Battles

[Noita]

Has anyone ran large battles in their runequest games? How did it go, how did you run it?

[Yelm's Light]

I've only ever done it as a plot device; the PC's might have taken part, but they didn't affect the outcome.  It was predetermined.

I haven't run a battle with Hero-level PC's, though.

[Zit]

I've run small battles (I already explained somewhere how). Each side has a coherence on a 1-20 scale and I made a "coherence contest" just like Spirit Combat with POWs. The first at 0 lost. Players' actions removed points to the other side (e.g. disabling a leader, taking a position). For more stress, the ennemies started with a higher coherence, making the party's actions crucial.

Now I may use the Revolution D100 conflict system. Keep the Coherence, but allocate each general a proficiency on a 0-100 scale, possibly takong some situational modifiers into account, and make an oppposed skill roll to decrease the opponent's Coherence. PCs actions can either provide the general with 30% Bonuses or for crucial actions  even replace the opposed skill roll.

[RosenMcStern]

10 minutes ago, Zit said:

Now I may use the Revolution D100 conflict system. Keep the Coherence, but allocate each general a proficiency on a 0-100 scale, possibly takong some situational modifiers into account, and make an oppposed skill roll to decrease the opponent's Coherence. PCs actions can either provide the general with 30% Bonuses or for crucial actions  even replace the opposed skill roll.

In the final SRD (which will become available to the public next week) there will be a small section describing exactly this procedure. Plus a quick method for evaluating the starting point pool of each army, taking into account size and troop quality.

As for running battles in RuneQuest, I have done it a couple times using the Dragon Pass or Warhamster combat system.

[MJ Sadique]

I did a lot of battle in the last years but I stick to a simplified version Glorantha's white bear vs Red (lucky me, a friend of mine forgot his french version at home XD) :
-Each player count as a hero with his own custom tile and 3 allied armies tiles at each round.
-Almost no map movement, unless scenarii need it. Most of time, armies movements and tactics are played in RP and give locations bonus.
-Battles with a fixed objective/theme (battle restricted to Defend, Defend as long as you can, a Siege, Capture the flag -castle, temple- )

The player have a sheet (see upload) with tile description, a short combat summary, tables of damage and up to six type armies on the sheet -they can have more than six units but only six types- : you just need one sheet, a copy of the rules and it's simple and Glorantha flavour (main reason my choice).

[Steve]

In the "Quo Vadis, Chaosium" talk at The Kraken recently, (at around 35min 40 secs) Jeff Richard talked about the fact that there are battle rules in the upcoming new RQ. He says a bit about how they looked at the Pendragon battle rules, but those didn't really work for RQ because they were mostly about mounted knights with lances.

 

[Runeblogger]

1 hour ago, MJ Sadique said:

I did a lot of battle in the last years but I stick to a simplified version Glorantha's white bear vs Red (lucky me, a friend of mine forgot his french version at home XD) :
-Each player count as a hero with his own custom tile and 3 allied armies tiles at each round.
-Almost no map movement, unless scenarii need it. Most of time, armies movements and tactics are played in RP and give locations bonus.
-Battles with a fixed objective/theme (battle restricted to Defend, Defend as long as you can, a Siege, Capture the flag -castle, temple- )

The player have a sheet (see upload) with tile description, a short combat summary, tables of damage and up to six type armies on the sheet -they can have more than six units but only six types- : you just need one sheet, a copy of the rules and it's simple and Glorantha flavour (main reason my choice).

Hi MJ Sadique: this looks like you ran a campaign in medieval Japan. Is that so? If yes, I'm interested in knowing more, since I'm also currently running such a campaign with RuneQuest. Please send me a pm!  ;-)

[Pentallion]

I ran the Battle of Iceland using WarHamster.

[styopa]

7 hours ago, Yelm's Light said:

I've only ever done it as a plot device; the PC's might have taken part, but they didn't affect the outcome.  It was predetermined.

I haven't run a battle with Hero-level PC's, though.

Agreed.  Largely they're programmed.  I wouldn't ever kill a toon based on a rationalized, oversimplified, impersonal wargame mechanic.  Too little agency.  I don't tell them that though.

[Yelm's Light]

1 minute ago, styopa said:

Agreed.  Largely they're programmed.  I wouldn't ever kill a toon based on a rationalized, oversimplified, impersonal wargame mechanic.  Too little agency.  I don't tell them that though.

