DM's Report: Midsummer at Skull Mountain

System: AD&D 1e with the Far Realms supplement.
Campaign: Seaward, which has been ongoing since 1978

  After what the party learned last time when clearing out the entrance to Skull Mountain (the third time that needed doing!) they returned to Oldbridge, leveled up, re-equipped, gathered henchmen, and headed back for Midsummer. Sa. was mildly upset his druid was out (because Midsummer) and the party spent a lot of time talking, since they had three objectives;

    1) Explore the third secret door they discovered last time, which they never even opened.
    2) Use the magical binoculars mounted on the peak to try to look at the surface of the third moon.
    3) Deal with the evil female in a robe that had been controlling the previous inhabitants.

  The party assembled was;

    Je. played- Brigid, a 3rd level human barbarian (custom class)
        and Brigid's henchman, Byron, a 1st level cleric

    Ja. played- Seeker, an elf 3rd/4th magic-user/thief
        and Seeker's henchman, Kaspar, a 2nd level scout (custom class)

    Al. played- Starfalcon, a half-elf 3rd level ranger

    Sa. played- "Clint", a human 3rd level paladin
        and his various henchmen, starting with Akio, a human 1st level monk
        as well as Arthur, his 2nd level human man-at-arms (custom NPC-only class)
        also Willem, a 3rd human level hedge mage (a custom NPC-only class)

    Ni. played Owen, a human 3rd level magic-user
        and Owen's henchman, Octavius, a 1st level half-ogre fighter
        plus Owen's brownie familiar, Mortimer

    The party also had their hirelings with them: Alon (merchant), Jerb (porter), and Merle (medium footman).
  That is a total of 11 with character sheets! So they set out with 14 horses and 3 pack mules up the Old Road toward Skull Mountain.

  The party staged out of the walled town of Esber, the town closest to the Briars. While Esber is still prepared for battle the party's report of clearing kobolds and such from the mountain has eased fears greatly. They also received a 10 gp bounty each for returning the Count's horses and reporting the fate of his patrol.

  It is literally the height of Summer, so the weather was very hot, something made worse in the Briars. Since the daytime temp was usually over 100 degrees the party traveled without armor and made frequent stops, adding to the travel time. The party encountered a ragged, gaunt man along the road. Although they were fairly sure he was a fugitive from justice their time limit led them to give him some rations and warn him to mend his ways. While gathering wood Kaspar encountered a brush cat, which he killed with some well-placed arrows.

  When they finally reached the plateau outside the entrance to Skull Mountain they discovered the bodies of a few of the kobolds killed on the last adventure, but now gnawed upon and then well-rotted. Starfalcon identified the tracks of 4 trolls, one of whom was 'very large'.

  The party reached the entrance cave, finding the main doors still sealed. Seeker scouted what they call the North Door; the door was open and the entrance room had rotting corpses of kobolds thrown into the corners. With the party at the entrance he went into the attached storeroom to find - a troll, sleeping in its new nest.

