Mass combat

[Oly]

It does take a lot of "hand waving" and narration of the results in an interesting fashion to make it work.

Care to give an example? I'm not fully sure I understand what you mean

The MC and modifiers to it for a formation are all abstract and not that easy to define. The list given is pretty good but I'd often go with the D20 rule of applying a +2 or -2 modifier for all sorts of other things.

For example in a recent battle my players prepared the battlefield with oil filled trenches and had archers ready with fire arrows. When they were ignited I simply gave the enemy formation marching over them a -2 MC modifier.

Likewise when a unit has it's MC drop as a result of a check then rather than just saying "oh it's taken a -2 to it's MC" it's better to look at map of the battle and describe upon it what that actually means.

In a battle to take a city as the defenders MC gradually dropped firstly ladders were put against the wall, then attackers got onto the walls, the defenders would drop back to the towers before finally being forced out into the city itself.

That sort of narration makes the battle interesting and should also give the PCs ideas for "mini adventures" such as saying "OK I'm heading to the south wall and I'll assist the defenders there to take back the battlements".

That would lead to me perhaps saying that they'd need to recapture the top level of a tower in order to get onto the battlements and that would be the mini adventure for that round of the battle.

So, just to clarify, MC really doesn't having any baring on whether the army (or unit, rather) is, say 10,000 strong or 10? (unless, of course, it's *actually* 10,000 versus 10. I personally wouldn't even bother rolling MC in that regard, just narrate the PCs being surrounded and seeing what they do)

There is a -2 modifier for a formation that is outnumbered by 2:1 but that's about it, in theory numbers don't matter.

Again this is where some hand waving comes into it. To me numbers alone don't tell the story, it's also about the quality of the units. A small army of Knights should be able to deal with an army of peasants many times it's size.

I'd look at the various MC values suggested for different types of unit, look at a formations composition and look at what it's set against before coming up with some MC for it.

Maybe a formation of mostly Zingaran Men-at-arms (MC11) has some Zingaran Knights (MC15) attached to it, I might give the resulting formation an MC of 12 or 13.

Sometimes I would also work backwards thinking of the difference of MC between formations that I would like to see and then coming up with reasons to justify that.

Again heading back to that city battle I wanted the attackers to have a distinct advantage so I think that I gave them an MC that was 2 to 4 points higher than the defenders. That was explained as the opposing army being well motivated, better equipped and having catapults and siege engines.

Let to their own devices the attackers should have won the day. However the players were listening to my description of the battle and were charging around shoring up weak points or taking advantage of a faltering enemy.

The PCs didn't win the battle on their own but their intervention at certain points, particular if all of them rushed to assist the same formation, was crucial.

 

[kintire]

I would allow something like a bonus to the performance of a unit containing a PC only if the PC had a very high CHA score, and a FTR-class character, and commanding the unit. Otherwise, I don't feel the presence of the PC would necessitate any preferential treatment of said unit. IOW, they throw their lot in with everybody else. A PC or PC's--if not unit commanders--would be assigned to a unit and the fate of the unit was the fate of the PC.

Now, when it comes to the subject of morale/reaction tests, if the PC's unit fails the test and routs, I would allow the PC to make a "Will Save", failure of which would result in his following his mates.

YMMV.

With respect, I think you've missed the point I was making. That's fine from a wargamer's point of view, but an RPG is not a wargame. An RPG is a game about the PCs. As a GM, I don't care about the fate of the unit, or the army, or the battle except insofar as it impacts the PCs, either directly by threatening or enriching them, or indirectly by advancing the plot or changing the background in which they operate. An RPG mass combat system is designed to fit the battle into the narrative of the game, but the focus is still on the game, and the heroes of that game... the PCs.

Now, if you would prefer to resolve the battle by wargaming it out that's fine of course. But that's not at all what an RPG mass battle system is trying to do, and you can't really criticise a system for not doing it!

 

[Nasir6]

A question


Say the PCs are in the fray, how would I got about, um...damaging them? As, well, they're in the press of bodies, people hacking at one another, it seems fair that they get smoked at some point or another

 

[Oly]

Say the PCs are in the fray, how would I got about, um...damaging them? As, well, they're in the press of bodies, people hacking at one another, it seems fair that they get smoked at some point or another

When I've run my battles the PCs might be in the fray but they are not a part of it. Just being a part of a shield wall hacking at people in the other shield wall doesn't really give me what I want from a battle.

The PCs are relatively free to move around the battlefield doing what they want to influence things. It's in their "mini adventures" that they're exposed to damage and harm.

