Playing an RPG in sync with a Wargame

Pierce Inverarity · September 21, 2007, 01:06:00 PM

This is an old fetish of mine: to run a campaign game in which I as GM also run a wargame solitaire in the background that's been published for the setting. The wargame set-up defines the initial situation for the adventure and the subsequent changes to it.

In other words:

Play the Dragon Pass wargame while the PCs are 'venturing in Glorantha.

Play Fifth Frontier War while the PCs are 'venturing in the Spinward Marches.

One consequence of this is that you generate a vast metaplot--but in a perfectly non-railroady fashion.

Thoughts, experiences, other examples?

jrients · September 21, 2007, 01:08:11 PM

I agree that it would be cool. What I've always wanted to do was alternating wargame and rpg events over a con weekend, where the Saturday morning battle scenario directly influences the Saturday afternoon RPG event, which in turn sets up events for the Saturday evening battle.

Pierce Inverarity · September 21, 2007, 01:09:59 PM

OMG, THAT would be the shit. Too bad we didn't do that back in the day.

flyingmice · September 21, 2007, 01:21:10 PM

In Harm's Way + Fire As She Bears. We are working on this.

-clash

arminius · September 21, 2007, 01:23:14 PM

SPI's Star Trader wargame includes, as part of the basic game, the possibility of hiring "agents" who confer various benefits. (E.g. one agent might give you an advantage in picking up black market deals, another might give a bonus for sabotaging ships in the star system he's located in.) The game then has suggestions on using the Universe RPG in conjunction with ST, basically with the implication that certain in-game random events/opportunity chits would be adventure seeds, and that PCs would to some extent be roleplayed "agents".

Then there's the King of Kings/Imperator wargame, a strategic-level sim on European/Mediterranean warfare and diplomacy, which has options for using the Ancients wargame to play out the battles at tactical level. Others have done similar things with Imperium Romanum and . Imagine doing all that and then also weaving in an RPG. (Okay, it'd take forever. Maybe it'd work as a PbP.)

Nicephorus · September 21, 2007, 01:46:21 PM

I've thought about this in various contexts but never really did much with it.

Birthright was pretty much set up for that. It had domain management rules and a simple system for high level combat. The idea was to have a monthly turn to figure out what was going on in the world then adventure.

flyingmice · September 21, 2007, 01:47:41 PM

I did it long ago with D&D and Battlesystem.

-clash

estar · September 21, 2007, 01:57:53 PM

Quote from: flyingmiceI did it long ago with D&D and Battlesystem.

-clash

Same here. One time I ran a apocalyptic series of battle where there was a LOT of dragons involved and the Battlsystem counters from the Dragonlance really helped. I still remember the look on the player's face in the climatic battle when I lined up all those dragons on the edge of the table. I don't dislike AD&D 1st but I don't really miss it either EXCEPT for how wonderful Battlesystem worked with it.

Ronin · September 21, 2007, 03:00:10 PM

One of the options I gave my player when I presented ideas for a new campaign. One of the choices was Mech warrior. RPG for all the character level stuff. Then Mech Warrior clicks for all the mech and vehicle combat. I know all the mechwarior and battle tech purists are hating on me, for not using classic BT, and whatever edition mech warrrior. But I cant find my old mechwarriro RPG. And I have a ton of clicks. So....

jhkim · September 21, 2007, 03:43:45 PM

I did a Battletech campaign which had bits of roleplaying done using Mechwarrior. That was more wargame focused. The role-playing parts definitely added some flavor to the battles, though.

I also did a primarily-roleplaying game with Star Trek where we used Star Fleet Battles for ship combat. The SFB thing was a bit more marginal, but it did allow an interesting dynamic where there were a lot of tasks and the different players did different things. (i.e. In SFB, energy allocation is an important part of game play, and the engineering player would allocate energy to weapons, but the helmsman would fire.)

Pierce Inverarity · September 21, 2007, 04:09:27 PM

So, in tactical combat the wargame is plugged into the RPG on a different level--essentially it replaces its starship combat rules... that's another interesting angle. I've been meaning to check out Battlestations for the longest time now, to see how it would work with Traveller.

Cab · September 21, 2007, 04:17:23 PM

I've often done this using War Machine in classic D&D.

Ian Absentia · September 21, 2007, 04:35:24 PM

I did use some of the results of my one and only successful game of The Fifth Frontier War with my Traveller campaign, and vice versa (my group had totally punked the Zhodani as a result of Adventure 3: Twilight's Peak). For the most part, it didn't really matter, because my group hardly got into the real line of fire, and our campaign wound down by a calendar date that didn't get us very far into the war.

I would like to try it with Dragon Pass and HeroQuest, though.

!i!

Wil · September 21, 2007, 05:20:18 PM

This would be fairly trivial using Heavy Gear and either HG Tac or HG Blitz!, or Jovian Chronicles and Lightning Strike (or VBAM Jovian Chronicles).

dar · September 21, 2007, 05:52:41 PM

I don't have it handy, but I had a link to somewhere discussing using some high level world spanning political intrigue game to flesh out the campaign world and large events. Then using the results of that as the campaign world to have the players in.

They were using two different sets of players, and one set would do the large scale world building game for the other set of players.