  Very quickly the party formed into 2 group - the main group at the North Door watching the other 2 entrances to the entrance room as Starfalcon, Brigid, Seeker, and Kaspar ambushed the sleeping troll.
  The attack went well, but there is only so well you can do against a troll. The troll was up and fighting quickly. At the same time in the entrance area Akio sensed a troll coming down the east hall and Octavius saw a troll charging, full speed, down the north hall.
  Clint, Arthur, and Akio covered the east while Octavius set spear for charge to the north and the 'flying squad' continued fighting to the west. Seeker and Kaspar did well with arrows while Brigid dealt wounding attacks and Starfalcon took advantage of the ranger bonus damage very, very well. The troll from the east engaged Clint and Arthur, a little damage flying around. Octavius did great damage with his spear - and the troll pushed down the spear and hurt Octavius badly!
  Byron rushed in and healed Octavius while Akio moved to back him up; Clint and Arthur stayed engaged; Seeker and Kaspar fell back into the entrance room while Brigid and Starfalcon held the door. During the next round Brigid and Starfalcon dropped the troll to the west, Seeker and Kaspar shifted fire to the north and east, respectively, and combat continued.
  But! Brigid and Starfalcon caught a glimpse of a very large troll coming into the room to the west!
  The party began to retreat to the south door, under pressure. Owen dropped a Stinking Cloud just inside the west door, catching the big troll. Clint, Starfalcon, and Brigid formed a line in front of the south door against the two trolls while Byron healed Octavius further.  Over two rounds they dropped the two trolls and, looking at how much magic was used (Owen's Magic Missiles were also gone and Byron was critically low on cures and all the fighters were wounded) they decided to retreat while the troll was blocked by the Stink.
  Unfortunately, the troll burst out of the cave in full pursuit while they were only halfway across the plateau.
  And, on spotting him, Brigid went berserk and charged right back.
  Luckily, Clint has Boots of Striding and Springing  so he was able to reach the big troll alongside Brigid. The two of them did a lot of damage in the first round! But, they also took plenty in return. In the second round Akio arrived, attacking from behind while Clint and Brigid kept doing well and the troll missed all but a love-tap on Brigid. In the third round Brigid and Clint both hit again, Starfalcon arrived and engaged Ranger Powers, and Octavius finally made it - and rolled maximum damage, cleaving the troll from shoulder to hip!
  Before an hour was up the trolls were gathered and burnt, the guard area was swept and found empty, and the troll nest looted. An hour after that the party was setting up a hidden camp on the eastern slope of the mountain, resting.
  In the morning Clint and Byron healed everyone up and the party went back into the guard complex. The found that the one secret door which they knew of but hadn't opened was trapped and decided to leave it alone. Seeker finally realized an earlier hope and had Octavius rip the lower grate from the kitchen chimney, then clambered up the long, long shaft.
  Along the way he found the grate from another fireplace (about 70' higher up); he could just see the corner of a Tonildan rug and the foot of a chair or table, both covered in dust in a room lit, somehow. At about 90' he found a side shaft that smelled of old smelter smoke and fumes angling off southeast and down. And at 120 feet he came to the upper grate, where he found, on the far side, the Wizard Mark of a member of a Mage House known for mage/thieves and evidence they had been stopped by the grate long, long ago.
  In the rest of the complex they found a very old cell behind double iron grates - inside were skeletons still with their hands wrapped around each other's throats.
  They left this area alone, too.
  Last, they went to the Wizard Locked door and had Octavius try it.
  A half-ogre with an 18(00) strength: he rolled a 1. The door opened.
  Beyond was the far side of the bronze doors from the main cave, sealed up and held by an adamantine bar sunk into the living rock on either side. And in the other direction was a 20' wide, 36' high corridor stretching deep into the mountain. The corridor walls were carved with bas reliefs of cultists walking into the mountain accompanied by various devils.
  The party followed the corridor for 1/10th of a mile before coming to a pair of evil shrines, one to ice (to the North) and one to fire (to the South), both behind pillars. The ice altar emitted cold, the fire altar emitted heat, and both were stained with old blood.
  The followed the corridor further until it opened into a massive space 150' across, 200' wide, and 180' high. The north section had bas reliefs showing a devilish sea full of spiked seaweed, sahuagin, and sharks. The south section was carved to resemble a vast volcanic plane covered in fire with orcs and devils. In the middle of the north wall was a 20' wide, 10' long raised pool of water; the middle of the south was was a 20', 10' high fireplace.
  The entire area was lit from above with a eerie, ruddy light, like the reflection of a forest fire from low clouds. The party continued down the middle of the space, between two rows of mighty columns, and kept going down the main corridor.
  After about another 150' they finally reached the end - another set of huge bronze doors. But these are braced from this side with mighty timbers, each the size of a tree trunk, and huge iron stakes hammered into the solid rock floor. The timbers have obviously been enchanted to resist age and, according to Clint and Byron, enchanted to cause evil beings discomfort and unease.

