Roudi said:
Do you use mercenaries in your games?
I have done.
One campaign started out with the PCs in a prisoner-of-war camp, their mercenary outfit having been on the losing side of a civil war. The winners were sore winners, and the PCs had to escape the camp before they met the fate reserved for unsuccessful revolutionaries. Then they had to cross hundreds of kilometres of hostile wilderness, make their way through lots of the territory of a police state without such conveniences as money, local clothes, or native accents. Once they got to the spaceport they could recover their fallbacks (money and travel papers in a spaceport locker), and inform the Empire (which disapproves of such things) of the crimes against Hmanity going on in the camps. Unfortunately they did not succeed in doing so without letting on that they were professional free-lance soldiers, so from then on they attracted the attention of the Empire where-ever they went. They had some difficulty finding a new outfit…. In short it was about a lot of aspects of being a merc other than actually serving.
Do you use mercenary companies in your games?
I have done.
In my SF setting the Empire really hates war, and has a monopoly on FTL travel. So you can't ship weapons or other purely military gear, and therefore any merc company has to use local tech on every planet it goes to. Some units specialise in particular tech levels, allowing their employers to hire skilled soldiers and provide equipment, but that really isn't terribly effective, especially as low-tech societies can't afford much hard currency. What with one thing and another mercenaries are usually either megacorporate security thugs or small corps of experts with high proficiency in specialist skills. The latter tend either to serve in training units or to get spread through conscript/volunteer units in special roles (such as pilots, maintenance crew chiefs, artillery officers, engineers) that can leverage the efforts of less-highly-skilled local recruits.
One campaign featured a corporation called 'Corcoran Military Technology'. Corcoran Militech started out (in backstory) getting around weapons trade restrictions by providing tech transfer consultancy services: ie. it sent in teams of consulting engineers to set up and run factories build (comparatively) high-tech weapns and other military gear, and trainers to show locals how to use it. At the commencement of the campaign Corcoran was branching out into a new line. The idea was to set up a mercenary outfit consisting of all and only the officers and NCOs of a military unit. This could be hired and transported at a price that comparatively low-tech employers could afford. And when it arrived on-planet the TO could be filled out with local recruits and specialists. The mercenary cadre could fairly quickly put its recruits through basic training and so fill out the less specialised roles. This wouldn't give the employers a veteran unit, but it would fairly quickly give them a well-organised, expertly-led one with good doctrine. And organisation, leadership, and doctrine can make a big difference.
In this campaign the PCs started out as platoon leaders (and a company sergeant-major) in one of Corcoran Militech's cadre regiments, and worked their way up through the Regimental Staff and company command to senior staff and battalion command level. There was a plot thread of political intrigue running through the campaign. Corcoran Militech would often subtlely or secretly screw its employers, and it gradually became clear that the whole outfit was set up to advance some sort of political agenda on the Imperial stage. Teh character players became very worried about whom they were fighting for, what their real employer's agenda was, and what would happen when the Imperial Secret Service found out about it. In the end, of course, it turned out that they were a secret, utterly expendable, absolutely deniable instrument of the Undercover Division of hte Colonial Office of the Empire itself, which meant that they were utterly screwed.
How do they fit into things?
Given that interstellar transport is pretty expensive in my setting (like intercontinental air fares), shipping weapons is banned, and the kinds of places that have wars that last any length of time quickly run out of interstellar hard currency, mercing in my setting is fairly small scale. Mercs work with local equipment (usually at a comparatively low tech level), in small numbers, and their part is usually either the rapid transfer of military know-how to colonies where that is not available (or belligerents that happen to lack it) or supporting interests (predacious megacorps, tyrannical governments) that have no hope of raising loyal supporters locally.
Are your characters mercenaries?
In two campaigns they have been (as describe above).
Was one of them a mercenary before the game began?
No, I haven't had an ex-merc in any campaign I have run to date. This is probably because I run mostly campaigns in which the PCs are Imperial servants (Justice Department folk, Imperial secret agents, etc.) and the kind of people who will fight and kill for pay don't tend to make it past Imperial Recruiting psych tests. However, I have had an ex-Imperial sergeant-major in a mercenary campaign.
Do your characters hire mercenaries?
They haven't, but I imagine that under some circumstances they might.
Do they fight mercenaries?
Sometimes. They also investigate mercenaries' war crimes, arrest mercenaries, etc.
The most common interactions are not with mercenaries fighting in the lines in regular wars, but with mercenaries acting as bodyguards, security bods, and black ops coves for unpopular rulers and interstellar corporations.
Would you incorporate mercenaries into your game if you had better resources?
Not more than I do now, I think. I have never been one to rely much on resources other than encyclopaedias and other reference works.
What kind of resources would help you run mercenaries?
Well, I did use some references on military organisation and military customs to set up my second mercs campaign (the one about Corcoran Militech). I wanted stuff about military organisation, rank, and social customs, and about small-unit tactics to add verisimilitude to both field incidents and stuff that was going on on the base and in the mess.
Things that I found useful included a little book on the current British Army, which gave me a lot on organisation. I have the 1997/98 edition, but there is a
modern edition available now. I also got a fair bit out of some old Australian Army training materials I have on hand, including a thing called
Customs of the Army that is handed out to officer cadets to guide them through military and mess etiquette, the
Soldier's Handbook, the
Infantry Section Leading Handbook,
Infantry Training, vol 4, part 2 The Platoon, and
Infantry Training, vol 4, part 1 The Battalion. (Do not ask how I come to have these military-distribution materials.) These provided practical detail on the minutiae of military life that I was able to adapted to SF circumstances: daily routine in barracks, daily routine in the field, living circumstances, personal kit, unit equipment; procedures for patrolling, defending a position, assaulting defences, setting an ambush, co-operating with armour and so forth. Of course I had to modify nearly all of it for SF technology. But it gave me an idea of
what I had to modify. These real materials, which outlined what is of practical importance to an army in the field, were much more useful than any pseudo-spec of technobabble sci-fi military gear would have been.
What kind of information would be necessary or helpful if you decided to bring mercs into the game (or build a game around mercs)?
Well, given that I already have a small collection of military reference materials, including textbooks on tactics and strategy, and training manuals for soldiers, section leaders, subalterns, and field officers, I reckon that the thing I would find most useful would be some material based on what modern mercenaries atually do, like 'military contractors' in Iraq, the late 'Sandline International' etc. Not speculation. Not technobabble. Distilled essence of real-world experience. In the same vein, material about routines for security work and principles of commando operations.
I have the knowledge I need in this respect now. But I would have found a really good glossary useful. What, in
specific terms, is an: Aide? Orderly? Aide de camp? Aigulette? Colour sergeant? Sergeant-major? Commissariat? Enfilade? Defilade? Provost? Mess? Dining president? Second-in-commmand? Chief of Staff? Section? Squad? Platoon? Troop? Company? Squadron? Battery? Battalion? Regiment? Brigade? Division? What is the difference between a leader and a commander? Between an officer commanding and a commanding officer? What does a sergeant-major actually
do?
T.O.s (org charts) are very useful, too. They tell you where to find the people with the skills you need. Is there a medic in each section? Each squad? Each platoon? Do I find an aid station at company HQ or battalion HQ? Are heavy weapons and anti-tank sections attached to my platoon or my company? Are artillery and anti-tank platoons attached to my company or my battalion? Where is the RMO? Where is the MASH? At what level is the chaplain attached?
