GURPS Mass Combat Question

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The goal of the Fourth Edition system is to tackle battles too large to play out tactically on a battle map; it can go up to entire fronts and wars, because it's highly scalable, but its "sweet spot" is between squad scale and battalion scale. In battle, PCs take on roles closer to staff officers, handling intelligence, logistics, planning, and leadership with a variety of skills. Those who fall outside those roles can still contribute, but do so by trying heroic actions and side-missions. Combat proceeds in rounds, with choices of strategies similar to maneuvers in personal combat, and there's ebb and flow as forces gain and lose advantage.

By the time other events caused my Fantasy Mass Combat game to end, we we running fights ranging from a rag-tag column of refugees being overtaken by a reinforced light cavalry company to multi-front sieges involving a dozen or more regiments/battalions on each side. The "sweet spot" was pretty wide, really, and in something like 30+ major battles over 70+ sessions, it did a nice job of giving us mostly predictable results with a few surprise upsets here and there. Definitely a great book to build a campaign around.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

By the time other events caused my Fantasy Mass Combat game to end, we we running fights ranging from a rag-tag column of refugees being overtaken by a reinforced light cavalry company to multi-front sieges involving a dozen or more regiments/battalions on each side. The "sweet spot" was pretty wide, really, and in something like 30+ major battles over 70+ sessions, it did a nice job of giving us mostly predictable results with a few surprise upsets here and there. Definitely a great book to build a campaign around.

Yeah, in the fantasy campaign that inspired GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, I used it to run conflicts of several sizes, from raids and sieges up to and including a huge war involving some 22,000 elements. The latter required a lot of spreadsheets to do right, though. ;)