  The party, focused on their goal of stopping the female cult leader, hurried back to camp to prepare for the next day, which was the day before Midsummer Night!

  The next day the party sent Seeker and Kaspar to the peak to observe the Old Road with the magical binoculars while Brigid, Octavius, and Starfalcon concealed themselves in the entrance cavern. Akio and Byron remained near the stables/North Door area with Clint. Willem and Arthur remained at the camp with the hirelings as a reserve.
  About 5 in the afternoon Seeker saw dust from the road a,d the two rushed to the Room of the Eye; by 5:30 they observed a robed woman enter the plateau follow by two huge humanoids, 7'-8' tall and also robed. Both big figures were pulling a gaol cart, both holding 4 human prisoners.

  The figures left the gaol carts in the center of the plateau, by the massive bonfire pit, and approached the cavern. The party prepared for trouble as the three walked in.
  At that point Kaspar opened fire; the three were surprised for a segment, meaning that Kaspar (as a scout) got a +4 to all bow attacks for the round. He feathered the brisket of the northern-most giant twice and general combat began.
  The medium figure threw back the hood of her robes, revealing her to be Arlissa, an evil mage the party had encountered years before and a known devil worshiper. As the party watched a door opened on the side of her capuchon, then closed and the door vanished. This prompted Owen, who knew that she had an Imp familiar, to hit the area with Sleep spell, in hopes of catching it (the spell failed).
  At the same time the party's 'trick' appeared - Clint, on horseback with lance, rode out from behind a large stalagmite and charged! He struck the southernmost figure (they were both revealed as more trolls) and continued on so as to wheel and return.
  Melee began with Starfalcon once again showing why anyone facing trolls needs a ranger friend and Brigid not berserking, but doing great damage. Seeker came in invisibly and back-stabbed a troll at a key moment, dropping it, and Clint's return pass put down the other just as an arrow pierced Arlissa and she fell over-
  and vanished in a puff of sulfuric smoke as her familiar Dimension Doored both of them away.

  Clint immediately spurred onto the plateau and spotted both of them out toward the gaol carts, Arlissa already regenerating to consciousness. Akio used his tremendous speed to follow as Clint rode down Arlissa and hit her full on with his lance square in the chest, breaking his lance and ending her life.
  The cackling imp seized her soul and vanished back to Hell.

  The party freed the prisoners, who were mainly villagers but did accept a healer (custom hireling) into service. Another prisoner was a nobleman; the last survivor of the Count's patrol who was slated to die at midnight.
  All were hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and sore for days to weeks of beatings. The party settled them in their camp with the various henchmen and hirelings and returned to the complex, making their way to the peak.

  As Midnight approached Seeker watched as Selene, the smallest moon, moved into view. The magical device revealed - a village on the surface of the moon, built as a circle around a central area. In that are was a stone shelf around a great pool. In the pool rested what appeared to be sailing vessels, but there were vast constructions of wood, metal, and crystal on the rock shelf in the shape of dragonflies and a swan.
  The party all looked and soon observed one of the dragonflies lift off and fly away!
  Turning the device toward the city of High Morath they observed that's nations Midsummer Festival, which involves the Pyrotechnics spell.
  Turning it toward Timber Lake they observed a dragonfly ship landing in the lake and being met by elven boats! Starfalcon explained that each year at Midsummer the royal family of the elven Kingdom of Tirgalen goes into the lake with just their personal guards for a 'special ceremony' that all others are forbidden to observe.
  They then looked towards the Demon's Eye, the lip of the volcano on Black Island, out at sea. They watched a massive humanoid figure, at least 30' tall, climb to the rim, look out towards the mainland, and then climb back down into the glowing mouth of the volcano.
  Last, they turned their gaze back to Selene as it slipped out of the focus of the device. seeing another sailing vessel fly toward the moon village.
  The party realized that the sailing vessels would fit into the dry dock on the peak of Skull Mountain.

  The party made an OK haul of cash and a good haul of magic items, including a golden llama, a familiar's hat, and  a flametongue, among other things.

