RPGs with good warband mechanics

[coralwave]

for a relatively simple example, check out Mausritter p.15.

since it's a game about mice, some enemies cannot be fough at all without a warband.

The PDF is free

 

[sevenbastard]

Lots of good recommendations. I'll have some reading to do during the holidays, see what works well and what doesn't!


I'm open to tinkering with that! Any recommendations?

No....mostly because I flirt with skirmish level war games and buy some, but never actually play them. I keep wanting to run a skirmish rpg campaign set in a low magic fantasy version of the 30 years war but none of my players are interested.

 

[kronovan]

...Savage Worlds also handles groups of followers well, though it doesn’t really feature in any of its settings.

Savage Worlds had this via the Tattered Banners companion for the 3rd party Beasts & Barbarians settings. It has content like war band creation, additional rules for Mass Battles and how to manage war bands. It also contains some GM specific rules like how to support war bands in a campaign, as wells as conquest points campaign system. It was written for the previous Savage Worlds Deluxe edition of the rules, but there'd be little problem using it with SWADE. There's some contents that's specific to the B&B sword & sorcery setting, but not too much - mostly setting agnostic.

IIRC, much of it was inspired by Glen Cook's Black Company series.

 

[PrunellaUK]

Hero Wars and its sequel HeroQuest (the Mongoose Publishing one), both of which focussed on Greg Stafford's fantasy world of Glorantha, did a good job with rules for communities. Though these can be used for everything from clans to companion bands, to regiments, and particularly for warbands, with the players treating them as a community to lead, defend, and draw on the resources of. The new 4th edition of the system, QuestWorlds, which is out in February from Chaosium, also includes these community mechanics.

Some writers of Glorantha material dig even deeper into these mechanics, particularly in the Jonstown Compendium campaign book The Company of the Dragon, which is explicitly set in a warband. These mechanics dig deep into the concept of 'the community as a character', with the warband being defined by RuneQuest stats - STR as manpower, CON as resilience and survivability, DEX as adaptability, and so on (it also has conversion rules for QuestWorlds). The community also has skills with ratings. Drawing on the company's resources will threaten to deplete them, so that the players will at times have to focus on tasks that strengthen or replenish resources, such as recruitment, logistics, and magic. It's a fascinating system that helps warbands come alive as entities.