Running Mass Combat

[Evilhalfling]

OD&D Companion rules

Aaron

Seconded

 

[TerraDave]

Other then GT, the little system in Green Ronin's Testement is nice. Not too involved, but their is room for some tactical decisions, and the DM can scale what sort of impact the PCs have in the battle. I think there is also something about special properties or feats for units (to go back to the original post).

Cry Havoc has a system reminiscent of the old War Machine. And there are some other imitators floating around out there as well.

 

[Steel_Wind]

A mass combat system _for D&D_ that requires minis is a bad idea IMO. I tried running a minis-based mass battle in my D&D campaign, with 6 players - it took a long time & caused great frustration for the majority of the players whose PCs were not (and could not plausibly be placed in) command positions. Whereas using an abstract system allows the focus to be kept where it should be, on the PCs, while the battle is quickly resolved in the background.

Well, as opposed to picking apart the complaints of other posters, let me just comment then on what I've done, what I've assumed and what I've used in my current 3.5 campaign.

1. I wanted to simulate a battle involving about 300 combatants who were attacking a fortress the PCs were in. Two of the PCs were members of the owner of the fortress. Four others were in a supporting role and as 5th level characters were far more experience than most at the fortress in the ways of battle. Some PCs got command of multiple units - some did not.

While the command of the fortress defence was ostensibly under the senior ranking Knight of Solamnia, I allowed the players to make the tactical decisions relating to certain units they were attached to, units they rallied or commanded througbh the use of Command Rating, and of course their own actions as unattached individual units.

Chapter 6, Mass Combat in the Miniature's Handbook permits this. A lot of posters on a lot of threads on a lot of forums all over the Internet suggested to me as a DM that using these rules would suck and that it would not work.

My point: It did not suck. It worked. If we were to do battles like this often, I think that everyone involved would have become familiar enough with the system that we could have resolved those battles relatively quickly (1 hour or so) too.

[ *Ahem* If one designs a mass combat scenario and then deprives the players of the ability to participate in it other than as individual unattached units by refusing to cede them control of units to which they were attached, I'm guessing the problem with the scenario is not the author of the rules, it's the designer of the scenario.]

2. I wanted a system where the scope of the battle happening around them could be accurately conveyed on the tabletop. I wanted rules that were solidly D&Dish to govern a visual spectacle in which my player's character would participate using more or less 3.5 rules.

This requires hundreds of miniatures or stand-ins for miniatures using tokens and counters. In my group's case - we have thousands of miniatures which we obtained expressly for this purpose, and used hundreds on custom trays during the battle.

It was a very cool and memorable session.

But you don't need hundreds of minis to do this. A few dozen minis and a few hundred coins will do the trick nicely. It's way cooler to have all the minis of course - and t we do. You may not. That does not mean you are shut out of the fun though.

Either way, Chapter 6, Mass Combat in the Miniature's Handbook permits both approaches.

3. I did not seek to resolve a battle between massive armies of thousands of combatants. While one could, in theory, use Mass Combat in the Miniature's Handbook for this purpose, it is not something I would advise. Fields of Blood would permit this if you were really inclined to try that on a more abstract basis. I suppose you could use the card system in Birthright as well.

But really, that's going off in another direction from RPGs entirely isn't it? If you are in the "simulation of war" camp - what's the purpose of the simulation?

From that Q - it all comes down to some basic questions:

What are you seeking to do? :

A- To have the players' thoughts and suggestions determine who wins your war?
B- To have your dice determine who wins your war?
C- To have the players' dice determine who wins your war?

In the end, this is pretty fundamental stuff. Why not just decide as the DM who wins the war? Why or why not? What are you trying to accomplish?

4. Battlefield as Dungeon? Use Heroes of Battle.

Most of all, if what you want is an epic battle that the PCs do not control or direct, but instread want to use the battle as something that happens in the background - a battlefield as a dungeon backdrop of sorts in which the player's participate using normal D&D rules, Heroes of Battle is what you are looking for. That is the very purpose of the book. That's what it's for. I bought it for that purpose too.

Heroes of Battle contemplates a flow chart approach to an unfolding battle where the PCs participate in their missions resolved on the tabletop as it might be in normal play. Consequences of their victory in the mission(s) is pre-determined by the DM as part of the flowchart and can be supplemented by awarding victory points and recognition points to the players as well.

The entire flowcharting of the battle made a great deal of sense to me. If you are familiar with computer game design, it is very much inspired by that approach to battlefield mission design.

If your style is not to assign missions to the PCs (or at least hint at them allowing them to control their own destiny within a limited range of options) - and you instead just let them run willy nilly about the battlefield doing whatever they want - well - good luck with all that. Free form roleplaying and a battlefield are uneasy partners.

I don't think it is remotely realistic to expect that any book or rule system is going to accommodate that approach to play in a manner which can provide a large body of detail or structure to resolve what is a very structured abstraction in a very unstructured way.

But, all the same, Heroes of Battle does have some suggestions for winging it and how to deal with battlefield scenarios on the fly.

What Heroes of Battle does not do is provide you with a system for resolving a struggle between armies of thousands or tens of thousands. It leaves you the DM to determine the outcome of the battle, and suggests that victories - either for the regiment or for the army as a whole, be dependent upon the success of the PCs in accomplishing their mission goals so that they can have a measurable effect on the outcome.