  Before they left they took an intact door from another section of the Guard Area, used it to replace the door shattered by Octavius, then had Mortimer bar it from the far side and before using Dimension Door to come back, sealing off the long corridor from intruders.

  The party returned to Esber without serious incident!

Thought Experiments in the OSR: 1e without Elves

  As anyone who ever reads this blog (Hi, honey! Hi, kids!) knows, I think about AD&D 1e far too much. And oddly. I really like to consider how much little changes can make in the game. Today's though experiment:

What if Elves were not a playable race?

  And by this I mean; elves are "monsters" (only seen as random encounters in groups as described in the monster manual) that do not mix with humans. They are, effectively, tall, less magical, Brownies. If, if, half-elves exist they are also 'monsters' like Cambions or something. How would this impact your game world?

One- Magic-users are human. Without elves and half-elves only Humans can be magic-users.
Two- The most common multi-class combinations don't exist. Fighter/magic-users? Magic-user/thieves? Fighter/magic-user/thieves? They don't exist. You will never have a fighter that can cast Fireball or a thief that can cast Knock.
Three- Gnomes are much more important as possible party members. They can be illusionists, fighter/illusionists, and illusionist/thieves, replacing the typical most common multi-class combos.
Four- Half-orcs are also much more important as the only real Cleric multi-class option and, RAW, the only truly viable non-human cleric at all.

  There are other, more minor, effects - but that is plenty. The changes of just dropping one race are huge and far reaching, mainly by making magic-users 1) always human and 2) never multi-classed.

  Thoughts?

The Dwarf Chieftain Has What?! Demi-Humans and Intelligent Swords

  All of the discussion in the last article led me and the sons to go through the DMG and Monster Manual (1e, of course) and do some more number crunching. We looked specifically at two things:

  1) the powers of swords with intelligence, and
  2) the number of magical swords in the hands of NPC demi-humans

  The results are very fun.
  First, the Primary Abilities chart has a surprising amount of powers that are, well, demi-human; they mimic the racial abilities of dwarves, elves, etc. Many of the rest of the powers on the Primary Abilities chart are clerical. 38% of the powers are demi-human and 53% are at least possibly clerical, if not exclusively clerical. Only 5% are arguably only arcane (the total isn't 100% because some results are 'see other table', etc.).
  About 95% of magical swords with special abilities only have Primary abilities so the implication is that about 90% of intelligent magical swords are made by demi-humans and/or clerics.

  That changes how I look at item creation, how about you?

  Gary tells us that demi-human NPCs can make magic items, even (maybe especially) powerful ones.

  Quick aside: ever notice that when Gary discusses the creation of really powerful items he mentions that they may have been the result of lost technology?

  And we know clerics can make magic items and, unlike magic-users, they don't risk the loss of constitution to do so.
  This makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Clerics and NPC demi-humans don't risk the loss of constitution to make permanent items - of course a great many weapons would be made by them! Suddenly all those +1 swords and axes make a bit more sense - it is either a cleric praying to God for a weapon to smite evil or a gnarled old dwarven smith chanting a battle hymn over an anvil as he shapes an axe head.

  I mentioned in the last post that one of the reasons most intelligent swords are Good is because good creators are more motivated to do so and good wielders are less likely to kill the sword maker.
  Another reason most intelligent swords are good is because a large number of the creators of intelligent swords are demi-humans.

  The Extraordinary Powers chart, however, is very, very different. Only 6% of these powers are racial (and gnomish, at that!) and 6% are exclusively clerical. The other 82% are arcane (like above, the total isn't 100% because some results are 'choose', etc.).
  This implies that the 1% of swords that are really smart and really powerful are made by magic-users or illusionists.
  This also makes a lot of sense. If a wizard is going to give up a point of constitution (or an illusionist give up years of life) he probably isn't going to make a +1 sword, he is going to make as powerful a weapon as he can!

