It's been a while since we first came up with the idea but I'm still hopeful that Richard P and I can get a chance to play some Sharp Practice set during the 1812 French invasion of Russian Livonia (modern Lithuania and Latvia). The idea is for me to play a small Prussian force in French service.
 |
| Not this small but you know what I mean |
I've said previously that I find the Sharp Practice Officer's Breeding Table a bit too "British" - great for the officers Sharpe encounters in the Peninsula but not quite appropriate for a campaign where all of the characters are Germans or Russians.
After a little digging through the biographies of Prussian officers I've come up with the following suggestions for adding personal backgrounds to our Sharp Practice Prussian officers. First up we roll 2D6 to see where our officer originates:
Then another 2D6 determines his family background:
Next we can we work out how he first joined the army:
After that we can use the usual
Sharp Practice tables to give us the officer's personality traits, skills, physique, looks, and charisma. The exception I would specify is that I don't see any reason to treat all of our officers as "Foreign Johnnies". I'm therefore going to add an additional D6 roll. On a 1-3 the officer's character is rolled on Character Table A and on 4-6 on Character Table G.
I need to determine the character of Leutnant von Hitwunde, the commander of my small Prussian infantry force.
I start off by rolling 10, 6 and 9. So von Hitwunde is from Pomerania; let's say he was born in Rostock. He's the son of a diplomat or courtier so he's not going to be penniless. He joined the army as an officer candidate or Gefreiterkaporal in his current infantry regiment.
A 1D6 roll of 4 indicates that we'll be rolling on the "Foreign Johnnies" table but the following roll of 11 means he's an honourable sort. He has no particular skills but a 5 on table D means he's a strapping fellow who'll get +1 on tasks requiring strength.
Finally, rolls of 8 and 2 reveal that he's fair of face but thoroughly dislikable as a character. Given the reputation of the Prussian Army, I'm going to interpret this as meaning he's a rigidly-by-the-book disciplinarian. It looks like there's a good chance his men will leave him to his fate if he gets knocked out on the battlefield!
I'd appreciate any feedback you'd care to give on these tables. Please drop a comment if you think I've got anything wrong.
