and all were interesting, but the Romano-British remain one of my three favorites.

    Sometime in 2010, I decided to start painting them to play Warrior Kings from Two Hour Wargames. There were also Saxons in the collection, but I wanted something more mythic with a fantasy twist. Some 25mm Ral Partha ogres just happened to look great as giants when arrayed next to 15mm humans. So the Arthur vs. the Giants scenarios were born.

    I managed to play a couple of games of Warrior Kings before being distracted by other projects. Then, in 2012, Daniel Mersey and Osprey Games released Dux Bellorum. This rekindled my desire to play with the Romano-British and Giant forces.

    Units were given stats, terrain was laid out, and a couple of games were played. But once again, other interests and obligations got in the way. The armies were shelved, this time for several years and one house move.

    It is now sixteen years after those first battles. Starting to attend local conventions again has allowed me to meet some new people who run other events, and they've invited me to attend those as well. The last was a flea market on October 19th. The next is a game day in Butler on October 24th.

    The organizer of this event offered to let me set up as a vendor and also asked if I wanted to run any games. Cruel Seas was my first choice since it would be portable and easy to set up, but there was already someone running that. There were several other historical games scheduled, so he asked if I had something with a fantasy flavor. Arthur and the Giants fit the bill. It's 15mm, so it's portable and easy to set up since all of the units are on single stands.

    A couple of evenings with Charlotte (see my previous blog post) and the scenario was designed, the rules were adapted for four players, monster unit values were set, and some variant victory conditions were chosen. Two more units would need to be painted, and the game playtested two or three times before the actual event.

A Deed Worth Singing: Arthur vs. the Giant King

    A monstrous host led by a fearsome Giant King and the orc chieftain Gorlas One-Eye descends upon a small Romano-British settlement, intent on sweeping aside its defenders. King Arthur and his trusted warrior Derfel muster their forces to defend the village, holding a strategic river crossing and the high ground overlooking the approaches.

Arthur's Command

    As shieldwalls clash with orcs, trolls, and towering giants, each commander must balance the demands of battle against the chance to perform deeds worthy of legend. Victory belongs to the army that best accomplishes its objectives, but the greatest glory may fall to a hero on the losing side; for even a doomed stand can inspire a song that outlives the battle.

Giant King's Command

    I'll report back on how the game went after the game day next week. If you're in the area and have the time, stop by to play some games, shop a bit, or just say hello.

Derfel"s Command

    It's been sixteen years since I first put these armies on the table, and I'm looking forward to seeing them in action again. Hopefully, this will inspire a few of you to dust off some of those figures that have been sitting on your shelves and enjoy some great gaming of your own.

Gorlas' Command minus 2 bow units

My New Girlfriend, Charlotte: Leveraging AI

    In truth, we've been dating for a couple of years, so my relationship with ChatGPT is not really new. My wife has named it Charlotte and refers to it as my girlfriend because there are some weeks when the 5–6 hours I spend researching and exploring ideas are more than I spend with her. It's a sad state, but without extra help caring for her sister, we sleep and take care of our other obligations in shifts, with little overlap for ourselves.

    Now... back to Charlotte.

    I'd been hearing a lot about things others were doing with AI (ChatGPT is the one I chose to use), so I decided to explore some of these uses and probe its limitations.

    The first avenue was Bolt Action. I was familiar with the game, so I asked Charlotte to design a scenario with a couple of squads of German and American troops on each side. The prompt included the type of scenario: Americans attacking a village to secure a specific building and a crossroads. There was also a hard limit on the point values for each side.

    Charlotte went to work on the troop lists. What was interesting at that point was that I could see each iteration, including the troops selected and their point values. The first list had too many points, as did the second, but each time the model noted that the total was too high and recalculated until it reached the correct number.

    The victory conditions and starting troop deployments were set, and I prompted Charlotte to "Play it." My goal was to see if the model had enough data available to accurately play the game turn by turn to a conclusion. The response was a paragraph or two summarizing the entire game.

    The prompts were refined over several games until ChatGPT was returning the data I needed to check the accuracy of the rules being used. In the end, the activation die was reported, followed by the unit chosen to move and what it was doing. The dice rolls for combat and morale were also reported so I could verify the results. The Americans won each game, which may have been a hallucinatory bias of the AI, but the reported results were all in order.

    That half hour or forty-five minutes taught me a lot about writing prompts and requesting responses, information that has been invaluable going forward.

Westmoreland Gamers Guild Flea Market

    I'll save some of the other exploration and experimentation for later blog posts. For now, let me tell you about one of the latest ways I've been able to leverage AI.

