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Milo v3
2016-11-15, 06:57 AM
I'm looking for RPG's that can handle actions on a large-scale like raising armies, running kingdoms, running organisations, and using magic to affect regions. Anyone know any RPG's that could cover things like that?

Doesn't need to have magic, and the less mechanics are tied to the game's setting the better.

Remedy
2016-11-15, 10:41 AM
I'm looking for RPG's that can handle actions on a large-scale like raising armies, running kingdoms, running organisations, and using magic to affect regions. Anyone know any RPG's that could cover things like that?
Oh, oh, Exalted-


and the less mechanics are tied to the game's setting the better.
-.... Never mind, not Exalted.

It's one of the best "large-scale" games, but it's definitely got its mechanics tied to setting on several levels and is hard to extricate from that. (It's an extremely huge and versatile setting with multiple time periods to potentially tweak things towards, so you can play many, many, many varieties of game in it, but ultimately... Yeah.)

Taking that into consideration...

Reign and Houses of the Blooded are both the most RTS-esque tabletop games I know, and Kingdom is pretty neat simply for being diceless. All are about running either kingdoms or kingdom-scale organizations. Houses of the Blooded has a core setting, but the mechanics don't give you any substantial trouble if you brush it away and put something more to your taste. Super crunchy in general though. Reign, likewise, can easily have its setting altered or changed entirely, but with a bit more mechanics-tweaking on your part. Kingdom has no mechanically-assumed setting, and in fact has twenty sample settings based on its rules just to show you how setting-making is done. It's, uh, a bit weird about whether or not GMs even ought to exist and what their role should be in the game. :smallbiggrin:

Hope that helps.

Floret
2016-11-15, 11:02 AM
Legend of the Five Rings 4th edition has some mass-battle rules and the "Way of the Daimyo" expansion in the "Emerald Empire" Supplement.
Some of those mechanics (For example "how to develop new techniques at a school/new spells") are of course heavily setting-dependend, others not so much, or one could (from my view at least) rather easily file off the serial numbers.

That said, the rules of L5R themselves are insanely setting-tied, and would require rather heavy rework to do anything else. But the parts that deal with mass-influence stuff (Being a Warlord, a Governor, overseeing a Merchant Empire, Ambassadorial duties) are rather setting-light from my reading.

Knaight
2016-11-15, 11:02 AM
REIGN. Normally I'd suggest half a dozen games for anything, but in this case you're looking for REIGN. One of its big selling points is that it has a whole system for organizational conflict, that it's deliberately designed to have PCs operate within organizations that they may or may not lead. The organizational conflict rules are deliberately designed to be portable to entirely different games, and even if you don't do that it's easy enough to jump genres with them. It also has a set of skills explicitly designed around the conceit of leadership, it has rules for individual actions turning broader conflicts, and it even has magic that is really wide ranging - although the magic system is the one thing that's fairly setting specific. Even then though there's extensive advice for homebrewing magic, and while it's setting specific it's also really cool.

Milo v3
2016-11-17, 01:00 AM
Oh, oh, Exalted-


-.... Never mind, not Exalted.

It's one of the best "large-scale" games, but it's definitely got its mechanics tied to setting on several levels and is hard to extricate from that. (It's an extremely huge and versatile setting with multiple time periods to potentially tweak things towards, so you can play many, many, many varieties of game in it, but ultimately... Yeah.)

Taking that into consideration...

Reign and Houses of the Blooded are both the most RTS-esque tabletop games I know, and Kingdom is pretty neat simply for being diceless. All are about running either kingdoms or kingdom-scale organizations. Houses of the Blooded has a core setting, but the mechanics don't give you any substantial trouble if you brush it away and put something more to your taste. Super crunchy in general though. Reign, likewise, can easily have its setting altered or changed entirely, but with a bit more mechanics-tweaking on your part. Kingdom has no mechanically-assumed setting, and in fact has twenty sample settings based on its rules just to show you how setting-making is done. It's, uh, a bit weird about whether or not GMs even ought to exist and what their role should be in the game. :smallbiggrin:

Hope that helps.
I've given Exalted a look and it does seem abit tied to it's world (and seems like GM's need to do a lot of work when it comes to making an NPC). I'll give those three a look, though I can't see much info about how Kingdom is without buying it so I'll have to check that latter down the line.


Legend of the Five Rings 4th edition has some mass-battle rules and the "Way of the Daimyo" expansion in the "Emerald Empire" Supplement.
Some of those mechanics (For example "how to develop new techniques at a school/new spells") are of course heavily setting-dependend, others not so much, or one could (from my view at least) rather easily file off the serial numbers.

That said, the rules of L5R themselves are insanely setting-tied, and would require rather heavy rework to do anything else. But the parts that deal with mass-influence stuff (Being a Warlord, a Governor, overseeing a Merchant Empire, Ambassadorial duties) are rather setting-light from my reading.
I'd rather not frakenstein systems as much as possible but I'll give L5R a look if I get the opportunity.


REIGN. Normally I'd suggest half a dozen games for anything, but in this case you're looking for REIGN. One of its big selling points is that it has a whole system for organizational conflict, that it's deliberately designed to have PCs operate within organizations that they may or may not lead. The organizational conflict rules are deliberately designed to be portable to entirely different games, and even if you don't do that it's easy enough to jump genres with them. It also has a set of skills explicitly designed around the conceit of leadership, it has rules for individual actions turning broader conflicts, and it even has magic that is really wide ranging - although the magic system is the one thing that's fairly setting specific. Even then though there's extensive advice for homebrewing magic, and while it's setting specific it's also really cool.
Might give that a look first.

Martin Greywolf
2016-11-17, 05:38 AM
FATE can do this reasonably easily, as long as you keep the distinction between skills that can be used in small fights and skills that are for large-scale encounters (can't exactly kill an army with a sword, but can certainly send it packing via intimidation). The core rulebook even has an example of how they did just that in a game, though it doesn't go into much detail. Best of all, the FATE core rulebook is free to download, so your wallet (or your conscience, if you're the torrenting type) is safe.

The disadvantages... well, it'll take you some time to come up with the specific details of how you want to set up your system and how actions on a small scale affect global situation - assassinating a king can be resolved in a "battle" between the kingdoms (essentially, you roll the kingdom's skills against each other), or it can be an adventure for the PCs. Both cases will play out differently, especially is king as a character shares some of the kingdom's skills.

Khedrac
2016-11-17, 06:48 AM
Companion D&D's domain management rules and war machine mass combat system might be useful here too (if just to steal ideas from).
They are also in the Rules Compendium.

One caveat - the domain economics were specifically skewed to make the character need to go adventuring to pay for everything, Bruce Heard did publish some suggested revisions in his Dragon Magazine column.