There's another level to that; when you're dealing with, say, regiment(s)-sized battles, it's unlikely that half a dozen PC's are going to have a very appreciable effect on the overall result.  Possible, of course; perhaps they spearhead the charge that takes the crucial piece of terrain that anchors the entire fight...but much more often it's them banging away along with a thousand other fighters.  (Again, with the caveat that we're not taking into account Hero-levels.)

[Pentallion]

With WarHamster, you can let them affect the battle within their capabilities and not be concerned with them dying an abstract death because you carry out the battle via WarHamster, but then you carry out their fighting via RQ and then apply it to the WarHamster results.  PCs tend to take out the enemy faster than the average soldier.  But you get some great drama unfolding.  In our Battle of Iceland, due completely to their own actions, I had characters who got themselves cut off from their group.  One leapt over a shield wall and inflicted pretty good damage before being swarmed over and left for dead on the battlefield.  Another got dropped fair and square RQ style and had to be pulled from the battlefield by her compatriots.
One of the rare times I enforced fatigue rules.

[Zit]

Did anybody ever run the Craddle scenario as a battle à la warhamster or whatever else ?

[Haimji]

6 minutes ago, Zit said:

Did anybody ever run the Craddle scenario as a battle à la warhamster or whatever else ?

Nope. But i ran the "battle of auroch hill". my players were in charge but not command a unit, only a group of warriors.

[Darius West]

Back around 1998 I ran a game where my players were Tovtari and started in 1593.  By the time the 1602 Lunar Invasion began they were Rune Level and part of the Northern Counter-Offensive out of Alda-Chur led by the Household of Death against the Temple of the Reaching Moon in Tarsh.  They got raided by Tusk rider mercenaries and saw them off, then fought against the Tarsh militia just within the Glow Line and were victorious.  When they got to the TRM things went exactly as Lunar propaganda said it does.  The frontage of the Lunar Hoplite Phalanx proved savage, as did the Lunar Sorcery, but the players persevered despite being very depleted and actually got inside the temple, then realized they were outnumbered, and the wardings would blow down their shield spells in about 2 minutes.  It was around then that they realized that they needed 20 points worth of extension, at least another 60 MP in storage, and that you can't get divine intervention in an enemy temple.  Having fought their way in, they had to fight their way out again, before activating their Guided Teleports.  If they had managed to pull off the attack I was going to run things with Sartar surviving the invasion due to the Lunars being put out of supply in rotten Sartar weather.  As it is history went according to plan. 

I made extensive use of the Battle Skill during the scenario, both to determine how the unit commanders were doing in terms of leading and noticing opportunities, and for the individual players to see how well they were reading the battle, the quality of their enemies, and how well they were able to position themselves etc.  Basically this meant that they were given a report on how their unit was faring, and then they would have to fight a set number of enemies based on their Battle Skill vs the enemy troop formation.  The actual combat was handled like normal RQ combat, but sometimes they had friends helping, or were able to maneuver themselves out of facing multiple attacks.  I created a table that had an axis of quality and an axis of quantity, with 5 columns, crit, special, success, fail, and fumble. For every level of success you could shift the axes in your favor by a column on either Quality or Quantity, and you got a bonus column shift if the opponents got a fail or a fumble. 

The game started with player characters being initiated and ended in 1605 with the Building Wall battle during which one of the characters, a Vingan named Tora won singular accolades for having devised the strategy of the Building Wall without knowing Gloranthan history, earning herself the title of "Tora the Glorious".  The party eventually retired to Esrolia where they got bogged down in politics but made a home for many Sartarite exiles.

[MJ Sadique]

I've seen some photo about battles at Kraken, did anyone know which system was used ?

[RosenMcStern]

I have released the Revolution D100 SRD, so if anyone is interested in checking the mass battle rules, here they are.

[jux]

On 10/14/2016 at 9:07 AM, Yelm's Light said:

I've only ever done it as a plot device; the PC's might have taken part, but they didn't affect the outcome.  It was predetermined.

I agree with this. If I want to simulate a mass battle, I don't play a RPG, but a war game.

All the mass battle rules I have encountered RPG games are so complicated that do not add much into the story. They do not fit into this personal scale.

I would just make a d100 check by guessing how evenly the sides were matched compared to one another.
Failure: battle lost, captured (roll injury, etc)
Success: battle won, roll injury
 

[g33k]

Also of possible relevance is this thread...

