Need advice for war/military campaign

[Green Knight]

Birthright was a great setting. I really wish somebody would put out a D20 book for it.

Whatever the case, if that setting were readily available, then I'd be suggesting it, wholeheartedly. You can start off the game as a ruler of a large kingdom right away. And PC's aren't limited to being rulers of a kingdom, either. You can have PC's who run temples, Bardic colleges, guilds, and the like. So while one PC could be running the kingdom, leading armies, etc, the others have other interests. Their own "empires", so to speak, though those empires aren't composed of large tracts of land and protected by legions of soldiers.

Can't think of any other setting suited to war, however. Forgotten Realms, for instance, has just tracks of land which is occupied by good powers. So unless you want to attack good guys, your options are limited (Though you might want to attempt something I wanted to do, which was the conquest of Myth Drannor. To bad that campaign ended. ). Dragonlance might be good, but I'm not up to date on its current status. You may be best served in just creating your own world.

As for mass combat rules, yeah, the D&D Miniatures Handbook which comes out either this month or next month will have mass combat rules. I also heard that Testament had some pretty good mass combat rules, as well.

 

[Droogie]

Birthright was a great setting. I really wish somebody would put out a D20 book for it.

Well, if Eden ever comes out with their dang Book of War, then your wish might actually be granted, in a way.

Unmaker, check it: http://www.edenstudios.net/odyssey/7005.html

Supposed to come out this month, but lots of people around here are fed up with waiting. Still, it has to comeout someday.

 

[bret]

That'd be a terrible waste. You're running a tactical/strategy campaign, so more than ever, every skillpoint is a critical resource, that can't be squandered on a skill which obviously must become from the player: Unless the DM is prepared to simply cough up advice on demand for somebody who buys this skill, and the player is bad at it, the player must ultimately dictate his own strategies and tactics. A character skill cannot help you, and therefore, resources spent on it are needlessly squandered.

So how would you have the contest of skills work between leaders? You need strategy to understand why a particular location may be important, why certain locations are being hit, etc. It is the big picture of what is happening.

Tactics is small group stuff that you are talking about. The stuff on a squad level. Strategy is the war, tactics is how each squad works together to try as a team to achieve their objective. All of the DND stuff is on a tactical level.

 

[Norfleet]

So how would you have the contest of skills work between leaders? You need strategy to understand why a particular location may be important, why certain locations are being hit, etc. It is the big picture of what is happening.

Tactics is small group stuff that you are talking about. The stuff on a squad level. Strategy is the war, tactics is how each squad works together to try as a team to achieve their objective. All of the DND stuff is on a tactical level.

Yes, and on the higher strategic level, unless the intent was to completely ignore it and boil it into a single die roll, the player is going to have to manage that, too. The D&D rules don't really cover strategy on the larger scale of armies and logistics, but whatever rules you're going to dig up for it, the player's going to have to be making those decisions: It's the quality of the player's decisions which are going to affect his skill in things, not some nebulous character skill. A bad strategy is going to show itself as a really bad strategy no matter what you do to whitewash it. If you can't keep the troops supplied, and in the correct places to attack and defend, it doesn't matter what your character's Knowledge(Strategy) skill is, your strategy is going to suck. If you do everything right, your strategy will work, even if the opposition doesn't realize it yet. Strategy and tactics are both far too complex to abstract into a single number: A "skill" in it would, at best, be a crutch for the strategically and tactically impaired players to use to lean on the DM for advice. In essence, the player is squandering potentially valuable character resources for what amounts to a hintbook.

 

[Tratyn Runewind]

Hello all,

Birthright is one of my two favorite campaign worlds, and I would also dearly love to see a well done 3.5e version that integrated the new rules into the world and corrected certain problems in the domain rulership and mass combat systems. But the best actual module I've ever seen dealing with warfare and large-scale strategy and diplomacy is Module X10: Red Arrow, Black Shield. It is set in my other favorite world, Mystara/The Known World, and it uses BD&D's War Machine mass combat rules and perhaps the old Battlesystem supplement. It is a sequel to Modules X4 and X5, and, similarly to your original idea of sweeping the characters into a war, starts out with the PCs in a town that is being invaded. You may want to give it a peek for useful ideas, if you can get your hands on a copy.

