Group Morale
Panic in Twilight 2000 2.2 relates to wounds and incoming fire and this is an example of personal morale.
Group morale is the behaviour of groups to events and situations. Player characters are not effected by group morale in standard games but non player characters do not have this luxury.
Normally, a unit's morale is based heavily on its leadership. Well indoctrinated, well-rested and well-fed troops with good leaders are capable of surprising accomplishments. Unsure, tired and starving troops with poor leadership regularly break at first contact. They will flee if possible or surrender if it is not. Often they will not even fight at all. In their desire for self preservation they might discard their weapons and anything else that hinders their ability to run at top speed. Leadership also incorporates many other aspects of group character and leadership figures often help shape unit behaviour in many situations, but that's getting a bit complex for this post.
It would be onerous to have to roll for every individual NPC constantly during a fight. Instead GMs should think on the following aspects before the encounter to come up with a sort of unit character to understand how they will react during combat.
- Leadership (if any)
Troops under an effective leader have the morale rating their leader has and this is why leaders are primary targets. Leadership usually but not always is equivalent to rank, however actual leadership roles have been found in very low ranking members of units. This aspect is brittle, troops that have a significant difference in NPC quality such as Novice troops under a Veteran leader often break when they become aware the leader is out of action.
- Training.
The four NPC levels depict training and the acclimatisation of the individual to combat and campaigning. Very experienced troops might be reduced to Novice morale if they are ill, disillusioned or fearful. Training has a strong influence on reaction (see below)
- Condition.
Hunger, thirst, fatigue and similar conditions sap the individual of their will to fight. Sieges frequently are resolved when troops simply lose the will to continue fighting due to privation.
- Indoctrination.
The level of commitment to fighting comes from how the soldier sees the situation and the information they are given about the fighting. Many things influence this and these include exposure to formal and informal indoctrination such as political training or propaganda or rumours and biases. Fraternisation strongly effects the will to fight and soldiers who have had friendly relationships with the enemy frequently refuse to fight at all.
- Circumstances
A catch-all category that influences the group and individual. For instance troops that have traded with the enemy might assume they will be given good treatment if they surrender. Troops who have been engaged in atrocities might assume that surrender will mean abuse followed by execution (although even at the last moment troops often choose surrender knowing this will happen to put off death for a short time). If a strong position is to the rear troops might wish to fall back towards it or if reinforcements are nearby troops might fight on knowing help is at hand.
All these modify the following hard fact:
The vast majority of troops do not attack at 10% casualties, retreat at 25% casualties and flee at 50% casualties.
Humans are not D&D orcs and only very rarely fight to the death (this is really a player character thing). These events are so rare they are nearly always noted in the history accounts. When morale fails there are three major human reactions that follow in decreasing order: Flight, Freeze and Fight. These reactions become Retreat, Surrender or Last Stand. Highly trained individuals have this retrained to Fight and Retreat through various means. Anyway, this is very rarely group behaviour. Note that most military operations deliberately give equal size units escape avenues as last stands can cause significant friendly casualties out of proportion to their operational gains.
Morale Failure Reactions:
As there's little if any evidence for group minds morale tends to fail in a smaller section of the unit and rapidly spread. Isolated individuals under pressure, flanks struck from the side, lower quality troops witnessing a leader's fall or capture often break first and then other members of the unit become aware of it and lose morale as well. While some leaders or sub leaders can salvage the situation and rally the troops on the spot what usually happens is some sort of reduction in fighting capability is managed. This can happen over and over during combat. One flank can start to fall back which requires rallying and shoring up while another sector comes under pressure. Troops can press forward and then stall or fall back. This sort of behaviour brings realism to T2K fights that are often lacking.
Player Leaders.
Using all this lets the players take the roles of battlefield leaders in unit actions. GMs should consider the nature of the led troops, the behaviour of the player leader and situation. Some troops might respond well to a brutal player leader while others might not. All these factors should give dice modifiers to the Leadership skill roll. All-or-nothing rolls should be avoided (as in all things) and excellent rolls should give excellent results and only-just-failures should not mean the troops run for the hills. Careful managing of the Condition, Indoctrination and Circumstance aspects relating to the troops can give bonuses while neglecting them can give adverse results. Note that heavily indoctrinated troops might misbehave when not under a leader's immediate control.
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