BitD Hack - Military Campaign Progress

[Starfox]

Continuing to delve into BitD. We gave up our trial run of Candela Obscura and are now on Princess World - Frontier Kingdoms session 2. But that's not what I am going to talk about.

I had an idea for something I found hard to do in any other game that might work in BitD, and that is doing a military campaign that puts progress in the hands of the players and also avoids becoming a military boardgame. The goal here is something like Band of Brothers, where we follow a military unit on 'adventures' and handle the wider progress of the war using the mechanics for gangs. Missions are particularly interesting events, but most of the campaign is run through background actions, which will have to be renamed and reworked to fit. The main difference between this and the ordinary gang mechanics is how tier would work. As an army in good supply and in contact with a friendly chain of command and supply, your tier is high. The more you fight, the more you advance, and the more you become an isolated spearhead, the lower your tier gets. There are downtime actions that help you resupply, but doing so reduces the number of offensive downtime actions you can perform, creating a balance between offense and defense. In the end you will have to be replaced, rest, resupply, gain reinforcements, and recover to return in the next campaign.

The inspiration for this game is the old Close Combat computer game where you played Americans in the bocage of Normandy. In that game, the better things went for you, the worse your replacement and supply situation became. It was a knife's edge thing to advance with weaker and weaker forces against stronger and stronger opponents. One of the most enjoyable computer games ever in my opinion.

My question is if someone has already done something like this?

 

[hawkeyefan]

What you’re describing is largely the premise for Band of Blades. It has a slightly more specific campaign in place… it is about the Legion withdrawing from the front in its war against hordes of undead, retreating to Skydagger Keep. So you might have to adjust it if you wanted a different sort of campaign.

Band of Blades

 

[MarkB]

What you’re describing is largely the premise for Band of Blades. It has a slightly more specific campaign in place… it is about the Legion withdrawing from the front in its war against hordes of undead, retreating to Skydagger Keep. So you might have to adjust it if you wanted a different sort of campaign.

Band of Blades

I think this is where the BitD structure may not work so well - it's too structured, designed to suit a specific locale (or, in the case of BoB, a specific campaign) - you can choose what to do in which order, but you're choosing from a pre-determined list. It's not adaptable to running a different battle, or even particularly to using unconventional strategy or tactics within a pre-designed campaign - not at the out-of-mission overworld level.

 

[Starfox]

I think this is where the BitD structure may not work so well - it's too structured, designed to suit a specific locale (or, in the case of BoB, a specific campaign).

Thanks for the warning. Like the power rules earlier, this is not something I am going to do soon - quite a bit of work before that, and I don't master the regular downtime rules yet.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think this is where the BitD structure may not work so well - it's too structured, designed to suit a specific locale (or, in the case of BoB, a specific campaign) - you can choose what to do in which order, but you're choosing from a pre-determined list. It's not adaptable to running a different battle, or even particularly to using unconventional strategy or tactics within a pre-designed campaign - not at the out-of-mission overworld level.

I’m not so sure. I think you could create alternate campaigns. I think it might take a lot of work, depending on how detailed you wanted it to be. But I admit to not having enough experience with Band of Blades to say so for sure.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

I think @

I’m not so sure. I think you could create alternate campaigns. I think it might take a lot of work, depending on how detailed you wanted it to be. But I admit to not having enough experience with Band of Blades to say so for sure.

BoB also includes guidance for changing the setting and such.

But even if reworking it for a different sort of military campaign would take work, it certainly wouldn't be more work than redoing a FitD game from the ground up. I think FitD (especially by way of BoB) has a lot to offer that sort of game/genre, especially how it encourages (and empowers) you to cut to pivotal scenes, and not get bogged down in minute-to-minute, day-to-day events, or in the total nightmare that is mass combat in really any trad game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think it's good in an overall sense, something like WWII western front '44-'45 should be workable. The 'big picture' stuff is basically beyond the unit's horizon. Nothing the unit does is going to drastically change the progress of the war, or if it does it will be in fairly predictable ways. Maybe BoB is a good starting point, I'm not sure, but I could see operational position as a sort of equivalent of turf and such in BitD, start off on the beach, if you can fight through to September you get into the next big push, etc.

 

[Starfox]

I think it's good in an overall sense, something like WWII western front '44-'45 should be workable. The 'big picture' stuff is basically beyond the unit's horizon. [...]

I agree on how this could work in a modern setting. I think Band of Brothers and the like could work, or perhaps each player in control of a Band of Brothers-like unit. I want PCs responsible some of the supply issues. Basically, both supply and connections to base and advancing would be downtime actions, as well as training your unit, training yourself, and other downtime tasks from BitD. Thus you have to decide what to prioritize - is it worth to advance faster at the cost of resupply?

What I am thinking of myself would be a fantasy army in a renaissance setting, a cooperative effort between dwarves and humans, maybe with some elves or even renegade orks, fighting to liberate a city and its environs. The PCs would be leaders on the brigade level, important but not the top brass.

Hm, something I only just thought of, maybe I should start the PCs at a lower level of command and allow them to advance in rank, effectively increasing their tier, at the same time the army's overall tier falls due to lack of supply. When the two meet, the PCs are among the top brass.

The battles themselves are also an issue. I think it would be best to handle them with downtime mechanics, and have scores be skirmishes, scouting, and commando raids. But I am not settled on this, I haven't even written a sketch for any of this yet.

 

[MarkB]

I agree on how this could work in a modern setting. I think Band of Brothers and the like could work, or perhaps each player in control of a Band of Brothers-like unit. I want PCs responsible some of the supply issues. Basically, both supply and connections to base and advancing would be downtime actions, as well as training your unit, training yourself, and other downtime tasks from BitD. Thus you have to decide what to prioritize - is it worth to advance faster at the cost of resupply?

Seems reminiscent of some CRPGs such as the Total War series, where there are moves on a strategic level in between the actual battlefield clashes.

What I am thinking of myself would be a fantasy army in a renaissance setting, a cooperative effort between dwarves and humans, maybe with some elves or even renegade orks, fighting to liberate a city and its environs. The PCs would be leaders on the brigade level, important but not the top brass.

Hm, something I only just thought of, maybe I should start the PCs at a lower level of command and allow them to advance in rank, effectively increasing their tier, at the same time the army's overall tier falls due to lack of supply. When the two meet, the PCs are among the top brass.

That feels like it would create an odd tension, whereby the PCs' advancement towards autonomy is aided by how badly their army is doing.

The battles themselves are also an issue. I think it would be best to handle them with downtime mechanics, and have scores be skirmishes, scouting, and commando raids. But I am not settled on this, I haven't even written a sketch for any of this yet.

How do you keep scores truly relevant to overall success and progression, then? There's only so much that tiny scouting missions can do to advance a major campaign. You risk the scores becoming irrelevant and feeling like unwelcome distractions from the 'real' game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

How do you keep scores truly relevant to overall success and progression, then? There's only so much that tiny scouting missions can do to advance a major campaign. You risk the scores becoming irrelevant and feeling like unwelcome distractions from the 'real' game.

Does seem like an issue with any scheme where you move up the ranks. I'd avoid that paradigm. Instead have progression in terms of mission type, sort of ala Mech Commander. Starting out with basic scouting for your platoon/company and on up into successively more elite missions.