Something I've noticed in fantasy game settings is a bit of a conspicuous hole in the way they discuss their factions' militaries. Everyone is in a hurry to talk tactics and go into great detail about all the cool swords and armor their factions use, but there rarely seems to be any consideration for the big picture questions of warfare.

Before your Orc army marches to war, how does the warchief muster his horde? How does he arm them? What is the command structure? What prevents them from deserting? What are they actually hoping to achieve? Even the wickedest regime does not attack its neighbors just for the sake of doing it (Warhammer Orks notwithstanding). There's an operational or strategic goal, some resource or political end they're trying to achieve. Even a goblin raid should be raiding for something, whether its food, slaves, horses or whatever. When the horde does set out, what do they eat? Who supplies their arrows or repairs broken equipment? How do they cross rivers? Gather information? Navigate? Communicate?

These considerations might never come up in an RPG campaign, but they also easily could. Campaigns set in wartime can take advantage of them for all kinds of interesting situations and missions.  A traveler in wartime could be constantly dealing with the moving armies' supply trains, foraging parties, and scouts, even if they aren't actually attached to either army. Understanding the goals of military NPCs can inform their actions and give PCs more ways to deal with them.

Even if you're not running a wartime campaign, thinking in these terms can be a very useful way of understanding a fictional society. Particularly in pre-industrial times, the way a society organizes its military is often reflective of its peacetime organization: its economy, social hierarchy, politics and so on. In a setting document I've been working on, I'm considering putting a "[Faction Name] at War" section into each political entry.

Do y'all ever think about the peoples in your homebrew (or even published) settings in these terms?

It's a sixth century reference, but the Strategikon of Maurice is a good read for anyone who wants a primer on military logistical planning.

It definitely informed me as a U.S. Marine, and also benefitted me as a ttrpg GM.

I don't go into super high resolution, but that stuff is usually covered by the faction design.
Most of it won't be visible to players until they look for it, but they'll hear rumors about it and can affect things if they intervene.

It really helps to model each faction after a real world equivalent in broad strokes,.so you have a framework.

For example: A tribe controls a mountainous area with a special ore, but lacks the expertise in mining and smithing- this will necessitate an alliance with someone who has the knowledge and needs the ore, then the PCs hear about a very protected caravn making its way to the the coast and things go from there. How is it protected? Probably by tribesmen who live off the land mostly, small mobile groups surrounding it (this is where either research or imagination comes in)

It can be really fun, some of it came up in my current campaign

This mostly comes down to the faction turn between sessions, though.

I tend to handle most such questions with the GM hat, not the game design or adventure design hat.  Though I've read a lot of military and economic history, so I've got that to draw on. 

Typically, regular forces are quite small compared to the population, even allowing magic to produce a more reliable food supply.  It may not be 90% of the population farming, but it sure is something like 75% to 80% either farming or closely involved (e.g. quasi-magic processes for food preservation).

Then when an army is temporarily put together, of course they have some objective.  Frequently, mercenaries are involved, and then they must be paid. Since I'm running a restrained, silver-based economy, without huge money payouts from every adventure, that's not a small thing.  In fact, I just recently had an adventure where the players became aware that someone else was also chasing a treasure for which they had a map. They got curious enough to go out of their way to capture an enemy, and eventually worked out that there was a wannabee warlord trying to get that treasure to pay off his mercenaries.  They still haven't fought that guy, but they did spike his wheels for a while by escaping with the loot.

Of course, it helps when you run a setting that is more early dark ages than medieval or ancient. Putting together a big army requires a big state.

Alexander Macris' Adventurer Conqueror King System (ACKS), just out in its second [Imperial Imprint] edition has extensive rules for this kind of play that purports to be based on extensive historical research.  I played a bit of 1st edition ACKS, but skipped on this edition because the people I play with don't want that much detail.  Might be worth checking out.

And if you're looking for interesting historical discussions of logistics, I recommend Donald Engels' classic study, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army, or Julius Caesar's Conquest of Gaul.

I mostly developed a campaign I called the Horde that I never finished*. In it you had an army of Orcs, Goblins, hobgoblins etc that were the occupying force in a captured Dwarven Hall (part mines, party city). The whole thing was led by Dark Elves who intentionally divided them into Divisions that were a mix of different races to keep the Divisions from fighting each other, but led to infighting within most of the Division.
Anyway the idea would be the players are grunts, members of a squad in one of these divisions doing raids into the territories of other Divisions for wealth, revenge, etc. Different squads would be armed for different tasks (scout, heavy infantry, etc) and different Divisions would have different attitudes towerds discipline in the ranks.
* thing thing was based on the Glog (Goblin Law of Gaming) which has a license that prevents it from being sold which means that VTT and others have no Glog content so I'd have to do all the work to get it onto a VTT so I just gave up. Some day maybe I'll rewrite it for a 5E or something as I still like the concept.

I think a lot about logistics for my campaigns and it starts even at the map-making level.

Urban metropoli with the resources to field professional armies don't spring up just anywhere.

I actually have what I call my "confluence checklist"; a list of coditions favorable for the formation of urban areas (trade crossroads, defensible locations, abundance of a valuable natural resourse, proximity to other major communities, etc.).

The more boxes ticked, the bigger the community I can put on the map there. Where there aren't such things you start filling in rural communities based on terrain and population of the nearest urban center (depending on magic/tech level the farming population in my settings ranges from 90% (low magic medieval) down to 60% (magic and/or tech able to emulate the food production of the late 19th century).

The ballpark then is that the total population can support about 10% of its Non-Farm population as full time soldiers and up to 25% for short term campaigns (often pulled from the farm population after planting and before harvest) and up to 200% of the non-farm population in an existential crisis such as being invaded).