Sometimes their role is critical to the overall victory. Most of the time it is not, and is merely incremental in its impact and felt only by their regiment.

Even if you the DM have determined that the PCs army is going to lose the battle overall (or win it), that does not mean the PCs need "lose" or "win" their scenario. A Heroes of Battle set piece battle can still be "victorious" if the purpose of the battle was to preserve unit strength, or acquire intelligence, or any number of 50+ other things the book suggests and details.

Put another way, the PCs regiment wins - even if the PCs army loses.

To me, the point of RULES for war as part of an RPG is not to abstract it all away. You can just flip a coin or determine an arbitrary percentage chance of victory and roll D100 if that's all you really want. There is nobody sitting there on your sholder saying "no, you're wrong. That side could not win the battle/campaign/war."

The point of a formal Mass Combat Rules system is to provide a structutred means of having the players participate in that battle as part of a session which is - in some manner - recognizably D&D.

Given that premise, on a large multiple unit scale ( say 600 or less combatants) the Mass Combat rules in the Minauture's Handbook is equal to the task. On a less than squad level battlefield, i.e. standard D&D combat rules, Heroes of Battle fits the bill.

If you want 1000+, the goal that you seek - the war you are seeking to simulate - really does not have anythign to do with RPGs anymore. G0 back to #3 above and rethink what you are trying to do and why you are trying to do it.

 

[S'mon]

[ *Ahem* If one designs a mass combat scenario and then deprives the players of the ability to participate in it other than as individual unattached units by refusing to cede them control of units to which they were attached, I'm guessing the problem with the scenario is not the author of the rules, it's the designer of the scenario.]

Hi, er Robert. Interesting post.

Re the above - in the scenario I'm thinking of, where I used a homebrew minis system (which hyper-accurately modelled the D&D rules raised to a company scale), there were maybe 3000 orcs, goblins etc vs around 1800 human knights, pikemen, some dwarf infantry et al. This is what I'd call a small battle - in a skirmish with only a few hundred combatants I'd normally just use regular D&D rules (worked fine in 1e) or maybe my quick skirmish system above if I didn't want to track hp. The PCs were around 12th level, 2-3 were in command positions, 2 were spellcasters who hovered over the battle blasting things, 1-2 had no command role & no way to be assigned one. Most of the PCs stuck together in a group, too scared of the BBEG to split up. The battle took 4 hours or so, the rules worked ok but it was considered unfun.

By contrast where I ran a battle with 422,000 combatants using OD&D War Machine, it took less than an hour, the players all got to have an effect on the outcome (by making mods to the d% rolls) and it felt much more like a "proper D&D session" to me.

I think your approach worked because you were running a very small battle with low-level PCs - but this would have worked using regular D&D rules anyway. For me the problem is high-level PCs, especially on a small to mid-sized battlefield with a few thousand troops. I don't have a perfect solution but War Machine certainly works great for big battles, I can probably get it to work ok for small ones - better than any minis-based system I know, anyway.

 

[S'mon]

I'm very interested in Heroes of Battle BTW, I may well get it. I disagree with the idea that roleplaying a battle must require flowcharts - one thing I've done that worked brilliantly for a mid-sized battle (ca 90,000 combatants total) was to have high level PCs and NPCs roaming the battlefield individually, with most of the battle as background scenery, and roll up random encounters with enemy champions - it gave a very Homeric/Iliad feel. Once the duels were resolved I could factor them into War Machine d% roll.

 

[S'mon]

I do have hundreds & hundreds of minis BTW.

 

[S'mon]

This requires hundreds of miniatures or stand-ins for miniatures using tokens and counters. In my group's case - we have thousands of miniatures which we obtained expressly for this purpose, and used hundreds on custom trays during the battle.

It was a very cool and memorable session.

Thinking about it, I had a very similar (cool) experience a couple years ago running a small town-assault battle with a few hundred combatants, using minis for all of them, regular D&D rules but I changed the scale so 1 mini = 10 men and 1" = 20' I think it was. Maybe 80 minis on the table. The PCs were only about 7-8th level - I definitely think that there's a problem with minis & higher level PCs (10th+).

 

[S'mon]

But really, that's going off in another direction from RPGs entirely isn't it? If you are in the "simulation of war" camp - what's the purpose of the simulation?

I don't really understand this point - I'm often running high-level D&D where PCs are involved in huge wars, like in much fantasy fiction. If I'm simulating anything it would be "dramatic narrative akin to what you find in a swords & sorcery novel" - just as Elric or Conan lead vast armies in vast battles, so do my PCs. I want a fun way to run those battles other than pure GM fiat, so that the players get a sense of accomplishment when they win. I don't see this as somehow un-D&Dish. The OD&D Rules Companion was an official D&D product, after all.

 

[Chairman7w]

I like the Mass Battle System in Testament, from Green Ronin, too.

(Same thing in "Trojan War" by Green Ronin).

 

[Nebulous]

Thank you for all the replies, this is good stuff. I haven't looked close enough at Heroes of Battle but i think it warrants a closer inspection. Just curious, for those of you who have maintained mass combat scenarios with miniatures, how do you set up the battleboard? I have a simple 1" grid map with plastic overlay, and i plunked some fake trees on it, drew in the contours of a hill and called it a day. IDEALLY, i wanted a full color terrain map laid out to 1' scale, with forests, rivers, grassy plain, etc. But again, that is getting beyond the scope of typical DnD and into full fledged wargaming.