Grand Campaign Strategy/Roleplay Hybrid

[Cactot]

I was playing a game of Warhammer Fantasy Battle this weekend, and started to think how this type of wargame could be integrated with a roleplaying game. If it could be done well, i really cannot imagine a more enjoyable gaming experience.

Here is the idea, there are three levels: Strategy, Tactical, and Skirmish/Roleplay.

Skirmish/Roleplay would be your standard roleplaying session, kill monsters, take their , hobknob with influential people. Build wealth and power. Depending on the campaign, this might be the only type of game until a certain level where you are influential enough to start going to war.


Tactical would be the wargame level, with the PC characters in the army as heroes/lords (in Warhammer terms), this is where the RP comes to fruition on a grand scale. This is where you could conquer regions/provinces of the grand map (on the strategy level below).


Strategy is the world-map level scale (Something like Medieval Total War, Risk, and Dawn of War II) and the conquered territories would contribute to the acquisition of additional resources and income. (One change from standard Warhammer that i could see as being beneficial is that units cost resources/gold instead of points, and any who die need to be replaced rather than magically re-appear next battle, except for the PCs, who probably just retreat or such).


This would fit in EXTREMELY well with a game of thrones type campaign, or (duh) a standard warhammer type campaign setting.

I figure someone must have done this sort of campaign before, so i was wondering if any of you had heard of such a thing. I am just kind of throwing ideas up on a wall, hopefully some of you will have some awesome ideas to help me try and bring this to reality. Feedback and alternative ideas/concepts are very welcome.

-cactot

 

[fireinthedust]

I see the trick here being in keeping pitfalls in mind and avoiding trouble spots.

Complexity: if there's too much to keep track of, you'll kill the fun. Make all goals specific, and don't bog down game play or GM prep.

It sounds like you've got three levels to keep track of: big map; battlefield; adventuring party.


big Map: so you're conquering provinces, nations, whatever. This is your big map. I'd have it so that each area to conquer (village, province, country) provides some sort of resource. Divide play into rounds, and every round (be it a month, a year, whatever) the party gets the resources from whatever area they've conquered. This means the army for Warhammer gets 5 points for every territory they conquered. In fact, it will allow them to add to their army creatures of whatever area they took over: they aide the dwarves, so allow them to spend points of dwarven miniatures.
For Map-level fights, sure: you could play RISK. However, it might be more fun to have them determined by the GM, and have news updates reach the players every round: the Orcs have conquered the province of Caimlen; the Elves have defended the forest of White-leaf, etc. This will have an effect on their resources, and on whether or not they're winning.
This is more like Medieval Total War, which is pretty kickass.

Battlefield: you could have them as leaders of the troops. keep in mind avoiding putting their PC in a position where your monsters can't kill them and you don't kill them off. Maybe have them play the army, or have some way of bringing them back if their peices are taken. Otherwise, build the army with whatever resources the PCs have available from whatever provinces they have access to: in LOTR terms, if they have Rohan they get cavalry; Mirkwood they get archers; Lonely Mountain they get dwarves, etc.

Skirmishes: you may want to start them as scouts for the army itself, as you'll have more time to develop the campaign that way. Maybe the initial army they want to build has been captured, and the 1st level PCs managed to escape; or were mercenaries from afar who were called in to rescue the troops (in case they're from a land where the PCs won't be conquering until a few levels later).
Initially the PCs need to free the army, by delving into the dungeon of doom or raising the loot to ransom them. Later, the PCs could do the mission to open the mountain pass so the army can get through and attack the foe on the other side (but there's this dragon in the gatehouse, or a wizard, or whatever).
Finally, though, the PCs might be high enough level that they could hold off an army themselves, considering most foes would be vastly lower level. Maybe they could challenge the leaders or champions of the enemy to give the winning side a moral bonus or an advantage to the rest of the final battle.

If you're doing Warhammer, I hope you've got the figuines. If every player has their own favourite army, maybe the party could build the composite army through adventuring, I dunno.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

While I have never done the full rp, grand strategic to battle field game at once I have done the grand strategic to minatures battle game, albiet with historical Napoleonic campaign.

