Do you have a preferred way of handling this? Assuming that what you're playing is normally a standard type of "Adventuring party" game; do you use some kind of abstract mass-combat mechanic to resolve big battles? If so which?
Do your players resolve things abstractly as well in that case? Or do you play out individual battles? Do you resolve things differently if one of them is commanding the troops?
Or do you prefer to gloss over it?

RPGPundit

I rarely run 'big' battles in any of my campaigns, but when I do, I get out the Bushido rules (a tip I took from Loz). The focus is very much on the PCs themselves, not the overall battle.

If one of the players is the/a commander then I'll ask what their plan is, make a few opposed strategy or tactics rolls then tell them what happens as a background to their individual encounters.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to play out the whole battle at a detailed strategic level, then you should pull out your favourite wargame rules. Those will handle it far better than any RPG does.

It only really comes up for me with D&D, so I use the rules from the D&D Rules Cyclopedia. I've never been completely happy with them, because they come up with casualty figures I think are unrealistic in medieval-style battles. It's one of those things I've always wanted to tweak to suit my own tastes, but never quite got round to it.

In actual fact, the old Advanced Fighting Fantasy game (not sure about the new one) had a decent mass battle system that doesn't involve a lot of fiddly maths like the Rules Cyclopedia one does.

Absolutely. We used a lot of skirmishes during our last campaign. Here's how we handled it with Warhammer. It's short and sweet, but got the job done:

A regiment equalled 9 men. Regiments may be armed with different weapons, but always assumed that one weapon type is carried by each. Damage was equivalent to 9 + normal damage. Multiply total Wounds by 9. Regiments used the highest Toughness bonus (TB) and armor to determine soak.

A player could act as regiment leader, and conferred his or her Strength bonus (SB) or Agility bonus (AB) for consideration of damage.

Regiments act like player characters. Although a regiment may technically be using different actions, a player would choose 2 Half Actions or a Full Action that the entire regiment would dedicate themselves to.

Every time a regiment suffered damage equal to their total Wounds, one figure was removed from the regiment and lowered their damage by 1.

Without being TOO large scale, I've run a small goblin army attacking a town before.  I used 5 goblin fighters per figure on the map, and when players or militia would attack them they would have to make a leadership save on a d6 based on the number of figures left.  if they rolled over the leadership roll, they would break and run.

attack bonus and damage were loosely based on the theory that if a group is attacking a player, they can move to flank and be more effective (+2 to hit and damage per doubling, so 5 of them were +4).

Overall it worked pretty well, they did some pretty severe damage to the frontline fighters and were chewing up the villagers, but the players won out in the end by using their defenses to their advantage.

It was in the Troll Lord trilogy of low-level adventures, I1-I3, and the goblin army attack was the climax at the end.

I love me some large scale battles, even hefty skirmishes, and you can't go wrong with a good siege or planetary assault. Some of the best adventures happen in war. Anyway I rolled my own system based on troop value.

Say one "average" soldier for the era is worth one point. An elite soldier is worth +1 multiplier, +1 more if mounted, +1 more if heavily armoured, for a total of *4.

So 1000 ordinary troops plus 1000 of those elite troops comes to a total troop number of 1000+4000=5000, although the physical number of troops is 2000.

Then you reckon the ratio of one army size to another and add bonuses to the appropriate general's roll. The injuries taken by each particular division of the army, for example, are worked out with this table:

Casualties per force type, this is the variation above or below the % losses that they take.
1-2: -20%
3-4: -10%
5-6: No variation
7-8: +10%
9-10: +20%
This is interesting because it can make a paltry victory into a brutal win, or a pyrrhic one.

I like this system especially because I use a roll-high 1d10+skill+stat system, so you can't have massive bonuses or it completely unbalances the whole operation. The offset between military power and the vagaries of war is just right.

Also its completely time period agnostic, once you've identified what makes a particular unit type more dangerous, or that say a tank is worth 30 infantry in terms of effectiveness, you're all set.

I prefer this level of abstraction since while one could duke it out using blocks of troops on a large map, its quite difficult to figure all of the many factors that affect battles on that level - it can be done but its too clunky for my tastes. There are aggregate issues that are non trivial to simulate. Better to figure it all out with a few rolls and then roleplay the details if needs be. There are mathematically simpler systems than this, but then you run into the opposite problem of losing important details and making the system semi-farcical as a result.

How involved the PCs are in any given battle or large scale skirmish is up to themselves, to a point. Some of the most hair raising random encounter tables I've drawn up were specifically for major battles, anything can happen. The PCs are allowed to help swing the tide by particularly heroic actions of course, moreso if they come up with especially clever strategies, like polluting all water supplies in the enemy path of advance with an energy sapping spell or drug and so on.

I've used the free Hordes of the Things rules to good effect for this kind of thing; PCs can be included as Hero units.  It's best suited for armies in the field; there aren't really any siege rules.

