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Anderlith
2017-06-26, 09:15 PM
Can anyone recommend a good system for playing mercenaries in a mercenary company? Something that has rules for being in an army but allows the players agency & be characters, without ruining things. I don't care about genre. I was thinking maybe Traveller or Only War. But honestly fantasy is what my players are most comfortable with so it doesn't really matter

Mr Beer
2017-06-26, 09:43 PM
I use GURPS for everything but it's more a toolkit than a system.

If the setting is modern, you may need to apply a fair amount of cinematic rules (of which many are available) or focus away from combat, because rifles are very good at killing people.

If the setting is future tech, see above plus you need to decide on what tech you and don't have available.

If it's fantasy, well you still need a setting and then develop it. Dungeon Fantasy is ready to play out of the box but it was created for D&D style slay-and-loot.

Probably easier to just pick an existing game if you aren't keen on doing a fair amount of work.

Anderlith
2017-06-26, 10:00 PM
I don't like GURPS...

CharonsHelper
2017-06-26, 10:06 PM
What sort of mechanics are you looking for? Having the PCs be mercenaries sounds like a very easy campaign to run since you just approach with jobs for them to do.

Do you want there to be a bunch of NPCs under their command and have rules for that?

Do you just want a setting designed for the PCs to be mercenaries?

Something else?

Anderlith
2017-06-26, 10:54 PM
Looking for something that has classes/careers/what have you that reflect being soldiers/officers & also has rules & the feel for being in charge of a smallish group of men under your command

Ninjaxenomorph
2017-06-26, 11:12 PM
What about Planet Mercenary?

Knaight
2017-06-27, 12:33 AM
Looking for something that has classes/careers/what have you that reflect being soldiers/officers & also has rules & the feel for being in charge of a smallish group of men under your command

Do you need classes? If you're good with a classless system I strongly recommend REIGN, mostly because REIGN is explicitly built to handle characters who are in or who lead organizations, such as said mercenary company. It has rules for fights with a bunch of soldiers in them that don't get bogged down. It's perfect for exactly this sort of thing.

Martin Greywolf
2017-06-27, 02:05 AM
Unless you find a perfect fit, I'd go for a generic system like GURPS or FATE, tweak it a bit, and pilfer ideas from Planet Mercenary - especially stuff about game creation. That assumes you have cash to sink into PM, though.

Other than that, any system that has some fractal scaling - the ability to stat things of different size as "characters" - will do.

GungHo
2017-06-27, 11:31 AM
Just about all of them, honestly. Mercenary is a job description. "I roam around beating things up for pay" is only slightly different from "I roam around beating things up for fun".

Aneurin
2017-06-27, 11:59 AM
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e might work, if you like Only War but want the Fantasy feel - I'm in a game of it right now as part of a mercenary company, and it's working quite well. You might just want to ban a few careers (like Knight Errant) that just don't fit in a mercenary company, though.

Or Zweihander. which is a much more setting-agnostic version of the same ruleset... and maybe a little more balanced. It specifically calls out The Black Company as one of its inspirations, and that's pretty much as mercenary as you can get.

Anonymouswizard
2017-06-27, 12:45 PM
I'm assuming that you mean a Band of the Hawk style mercenary bands and not the standard D&D party (which is generally a group of mercenaries) taking part in a war.

How would the PCs operate? On their own away from their troops? Fighting battles with their troops and some loaned ones? Fighting as part of a much larger army alongside their companions?

I'd personally use the save roles for the latter two, just to keep the players engaged have them command 'their' side regardless of how important their characters are.

Also, are all the players part of one band, and if so how high ranking, or do they reach lead their own? Because that changes requirements massively.

Savage Worlds, while classless, theoretically allows you to do this. It's built to reduce bookkeeping and this speed large battles (and even has a wargame variant), although it does start to lag at battles with fifty participants or more. It also has Command Edges which are supposed to represent how good you are at leading others, although actual followers/troops/mooks are fully GM determined until characters achieve Legendary Rank (and even then are a bad investment, five followers per edge that don't get replaced if they die, so better keep those edge-night followers safe).

Otherwise, Date is always generic enough to manage this, although it's not everyone's cup of tea.

The simplest solution would be to use a wargame for army scale battles, with PCs either commanding from behind the lines or represented by custom pieces, and your RPG of choice for standard roleplaying skirmishes. But that does require figures, terrain, an extra rulebook, and potentially homebrew.

Anderlith
2017-06-28, 12:58 AM
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e might work, if you like Only War but want the Fantasy feel - I'm in a game of it right now as part of a mercenary company, and it's working quite well. You might just want to ban a few careers (like Knight Errant) that just don't fit in a mercenary company, though.

Or Zweihander. which is a much more setting-agnostic version of the same ruleset... and maybe a little more balanced. It specifically calls out The Black Company as one of its inspirations, and that's pretty much as mercenary as you can get.
I'll check out Zweihander, I do love WHFRPG2nd & it was ,you first idea but some of my players don't like the setting so Im not using

I'm assuming that you mean a Band of the Hawk style mercenary bands and not the standard D&D party (which is generally a group of mercenaries) taking part in a war.

How would the PCs operate? On their own away from their troops? Fighting battles with their troops and some loaned ones? Fighting as part of a much larger army alongside their companions?

I'd personally use the save roles for the latter two, just to keep the players engaged have them command 'their' side regardless of how important their characters are.

Also, are all the players part of one band, and if so how high ranking, or do they reach lead their own? Because that changes requirements massively.

Savage Worlds, while classless, theoretically allows you to do this. It's built to reduce bookkeeping and this speed large battles (and even has a wargame variant), although it does start to lag at battles with fifty participants or more. It also has Command Edges which are supposed to represent how good you are at leading others, although actual followers/troops/mooks are fully GM determined until characters achieve Legendary Rank (and even then are a bad investment, five followers per edge that don't get replaced if they die, so better keep those edge-night followers safe).

Otherwise, Date is always generic enough to manage this, although it's not everyone's cup of tea.

The simplest solution would be to use a wargame for army scale battles, with PCs either commanding from behind the lines or represented by custom pieces, and your RPG of choice for standard roleplaying skirmishes. But that does require figures, terrain, an extra rulebook, and potentially homebrew.

Im not looking for rules for mass combat, just stuff that allows you to have that feeling of being a soldier, like requisitions, going from hell on the front lines to being stuck in a city with no orders & officers being helpful or horrible

BayardSPSR
2017-06-28, 01:36 AM
Looking for something that has classes/careers/what have you that reflect being soldiers/officers & also has rules & the feel for being in charge of a smallish group of men under your command


Im not looking for rules for mass combat, just stuff that allows you to have that feeling of being a soldier, like requisitions, going from hell on the front lines to being stuck in a city with no orders & officers being helpful or horrible

Sounds like Burning Wheel might be good for this kind of game?

Anderlith
2017-06-28, 08:06 AM
I'll give it a look too. Thanks

lightningcat
2017-06-28, 03:21 PM
There is a Black Company RPG, if you can find it. And I believe AEG put out a Mercanary supplement. I am away from my books and pdfs right now. Both of these can be used for ideas for a fantasy merc campaign.

dps
2017-06-28, 03:32 PM
What sort of mechanics are you looking for? Having the PCs be mercenaries sounds like a very easy campaign to run since you just approach with jobs for them to do.


Yeah, just about any RPG could easily work for this, except maybe some with setting that clearly aren't appropriate for mercenary bands (like a crime-fighting RPG, and even there you could probably make the PC a detective agency, because what are private detectives if not investigators for hire?).