Don't know the current status...

 

[johnmcfloss]

I've generally shied away from letting the results of battles be too random - it can potentially mean a massive shift in the game for the sake of rolling some dice, and it's arguably more narratively satisfying to have a pre-set conclusion that you know to script around and work from (and ultimately makes no difference to the players, but I'm growing increasingly skeptical that random events are in any way preferable to scripted ones).
I also tend to find that the main ebb-and-flow of battle doesn't massively affect the players - unless they're playing the roles of general, they won't know how the battle outside 10-20 foot around them is going until it's over.

What I tend to do, is have a a "if the players do nothing" result, and then a number of objectives (clearly more than they can achieve), with the results of these having an affect on the end result - some may make their side more likely to win, some may reduce casualties, some may let them settle personal grievances and rivalries. They can choose (to a certain degree) which of these objectives they want to try to deal with as the battle rages, but each objective is functionally a self-contained encounter, as the enemies around them are tied up with their allies.

[fulk]

The best approach to battles really depends on the players and characters role in the battle.  If you're just a spear in the shield wall and only responsible for yourself and the guy next to you, then scripted results make sense.  The characters really only need interact with their local tactical environment.  Their actions may have no effect on the outcome, just their survival.

If you're the general, then you probably want to determine the outcome based on your skills etc (and that of your army).   One could use a war game approach to let the player make the decisions or a rpg battle approach to use the PCs skills etc.  I prefer the latter myself (probably from playing a lot of Pendragon, which has had many different battle systems over the years).

There is obviously a range in between such as the above post where the actions of a few intrepid adventurers might swing the tide of the battle through GM narrative if the PCs achieve a goal. 

[Dissolv]

I plan to use a combination of scripted sequences (much like Pendragon), and a modification of Simon Miller's excellent To The Strongest!  It plays very quickly -- quickly enough to easily wrap up within a game session, and the author is a known Gloranthan lover.  Obviously such events would be relatively rare in most campaigns, but there is no denying the military struggles that go on in Dragon Pass. 

Dissolv

[styopa]

1 hour ago, Dissolv said:

I plan to use a combination of scripted sequences (much like Pendragon), and a modification of Simon Miller's excellent To The Strongest!  It plays very quickly -- quickly enough to easily wrap up within a game session, and the author is a known Gloranthan lover.  Obviously such events would be relatively rare in most campaigns, but there is no denying the military struggles that go on in Dragon Pass. 

Dissolv

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/169926/strongest Board Game Geek rating 8.2 which is pretty high.  Most of the minifig rules that I've enjoyed over the years only rate 5.5-7.2.  :/

[Zit]

On 28.10.2016 at 4:58 PM, fulk said:

  If you're just a spear in the shield wall and only responsible for yourself and the guy next to you, then scripted results make sense.

I'm not sure this would anyway make an interesting game. If the PC's are just spears in the shield wall, just tell the battle and go back to role playing when it is over. I think PCs shall have someting interesting to do, like take and hold a door, infiltrate, climb a wall, find and capture a specific ennemy target, defy a ennemy champion, explore a craddle...

[TRose]

 I play HORDE of the THINGS a nice simple rule set which has  a Gloranthan following and could be used for quick battles.  It might not be detailed enough for some players though.

[Dissolv]

Quote

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/169926/strongest Board Game Geek rating 8.2 which is pretty high.  Most of the minifig rules that I've enjoyed over the years only rate 5.5-7.2.  :/

I am speaking from personal experience on this one.  My gaming group uses and loves Simon's rules.  They were designed for (potentially) very large scale, multiplayer, streamlined play.  They do that in spades, plus have the critical virtue of feeling very "period" while stripping out all of the fiddling bits that slow the games down.  We have done a simple 2 player game in 1 hour, and mega 8 player games with hundreds of figures on each side in under 3 hours. 

Obviously this would not be an every session kind of thing, but if the players wind up being generals of an army sometime, have completed the pre-battle drama and narrative actions, they may enjoy a diversion from the normal RPG treatment of mass battles.  You don't even strictly need figures.  In this set of rules rectangular print outs would work just fine, as demonstrated by Simon in the rules!

I have played quite a few Ancient miniatures rules in the past, but this is the only one I would bring to an RPG session.  And of course, not for every battle, just the one's where the players have a role as commanders, as opposed to grunts, or heroic figures.  But it is a tool for consideration.

Dissolv