  Last, but certainly not least, we looked at the Special Purpose powers. As I mentioned previously, only about 3 in 1,000 magical swords have a Special Purpose and the Special Purpose powers are pretty much evenly divided between magic-users and clerics, although clerics have a bit of an edge.
  Say it with me - this makes sense. Really, really powerful clerics and magic-users that can make a powerful swords probably would, but clerics would be more likely to do so because they don't face the same penalties.

  After we did this analysis we did some number crunching on the demi-human listings in the Monster Manual. In the middle of this we realized something; the fact that only humans and demi-humans have specific listings for individual magic weapons, etc. while humanoids do not is entirely consistent with what we are learning by examining these charts - demi-humans and humans can much more readily make enchanted items! While we can assume that shamans and witch-doctors can and do make magic items these are probably almost always scrolls and potions; they rely upon evil humans and gifts from extra-planar creatures for the magic items they do not steal.

  [my oldest son is creating a supplement with write-ups for humanoid shamans and witch-doctors and item creation rules for them]

  Anyway, after crunching the numbers we discovered the following things to be statistically so;

  - 1 out of 2 large dwarven lairs has an intelligent magical sword (this is because dwarves prefer axes and hammers, or the number would be higher)
  - 2 out of 3 large halfling lairs have an intelligent magical sword
  - Each large gnome lair has an intelligent magical sword
  - Each large elven lair has an intelligent magical sword

  As I said in the first post  - HOLY MOLEY! This really changes how we look at NPC demi-humans, doesn't it? After all, it looks like each and every elven chieftain has an intelligent sword!

More on smart weapons next!

Magic Item of the Week - Elven Battle Helms

  These items, created by the Mountain Elves of Argalen, are highly prized by military commanders. While far from common some are in the possession of human and gnomish leaders as gifts, others are in the hands of human, orcish, and hobgoblin forces as spoils of war.
  While they vary in appearance they are all open faced helms with cheek plates and nasals giving the head a base A.C. of 2. The helms make all saves at +2 but grant no bonuses to their wearer. The helmets will resize themselves to properly fit any humanoid (or creature with a human-like head!) from brownie to ogre size
  The helms are enchanted to allow a wearer to speak to another wearer  up to three miles away. All communications require that the person sending the message have a clear line of sight to the receiver and actually be able to the see the target. A person can receive a message at any time but may only send when observing the target recipient.
  The magic of the helmets ensures that the message can be heard over the din of battle but deafness effects (from a spell or, say, a dragonne's roar) of course prevent someone from hearing the message.
  Only one person may be spoken to at a time (no 'broadcast messages') and only 3 people per round can be spoken to.
  Their utility on large battlefields should be obvious.

Dungeon Master's Log - Blackstone Campaign background Part I

  NOTE: MY PLAYERS SHOULD NOT READ THIS ENTRY

  My 2e campaign world is relatively new, only 4 years old. I use the Skills and Powers, Combat & Tactics, and the Spells & Magic rules in this campaign.  In this post I am going to review the steps I went through to provide in-universe reasons for certain racial traits.
  I began with a world map created with AutoRealm. I created a world with 2x the diameter of Earth because I wanted to introduce certain ideas into the campaign about elemental forces. Plus, big maps!
  There are three major continents - one in 'the North', one in 'the South', one the crosses the equator. The north pole is covered with a massive plateau of 6,000 square miles and the south pole is a flat plain.
  Then I went into a history that stretched from before the use of metal tools until the year before play started. Key historical events are;
 -in the the late Paleolithic all the demi-human races were concentrated in the tropical southern continent. Humanity was enslaved by Elves. The long-lived elves and their natural magic allowed them to dominate the other races. Dwarves hid in the mountains, working on weapons, Gnomes hid in the forests, Halflings skulked about, and Humans were slave labor. Humanoids lived on the northern and eastern continents.
  -a human, furious about the inability of Humans to use magic, had a breakthrough and began to understand preparing spells. He and his descendants developed the magic-user abilities over three generations eventually culminating in the magic-user class.
  -Humanity began developing magic-users in secret until they staged a mass uprising. This began generations of warfare between Humans and Elves and a civil war between the Elves. The pro-Human branch of Elves lost the civil war were driven underground by the winning Elf factions.
  -Surface Elves gained a limited ability to use prepared magic at the expense of much of their innate magical ability.
 -The subterranean Elves used magic to darken their skin to aid in underground stealth.

