Battle Systems - HELP!!!
Barry Friedson
I am now plannning to run a campaign which will include a
very large scale battle. It may even include the defense of
a castle!!
Anyway, my problem is that I have no experience with this type
of gaming. I am looking for a good set of rules for large scale
battles. Is there a AD+D reference on this topic????? We play
AD+D so this would be the best. Is there any other compatible
systems which would be better???
Also, any tips on running such a campaign would be helpful. I
really want to make this an enjoyable new experience for me
and my players.
E-mail or posts would be greatly appeciated.
Barry
Barry Friedson
frie...@eniac.seas.upenn.edu or frie...@grasp.cis.upenn.edu
PENN -> IVY FOOTBALL CHAMPS 6 out of the last 7 years!!!!
Timothy Cain
> I am now plannning to run a campaign which will include a
> very large scale battle. It may even include the defense of
> a castle!!
Please post responses. I have only tried to do a large-scale battle in
AD&D once, and the results were miserable. I tried to group the
archers, horseman, and footman together into respective groups, but I
didn't know how to handle exceptional individuals, including the PC's.
So I'd be interested in these suggestions too.
Tim.
--
Timothy D. Cain Department of Information and Computer Science, UC Irvine
ca...@ics.uci.edu (ARPA)
Greg Huey
Do you have miniatures? Chits? Anything that will let you represent the
troops involved in this battle? If not you'd better get *something*!
From what I have heard of the AD&D Battle Sytem, it is pretty lame, but
if what you're looking for is just some simple, easy to learn rules for large
scale battles, I would say look to the vast world of small press-type miniatures
rules. Warhammer is too tied up in itself, and the AD&DBS is garbage.
Personally, I'd say you should go with Warlord from Yoyodyne, Inc. It's
a little booklet about 30 pages long that you can learn in an hour. Troops are
very simple to design, and there are extensive fortifications rules. Warlord
can handle a simple set of magical spells, and shows you how to design just
about any monster. 'Tinkering' with the system to get just what you want out
of the troops is *very* easy.
Good Luck.
Edward Allen;345 Mulford;x2-9025
AD&D has a large scale battle set of rules called the Battle System I
think. I've never used it so someone else will have to cover its quality.
I have used the old Sword and Spell rules for D&D and they worked okay.
I've run these kind of actions with an assortment of miniatures rules with
the roleplaying patched in and with roleplaying rules patched ad hoc.
Anything can work if you know what you are aiming for.
The first thing you'll need to do is read up a bit on medieval siege
warfare if you haven't already so you know the general stages siege
battles go through and get a feel for how likely various strategems are to
work. I'm assuming here that you will be doing the castle battle.
Otherwise you need to read up on field warfare. Offhand, I'd suggest Life
in a Medieval Castle or David Macauley's book Castle as a place to start.
Use the library. Don't neglect the children's section. Often books on
the history of warfare wind up there as "books for boys", especially the
ones with a lot of illustrations.
You didn't mention how much magic would be involved or whether any fliers
might be present. These two things, plus powerful creatures like giants
are the major things that will modify fantasy battles away from the
regular ancient or medieval pattern. They'll mean increased concentration
of power, mobility, and reconaissance. Tactics and Fortification style
will adjust to account for the differences.
For example, flyers will generally mean the introduction of antiair
ballistae and crossbowmen. Plus netting strung up over the parapets to
prevent diving attacks, or other such measures. And forest and night
marches to avoid being discovered by flying scouts.
The rules and style of play should be geared to the roles you'll have the
PCs playing. I see three basic roles - the Generals, the Cowboys, and the
Grunts.
Players are taking the role of Generals when they're in control of the
army because of military rank or its a bunch of mercenaries they've
hired. There's two ways to play this. You can either run it as a fairly
straight wargame, with the players organizing their forces and directing
them on the table top with minimal roleplaying, with leader figures or
counters indicating where their PCs are, or you can roleplay the
situation. If you roleplay it, you needn't necessarily use any rigorous
set of rules for dealing with the details of the action. Instead, you
talk to the players, taking the varied roles of officers, scouts, etc and
keep them receiving reports and responding to them in character, plus
you'll be describing what they see of their forces movements and actions.
Combat can be resolved in a very sketchy way. For example, the commanding
PC orders an assault against a breach. You describe the people around him
and their responses, and then, the advance with gradual casualties to
arrows and catapults, the rush and confusion at the wall as people clamber
up the rubble to be struck down, maybe a heroic vignette or two, and then
roll a couple dice to see if the assault succeeds, basing on the relative
attacking and defending strength at the breach. Then graphically describe
the results. If a PC is leading the attack, do likewise, but run a couple
of quick personal encounters with individual defending soldiers.
The idea here is to maximize flavor and minimize detailed wargame
statistics counting.