The quality of said troops and their gear is largely a factor of the size of the largest urban area in the realm (the more people in one place, the more specialists for war-specific goods and services can be supported).

Those beyond the initial 10% (but still in the 25%) are probably a grade or two less well trained and equipped (depending on how often they're called up) and the 26-200% troops are overall just above the level of non-combatants who've received a crash course in basic drill.

As a practical manner, I generally run it that realms which rely nearly entirely on their professional military have better morale and smoother logistics than those who regularly pull in seasonal troops.

More bodies only matters so much in pre-modern warfare where morale is often the deciding factor and taking 10% casualties almost always resulted in a complete route of the non-professionals anyway.

Food and then, if not in summer, "blankets" are going to be the primary logistical bottlenecks for an army. Men who are hungry have a hard time being motivated by anything that won't fill their bellies and cold men are similarly more lethargic and prone to illness and disease.

Generally, in terms of tracking for military campaigns I tend to lump most other short-term consumables under "food" and most long-term consumables (uniforms gets ripped, boots are worn through, tents get leaks, knives dull, pot handles break) under "blankets" for tracking an army's condition in addition to raw numbers of men... and shortages of either impacts performance (abundance doesn't improve performance... though it does mean they can take more losses before low food or blankets impacts performance).

Quote from: Chris24601 on December 18, 2024, 11:46:33 AMGenerally, in terms of tracking for military campaigns I tend to lump most other short-term consumables under "food" and most long-term consumables (uniforms gets ripped, boots are worn through, tents get leaks, knives dull, pot handles break) under "blankets" for tracking an army's condition in addition to raw numbers of men... and shortages of either impacts performance (abundance doesn't improve performance... though it does mean they can take more losses before low food or blankets impacts performance).

Ooo. I really like the simplified "food" and "blankets" approach to logistics. These should certainly play into morale and if your force can even make it to where it matters.

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 17, 2024, 11:15:59 PMSomething I've noticed in fantasy game settings is a bit of a conspicuous hole in the way they discuss their factions' militaries. Everyone is in a hurry to talk tactics and go into great detail about all the cool swords and armor their factions use, but there rarely seems to be any consideration for the big picture questions of warfare.

Before your Orc army marches to war, how does the warchief muster his horde? How does he arm them? What is the command structure? What prevents them from deserting? What are they actually hoping to achieve? Even the wickedest regime does not attack its neighbors just for the sake of doing it (Warhammer Orks notwithstanding). There's an operational or strategic goal, some resource or political end they're trying to achieve. Even a goblin raid should be raiding for something, whether its food, slaves, horses or whatever. When the horde does set out, what do they eat? Who supplies their arrows or repairs broken equipment? How do they cross rivers? Gather information? Navigate? Communicate?

These considerations might never come up in an RPG campaign, but they also easily could. Campaigns set in wartime can take advantage of them for all kinds of interesting situations and missions.  A traveler in wartime could be constantly dealing with the moving armies' supply trains, foraging parties, and scouts, even if they aren't actually attached to either army. Understanding the goals of military NPCs can inform their actions and give PCs more ways to deal with them.

Even if you're not running a wartime campaign, thinking in these terms can be a very useful way of understanding a fictional society. Particularly in pre-industrial times, the way a society organizes its military is often reflective of its peacetime organization: its economy, social hierarchy, politics and so on. In a setting document I've been working on, I'm considering putting a "[Faction Name] at War" section into each political entry.

Do y'all ever think about the peoples in your homebrew (or even published) settings in these terms?

Nope, not anymore.

I've found in my experience that such details don't matter much. Why come up with such down to detail information if only a smattering of it is ever actually used?

Just in case a player asks?

For my group, they rarely ask such questions, and if they do I make it up on the fly.

Because I learned a long time ago, the players (and the PC for that matter) only know what they know.

That's just how I do things as a DM. Not saying it's right or wrong for anyone else, but my method works for me.

Quote from: Thondor on December 18, 2024, 01:04:32 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on December 18, 2024, 11:46:33 AMGenerally, in terms of tracking for military campaigns I tend to lump most other short-term consumables under "food" and most long-term consumables (uniforms gets ripped, boots are worn through, tents get leaks, knives dull, pot handles break) under "blankets" for tracking an army's condition in addition to raw numbers of men... and shortages of either impacts performance (abundance doesn't improve performance... though it does mean they can take more losses before low food or blankets impacts performance).

Ooo. I really like the simplified "food" and "blankets" approach to logistics. These should certainly play into morale and if your force can even make it to where it matters.

I'll admit that the root of the idea didn't come from me, but my dim memories of the old Dragonlance modules which, along with the Red Box (my parents didn't know there was a difference between D&D and AD&D), were basically my introduction to roleplaying.

Anyway, one of the early modules, the third off the top of my head, involved getting a band of refugees safely through the wilderness and the main things you had to track in order to prevent casualties were days of food and number of blankets the refugees had, with various encounters potentially depleting one or both and then requiring checks to see if any of the refugees perished in the following days (and the need to acquire more to prevent this).

So, I just kept using that as my benchmark for large group travel in RPGs... track the food (consumed daily), track the blankets (lost due to events) and the total numbers and you've got something close enough to logistics to be present, but not bog things down until it becomes a grind.

The need for both also provided a lot of self-directed quests as the party would need to seek out supplies to keep their force in fighting shape far from home.

I don't go so far into food and blankets, but I'm currently running a War of the Burning Sky campaign (heavily modified) and supplies lines are definitely part of the macropolitical discussion - especially, cutting supply lines and raiding enemy supply convoys. My players are always very pro-raiding (and delivering the spoils to their allies, the elvish cavalry on the plains who are fighting a guerilla war), and so they are always interested in just how those enemy troops over there --> are getting their victuals.