 

[Yogah of Yag]

As a GM, I don't care about the fate of the unit, or the army, or the battle except insofar as it impacts the PCs

Wowzers! :shock:
I can see that we sit on opposite sides of the fence! :wink:
I, playing the rôle of general, care about the entire army, not just the PC's nor only about the specific units which host them. Additionally, I, playing the GM, must consider how all conflicts of any appreciable size affect the political geography of the Hyborian Age IMC, and not only worry about select individuals no matter how impressively heroic they may be as attested by their stat-blocks.

If an individual is in battle, how could it possibly not affect them directly (physically and emotionally)?

IMHO, most PC's in RPG's are combat-oriented entities (fighting henchmen, defeating BBEG's, slaying monsters, beating up demonic hordes, etc.). Why would the characters gravitate toward one-on-one combat and shy away from being in mass combat situations?

If I were to introduce the likelihood of war into my Hyborian Age campaign, I would have to ask questions of the players as:

1) are they willingly joining in the conflict?
2) If so, as enlisted men, officers, other?
3) Are they joining out of financial motivations?
4) Or were they forced to join, id est, via conscription, impressment, kidnapping, 'being shanghaied', and so on?
5) Does the conflict involve a nation to which they have affiliation, feelings of patriotism?

This is how I handle PC's in mass combat milieux:
A) If the PC party is in a unit as 'grunts', they'll do as they're told by their CO. If the unit is wiped out, the PC's are wiped out. If the unit is taken captive, they endure the same fate.
B) If a PC or all PC's are unit commanders, their roleplaying decisions affect the fate of the unit, as long as they in turn obey the orders handed down from their CO, including the C-i-C. If a PC commands the equivalent to a company, I (as the Gm/C-i-C) would have to hand down orders to them, or have some artificial mechanic (random dice rolls mapped to a table, perhaps) replicating the decision-making processes of an illusory C-i-C.

Example:

Stygia has four smallish towns on the north side of the river in Shem lying between Abbadrah and Kaetta (RoK, p. 115) which they settled only a few years ago. Shem has invaded and sacked the Stygian settlements, claiming them as their own. (I'm assuming that Stygia was very stoopid and did not have garrisons in any of those four locations.) Stygia sends a punitive force of 4,000 troops (1,000 to each town) to reclaim the purloined sites by force and drive out the Shemites (or take as many POW's for the increase of their slave workforce, or to feed the big, hungry snakies. ) Now, I would have to inquire: is the PC a native Stygian or a Shemite? Was he present at any of those four locations when the invasion began? Or was he part of the Stygian force? If so, under what circumstances? (See numbered Q's above.) If the party is composed of Stygians, their motivation is clear, as it would be the case if they were Shemite. If the PC's are foreign mercenaries intent on making a couple quid and are allowed to tag along, why not let 'em? If a war is being waged between Stygia and Shem, but the party is lounging on silk divans in Khitai while being fanned by nubile, almond-eyed lovelies, who gives a rat's ass about Stygia and Shem??? :lol:

An RPG is a game about the PCs.

A perfectly valid way to define an RPG.
However, my definition is "An RPG is a game about the world in which the PC's live and strive to interact, with the hopes that they may in the future put their mark on the Hyborian Age."

 

[Oly]

IMHO, most PC's in RPG's are combat-oriented entities (fighting henchmen, defeating BBEG's, slaying monsters, beating up demonic hordes, etc.). Why would the characters gravitate toward one-on-one combat and shy away from being in mass combat situations?

It's not a case of shying away from mass combat at all, it's just a case of where your focus is.

To me a mass combat is the backdrop for the PCs adventures, it's not the focus of an evenings gaming. Much as how I enjoy wargaming it's not what my RPG nights are about.

Neither I nor my players want the camera to suddenly zoom out and to have their PCs merged into a unit taking away the standard level of RPG detail on their single character.

To me the battle is something to be abstracted away into the background. I don't want to have to deal with dozens or hundreds of individual units, I just want to paint a sweeping picture of all of that. I want the flow and outcome of the battle to make some kind of "sense" but that's about as far as it goes.

All personal choices of course. There's nothing to say that during an RPG session you shouldn't break out a more detailed game to handle mass combat or some other situation. I remember the first edition of the Star Wars RPG mentioning that if people wanted to they could use the Star Warriors board game to handle starship combat as opposed to the very abstract system the RPG used.

However I doubt that many gamers want to do that.

Oh and your descriptions of how you feel about your game world and the detail you consider is pretty much how I, and I suspect many of the others on this board, feel about things.

Where we differ from you is the amount of detail and "wargaming" that we want to put into the big battles that occur.