My advice is that once the characters are powerfull enough to be running armies, etc. that they spin off a second set of charactes to handle the lowlevel recce and infiltration stuff.

On the resource level i would agree with Cactot that the conquered territories yield abstract resources that correspond to the armies you can maintain and some simple abstact rule to cover normal attrition.

You should try an get a good set of campaign rules, Risk is too simple, essentilly you need to reflect that in war the pre-battle manouvers largely determine the outcome of the battle. Try Grognards.com or the Comsim-L forums for info on that.

On the battle you can use the normal warhammer rules but remember that most of your casualties are people that run away and if you win you should recover about 2/3 or more of them. If you loose you get back less and less again if the winners have a lot of cavalry or equivalent fast moving elements to scatter a routing army.

Let us know how you get on.

 

[Cactot]

Fantastic responses guys, thats exactly what i was looking for. It really helps me flesh out my ideas.

My initial thought was having a campaign map just like MTW, and i still think that it has potential. Now that i am considering it, another cool plot device for the adventure phase could be to have quests to "unlock" certain units for use in the wargame phase. Perhaps for some really epic units combine it with territory requirements.

To fireinthedust, i dont have tons of experience with warhammer battle, but it seems to me that units break and run more often than are completely wiped out, which provides a convenient plot device to explain your heroes surviving what seemed like a massacre. Also, warhammer battles dont have victory decided by total annihilation normally, it seems that its usually more of a margin of victory thing. (Unless the armies are totally imbalanced). Also, i am not sure if the players would ever get 'that' powerful relative to the opposition units, there are some pretty absurdly powerful units in warhammer. I suppose it would depend on what game the each aspect was based on (or what edition, if referencing D&D).

Warhammer unit stats are pretty simple, so i suppose it wouldnt be TERRIBLY hard to figure out a conversion for DnD > Warhammer Battle, or even Warhammer roleplay > warhammer battle. The hardest conversion would be 3rd edition CoDzilla or Wizards.

I will check out the links you provided. Thanks a ton, keep the ideas coming!

 

[Wik]

Check out the old TSR BATTLESYSTEM. It was a minis strategy game using D&D rules. If yo uwant to run a D&D/minis game, it's a great place to start.

 

[Ariosto]

I figure someone must have done this sort of campaign before, so i was wondering if any of you had heard of such a thing.

Yeah: Dave Arneson's Blackmoor, ca. 1970-74, whence came the prototype of DUNGEONS and DRAGONS. The expectation that high-level characters would become strategic movers and shakers is one reason why the original D & D set lists the CHAINMAIL miniatures rules as recommended equipment and includes rules for collecting taxes, building castles, raising armies, and fighting naval and aerial battles.

 

[fireinthedust]

there are some varient D&D battlefield rules, iirc:

1) Cry Havok: nice cover, and the rules were simple. 3.x, tho, and I personally prefer 4e for its simplicity and the computer CB that generates Pcs without you having to do the math. Still, the basic premise of deciding how many HP an army of D&D monsters would have seems fairly straightforward.


2) Heroes of Battle: same deal, but WOTC-made. 3.5, I think, and so you will have to swap over to 4e if you're going to do it that way.

So yeah, you want simple systems for RP and battle, for sure, because you're already going to be doing so much character generation.


As well, keep in mind that you're going to be doing either all of these things at once, or else having one night to do each section. You'll need a group that's long-term and interested in the campaign.
I'd suggest having the PCs be tag-alongs of the army, or a special unit, and that you prepare yourself to have long stretches of realtime where you're doing RP, and then a night of Warhammer army battles and a regular use of the map to decide what's going on at the national level. This makes sense because the army is going to lose soldiers, and you'll need to resupply and train them all.
RP takes longer just to do, so you're likely going to be able to go off on a tangent for periods of time.

Scenarios...