Posted by bret:
Have everyone take a single level of the Fighter class to represent bootcamp training. Do not apply multiclassing penalties for this. This means spellcasters too. Don't require that it be their first level, since that would hurt Rogues a lot in skillpoints. If you think the bonus feat is too much, then consider making it a level of the NPC Warrior class.

I don't know that I'd go this far - the real purpose of basic training is to weed out the obvious incompetents and misfits, and get recruits familiar with the rudiments of military courtesy, discipline, bureaucracy, and emergency procedures. I'd simply say pretty much anyone with the skill points and weapon proficiencies of any 1st-level adventuring class, and no ability scores below 8, has what it takes to get through basic, though regimes with a dislike of particular alignments will probably set up basic training to detect such alignments and throw them out with the other misfits.

Posted by Unmaker909:
I hadn't considered the possibility of starting the players off in the military. I saw the war as being something that sweeps across the land, changing a group of self-serving "adventurers" into heroes.

The soldier-versus-adventurer question can indeed be an interesting one. Many players chafe at anything resembling military discipline and obedience, especially on the salary of a private soldier (which, in medieval times, was often nothing - give your liege forty days military service a year, at no pay, buy and bring your own weapons and often your own mount). But mercenaries and freebooters often have an unsavory reputation - "pickers of bones, meddlers in other men's sorrows, carrion-fowl who grow fat on war." And privileged "elite" units who operate with minimal discipline and supervision can create resentment within armies even today. It's a choice that can have a major effect on campaign atmosphere, depending on how the GM wants to use it.

A good read through some of Harry Turtledove's "Videssos" and "Darkness" books, Glen Cook's Black Company and its sequels, and Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos might also provide some inspiration.

Hope this helps!

 

[Green Knight]

Just thought I should bump this, as you'd probably find this info useful.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20030906a

That's an excerpt from the D&D Miniatures Handbook which comes out in a couple weeks. Specifically, here's the Marshal class, which should be useful to you.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20030906b

Hope that helps.

 

[Ron]

A few suggestions:

You might want to downplay the importance of magic. Spellcasters can easily shadow soldiers, which might spoil the military tone of your campaign.

Also, you should care for avoiding excessive high level NPCs. If there are too many, there is no need for an army. Small parties can do it better, faster, and, probably, at a lower economic cost.

Most important, you should consider not using any mass combat system at all. I am sure that there are a lot of good options at the market, but you don't need any. I've done a few military oriented adventures in the past and I discover that mass battle rules don't add much to the game. Decide yourself which are the most interesting possible results of a battle and fresh up some meaningful events to give your players a chance of roleplay. Based in the outcome of those scenarios, decide the fate of the larger battle. Doing this, there will be a lot of opportunities to roleplay and your players will feel satisfied as they played a central role in the batle.

If you use my previous suggestion, don't place the players in the position of generals. They would have no time to do adventures in such role. Instead, let them be lower rank officers leading scout or commando like missions. It's much more exciting.

 

[FoxWander]

Well everybody else has covered the good rules and advice stuff, so I'll just mention some good inspirational reading. The Black Company by Glen Cook. Not only is it an excellent book all around, but it's particularly good for looking at how a small party of characters can fit into a war/army. The main characters in the mercenary company are effectively a typical D&D group. They routinely go out on special ops and escort runs, but they are also well integrated into the company as a whole. The book is also chock full of good bits on how low-level magic, applied well, can greatly effect the outcome of both small and large scale encounters. I have no idea the details on what you're planning to run, but I can't help but think this book would at least give you some great ideas.

 

[KnowTheToe]

Great thread.

Lots of good advice and ideas.