Mass Combat

[Danos]

Does anyone have mass combat rules? I remember that someone wrote up a set of rules based on the Legend of the Five Rings system, it was a pretty good framework where you decide how daring you wanted to be and determined some other parameters, then rolled your Warfare and compared the result to a chart. I don't know whatever happened to that writeup. It might have been on the HDI forums.

Anyway, my current group has a Shelit noble trying to recruit elite troops for his house. He has set up a cyber clinin on a fief he just inherited, and he is recruiting maimed ex soldiers with the promise of building them cybernetic prosthetics. He will wind up with small units of cybercorps warriors if he does it right. I would like to play out the warfare aspects of forging a military unit without just hand waving it away with narration or getting too bogged down in tactical combat with dozes of NPCs. Anyone have any ideas?

[Angelman]

I remember having worked on some L5R-based mass combat system for FS3, WAY back in the day, but I don't think it got anywhere near finished so what you have seen ws probably someone elses effort. It did seem like a good mach back in the day, though.

The plan is to publish a skermish system at some point, based on using minis but it could probably be used for non-mini mass combat as well. But the future is a harsh mistress and we'll see what happens.

[Danos]

Found a print copy in my old notes. Glad I keep three ring binders of everything. The version I have was developed by Eric Brennan. I'll either scan it or get real ambitious and type it, all I have right now is a print copy and I would prefer to have it in electronic form. I'll share here when I scan or type it, and I'll properly attribute it too.

[Angelman]

This would be very interesting to see Perhaps you should track down Eric to get his concent to redistribute his stuff Who konws, perhaps he has done more with this stuff

[Leviathan of Maddoc]

The Fading Suns rules doesn't really have skills that strongly reflect military strategy or intelligence analysis so I would present information about the battle as the characters know it and allow them to improvise tactics. Then I'd make an almost random roll-off against the forces with a bonus to either side for numbers and battlefield tech and perhaps a small modifier for tactics employed to determine which way the battle is likely to go. In the middle of the fight let the PCs make leadership rolls to inspire the troops to rally or retreat safely.

Other than that large battles should be mostly narration. PCs may be worth ten average soldiers in a duel but in the chaos of a battle they wouldn't be much more effective than the average soldier.

[Danos]

Leviathan, I usually do it that way, but I am reluctant to hand wave away mass combat in a campaign where it is taking on such prominence. I found a set of rules that codifies it a bit, and acts as a framework I can hang the gaming session on, describing the action based on the chart. I'm pretty good at describing battles, but I need some help. The rules I found use the Lot5R chart as an inspiration, and creates a set of scenarios for Fading Suns mass combat. I think Angelman has the right idea, I am going to try to find the author and ask if I can share their stuff here.

[Leviathan of Maddoc]

I'd be reluctant to adopt rules that make a meta-game of large battles. Even if players adopt the roles of unit or army leaders battle should always feel chaotic and random with more a sense of leverage in the struggle than control. The more you can make players feel helpless in a war the more you're doing a good job of both the realism and romanticism of war.

[Bogie]

We haven't created anything specific but what if you set up some specific Victory Point goals for certain events that can lead to success or failure? Each character working in their own specialty. Failures or critical failures could create additional setbacks, maybe have time limits on trying to meet the goals?

Sounds like you guys are having a fun game and would love to hear how you end up resolving it.

[Danos]

Yeah, looking at what I found from years ago, I am leaning towards crafting two or three encounters for a battle, then giving bonuses or penalties based on Warfare rolls during planning. Part of the problem is, my player with the noble character is simply better at wargames than me. He routinely beats me when we play 40K, and he is just as dominant in board games.

What I really want is to capture that feeling that you just don't have all the information and everything is chaos. Like Leviathan says, but I want to reward them for spending xp on the skill sets for being a commander. I think crafting a few encounters and working them into the narrative will work. I'll have to chew on it and see what I come up with. I may just use these rules that Eric Brennan came up with, but I don't know that they can be published, as I read them they look a bit too much like the Lot5R rule set, if you get what I'm saying.

Sigh. I might have my next writing project. If I decide to tackle this, I will share whatever I come up with.

[Leviathan of Maddoc]

Oh that's pretty easy I think.
First of all make the Warfare roll blind behind your screen so he doesn't necessarily know how well he's done. Apply bonuses or penalties based on how well the character knows the terrain and the enemy army. A desert fighter planning a forest defense would be -4 on their roll. A rebel who was once a lieutenant under the enemy leader would have a +6.
For each Victory Point let him know a likelyhood of the battle, such as "The enemy will most likely send Cavalry to the left flank to tear appear weaker units" or "With their superior range they will not advance until they're confident they've caused significant casualties" or "Count Juan is famous for forming a distraction to capture enemy nobles, the first enemy contact will surely be a distraction" and by likelyhood you'll want to have about one in three of these tactical clues be inaccurate.
Save the initial victory points from their strategy roll and use it as a bonus to Warefare when trying to evaluate changes in the fight mid-battle.