Note: This is used to explain in-universe a few points:
  1) Humans have unlimited potential as magic-users because they invented the use of prepared spells.
  2) The limit on maximum level as magic-user for Elves and Half-elves is because the use of prepared magic is alien to them - it is literally against their nature.
  3) Gnomes are good at Illusion because they had to hide from Elven slavers
  4) Dwarves are resistant to magic because of their long war against the naturally-magical Elves.
  5) A real reason why Drow are black-skinned as an underground race and their hatred of other elves.
  6) The plot twist that the Grey Elves are the ancient villains of the Elven civil war that drove the Drow underground.

  Next will be how I built a histroy

Fantasy Demographics, or: Why Elves and Orcs Fight Different Wars

Note: This post deals with Real World ideas, concepts, or choices that are very personal. It is not meant to offend but is just a discussion of how these factors impact fantasy role playing game campaigns. Thanks.
  Waaaaay back when, my Dad took me to see Soylent Green. Now, I was very young, but in my father's defense we both love science fiction movies, so we went anyway. This began my rather odd hobby of studying demographics (which led me to reject the threat of overpopulation by 5th grade, but that is another story). Thus there was something in both the Complete Book of Elves and the Complete Book of Dwarves which just intrigued me. In the complete CBoE they state that the average Elven female has 2 children. In the CBoD they state that the average Dwarf female has 3 kids, but 2/3 of all births are males.
  Why does this matter?
  Math.
  Not to get too wonky (although I can talk about demographics for literally hours. And I am not using 'literally' for emphasis, I mean it literally) (see what I did there?), but a key metric in demographics is Total Fertility Rate (TFR for short) which is, simply, 'how many children does each woman in a population have, on average?'. TFR means a lot - it allows you to calculate the growth or shrinkage of future generation, determine the demographic momentum of a society, all sorts of really... boring... to... anyone... else... stuff....
  Yeah.
  Anyway, when the books say 'the average Elf female has two kids' this means 'the TFR is 2'. This is important because in the Real World replacement TFR (the TFR where the population neither grows nor shrinks over generations) is between 2.1 and 2.4 - each woman has just over 2 kids each on average. Since a certain number of people never have kids for a variety of reasons, it must be above a flat 2.0. In a modern industrialized nation like, oh, France, 2.1 is equilibrium. In a modern nation with a higher rate of mortality for youth it is more like 2.4.
  Here's the point, though - in pre-modern societies replacement TFR was more like 3.5-4.5. Why? Poorer health care and a higher mortality rate. Remember, the reason the average lifespan before the mid-20th Century was 35-40 for most of the world was because so many children died - if you lived to be 14-16 you were almost certainly going to live to be 75-80! Well, barring other factors. Like war.
  Chronic war really increases the replacement TFR number, for obvious reasons. Plague can do the same.
  Well, the CBoE said 2, but maybe they reaslly meant, oh, 2.3. With magical healing, a natural resistance to disease, etc., this probably means that Elves have a stable population, barring war.
  Let's talk about Dwarves for a moment.
  In the Real World we assume a gender ratio of about 50/50, so the 66/34 male/female of the Dwarves is really important.This means if you start with 300 Dwarves you will only have 100 couples (it takes two to make little dwarves and, more importantly, TFR is tied to the number of females). If they have a TFR of 3 that means the next generation will be = 300 Dwarves. Also perfect equilibrium since that generation will also have 100 females
  "OK," I hear you say, "so the generations are stable, so what?"
  One, it means that if you accept these numbers Dwarves and Elves can't really expand - if there is already a city that houses 2,000 Dwarves why build a new one? After all, there is no population growth. Sending people off is a drain of the most important resource of a society - the people. There are probably a number of social pressures to avoid this.
  Two, it will have a huge impact on how Dwarves and especially Elves go to war. Here are some of my thoughts on this:
