Contents:
A force with multiple PC commanders has to have a single overall commander and intelligence chief during reconnaissance operations. It only splits into multiple fronts when the battle is joined. After that, each front is a separate battle for purposes of calculating troop strength and class superiority, defense bonuses, positional bonuses, casualties, and the like.
Dividing Forces at the Start Before the first round of combat, the PCs need to split their forces into individual fronts and assign a commander PC to each front. They can do this however they want: equal split of all forces, assign one player all the cavalry and split the rest, give one player all the units of the same race in a multi-racial force, whatever. The only restrictions are that each PC needs to have enough units to be interesting: preferably at least 10 units.
Players need to work out the details among themselves, with the overall commander having final say aside from a GM veto in the unlikely event that people are being jerks. The GM also needs to divide the enemy force as he sees fit, based on the personality of the overall enemy commander. One enemy commander can be assigned to multiple fronts, or subordinate commanders can be created and assigned, as appropriate. In general, each front should have a proportional share of the total enemy force relative to the share of the PCs' forces in the front, but the GM can make decisions as he sees fit: he can assign all the Marine troops to the river crossing in one front and all the cavalry to another front, if that's an appropriate decision for the NPC commander.
The side that lost the reconnaissance contest divides their troops first, and the side that won responds to that division based on the initial intelligence for the battle type Mass Combat In the case of a tie, the players split their forces first but can reassign entire fronts after the GM has split his forces.
Fighting the Battles Each front is its own separate battle, and the decisions in one front have no effect in another front.
Therefore, this article presents the generic portions of these mass combat rules for use across Tech Levels, along with two new examples: fantasy battles on Yrth . GURPS Mass Combat. Available as a digital file! Written by David L. Pulver * Edited by Sean Punch * Production art by Nikola Vrtis. GURPS Line Editor: Sean .
One exception to this rule is the length of the battle round, which is determined by the total size of the smaller force involved, not the smallest force in any given front. So if the smaller force is elements, then each battle round is 2 hours, even if the smallest force in a front is only 5 elements.
Transferring Troops and Collapsed Fronts After any round of battle, troops can be transferred between fronts freely. Troops get the PB of the front they move into and calculate casualties as the worse of the front they left and the front they're moving into. Calculate TS and class superiority normally based on the new troops in the front. A PC with a collapsed front can either get reinforcements, using the above rules, or sit out the rest of the battle in which case any enemy troops in his former front can be moved to other fronts.
This doesn't apply if all fronts on a side are in collapse at the end of the same round: the battle is over and the pursuit can possibly begin. Note that it is legitimate to have multiple fronts Retreat while one front remains fighting a rear guard action to hold up pursuit. This is generally pretty rough on the troops fighting the rear guard. Parley Any commander on any front may start a Parley, but the Parley only occurs if all commanders on all fronts agree to it.
If a Parley attempt fails, only the commander who started the Parley takes the penalized Defense strategy, not all commanders on his side. Sieges In a multifront siege, some fronts may be involved in Deliberate Attacks against Deliberate Defenses called "siegework" while other fronts may choose different strategies called "activity". Split each siegework battle round into 6 segmented battle rounds during which activity can take place.
Only roll for the siegework battle strategies at the end of the 6 segmented rounds, and only if the forces involved in the front performed siegework for at least 4 of the 6 segments. If a front did activity for three or more segments, treat any segments that were intended to be siegework as though the attacker had chosen the Attack strategy and the defender the Defense strategy and resolve them all at once after the six battle round.
Rachel and her opponent choose Deliberate Attack and Deliberate Defense, each, for all 6 segments. Derick starts by performing an Indirect Attack into his opponent's Deliberate Defense on the first segment, then tries a Deliberate Attack against his opponent's Mobile Defense on the second segment, and then both switch to Deliberate Attacks and Defenses for the last four segments. Will chooses Deliberate Attack for all six segments, and his opponents chooses Deliberate Defense for the first three segments, but then chooses to Raid for the last three segments.
Derick's Indirect Attack versus a Deliberate Defense is resolved immediately, followed by his Deliberate Attack versus his opponent's Mobile Defense, followed by a single Deliberate Attack versus a Deliberate Defense at the same time that Rachel's Deliberate Attack versus a Deliberate Defense is resolved. These handbooks describe how to reduce GURPS to the essential abilities and rules you need to play in a typical modern "Monster Hunting" type of game.
The following fictional settings are adaptations of preceding fictional works originating in novels:. Traveller was originally published in by Game Designers' Workshop.
Several books were produced in Japanese, mostly by the Japanese company Group SNE , and published by various publishers. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Bottom tier are core books necessary to play, moving up to least necessary. Using resources from further up the stack requires less preparation work on the part of the game master. Austin, Tex. Archived from the original PDF on 18 October Archived from the original PDF on 5 January John ; Thibault, Daniel U. Steve Jackson Games. March 24, It is pretty good.
I only had one gripe with it. It gave high toughness characters an advantage in the system, which is good. It did not take into account the benefit of extra agility for high agility style characters, however. I was playing a character at the time that was specced like a high agility striker rogue type that wore no armor, but in individual combat is tough to lay a hand on.
I really got the short end of the stick under the mass combat rules.
First off, we start with a chapter on rules, then we have a chapter on lowish tech military units, then highesh tech military units, then another chapter on rules, and then some appendices giving some more help and some useful summary tables of the rules. The Rules. Other Popular Products. Subscribe to: Post Comments Atom. This means half the Foot and Mounted rates because of the camping and cycling of patrols plus reporting. The Warhammer one doesn't sound to bad.
Not a "simple" system though, but much simpler than proper wargames, and most of the complexity was blending the character powers into the mass battle ruleset. Pendragon also had quite a nice system where you have "the battle" with morale and how it's going, and characters using leadership like skills to win "the battle", but then I think you had individual fights hero-on-hero which could help swing the battle, or maybe the fights were tougher when the battle was going badly I only played in the Pendragon game though, so less sure about that.
Ah, I remember that book, it was good. I think that miniatures were needed to play with that system.
All rights reserved.