1) Rescue the survivors: the army starts off captured, and the PCs have to enter the enemy fortress and release them, and get them armed and armored so they don't get wiped out. The enemy army has left only a skeleton guard while they take to the field (looting the area) so the PCs have to get their force ready and take the fortress before the enemy returns and cuts them down.
Followup: hold the fort, or march on the enemy, or sneak away through a mountain pass.

2) Hold the pass: like in the 300, the PCs must hold a pass from an enemy army while their forces make it there in time to back them up. Can the PCs hold off their foes long enough for messengers to arrive and get help? the PCs finally contact their main nation (Bandoria), and this gets them their first territory on the map.
Battlefield: depending on how well the PCs do, the armies arrive and fight in a corridor against a superior foe that's hindered by cramped space.

3) Befriend a neutral party: the PCs must befriend a neutral 3rd party, and convince them to join up against the invading forces. This will significantly build the PCs nation, granting them two territories on the Map (Bandoria and Elfinia). Threat: the Invadors are likewise trying to convince Elfinia that it's a bad idea to help the PCs.
Skill challenge: set the pace for the adventure, and let the PCs screw themselves if they try to browbeat the Elfinians.
Dungeon: to get good will, the PCs agree to get the Elfinian Orbs from an ancient tomb haunted by ghosts. If they don't die, the Elfinians are on side. Obviously the invader's necromancers are going to try something, so add in an encounter fighting tiefling assasins and warlocks.
Battlefield: With or without the Elfinian units, the PCs can now have at the Invaders' armies.

 

[Cactot]

I fricking love these boards, you guys rule. I dont think converting to 4e will be a problem, i tend to favor 3.x (although 4e seems more tactical wargamey to me, and i love tactical wargames... strange).

 

[fireinthedust]

I fricking love these boards, you guys rule. I dont think converting to 4e will be a problem, i tend to favor 3.x (although 4e seems more tactical wargamey to me, and i love tactical wargames... strange).

I'm a 4e fanatic, sure, so I like to throw that in there. I have a bookshelf filled with 3e books, and while I've enjoyed them I just can't do the math. I... well, love D&D, but could never find 3e people to play with. I finally offered to run a game for some RPGA buffs, but I had no idea how overpowered PCs get at mid-to-high levels, so they wiped the floor with an army I threw at them. This was because I didn't know that every monster's stat blocks is simply the basic naked version of a monster, who needs to be outfitted with piles of magical protections to have them last more than a single round. No such math issues running 4e for me.
At any rate, stay in 3e if you don't mind doing the math, or you've got pre-generated monsters that will challenge your PCs. You're going to be doing a ton of prep work for every single aspect of the game. [/two cents]


Do you like Paizo? Pathfinder (which, oddly, I love; and would run for 4e ) has a great set of nations, and a map. If you're big on 3e, you could have the various armies come from parts of the Pathfinder CS.

Eberron is another national politics setting, tho far fewer nations. You could have the PCs fighting for their nation, and conquering provinces one by one. The final battle could be a march on the Lords of Dust, who have secretly been controlling their enemies and sending assassins against the party members.

Challenges to your nations: keeping in mind your nations providing your armies with resources/troop options/points for the battlefield builds. you could have Nation-level challenges, like unrest or weather difficulties in each reason. This could lower the number of points for the armies. So could two rival nations: any Battlefield with both Elves and Dwarves, or both Paladins and Undead, loose you a small number of points per nation.
As well, for RP, you'd have the PCs quest for items or alliances that could curb the point loss.

Nation 1: Elves: 5 pts per round. If you join with Nation 2, lose 2 pts.
Nation 2: Dwarves: ditto for nation 1.
Nation 3: Undead: 3 pts per round; -2 if forced to work with nation 4
Nation 4: Thrane (from Eberron): Paladins and clerics: 5pts per round hates Undead; -3 pts if forced to work with the Undead

I gave the Undead fewer points because they could maybe have cooler powers. I really have no idea how Warhammer works, though I'm guessing they have more points for an army.