Conquering the World

[Oni]

I've always wanted to do a campaign where the objective was conquest. So tell me about campaigns you've run or played in which conquest of a significant part of the world was a major goal. What are some of the pitfalls of such a game? How much did you involve armies and resource management? How much traditional dungeon delving? How did the players go from adventuring to raising an army? et c.

 

[Hussar]

I would highly recommend Heroes of Battle for a resource for this. Rather than try to use D&D to do mass battles (which IMO, it doesn't do well), you can focus on the PC's while those battles occur.

 

[Oni]

Has dnd ever had a mass battle system?

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

has dnd ever had a mass battle system?

4e?

 

[knightofround]

The biggest problem with such an approach is that it can be difficult to prepare for. Whenever you have such a broad theme as "conquer a country" the PCs can go about it in so many ways it can be very difficult to maintain a unified plot line. If you're good at improvising though I'm sure it would work fine.

Heroes of Battle is great, but its more of a "Saving Private Ryan" approach to D&D. It works great for putting PCs in mass-combat situations, but actually have the PCs guide the strings? Dunno.

From my experience, the players were much more interested in awesome big combat scenes rather than resource management.

I haven't had much success going from adventures -> soldiers, but I have had a lot of luck with soldiers -> adventurers. Think Joss Whedon's Firefly.

Dungeons are essentially bunkers, and aren't too difficult to implement.

 

[El Mahdi]

They tried it with 2E AD&D in a book called (I think?) Battlesystem. There may have been others throughout the years with other editions (I'm not sure).

 

[questing gm]

Has dnd ever had a mass battle system?

Birthright?

 

[S'mon]

The best D&D abstract battle system is War Machine in the BECMI D&D Companion Set, which quickly handles battles of any size and works well integrated with Heroes of Battle. Bithright has a simple tactical system that works well for battles of several thousand, since units are around company sized, 130 men or so. Fields of Blood has a similar but much more complex system.

 

[icarusfallz]

Birthright, done correctly, is a LOT of fun (we actually used just the system, and set in the Realms).

Birthright done poorly is like anything done poorly.

It allows for players to work their way up, and really rule a land.

 

[Fenes]

There was a mass combat system tool on the PC. I used it for a crusade once. I am not sure I have it still though.