Newbie with questions..

[Sapper31]

Hey folks,


Been really wanting to play this game for some time now. However, I've never really played DnD or any PnP roleplaying game (I am an experienced PC gamer however, and know how RPGs work in general).

I've read the 1.0 and 2.2 rules front to back a couple of times. My main concern is: how do you make combat work practically at larger scales?

With the level of detail involved in this game, and the fact that many of the encounters can easily be 20+ NPCs with vehicles, it seems that not only would a small group of players almost always be hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned: resolving combat for that number of NPCs would be extremely long and tedious.

For those of you that have actually played, how do you make it work?

I am hoping to try a game with my friends next week.. I've warned them it will probably be very rough until we get in a rhythm. We are all PC gamers primarily and I'm hoping we can all overcome our inherent ADD. This combat problem is something I would really like some insight on however, as taking 3 hours to resolve 5 seconds of in-game combat doesn't seem appealing.

[James Langham2]

Welcome. We've all been there at some point.

my advice:

* if you make a mistake you make a mistake

* version 2.x works better for larger combats

* before starting a real game go into sandbox mode and run some practices

* start small and build up - start with npc v npc with each player having 1 each then expand in small steps e.g. add extra npcs, add pcs, add a vehicle, etc

* in live games don't be afraid to fudge what happens to npcs

* don't tell the players everything e.g. the npc is hit and falls down behind the wall as the two rounds hit his body not he's dead

* above all enjoy it

Let us know how it goes.

[Olefin]

One thing you can do is to break up the combat by spreading out the enemy forces. They may have 20 men and vehicles but you can break it up into an advance party of perhaps one vehicle and 4-6 men and then the rest of the group in a "main body".

This allows for characters to not be so heavily outnumbered in such an encounter and also breaks the combat up into more manageable chunks.

There are also things like "The Last Battle" for Twilight 2000 that are made to resolve larger battles with vehicles and larger groups of people. You can find it on ebay or there are reprints of it that are available.

[Cdnwolf]

http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.p...ht=mass+combat

[Sapper31]

Thanks for the quick replys! All solid advice. It's nice to see an active forum for this game as alot of the info I have been coming across was very dated and I worried it was completely dead.


I tried a few trial combats with some random NPCs and some rough PCs. A few ideas I have are as follows:

- I created an encounter generator with excel. Only group encounters work at the moment. This uses all the stock tables from v2.2, and lets you generate a groups vehicles, support weapons, and numbers very quickly. Note you need macros enabled.

- Generate terrain. I'm currently using grid ruled chart paper, and making some simple contour lines, trees, and land cover. Similar to wargaming/last battle, anything that blocks line of sight (such as >20m of forest, elevation change, buildings, etc) disallows direct fire actions. Combat can then be played out on the chart paper similar to warhammer using a ruler for range determination.

- Spreading sub-units out. Basically what you said Olefin. With a group encounter including 4 sub-units of 6 for instance, each sub-unit is spread across the encounter area. Say for instance you are in open terrain and roll an encounter range of 8 (300x8=2400m). Your 4 groups of 6 would be spread across this 2400m area, so if the PCs make contact with a sub-unit, the others may be at further range or blocked from LoS. PCs can then divide and conquer or hit and run without taking fire from 24 units simultaneously. The NPC unit in contact may also try to communicate with their other sub-units who can then provide support or maneuver onto the PC group (allowing for some interesting hit/run tactics or ambushing). Another option is to leave some of the sub-units "off-map" and allow them to come in a later point in the battle, from a direction of GM choice.

- Something I'm seeing a lot of is novice NPCs being knocked out of battle very quickly. Novice NPCs have an initiative of 1, and according to P.194(v2.2) "A character whose initiative level is reduced to 0 or lower may not act at all". Also P.211 "As soon as an NPC takes any hits in the first row, he or she is slightly wounded and suffers a -1 initiative penalty". This precludes them for further combat action. Am I interpreting this correctly? It seems reasonable that un-committed/rookie soldiers would panic/exaggerate in the face of any wound whatsoever. This also allows for post-battle roleplay treatment of enemy wounded/POWs, forcing the PCs into some interesting ethical scenarios (kill wounded enemy? eat the wounded!? try to recruit him and have an NPC army? interrogate? Etc.)

I did buy the last battle PDF and read it over. While it does seem much simpler (especially for vehicle combat), I think it sacrifices too much in terms of detail. It could work with modification, but at that point you might as well just homebrew your own marker/miniature battle with grid paper. Time to hit the dollar store and pick up some plastic army men!

Anyways i'm just spitballing here. Please keep the ideas coming as, again, it's pretty intimidating facing my first RPG which I must also GM!

[James Langham2]

I regard the novice as being out of action as also covering them deciding that they have had enough and slinking off or just keeping their heads down for the remainder of the fight.

I would love to see the spreadsheet if you are willing to share it.

Originally Posted by Sapper31

Thanks for the quick replys! All solid advice. It's nice to see an active forum for this game as alot of the info I have been coming across was very dated and I worried it was completely dead.


I tried a few trial combats with some random NPCs and some rough PCs. A few ideas I have are as follows:

- I created an encounter generator with excel. Only group encounters work at the moment. This uses all the stock tables from v2.2, and lets you generate a groups vehicles, support weapons, and numbers very quickly. Note you need macros enabled.

- Generate terrain. I'm currently using grid ruled chart paper, and making some simple contour lines, trees, and land cover. Similar to wargaming/last battle, anything that blocks line of sight (such as >20m of forest, elevation change, buildings, etc) disallows direct fire actions. Combat can then be played out on the chart paper similar to warhammer using a ruler for range determination.

- Spreading sub-units out. Basically what you said Olefin. With a group encounter including 4 sub-units of 6 for instance, each sub-unit is spread across the encounter area. Say for instance you are in open terrain and roll an encounter range of 8 (300x8=2400m). Your 4 groups of 6 would be spread across this 2400m area, so if the PCs make contact with a sub-unit, the others may be at further range or blocked from LoS. PCs can then divide and conquer or hit and run without taking fire from 24 units simultaneously. The NPC unit in contact may also try to communicate with their other sub-units who can then provide support or maneuver onto the PC group (allowing for some interesting hit/run tactics or ambushing). Another option is to leave some of the sub-units "off-map" and allow them to come in a later point in the battle, from a direction of GM choice.

- Something I'm seeing a lot of is novice NPCs being knocked out of battle very quickly. Novice NPCs have an initiative of 1, and according to P.194(v2.2) "A character whose initiative level is reduced to 0 or lower may not act at all". Also P.211 "As soon as an NPC takes any hits in the first row, he or she is slightly wounded and suffers a -1 initiative penalty". This precludes them for further combat action. Am I interpreting this correctly? It seems reasonable that un-committed/rookie soldiers would panic/exaggerate in the face of any wound whatsoever. This also allows for post-battle roleplay treatment of enemy wounded/POWs, forcing the PCs into some interesting ethical scenarios (kill wounded enemy? eat the wounded!? try to recruit him and have an NPC army? interrogate? Etc.)

I did buy the last battle PDF and read it over. While it does seem much simpler (especially for vehicle combat), I think it sacrifices too much in terms of detail. It could work with modification, but at that point you might as well just homebrew your own marker/miniature battle with grid paper. Time to hit the dollar store and pick up some plastic army men!

Anyways i'm just spitballing here. Please keep the ideas coming as, again, it's pretty intimidating facing my first RPG which I must also GM!