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Message: <blockquote data-quote="arwink" data-source="post: 424439" data-attributes="member: 2292">When using it as the basis of a campaign, I found that the mercenary thing needed to be brought up in advance for those two reasons.  Mostly, players were interested in the idea and the change of pace, and weren't really bothered by the fact they had a commanding officer.  It was understood that when they started, even at 1st, they inhabited a strange space between the 1st level warriors that made up the rank and file of the company, and the higher level characters that commanded their force.  It also helps to give the PC's some respect as well - they may be part of the grunt force, but both their superiors and their fellow soldiers knew they were troops worth having, so they were given a bit of leeway.The pacing between full scale war and typical adventuring is also just a level of adjustment.  There are a lot of small things that happen in when the troop moves from place to place.  They need scouts, they send forward a small advance force, they leave behind a rear guard.  I used stuff like the black company books and Robert Jordans Conan books that featured Conan leading a free company as the inspiration for adventure design.  The battle themselves are a matter of taste.  There's a lot of mass combat systems out there that can be adapted, and it is possible to make your own if you need too.  Personally, I just think of an battle as a flowchart - looking at the events that may happen to the characters over the course of the battle, and calculating how things may turn out for either side dependent on PC actions.  The rest is filled in with general description, and the battle adventure equivelent of random encounters.</blockquote>

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