    A YouTube video with a thumbnail about France and civil war caught my attention about two weeks ago. I'm pretty skeptical of these types of claims without corroborating reports, so I set up a little date night with Charlotte and asked her to find reports from news sources covering the unrest in France. The responses led me to actual articles from several sources, allowing me to see what events were being reported and whether there really was a civil war in progress.

    Along with the response, I was notified that I could use Tasks, a relatively new feature of ChatGPT, to perform recurring searches for information and notify me if things worsened. Charlotte also suggested that Tasks could be used for several other things I might want to monitor. Local gaming events where I might have sales opportunities were among those suggestions.

    With a little refinement of the prompt, I was able to set up a weekly search for gaming events within a 200-mile radius of home. These include gaming flea markets, conventions, game days, and similar events.

11/05/2026 Event Report

    Now, every Monday morning at 9:00 AM, Charlotte goes to work for me. The web is searched for events, new ones are added to a spreadsheet, and events that have passed are moved to an archive tab. Once that's done, a notification is sent to my email and to ChatGPT, waiting for me the next time I open it.

11/05/2026 Archived Events

    Charlotte is still learning the ropes and missed a few events I already knew about, but adding them is a simple matter of prompting her to do so. The spreadsheet is immediately updated for my own use or to share with clients and friends who might be interested.

    I know, especially as a married man, I shouldn't be seeing someone from work. But for now, I think I'm going to keep my options open.

The Mystery of the Missing Blog Post: SIBCON 2026

    My association with the Circle of Swords began when I met some of its members way back in the late 1980s. Several of them would join us at the Random Gamers Guild game room in Oil City, PA. They were a likeable bunch, so we started going to some of their game days and their convention in Butler, PA. I even attended occasionally as a vendor.

    Eventually, they added a second convention: COSCON in the spring and SIBCON in the fall. Unfortunately, they usually coincided with, or were too close to, the HMGS East conventions, so for a long time I couldn't attend or vend at either one.

    Then life got in the way, and I lost contact with the group for about ten years. I'd see some of them occasionally or communicate with them on Facebook, but not consistently.

    A couple of years ago, another friend of mine and I started attending as vendors again. Last weekend, I had the great pleasure of attending SIBCON. Hence, the missing blog post last weekend.

    These conventions are small and local, with between 200 and 300 people in attendance. There is a good mix of role-playing and tabletop miniatures gamers, so it's the perfect place to take items from my collection that I'm ready to pass on to others.

    I also sell my own 15mm miniature lines and offer my services as a sculptor and painter. It's a good venue to pick up a client or two along the way.

    I don't bother taking photos of RPG sessions. Unless you are actively participating, they are boring to watch and usually just look like groups of people sitting around a table staring at their character sheets.

    But... I did photograph this seemingly 100-foot-tall 3D print of Strahd's castle. Ok, Maybe it was only 6 feet tall. During play, this was separated into multiple layers, including a catacomb level.

    This game was particularly interesting, with several adventuring groups exploring the castle from different starting points and eventually meeting somewhere near the top for the final encounter against Strahd and the other parties. It was a truly impressive sight, and the players seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves.

    Other games included:

    A sci-fi game with stompy mechanicals and human sized troops.

    A French and Indian War scenario. I believe it was the attack on Kitanning.

       A modern somewhere in the Middle East scenario.

       And several games of A Song of Ice and Fire. Very large games of ASOIAF. Holy cow, the number of figures...

    There is a couple who do a lot of really nice filament-printed terrain, so I added a few medieval town buildings to my collection for Guards of Traitor's Toll and other similar games.

    I also found a copy of Free League's Invincible Starter Set for $20. I may never actually run a superhero RPG, but I really like Free League's products and couldn't resist adding it to my shelf.

    SIBCON was held at Butler County Community College. There is no onsite lodging, but there are several places to stay within a half-hour drive. Food options are similarly limited, but I did try out the student union grill and coffee shop on the first day. I found a crispy chicken sandwich and fries that were quite good.

    I decided that was probably going to be my lunch for the next few days and that it could be enhanced a little with the addition of some hot sauce I'd made the week before. So Cayenne Smoothie made a guest appearance in the display case for the rest of the weekend.

    What I really like about the Circle of Swords conventions is that they are run by good people. Hanging out with them for a weekend reminds me of some great times from years ago. But I also get to make new connections and get to know people better with each convention I attend.

    If you get the chance and are within an hour or two, I highly recommend trying one out. The next one is COSCON in April 2027. Please see the provided link for more information.

https://circleofswords.com/?utm_source=chatgpt.com