Is Mass Combat seeing play?

[jimminy]

Originally Posted by Jabani

I think scads of people have the same question, and I think the answer is, "It's seeing far less play than the amount of interest it generates," though I don't think that means it's seeing less play than any other book. What gives me that impression is the number of views versus number of posts:

1,149 views vs. 40 posts (more or less)

Which compared to the recent popular Fallout post:

500 views vs. 40 posts

Though that's of course a horribly unscientific reasoning process.

Also, even in a combat heavy game you might not use Mass Combat until the campaign reaches a certain point. Until people start leading large teams the rules just might not come up on the screen, or out on the table, or whatever. So there may be a lot of people who have read it, like it and have it ready... But the right moment just hasn't popped up in their campaign yet. I know I had the rules sitting there for a while before I used them and it was good to know that I could comfortably slip into that level of PC responsibility and that scale of struggle without having to stress about anything or make any big changes in the campaign. The rules were all just there, ready and waiting.

I tried using the 3e mass combat rules once and they were too simple. The 4e rules are actually simple when you get down to it, it's all just plusses and minuses, like most GURPS skill checks (and like Munchkin), it just has all that glorious detail and it is quite satisfying. The 4e rules I will use again, for sure.

[AmesJainchill]

Originally Posted by Snoman314

Seconded.

("The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters." <sigh>).

Thirded. Doing a Star Wars fleet engagement would be awesome.

I don't have Mass Combat, but SJgames is putting out so many nifty .pdfs and I am unemployed...but it certainly seems up to the usual high standards.

[Jabani]

So there may be a lot of people who have read it, like it and have it ready... But the right moment just hasn't popped up in their campaign yet.

Indeed. But I think you can say that of lots of books, or rather, that they want to run campaign X based on book Y, but haven't got around to it. I think Mass Combat is different because it's a self-contained module that contains only rules, so you've either used it or you haven't, unlike a genre book like Fantasy or something. I mean, with other sorts of books, it's not necessarily obvious that you've used them, even if you run a campaign in that genre (and what if you take the stats for one gun from High Tech - have you really "used" it?), but with Mass Combat it is obvious. Plus, people like war :) Thus the interest.

Nevertheless, large-scale combat within the world of roleplayers probably isn't that common, rules or no rules. But as I said before, I don't think the book itself is used any less than any other book, it's just more apparent when it is/isn't.