The Importance of Minions and Mooks in a World of Champions

[Mr. Mask]

While watching a stretchy pirate beat up dozens of other pirates and sailors, a thought occurred to me. It's neat having a setting where heroes can beat up loads of mooks... but often I feel these weaker characters are underdeveloped.

Generally, they exist only as a buffer to boss fights, for heroes to slaughter to give contrast to the strength of main villains. Wouldn't it be interesting though, to think of a system where there is codependency, between champions and rank-and-file soldiers? Not a setting where the players take up one corner of a battlefield while the mooks are being necessary elsewhere, a world where heroes will fail without support, and common soldiers will fail without their heroes.


Anyone tried something like this, or know a system which can accomplish this? I'd consider running a 4E game where a small number of players lead a large number of minions into battle--against similarly-levelled villain characters who have their own minions.

The main concern I see, is complexity and time-consumption. You need all the minions to be easy enough to command, so tracking initiative and the like would be a ridiculously complicated effort.


What are your thoughts on this concept? Surely it isn't a new one, but the closest I can think of right now is old DnD where it was so hard you needed NPC hirelings.

[Water_Bear]

Keeping ordinary humans relevant means one of two things; either you need to tightly control power levels so that ordinary humans still pose a threat, or you need to insert modern technology so that military/paramilitary groups can still operate on the level of superheroes (even most DC heroes would balk at getting hit with a fuel-air explosive, and that's non-nuclear).

-Edit-

As for systems, Adventurer Conqueror King (http://www.autarch.co/) does as really good job at this in a fantasy setting (it's based on B/X D&D, updated for a modern audience), although it is fairly low-power compared to 4e and One Piece so you may be disappointed. And with Domain at War out now it might be even better; IDK yet because I don't like Kickstarter and am waiting until it is sold for real.

[Rhynn]

Water_Bear beat me to bringing up ACKS.

In more general terms, this is a matter of individuals' power levels and difference thereof.

Look at Lord of the Rings (books or movies): the heroes need armies to combat armies. They can take on two, three, maybe four times their number in orcs, and fight similarly powerful enemies (like trolls) almost one-on-one, but that's about it.

Basically, being a hero doesn't have to be about individual power, and even when that's involved, you can make the differences in individual power smaller than in, say, 3E D&D. You don't have to have realism, although that works.

In ACKS, heroes are likely to be at least somewhat threatened by a hundred people shooting bows at you. You can become individually powerful, but to take on armies or conquer realms, you need to become a leader.

In HârnMaster, you can be an adventurer all you want, but to be a real hero who affects the world, you have to be a leader.

This is often neglected in RPGs, but to me, it's an essential part of fantasy: heroes are leaders of others. Aragorn, Taran of Caer Dallben, Conan of Cimmeria... and so on.