Mr. Mask
2015-11-12, 10:54 PM
There have occasionally been discussions on how to run wars in game, namely related to the world wars. But it got me thinking, you know what can be a lot of fun in a fantasy setting? Heroes who can kill two hundred men, who can do impossible things like scale the wall like a ninja, then use those powers for a strategy to turn the tide of battle. To lead your men and cut through the enemy, and face the enemy commanders who are also heroes.
The question is... how to do this? In video games, we have Dynasty Warriors......:smallfrown: .... And Mount and Blade, perhaps? Many videogames are more on the scale of Advanced Wars or Final Fantasy Tactics or RTS than they are about mooks and heroes working together. Tabletop RPGs have made more attempts at this, but they tend to be rather uninvolved--large numbers get decreased, and you can add a d6 to the numbers. Teamwork!
So this brings us to the question, of how to make combat with mooks and heroes interesting. I guess we should look at the different aspects involved:
1 vs 1,000: How do you make killing 1,000 guys interesting? HOW? It's just like killing ten guys, except you do it one hundred times over! Even if you made it into one hundred or just ten interesting encounters, ain't no one have that kind of time.
One neat idea, would be to have a real-time combat component, where you can kill them in swathes as quickly as you can roll the dice. They'd want to work fast so they're not overwhelmed by some timed mechanic, and you'd want a secondary mechanic like the enemies advancing from multiple lanes or such to give the player something to consider. That could be a fun gimmick, though not the most enticing combat system.
Perhaps the focus should be internal? Rather than worrying about the AC of each mook, or any individual mook, you're concerned about your character. Their endurance, if they've taken any hits, if they need to rest and wherher you should use risky abilities like berserk. There might also be time limits, where you might want to fight your way through the enemy to save someone, and so you want to kill X enemies in Y turns--but that would mean putting your character at risk. Make it more about monitoring your character, making use of their abilities, and trying to reach an overarching goal like maintaining enough endurance for the next part of the battle or to break the enemy's morale. And if you get too cocky, you can get yourself killed fairly quickly--whereas fighting carefully might allow you to kill three thousand men--if your endurance lasted that long.
There was also an idea I had a while back, for a system all about forming large combos based off combining your abilities. You had a few regenerating HP in that system, which you could spend to use abilities. You could try to use that system for this, where it's about forming large combos without leaving yourselves too vulnerable. The only problem with that is that without positioning, it'd be too easy to find a couple of optimal combos, unless you give the enemy army their own abilities to keep you on your toes and changing.
If the gameplay with controlling mooks and formations is substantial enough, you could just have the heroes apply d6 extra casualties in combat. Though you'd want to make sure commanding and maintaining the troops was interesting enough.
Morale and Leadership: There is also the question of leading the troops. In XCOM, you could control up to 14 guys. It was horrible and I need therapy (XCOM is good, but controlling 14 guys was a headache). You'll presumably be controlling your soldiers as units of X men each, as different fronts of a pitched battle, or maybe as one homogeneous army group with abilities based off what you put in it. Now, for multiple players, there's the question of how you divide command, and what they can do to keep troops fighting or help them fight better or such.
I like systems that split up command, so each player is in charge of one flank or so many units. The number can be based off a command stat. This gives all the players something to do and think about, and allows for more complex unit mechanics. It's quite possible players can't go out and fight while commanding (as effectively). You might set it up so that coordinating between players is challenged by certain mechanics, so there are difficulties in making the perfect plan come together. Can be fun, or it can be annoying, depending on the adventure and how the mechanics are done precisely.
You could try something a little tacky like having each player able to grant a unit a certain special ability, possibly encouraging the players to move to reinforce different units who are having trouble. That wouldn't be too bad, actually. Make them an interesting resource. This could also work with their combat prowess and command bonuses, or such. Where it gets really tacky is if you have a command-points bar shared between all players, where the whole game is using special abilities divorced from the battle altogether. I have just summed up Nobunaga's Ambition: Sphere of Influence's combat system.
There is the question of how to make handling morale and such interesting. If you can just spend a turn attacking or raising morale, that'll make it like attacking or healing. And for that matter, attacking the enemy yourself is a good way to raise morale. You could make it a bit like gambling, where taking risky heroic actions can raise morale if you succeed, or fail and hurt morale slightly/greatly. That could be interesting. A safer action might be to make a speech roll where success helps morale but failure does nothing, but it won't help morale as much.
Heroic Duels: Not much to say with this. You just need a good combat system for two or more heroes clashing. Maybe before a battle starts, maybe within the midst of one. Some mooks might get involved.
Powers: One of your guys is super strong, and another can fly, and another can summon lightning. So obviously, the strong guy should wear a lot of wet, steel armour, then be dropped in the midst of the enemy by the flying guy, then be hit with lightning bolts by the lightning guy so that the enemy can't get near the strong guy as he rips them apart.
I think powers would mostly be special abilities and roleplaying. If your guy can fly, maybe he can get into the castle and try to assassinate the enemy commander. Or maybe the strong guy can batter down the wall.
And I didn't mention this, but the makeup of what equipment and experience your mooks have should make a difference, along with if you have any second-grade heroes to help out and give unit bonuses.