Cowboys are PCs who go running off on special missions that may be
critical but which do not coordinate tightly with the large battling army
units. These tend to be the "sneak in invisible and off the leaders or
drop the gate or cause confusion" type situations. Under these
circumstances the battle can be resolved very sketchily, because all you
need to know is who's where and how well they're doing at the time the PCs
are performing their mission. You can even just decide how things will be
at that point for maximum dramatic potential. Then basically run things
as regular roleplaying, letting the battle situation tell you who they'll
encounter and where, and what they'll be doing at the time. If you're
doing this, make sure to add in details that lend versimilitude. Things
like near misses by friendly catapults shooting into the besieged castle
just as the players are sneaking through, or encounters with frightened
peasants or livestock, or the wagon that breaks down right in front of
them at the most inopportune time. Think back on war movies like the
Dirty Dozen for the kind of unexpected things that show up to monkeywrench
a plan.
Grunts are PCs who are serving as regular soldiers or low level officers
in command of small groups of regular soldiers. With this kind of role,
it is again probably better to run the battle with very simple mechanics,
but describing the situations the PCs face in graphic detail and then
roleplaying their actual encounters with the enemy including the troops
that are immediately with them and the enemies they immediately face.
Looking this over I guess I'd only recommend formally wargaming the
situation out if the PCs are playing Generals and high officers.
If that's what you'll be doing, you can use the TSR AD&D add on rules,
or the old Heritage Knights and Magic, or Warhammer Fantasy Battle, or
Chainmail, or even standard wargame rules like WRG Ancients for the grand
action. I've also used boardgames that covered the appropriate kind of
action. If you can get one, having an extra player who isn't a current
party member to play the bad guys works really well when wargaming the
battles. He can then put a lot of thought into how to stymie their plans
without them saying the GM is out to get them. The GM will have plenty to
do orchestrating things, and attempts by the PCs to surprise the enemy
will be more real surprises and not just Gm judgement calls as to whether
the enemy walk into them.
Ed Allen (al...@enzyme.berkeley.edu)
Charles K Hughes
Try the BATTLE SYSTEM put out by TSR. It looks pretty good, but I've
never had a chance to use it.
Ordania-DM
Keith 'Badger' Vaglienti
>
> Try the BATTLE SYSTEM put out by TSR. It looks pretty good, but I've
>never had a chance to use it.
We had occasion to use the BATTLE SYSTEM while playing one of the
Dragonlance modules. Before the "real" thing we ran a few test battles using
setups given with the rules. They were all basiclly two sides meeting out in
a field or the woods and they all worked rather well. Then we played the
module, which had supposedly be designed for BS use and we ended up regretting
it or at least I did. The module had us fighting a defensive battle from a
"castle" (the Tower of the High Clerist actually) against forces advancing
across an open plain. In the long run I think the system turned the actual
Tower, which was supposed to be a well designed defense, into more of a
limitation than a help to the defenders.
I'd reccomend going with something else. Maybe Warhammer Fantasy Battle except
that thats way too expensive.
---
Keith "Badger" Vaglienti
Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
...!{akgua,allegra,amdcad,hplabs,seismo,ut-ngp}!pyr.gatech.EDU!ccastkv
In no way should my remarks be considered to reflect the opinions and/or
policies of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Put another way, its-a
not my bosses-ah fault, monkey boy!
Andrew Pearlman
>module, which had supposedly be designed for BS use and we ended up regretting
>it or at least I did. The module had us fighting a defensive battle from a
>"castle" (the Tower of the High Clerist actually) against forces advancing
>across an open plain. In the long run I think the system turned the actual
>Tower, which was supposed to be a well designed defense, into more of a
>limitation than a help to the defenders.
From what I remember from the Dragonlance books, wasn't that the tower that
had been designed to be a sieve. The defenses were so badly
set up, multiple, large, obvious, entrances, with a highly-individualistic,
badly disorganized fighting force to defend the tower.
Andy Pearlman
Glenn Thain
>Dragonlance modules. Before the "real" thing we ran a few test battles using
>setups given with the rules. They were all basiclly two sides meeting out in
>a field or the woods and they all worked rather well. Then we played the
>module, which had supposedly be designed for BS use and we ended up
>regretting it or at least I did.
(Description of the BB scenerio omitted)
Hmmm, was this the fault of the system or the way the scenerio was set
up? I've been pawing through the system and it looks pretty good, (I usually
use C&S Version I for minatures, they're awfully good rules), simplistic and
easy to teach. I would imagine from the descriptions you've given that it was
the "special clauses" in the actual scenerio that were the problem. Especially
since the other two homebrew scenerios worked well.
It might be too that the defenders had trouble with the idea of how to
defend...i.e. I know that sometimes is the case with me.....anyway, I recomend
that you, (the original poster) check out BattleSystem and determine for
yourself whether it meets your needs.
You might also want to check out C&S and the original mass combat system
in the D&D game, (Basic, Advanced, Companion, Immortal and whatever?), it is
in the Companion rules and provides another interesting alternative.
Best,
Glenn