  While Dwarves have an 'excess' male population (the 33% of each generation that will have no wife) allowing them to go to war relatively easily, women and children are virtually irreplaceable. So while male Dwarves roaming the mountains prospecting and killing Orcs for fun might be common, they will almost certainly guard their women and children fiercely. This is a simple explanation for why you traditionally never see Dwarven women - they are quite directly the most precious thing in Dwarf society.
  For Elves it is even more extreme - any loss of life might not be replaced for two or more generations. That is pretty serious.
  This means the Elves must really strive to limit battle deaths and while Dwarves can sustain some heavy losses of life on the battlefield women are too precious to risk.
  Which leads me to a fantasy element - lifespan of non-humans.
  It takes a human about 16 years to be considered an adult and human generations are counted as about 25 years. If we follow the age guidelines in the DMG (and why wouldn't we?) it takes a Dwarf about 60 years to mature and an elf about 120. With a bit of extrapolation we can guess that a Dwarven generation is about, oh, 60 years and an Elven generation is about 250.
  Wow. That's big.
  Why? because it takes at least a generation to recover from a major loss of life. World War I caused the death of a huge number of young men. One of the reasons World War Ii was a generation later is, arguably, the hostiles needed to wait until the next generation finished growing up to continue the fighting. The Black Death caused so much loss of life that it really took five generations for Europe to recover.
  This means that it would take the Dwarves 75 years to recover from a war that killed their 'excess' males and about 30% of the rest of the males. This means an Elven society struck with something like the Black Death wouldn't recover for more than a millenium. That is high stakes stuff.
  Let's change tacks just a little bit and think about Orcs. We can extrapolate that they mature around 12 and that an Orcish generation is, oh, 20 years. We know they are 'fecund' because we are told they are. What does this mean in comparison with Elves? Well, in the Real World there are societies that reached TFRs of 9+ in the 20th Century, so 'fecund' could be quite a large number! But let's just assume that between disease, violence, and generally being Lawful Evil Orcish societies grow about 25% per generation.
  What does this mean? More directly, what does this mean for a campaign (since this is about a game, after all)?
  Here is a scenario;
  The Orcish tribes and the Elven kingdom have been on edge for a decade, but now war is really begun. The Elves are smarter, better trained, have better gear, and have more spell casters. The Orcs are more disciplined and there are many more combatants. When they begin the war there are 3,000 Elven soldiers (out of a kingdom of 20,000) and 7,500 Orcish warriors (out of 20,000 Orcs).
  After 5 years of brutal fighting the Elves prevail; they slaughter over 5,000 Orcs while losing only 1,000 Elves. The Elves return to their homes, triumphant, and the good feelings and other factors cause a spike in births, meaning the next generation of Elves will be about 10% larger.
  Humiliated, the Orcs retreat to their homes. There is no surge for them. At this point, the Year of the Great Battle the two sides are roughly as follows;
  Orcs: 3,500 surviving warriors. 7,500 potential warriors not yet mature from the 2nd generation. And 6,000 females with mates available to birth the 3rd generation.
  Elves: 2,000 surviving soldiers. 3,000 potential soldiers not yet mature from the second generation. And 9,000 females with mates to birth the 3rd generation.
 In Year after the Great Battle (YGB) 20 the second generation of Orcish warriors are mature and ready to fight - all 7,500 of them! They face off against - the first generation Elvish warriors again. After all, the young Elves still have over two centuries to mature! The Orcs are young and the cream of their army dies in the Great Battle. The Elves are battle-hardened and fierce, so this time the Elves kill another 4,000 Orcs but only lose 500 Elves. So in the second generation we have;
  Orcs: 3,500 surviving warriors. 7,500 potential warriors from the 3rd generation (25% growth, remember?). 6,000 females with mates to birth the 4th generation.
  Elves: 1,500 surviving soldiers. 3,000 potential soldiers from the 2nd generation. 9,000 females that will eventually birth 2,700 soldiers in the 3rd generation.
