Dealing with High Stat players

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by Bill_in_IN

By the mid-90's our play had moved toward more large scale and militaristic situations up to and including a castle siege.This was because each of us had generated many characters and actually played them. During such play, there were ways to keep the high stat (elite leader) characters occupied and challenged while well over 120 troops (both sides) fought it out.

Thanks Bill, that was one great read. Much of what you recount mirrors how and what my own group was doing at the very same years, and not many miles away.

I only wish I could have seen that castle siege play out, or better yet had some characters in that fight! We once did the siege of an entire walled city, but using the rules from a different (larger scale) wargame, with some of out best player characters (represented by little counters) stacked one each with different combat units they were leading. No actual melee though. I believe on the scale you used it would have been a lot more interesting.

[Bill_in_IN]

Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck

Thanks Bill, that was one great read. Much of what you recount mirrors how and what my own group was doing at the very same years, and not many miles away.

I only wish I could have seen that castle siege play out, or better yet had some characters in that fight! We once did the siege of an entire walled city, but using the rules from a different (larger scale) wargame, with some of out best player characters (represented by little counters) stacked one each with different combat units they were leading. No actual melee though. I believe on the scale you used it would have been a lot more interesting.

Well...I believe that it was the pinnacle of my GM abilities and it certainly taxed them to the max. I freely admit that I was not that great a creating a world and a story that went with it. I was carrying on from what a deceased friend originally created and stole ideas from other game system info. I was good at scaling the encounters and battles appropriately for the PCs present.

Since TFT had been out of print for a decade, we were using stuff from other game systems. The most compatible was GURPS (which was TFT 2.0 until ITL Legacy came along). I used the castle layout from a GURPS module. It was a huge hexmap. I had to accommodate a large number of Centaurs, catapults, arbalests, and some flying creatures. Lots of magic, magical enhancements, and regular play with beginning or close to it) was present. Most troops had a reasonable amount of training in the arena so that they could, at least, prove themselves as a fighting group.

My friend that was into Centaurs started with one character that he liked to play and then he started a couple more and played them as a group with other characters present. Then he said something about starting a squad of beginning centaurs. That's when I suggested that he place one of his secondary characters as their SGT and he agreed. As the group progressed, they would break off into their own squads with recruits. Access to decent weapons, armor, and wine were good recruiting tactics for his Centaurs. Centaurs were like light tanks racing across the board in open field combat. They were a challenge for a GM to keep challenged.