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Adversary Rosters

Overview

Adversary rosters decouple inhabitants from room keys so opposition can move, reinforce, patrol, and react coherently. This preserves the usability of keyed locations while enabling a living complex.

Core Components

  • Action groups: manageable units of adversaries tracked as one element.
  • Start locations and movement routes: where groups begin and how they circulate.
  • Optional state variants: day/night, normal/alert, or other shifts.
  • Notes and roles: tactical behavior, constraints, and triggers.

Additional Practical Insights

  • Action-group indexing outperforms area indexing once units begin moving frequently.
  • Faction or sector chunking keeps large locations playable without losing dynamism.
  • Casualty and status updates are easiest when tracked directly on the roster, not in parallel sheets.
  • Roster prep works best as a flexible runtime tool; heavily scripted contingencies are brittle.

Why It Matters

Rosters increase scenario dynamism without requiring full simulation of every keyed room at all times. They are especially strong for assaults, infiltrations, heists, and compound defense play.

Practical Limits

Very large locations can exceed manageable action-group counts. At that point, split into sectors or combine rosters with random-encounter abstractions.

At-the-Table Template

Use one row per action group. Index by group id, not by room.

Group Units Start Current Posture Trigger Route/Patrol Status Notes
G1 4 guards A3 A3 hold alarm bell A3-A5-A7 fresh shield wall, loud
G2 3 scouts B1 B2 sweep sighting B1-B2-B4-B1 alert avoid melee
G3 captain + 2 C6 C6 reserve horn x2 C6-C4-C2 wounded reinforce weak flank

Notation

  • Group ids: G1, G2, G3 for quick map/token references.
  • Posture: hold, sweep, reserve, pursue, fallback.
  • Trigger examples: alarm, contact, missing patrol check-in, commander order.
  • Status examples: fresh, alert, scattered, wounded, routed.

Runtime Loop

  1. End of each exploration turn or combat round, check triggers.
  2. Update posture and current location for affected groups.
  3. Apply consequences in one place: casualties, morale state, reinforcements.
  4. Announce fiction-facing signs (boots, horns, lights, silence) before contact.

Scaling Rule of Thumb

  • Up to 6 groups: single roster is usually enough.
  • 7-12 groups: split by faction or sector.
  • 13+ groups: split rosters and abstract distant sectors between contact windows.

See Also

Sources

  • https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/38547/roleplaying-games/the-art-of-the-key-part-4-adversary-rosters
  • https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/45091/roleplaying-games/design-notes-adversary-rosters