Quote from: RPGPundit;570419Do you have a preferred way of handling this? Assuming that what you're playing is normally a standard type of "Adventuring party" game; do you use some kind of abstract mass-combat mechanic to resolve big battles? If so which?
Do your players resolve things abstractly as well in that case? Or do you play out individual battles? Do you resolve things differently if one of them is commanding the troops?
Or do you prefer to gloss over it?

RPGPundit

I have been using an abstract mass combat mechanic I came up with to play out conflicts in the background. So if the players are not in a position to effect the outcome of the battle, this is how I handle it. Basically a roll off between the two sides, with a number of modifiers factored into the roll (and I give the armies "HP" based on size): training, tactics, equipment and supplies, morale, etc. What I like bout this method is players can impact the outcome of the roll by aining or losing modifiers. For example if they assasinate the general on the other side, that would be a big modifier to the roll.

If players are commanding troops then I am happy to play that out using miniatures or just ripping mass combat rules from a board game.

In our Barbarians of Lemuria campaign (just restarted after a 2 month break) the PCs are currently raising and army and running intelligence operations before overthrowing the ruler of a Lemurian city state.

This is the first time I've had to ref a big battle in 30+ years of running rpgs. I plan to go abstract, with the focus very much on the PCs. The swashbuckling rpg Honor+Intrigue uses the BoL system and it has a simple battle resolution sub-system for 17C battles - so I'm going to adapt that.

I favor for huge epic battles narration of the battle, with a mini battle played out between the pc's vs an elite group of the enemy army.

Now, if I actually had 1,000 orc miniatures....


Forgot to say, the old DND Battlesytem seemed to work well, but I used that so many years ago its hard to be sure if my memory of it is accurate.

When playing D&D-ish, when I kind of want to get some sort of random result, I'll use the mass combat rules from Swords & Wizardry Core but when I want to really play out groups in a skirmish or even massive battles I'll break out TLG's Fields of Battle.

The advantage of Fields of Battle is that attaching PCs to a unit makes that unit meaningful on the table. You can scale the system from high single digit numbers per side up through thousands per. It does a really good job of blending together wargaming and roleplaying for when you want that sort of thing.

I love Savage Worlds Mass Combat (a version of which was also written for the Unisystem).

It's an abstracted system that allows for differences in forces, force sizes, tactics, terrain, etc., is based off of a commander having skill in directing mass combat, and has a phase each round that allows for the PCs to have a big impact on the battle (at the risk of injury)...and you can also seamlessly "zoom in" on them if you want to have a standard combat with, say, the opposing leaders while war is raging around them.

We use War Law of course!  Silly question.  One nice feature of War Law is that it's set up to play on a smaller map with ranges and movement rates only being a couple hexes, so it doesn't dominate the table top.  It corrects probabilitys on the attack roll by standard deviation for the number of attacks using an extra table.  There's a surprise right?

But I'll go back to pointing out that the core of D&D can handle a couple hundred figures on a side as well as Warhammer.  It really was designed as a wargame originally.  Use the Wargames Research Group Ancients movement rules.  They're were pretty much standard practice in Wargaming up until DBA came along.  Warhammer used a variant originally though it's been cut back as the years rolled on.

Anyhow, set the men per figure ratio to 10:1 or 100:1 and you're good to go.

Quote from: Gruntfuttock;570460In our Barbarians of Lemuria campaign (just restarted after a 2 month break) the PCs are currently raising and army and running intelligence operations before overthrowing the ruler of a Lemurian city state.

This is the first time I've had to ref a big battle in 30+ years of running rpgs. I plan to go abstract, with the focus very much on the PCs. The swashbuckling rpg Honor+Intrigue uses the BoL system and it has a simple battle resolution sub-system for 17C battles - so I'm going to adapt that.

I would enjoy hearing how this turns out, if you would like to share the results Gruntfuttock.

Quote from: RPGPundit;570419Do you have a preferred way of handling this? Assuming that what you're playing is normally a standard type of "Adventuring party" game; do you use some kind of abstract mass-combat mechanic to resolve big battles? If so which?
Do your players resolve things abstractly as well in that case? Or do you play out individual battles? Do you resolve things differently if one of them is commanding the troops?
Or do you prefer to gloss over it?

I recall your description of the Great Pendragon Campaign you ran Pundit.  Did you ever use any of the extended content in the Book of Battle and the Book of Armies for Pendragon by Stafford?  I was wondering how it worked with the mass combat system in the main book and the game as a whole.

In campaigns I have been a part, it depended upon the role of the characters in the battle and the goals of the characters.  It has been from pure description based upon character activities to a full miniature wargame like Battlesystem.  So, my answer is that it depends upon the actions and interest of the characters, as well as the temperament of the players.  However, as an over riding rule, I try to use the elements of a given system to resolve issues in a game, without adding a subsystem.  I find this to be the more creative manner to approach mass combat for games that don't have default methods. In other words, I enjoy applying the elements of a game in unusual combinations.

D&D RC War Machine.

Though I'm looking forward to Domains At War for ACKS.

Quote from: Eisenmann;570462TLG's Fields of Battle.

I've been curious about it for some time now. What's it like?