So, anyone have ideas to this light? Anything to add, or thoughts on the subject? Seen any systems that had a worthwhile take on this concept? Experience with attempting heroes in war?
The question is... how to do this? In video games, we have Dynasty Warriors......:smallfrown: .... And Mount and Blade, perhaps? Many videogames are more on the scale of Advanced Wars or Final Fantasy Tactics or RTS than they are about mooks and heroes working together. Tabletop RPGs have made more attempts at this, but they tend to be rather uninvolved--large numbers get decreased, and you can add a d6 to the numbers. Teamwork!
So this brings us to the question, of how to make combat with mooks and heroes interesting. I guess we should look at the different aspects involved:
1 vs 1,000: How do you make killing 1,000 guys interesting? HOW? It's just like killing ten guys, except you do it one hundred times over! Even if you made it into one hundred or just ten interesting encounters, ain't no one have that kind of time.
One neat idea, would be to have a real-time combat component, where you can kill them in swathes as quickly as you can roll the dice. They'd want to work fast so they're not overwhelmed by some timed mechanic, and you'd want a secondary mechanic like the enemies advancing from multiple lanes or such to give the player something to consider. That could be a fun gimmick, though not the most enticing combat system.
Perhaps the focus should be internal? Rather than worrying about the AC of each mook, or any individual mook, you're concerned about your character. Their endurance, if they've taken any hits, if they need to rest and wherher you should use risky abilities like berserk. There might also be time limits, where you might want to fight your way through the enemy to save someone, and so you want to kill X enemies in Y turns--but that would mean putting your character at risk. Make it more about monitoring your character, making use of their abilities, and trying to reach an overarching goal like maintaining enough endurance for the next part of the battle or to break the enemy's morale. And if you get too cocky, you can get yourself killed fairly quickly--whereas fighting carefully might allow you to kill three thousand men--if your endurance lasted that long.
There was also an idea I had a while back, for a system all about forming large combos based off combining your abilities. You had a few regenerating HP in that system, which you could spend to use abilities. You could try to use that system for this, where it's about forming large combos without leaving yourselves too vulnerable. The only problem with that is that without positioning, it'd be too easy to find a couple of optimal combos, unless you give the enemy army their own abilities to keep you on your toes and changing.
If the gameplay with controlling mooks and formations is substantial enough, you could just have the heroes apply d6 extra casualties in combat. Though you'd want to make sure commanding and maintaining the troops was interesting enough.
Morale and Leadership: There is also the question of leading the troops. In XCOM, you could control up to 14 guys. It was horrible and I need therapy (XCOM is good, but controlling 14 guys was a headache). You'll presumably be controlling your soldiers as units of X men each, as different fronts of a pitched battle, or maybe as one homogeneous army group with abilities based off what you put in it. Now, for multiple players, there's the question of how you divide command, and what they can do to keep troops fighting or help them fight better or such.
I like systems that split up command, so each player is in charge of one flank or so many units. The number can be based off a command stat. This gives all the players something to do and think about, and allows for more complex unit mechanics. It's quite possible players can't go out and fight while commanding (as effectively). You might set it up so that coordinating between players is challenged by certain mechanics, so there are difficulties in making the perfect plan come together. Can be fun, or it can be annoying, depending on the adventure and how the mechanics are done precisely.
You could try something a little tacky like having each player able to grant a unit a certain special ability, possibly encouraging the players to move to reinforce different units who are having trouble. That wouldn't be too bad, actually. Make them an interesting resource. This could also work with their combat prowess and command bonuses, or such. Where it gets really tacky is if you have a command-points bar shared between all players, where the whole game is using special abilities divorced from the battle altogether. I have just summed up Nobunaga's Ambition: Sphere of Influence's combat system.
There is the question of how to make handling morale and such interesting. If you can just spend a turn attacking or raising morale, that'll make it like attacking or healing. And for that matter, attacking the enemy yourself is a good way to raise morale. You could make it a bit like gambling, where taking risky heroic actions can raise morale if you succeed, or fail and hurt morale slightly/greatly. That could be interesting. A safer action might be to make a speech roll where success helps morale but failure does nothing, but it won't help morale as much.
Heroic Duels: Not much to say with this. You just need a good combat system for two or more heroes clashing. Maybe before a battle starts, maybe within the midst of one. Some mooks might get involved.
Powers: One of your guys is super strong, and another can fly, and another can summon lightning. So obviously, the strong guy should wear a lot of wet, steel armour, then be dropped in the midst of the enemy by the flying guy, then be hit with lightning bolts by the lightning guy so that the enemy can't get near the strong guy as he rips them apart.
I think powers would mostly be special abilities and roleplaying. If your guy can fly, maybe he can get into the castle and try to assassinate the enemy commander. Or maybe the strong guy can batter down the wall.
And I didn't mention this, but the makeup of what equipment and experience your mooks have should make a difference, along with if you have any second-grade heroes to help out and give unit bonuses.
So, anyone have ideas to this light? Anything to add, or thoughts on the subject? Seen any systems that had a worthwhile take on this concept? Experience with attempting heroes in war?