 

[kintire]

Exactly: what Oly said. I have plenty of mass battles in my campaign: they are an important part of the world. That doesn't mean I break out the minatures and play them out. I'm perfectly capable of considering how all conflicts of any size affect the political geography of the Hyborian age without spending six hours maneuvering units around a tabletop, and I worry about select individuals based on their importance to the plot, not the heroism of their stat blocks. Actually, if my PCs have heroic stat blocks that makes it more likely I'm bothered about the battle as a whole, not less. After all, the PCs are more likely to be able to affect the outcome.

If an individual is in battle, how could it possibly not affect them directly (physically and emotionally)?

What are you talking about? of course it does. But what impact does using a narrative based mass combat system where the battle outcome is resolved in two minutes vs a full on hours long wargaming system have on that?

IMHO, most PC's in RPG's are combat-oriented entities (fighting henchmen, defeating BBEG's, slaying monsters, beating up demonic hordes, etc.). Why would the characters gravitate toward one-on-one combat and shy away from being in mass combat situations?

You have missed the point... again. No one is avoiding mass combat situations. We are just following the PCs through the battle instead of worrying about the whole shebang.

I have no idea where you are going with your example. All I can see is that you are trying to show how a war can improve the plot. Well, I knew that. The problem is that you seem to be under the impression that the only way to run a war to is game out each battle using detailed wargaming rules, and if I'm not doing that, I must be avoiding war completely. That is NOT the case.

 

[Yogah of Yag]

No need to get your kilt in a twist!
I do things differently, but in the end it's about what the player's want out of the experience. :wink:
I have known many more wargamers than RPGers so that's why my emphasis is on the 'big picture' (with the 'camera' as you call it 'zoomed out') and not 'soldier-in-the-thick-of-it' POV. I come from a military family and I suppose that's why I've leaned a bit more toward military history and wargaming than RPG's. YMMV.


(Back to lurker mode.)

 

[Yogah of Yag]

No need to get your kilt in a twist!
I do things differently, but in the end it's about what the player's want out of the experience. :wink:
I have known many more wargamers than RPGers so that's why my emphasis is on the 'big picture' (with the 'camera' as you call it 'zoomed out') and not 'soldier-in-the-thick-of-it' POV. I come from a military family and I suppose that's why I've leaned a bit more toward military history and wargaming than RPG's. YMMV.

I'm getting sick of arguing with wankers on this forum.
(Back to lurker mode.)

 

[kintire]

No need to get your kilt in a twist!

Its not. I'm emphasising my point, because you seem to have missed it first time round. I am therefore trying to be more clear.

I do things differently, but in the end it's about what the player's want out of the experience.

So you say (rightly) now, but...

I'm getting sick of arguing with wankers on this forum.

Well, that is a disappointment. I respected your opinion till I read this. But it seems you're just another of the "disagreeing with me is RUDE!" brigade. Oh well.

 

[pasuuli]

Oly and Kintire,

You know, until today, I had never realized that there in fact is such a thing as RPG Mass Combat. But, I have to say that you're right, and that it is quite different than war-gaming... and that it's clearly superior for the purposes of Role-Playing.

Thank you.

 

[raymond_turney]

Hi,

The differences between the problems of RPG Mass Combat and Wargaming are basically in perspective.

RPG mass combat is designed from the perspective of the individual fighter. In ancient warfare, this experience usually resembles:

1) marching to a deployment point determined by someone else;

2) being bored while the rest of the both armies get into something resembling position;

3) possibly being subected to a hail of arrows, or if bow armed contributing to a hail of arrows;

4) charging an enemy who may be charging him

5) if in the first two ranks, maybe doing some fighting and getting injured or killed

6) Running away if his unit loses, running after the enemy if his unit wins. He may get to kill someone and loot the body, or capture a prisoner for ransom.

7) being rallied, usually by some kind of horn call. This means stopping, suddenly feeling ehaused, and getting ready to do it all again.

Wargaming rules are written from the perspective of an idealized general. He gets to pick his forces off an army list, rather than just take whatever shows up at the muster point. He and the opposing general pick terrain, rather than ending up on one of a limited selection of battle sites; possible social problems with other nobles are highly simplified and standardized, etc. In short generalship with slightly more freedom than they usually assume at a military academy, rather than generalship as portrayed in Tolstoy's War and Peace.

If your characters are actual officers, they will have experiences that are not really well modeled by either extreme. Writing rules for this is an interesting challenge, but would be pretty subjective. You'd have to figure out just how much, and what, real officers control in actual battles. This is not easy.

This has been a fairly long post.

If you would like to read more from me, I have written an RPG, available under an open source license as a free download at:

http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/downloads.php?do=cat&id=12

There is also a short introductory version, a designer's commentary, character sheets and a setting description.

Good luck with your gaming, however you choose to deal with mass combat,

Ray,