Morale is vitally important in real battles. Units didn’t become hors de combat because most of the unit was dead or wounded, instead their morale broke when there was still a majority able to fight, and they fled. Morale has fallen out of use in RPGs – why?
Morale is vitally important in real battles. We read about bayonet charges and hand-to-hand fighting in the age of gunpowder, but as I understand it, fighting rarely reached the bayonet stage. Instead one side or the other’s morale would give way, and either the defenders would flee or the attackers would retreat. Units didn’t become hors de combat because most of the unit was dead or wounded, instead their morale broke when there was still a majority able to fight, and they fled. That was true in both melee (club, spear, and sword) and gunpowder ages, and today.
Even though soldiers often knew that breaking and running was the worst thing to do, most casualties in battles occurred during the pursuit of the side that fled.
I’ve read many sets of miniatures battle rules where morale tests, breaking and fleeing, and rallying broken units are a very important aspect of the battle as a whole, perhaps more important than the actual casualties inflicted. (D&D’s predecessor Chainmail was rules for miniatures battle, but I don’t recall the details of its morale rules). Saving throws are often a part of morale rules, and came into D&D as a standard mechanism. For a "simplified" morale system for D&D 5e, see this site.
RPGs are skirmish battles rather than pitched battles, but morale can still prevail. Yet how often does morale play a significant role in an RPG? I suspect, not often.
Why do we see morale applied rarely in RPGs? I don’t know, but this is my hypothesis: serious game players want to feel that they control their own fate, that what happens to them is a result of their own actions. They don’t want to be told that their character’s morale breaks and the character runs away. (I know I don’t!) They want to decide for themselves whether they run away.
Furthermore, GMs who are telling specific stories don’t want the story messed up because the player characters run away at an inopportune time.
The result, given the absence of the fear and stink of death that would be present in the real world, is that player characters tend to stick around long after the morale of the typical soldier would have broken. (And this actually makes sense for the characters, who know that the pursuit is where much of the killing takes place.) I suspect as compensation, most GM’s have the bad guys stick around long after their morale should have broken. It’s an application of the Golden Rule of RPGs (“what’s good for the good guys is good for the bad guys”).
The contrary point of view would be, the player adventurer party is extraordinary, just as the characters in a novel are extraordinary (or they wouldn’t succeed), and so they should have an advantage that others do not have. Consequently, the bad guys should have morale appropriate to gangs and to individuals who are more interested in many cases in finding food and water than in defeating heroes. They ought to break fairly easily! On the other hand, properly motivated intelligent bad guys will have much better morale.
If NPCs are involved on the adventuring side, perhaps their morale could break, even if the PC morale does not.
Some early versions of D&D, descendant of miniatures rules, provided morale tests for the opposition, but this was later dropped, and I've read many sets of RPG rules that do not consider morale.
That means most fights are "to the death", which is exactly the opposite of the real world.
A drawback of morale rules (aside from the additional complication) is randomness. They depend on die rolls and calculations. Sometimes enemy morale will break quickly, sometimes they just won't break. This random factor might get in the way of the GM's plans.
So, do you use morale rules in your games? Only for the opposition, or for the player characters (or just the NPCs) as well?
This article was contributed by Lewis Pulsipher (lewpuls) as part of EN World's Columnist (ENWC) program. We are always on the lookout for freelance columnists! If you have a pitch, please contact us!
"Two armies are two bodies which meet and try to frighten each other."
"An army's effectiveness depends on its size, training, experience, and morale, and morale is worth more than the other factors combined."
[In war] "The moral is to the physical as three is to one."
- (Emperor) Napoleon I Bonaparte
"An army's effectiveness depends on its size, training, experience, and morale, and morale is worth more than the other factors combined."
[In war] "The moral is to the physical as three is to one."
- (Emperor) Napoleon I Bonaparte
Morale is vitally important in real battles. We read about bayonet charges and hand-to-hand fighting in the age of gunpowder, but as I understand it, fighting rarely reached the bayonet stage. Instead one side or the other’s morale would give way, and either the defenders would flee or the attackers would retreat. Units didn’t become hors de combat because most of the unit was dead or wounded, instead their morale broke when there was still a majority able to fight, and they fled. That was true in both melee (club, spear, and sword) and gunpowder ages, and today.
Even though soldiers often knew that breaking and running was the worst thing to do, most casualties in battles occurred during the pursuit of the side that fled.
I’ve read many sets of miniatures battle rules where morale tests, breaking and fleeing, and rallying broken units are a very important aspect of the battle as a whole, perhaps more important than the actual casualties inflicted. (D&D’s predecessor Chainmail was rules for miniatures battle, but I don’t recall the details of its morale rules). Saving throws are often a part of morale rules, and came into D&D as a standard mechanism. For a "simplified" morale system for D&D 5e, see this site.
RPGs are skirmish battles rather than pitched battles, but morale can still prevail. Yet how often does morale play a significant role in an RPG? I suspect, not often.
Why do we see morale applied rarely in RPGs? I don’t know, but this is my hypothesis: serious game players want to feel that they control their own fate, that what happens to them is a result of their own actions. They don’t want to be told that their character’s morale breaks and the character runs away. (I know I don’t!) They want to decide for themselves whether they run away.
Furthermore, GMs who are telling specific stories don’t want the story messed up because the player characters run away at an inopportune time.
The result, given the absence of the fear and stink of death that would be present in the real world, is that player characters tend to stick around long after the morale of the typical soldier would have broken. (And this actually makes sense for the characters, who know that the pursuit is where much of the killing takes place.) I suspect as compensation, most GM’s have the bad guys stick around long after their morale should have broken. It’s an application of the Golden Rule of RPGs (“what’s good for the good guys is good for the bad guys”).
The contrary point of view would be, the player adventurer party is extraordinary, just as the characters in a novel are extraordinary (or they wouldn’t succeed), and so they should have an advantage that others do not have. Consequently, the bad guys should have morale appropriate to gangs and to individuals who are more interested in many cases in finding food and water than in defeating heroes. They ought to break fairly easily! On the other hand, properly motivated intelligent bad guys will have much better morale.
If NPCs are involved on the adventuring side, perhaps their morale could break, even if the PC morale does not.
Some early versions of D&D, descendant of miniatures rules, provided morale tests for the opposition, but this was later dropped, and I've read many sets of RPG rules that do not consider morale.
That means most fights are "to the death", which is exactly the opposite of the real world.
A drawback of morale rules (aside from the additional complication) is randomness. They depend on die rolls and calculations. Sometimes enemy morale will break quickly, sometimes they just won't break. This random factor might get in the way of the GM's plans.
So, do you use morale rules in your games? Only for the opposition, or for the player characters (or just the NPCs) as well?
This article was contributed by Lewis Pulsipher (lewpuls) as part of EN World's Columnist (ENWC) program. We are always on the lookout for freelance columnists! If you have a pitch, please contact us!
