[Mass Combat] When do the rules break?

[Tyneras]

My group has used Mass Combat for a number of battles so far, and we have enjoyed the system quite a bit.

Last night, when we got into our random brainstorming mode, the idea came up of how small a battle we could do with Mass Combat and not have the rules break down on us. Until now, we haven't had any fight with less than 50 units on each side, often 100+. Would the system still work if we, say, made a single infantry unit do a dungeon crawl, and fought various monsters in individual battles? 1 Heavy Infantry vs 1 Troll, or Dragon, or whatever. Do the rules work, or does it fall apart/give odd results? The idea came up mostly as a way of skipping character creation for quick games. The various quality and optional features make the units quickly adjustable, without requiring the time of actually building a 10 man party one character sheet at a time.

[Gigermann]

This is actually a question I've been pondering lately. GURPS combat stuff is fine for individual contests and/or quick fights, but takes way too long for prolonged engagements to be "efficient" for a typical (for me, at least) game session; especially if it should be a more drawn-out affair (more than a handful of seconds). Mass Combat seems to be pretty effective for dealing with large-scale combat, and I generally like it. However, I'm looking for something "in-between"—something for doing, say, a big bar fight. That would take ages in "tactical" combat, but is small enough that maybe "mass" combat might not work.

In that event, I really hadn't considered how little "Mass" might work for Mass Combat.

[Snoman314]

I had a quick look at Mass Combat again with this in mind. Some thoughts I had are:
- An infantry element is 10 individuals normally, so unless you want to somehow modify TS for undermanned elements, this puts something of a lower limit on things.
- It would probably be acceptable for the leader of a side with less than 5 or so elements to use tactics in place of strategy. I actually thought it said this somewhere but can't find it now.
- the round length table says that for 1-9 elements, each round lasts 15 minutes. This could be reasonable for two forces meeting up and manoeuvring on a battlefield, but I'd suggest that a close quarters engagement such as in a dungeon or barfight would be over in 15 minutes. You might want to modify this.
- You probably want to ignore the logistics force rules.
- Most of the battle strategies and significant actions etc probably could be stretched to make sense in many small actions, but the GM would want to check to make sure beforehand.
- Casualties could be done as follows for a ten person element. Every multiple of 10% casualties equals one dead person. If there is a 5% casualties remainder, that equals one person wounded. Feel free to break down some of the kills to woundeds.

So I think it would be workable, but it would be very low resolution, and require a few modifications. If you're after a quick and dirty battle resolution though, it could be good.

[Figleaf23]

Here's an example of how it worked with two fairly small units in confrontation.

[Anaraxes]

{scale down to} 1 Heavy Infantry vs 1 Troll, or Dragon, or whatever

Hey, that's a neat idea. And we could even skip the mass part of the combat, and just use our heroes instead of whole armies. We could have a scenario that's just a few people on some sort of adventure, like in the books. Everybody could have just one hero each, and play their favorite character. It's a whole new kind of wargame.

[Tyneras]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Hey, that's a neat idea. And we could even skip the mass part of the combat, and just use our heroes instead of whole armies. We could have a scenario that's just a few people on some sort of adventure, like in the books. Everybody could have just one hero each, and play their favorite character. It's a whole new kind of wargame.

Or, the Prince is the PC, and these NPCs are some suckers, err, loyal subjects he convinced to kill the troll so that the Crown of the First King could be returned, securing the prince's claim to the throne. Or maybe all the infantry die, the prince returns with no crown, his claim to the throne no stronger, and terrible rumors of his incompetence as a commander making their rounds in the palace.

Live or die, the infantry are just there to see if the prince made the right plans and moves in a social focused adventure. It's like those complicated domino chains, you aren't the dominoes, you are the guy making them fall in interesting patterns. At the end, you just watch and hope you didn't make a mistake.

[PK]

Originally Posted by Gigermann

This is actually a question I've been pondering lately. GURPS combat stuff is fine for individual contests and/or quick fights, but takes way too long for prolonged engagements to be "efficient" for a typical (for me, at least) game session; especially if it should be a more drawn-out affair (more than a handful of seconds). Mass Combat seems to be pretty effective for dealing with large-scale combat, and I generally like it. However, I'm looking for something "in-between"—something for doing, say, a big bar fight. That would take ages in "tactical" combat, but is small enough that maybe "mass" combat might not work.

In that event, I really hadn't considered how little "Mass" might work for Mass Combat.

The thing that converted me to a believer in GURPS Mass Combat (because I hated the 3e system) was how small it went down to. It handles squad-level stuff just fine, though I'm pretty sure it'd break if you tried to go down to 2-3 normal people per side.

I haven't tried anything like a bar fight with it, but that's because a bar fight isn't like a war. People are using fists or chairs, not real weapons, and no one is trying to kill the other side, just hurt 'em. So you'd definitely need to adapt the rules a bit, though in theory, I'm sure you could do so with some playtesting.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Gigermann

This is actually a question I've been pondering lately. GURPS combat stuff is fine for individual contests and/or quick fights, but takes way too long for prolonged engagements to be "efficient" for a typical (for me, at least) game session; especially if it should be a more drawn-out affair (more than a handful of seconds). Mass Combat seems to be pretty effective for dealing with large-scale combat, and I generally like it. However, I'm looking for something "in-between"—something for doing, say, a big bar fight. That would take ages in "tactical" combat, but is small enough that maybe "mass" combat might not work.

In that event, I really hadn't considered how little "Mass" might work for Mass Combat.

I think it may be a common problem in RPGs that players are reluctant to have multiple "pets" or followers, or are (or feel that they are) pressurized into not going there (by the GM or by other players), because handling a dozen allies in combat, e.g. summoned entities or animated undead, is just way too cumbersome.

That could be one place where "GURPS Mass Combat" might give more freedom to players, e.g. effectively empower players to become large-scale animators of undead, or at least medium-scale animators.

Personally I balked when I saw that one of the "Elements" in "GURPS DF5: Allies" allowed the Divine Servitor to animate up to 20 corpses. Way too combersome, I thought.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Snoman314

- Casualties could be done as follows for a ten person element. Every multiple of 10% casualties equals one dead person. If there is a 5% casualties remainder, that equals one person wounded. Feel free to break down some of the kills to woundeds.

IIRC "GURPS Mass Combat" is agnostic about what casualties are. It never says, unless I'm misremembering, that a casualty is death. It can equally well be wounded troops that leave the army once they are recovered, but are available for re-recruitment.

Once one moves down in scale to very small army sizes, that issue probably has to be addressed explicitly, so that it is clear what a casualty is, or better yet so that there are different kinds of casualties, including Dead, Very Dead, and various wound severities. In particular that can be useful if it is desired (e.g. by a PC or a PC party) to use healing magic, or even mundane medical skills, to try to make wounded troops combat-worthy again.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Hey, that's a neat idea. And we could even skip the mass part of the combat, and just use our heroes instead of whole armies. We could have a scenario that's just a few people on some sort of adventure, like in the books. Everybody could have just one hero each, and play their favorite character. It's a whole new kind of wargame.

I doubt that would catch on.