How the heck did medieval war work? And other rambling questions.

[FriarRosing]

In my upcoming game, I plan on the PCs living and adventuring in a kingdom currently fighting a two front war. I don't know if they'll get involved in the conflict yet, as for the moment I'm planning on having them mainly deal with internal affairs and conflicts. But, when I was thinking about adventures involving them fighting in the war itself, I realized that every assumption I'd made was based on post medieval war.

In reality, I don't care much for the medieval period, but I like the fantasy genre and D&D as a setting (which I guess is kind of strange). I'm the kind of guy who has to have a logical consistency in his game world, so I can't rightly have a war fought with swords, spears, arrows and a touch of magic work the same as a war fought with rifles and artillery.

My favorite conflict in history is probably the First World War, and I'm using that as inspiration (the characters are citizens of the country roughly analogous to Germany), but I feel I can't get the feel I want, which is political, cultural and physical devastation and pointless loss of life, with what I imagine a D&D war would look like. At least, I can't do that without introducing elements that would break the whole thing for me. Poison gas I could easily do, but constant shelling is hard. And, almost most importantly, it's hard to come up with something in a fantasy universe analogous to trench warfare in terms of psychology and atmosphere.

How can I get something similar to the front, with both sides at a stalemate, throwing men at each other's entrenchments with little to no gain in a medieval setting? I guess that's my main question. I'm afraid I don't have the imagination to come up with an answer.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

The use of trenches was actually fairly prevalent - before cannon, they'd try to tunnel under the walls to undermine them. Then cannon were introduced, which could knock down the walls without mining, which led to the fortress designs changing (to the "star fort" style of earthworks), which then led to a new round of trenching and undermining. So I think you can get that feel, but mostly in long sieges of cities. You wouldn't see that sort of thing out in the open field as you did in WWI.

Magic, of course, changes things, and you should give some thought to how prevalent magic is in war before going too much farther. I keep my wars fairly magic light, so I can keep things close to the medieval/rennaissance paradigm. The more magic, the more the war will start to resemble modern warfare, I think.

 

[CardinalXimenes]

I do think it's best to drop much effort to be historically realistic about medieval warfare. An enormous amount depends on where and when you're trying to simulate, and some basic military tropes just don't translate back from WWI very well.

First off, medieval societies could not sustain a "total war" footing. The mass conscript armies of the WWI era, supplied by enormous logistical tails that reached back into every major population center, just did not happen. Actual logistics and financing could be surprisingly sophisticated, but they were sophisticated in the context of societies like England, where they balanced the yearly books by moving counters around on a checkerboarded table.

This is not to say that attempts weren't made to fully mobilize the populace. Indeed, the essentially tribal character of a lot of Dark Age societies contributed to an archaic conception of a general muster involving all able-bodied men, especially those who held land and property. This archaic principle rapidly decayed into payment in money or goods in place of men, because the confused mob of peasants, townsmen, and nobility produced by a general muster was of extremely limited use on the battlefield, to say nothing of the economic damage caused in a society that simply did not have the productivity excess to support such a percentage of its population doing non-productive work.

Carolingian edicts were issued insisting that every man who presented himself for the muster must have a helmet, a spear, and a jack, but even that proved too much in some cases. Royal orders insisted that arriving with nothing but a staff or club was not sufficient. Eventually, the funds and goods provided in place of military service went to finance the maintenance of smaller corps of professional soldiers, though there were always variations among places and times.

If you really want conscript armies bloodletting each other in endless siege warfare, you're probably best off short-circuiting the historical progression that turned the muster into scutage-money. Perhaps magic provides unusual productivity for the nations, allowing large percentages of its population to spend their time killing each other. Perhaps the borders are heavily fortified, with castles, manors, and other hard points that have to be reduced if an enemy army is to penetrate into the soft interior. Honestly, I'd be surprised if your players ever noticed if you just did it this way even without any magical explaination.

If you want info for the flavor of medieval warfare, I'd recommend Philippe Contamine's "War in the Middle Ages". It's a little dry at points, but it covers the evolution of mass musters into paid soldiery quite well, and gives a lot of useful detail on specific weaponry, armor, and tactics. Marc Bloch's "Feudal Society" series is another great read; it's a little dated in some places, but there's a reason it's such a classic.

 

[mhensley]

How can I get something similar to the front, with both sides at a stalemate, throwing men at each other's entrenchments with little to no gain in a medieval setting? I guess that's my main question. I'm afraid I don't have the imagination to come up with an answer.

What you want is a siege. The besieging army will be dug in and could be there for months. Trenches, mud, fortifications, mud, disease, fighting in tunnels under the walls, and more mud. I highly recommend reading Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell for tons of great info and flavor for this sort of thing.

 

[Grymar]

What you want is a siege. The besieging army will be dug in and could be there for months. Trenches, mud, fortifications, mud, disease, fighting in tunnels under the walls, and more mud. I highly recommend reading Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell for tons of great info and flavor for this sort of thing.

Great recommendation. It also reinforces one of your thoughts...wide-spread devastation. Because of poor logistics, an army on the march fed off of the land, consuming entire villages along their path.

 

[Piratecat]

Consider listening to several of Dan Carlin's Hard Core History podcasts (easily googleable.) He's an amateur historian who is superb at making you feel like you're right there at the battle. Highly recommended!

 

[Storminator]

In general, I recommend doing some reading about the Hundred Years War. Awesome game setting if you ask me.

PS

 

[C_M2008]

You can still use artillery bombardment: Pots/balls filled with Napatha, Large stones and Ballista bolts continuously raining down would be emotionally crippling for most people I would imagine. Depending on what sort of medieval you're going for looking at articles on the Roman Empire's Wars might be useful as well.

 

[coyote6]

You could have large-scale alchemical weapons, too -- catapults firing bucket-loads of alchemist's fire & the like. Posit some sort of cheap-ish magical enhancements for catapults that increases their range, and you can at least get near "artillery".

Also, if one or both sides field undead like shadows or wights -- creatures that can create more undead -- you can get similar levels of terror and despair.

Glen Cook's Black Company novels got into some fairly modern-ish feeling wars, in the Books of the South. It involved lots of sieges, as others suggested above, along with powerful magic.

 

[Herschel]

Also, watch "Braveheart" and "Excalibur" for the feel of melee fighting and "King Arthur" for that 'small group of heros in the midst of a big battle' feel, especially in the climactic end battle. "Kingdom of Heaven" also gives you a bit of the siege feel. These are resources you may already have and can be done at the times where you want more of a passive gain and can be watched going to bed or whenever.

The ideas listed above by others are also what I would recommend for active 'learning'.