  Reeling from two defeats in two generations, the Orcs wait, biding their time and skirmishing with Humand and Dwarven forces in raids, raids which whittle down their comabt numbers but mean their warriors are experienced.. Finally in YGB 60 the 4th generation of Orc warriors, whittled down to 7,500 (remember that 25% growth?) but battle-hardened face off against - the 1,500 surviving 1st generation Elven warriors! As evenly matched individually as the first battle, but incredibly outnumbered, the Elves fight as defensively as possible. They barely manage to drive off the Orcs losing another 1,000 elves to 4,000 Orcs.
  Barely able to send 500 soldiers to the field, the Elves retreat into the mountains.
  As you can see, the humanoid races, with their higher fertility and shorter generations, have a massive advantage in warfare over multiple generations!
  In other words, if Elves and Dwarves do have such low fertility, they are going to be wiped out. As a matter of fact, as DM you need to explain why they haven't been wiped out already.
  Please allow me to digress from fantasy to reality for just a moment. I am going to assume that most readers of this blog like most roleplayers are from nations with low birthrates. This is, historically, an anomaly. While real world demographics do show periods of stability and periods of decline, these were caused by bad weather and plague - birthrates remained high relative to modern birthrates. While the majority of the current world is below replacement TFR this is very unusual.
  Back to FRPGs. As you can see from the example I give above, have only replacement TFR is a big problem because it means that societies can't replace major losses in anything approaching a reasonable amount of time! For this reason in my campaigns I tend to have birthrates higher. Add in the fact that FRPG worlds tend to be shockingly lethal, I tend to make them much higher than you see in the modern world, much more akin to Europe of the High Middle Ages. I essentially assume that per generation population growth for Humans is about 30%, for Halflings it is 25%, for Elves, Gnomes, and Dwarves it is 15% and for the major humanoid races it is 40%-60% (not counting war or disease for any of these). I also have the sex ratio be about 50/50 for everyone but Dwarves where it is 55/45 male/female.
  Even with more reasonable TFRs, though, the issue of the length of generations remains - Orcs can go through almost 4 generations before Dwarves get to 2. For Elves it is closer to 12 generations to 2. This will have a profound effect upon how the various races wage war.
  First, the various bonuses Dwarves and Elves have (bonuses vs. certain races or with certain weapons) make sense because of their longer lives. The same applies to the greater numbers of powerful individuals in their forces. In any given battle Dwarves or Elves will prevail over Orcs of the same number. It will be more lopsided in their favor against Goblins and much more even against Hobgoblins. But Dwarves and Elves must do their utmost to avoid a long-term war of attrition because they simply can't win such a war.
  Suddenly, there is a reason Dwarves built such strong mountain fortresses and Elves live in thick forests with many sylvan allies; these positions are defensive, giving them the advantage, and can give them better warning of potential attacks. Both races will be as selective as possible about engaging forces they cannot overwhelm and must limit their losses as best they can.
  In a similar vein, Gnomes and Halflings make a lot more 'sense', too. The Halflings have great stealth and skills with missile weapons because they rely upon avoidance and ambush. Gnomes, with their illusions, are natural commandos. Like Dwarves and Elves they have these skills because they need them to survive as a society.
  Humanoids, on the other hand, are much more like hammers than rapiers. Their goal in war is to close with and engage the enemy with as much force as possible. With their numbers than can afford to be profligate on the battlefield because they recover from the loss of soldiers faster than their foes. Wave attacks by Goblins to 'soften up' the front lines for the hammer blow of a Hobgoblin charge may seem like a terrific loss of life but every Dwarf they kill is one less Dwarf their grandchildren will have to fight!
  This can also explain why Humans so often seem dominant in FRPGs; with a birthrate and generation length much closer to the Humanoids they are both much more capable for fighting humanoids on their own terms and invaluable allies to the other demi-human races.
  Please think about it and I hope this can add to your campaigns.