Planning a military campaign

[derrick mcmullin]

I'm in the process of creating a world and a campaign that has a military bent. I casting the PC's as irregulars that in times of peace raid dungeons to help their home countries coffers and in times of war act like a commando unit.
I was wondering if anyone has done something similar and if so what advice can you give me. I'm especially looking for pot holes to avoid but cool ideas are also welcome.

[marcryser]

The last campaign that I created/ran had all the PCs cast as regulars of the Pharoh's army. They chafed at following orders form higher ranked officers and objected (strenuously) to being treated as if they were expendable by their command structure.

Gamers are not necessarily possessed of a military mindset and do not like that a mission doesn't need to be to their liking and that the commander wasn't asking.

[EWHM]

I've run games before where the PCs are assets for the Special Operations division of an up and coming empire. The cultural alignment of that empire leaned chaotic (probably about 65th or so percentile) and slightly good (about 40th percentile or thereabouts). They didn't have a rank or anything but there was the understanding that they would sometimes take jobs from the director of special operations, who they knew personally and were on good terms with. Most of the times the assignments were open-ended--along the lines of: I understand you're going to the far South, near the Cape, could you send me a report in your enchanted letter box about what is going on there? Or, be on guard, the stars that form the Cross of Fire are aligning very soon, and this alignment is coming very close to the winter solstice. Lots of very powerful ritual magicks are much easier when that happens. If you see ANYTHING that looks suspicious, please inform me asap. If you'd investigate any of the places of power, ley line nexus points, or the like, I'd appreciate a report of that as well. Occasionally the request would be more straightforward----a half fiendish orc has apparently started uniting the orcish tribes on the frontier into something resembling a nation--can you go gather more information and preferably put a stop to this union?
Compensation was typically proportional to the value of the information gained or the actions taken. The Empire's strength was initiative, its weakness was coordination and administration. As the Empire matured, its initiative waned and its coordination and logistical strength improved. Special operations remained for quite a while a holdout of the old imperial values.

[derrick mcmullin]

marcryser wrote:

The last campaign that I created/ran had all the PCs cast as regulars of the Pharoh's army. They chafed at following orders form higher ranked officers and objected (strenuously) to being treated as if they were expendable by their command structure.

Gamers are not necessarily possessed of a military mindset and do not like that a mission doesn't need to be to their liking and that the commander wasn't asking.

Thats a good point though I think I won't have that problem. One of my players is former military, and the other two had fathers who served and our well informed about how the military works. I will try to make sure they don't feel put out

[Adamantine Dragon]

Yes, I have run campaigns that were military based. In fact it was in large part based on the frustrations I had in D&D 2e attempting to run a military styled campaign that I created an entirely separate wargame for my group.

The main problem with a military campaign is that the encounter rules don't scale well. It is a PITA to run an encounter where your "special forces" group has to mow down a couple dozen enemy infantry units. The process of tracking individual hit points and individual reaction and movement can become daunting if you don't generalize things into groups, but then the rules don't deal well with group activities.

If you keep the encounters small enough so that your special forces group is engaged with opposing special forces groups, it can work. But if you run into situations with platoons or brigades, it's gonna be a chore to get through the encounter using PF rules.

I'm deliberately ignoring the whole "my gamer group doesn't much like taking orders" angle. But that's an issue you may well encounter too.

[Kairos Dawnfury]

I'm a fan of the Fire Emblem games and Tactical RPGs that deal with Wars, but have battles a little larger in scale of an Encounter. Some of the missions they are being tracked down in towns that can break up a battle into multiple encounters or give the PCs options to keep fighting or try to find another options. Others have them taking an objective during a battle that's pivotal to success, like capturing the supply tent or taking out the Officers.

Obviously, it's important to keep the focus on the PCs' story, and not just make them pawns in the War Story. That's a trap I feel into in a game I was DMing and the players lost interest.

[Vamptastic]

Is there any rule for multiple people firing a volley of shots? From bows, or from guns, or from whatever? Or, is there any way to show various army tactics, like phalanx positions and all that?

[Charlie Bell]

PCs should pretty much always have some sort of special mission and not just be lumped in with the knuckle draggers (no offense to my knuckle dragging infantry brethren).

I would recommend a group character generation session. Military groups do not get put together haphazardly. Players need to be on board with the concept and bring character ideas that can fit into an ultra elite commando unit. In particular, everybody needs some sort of stealth capability. Recon missions are going to get old fast if Sir Chargey McClanksalot gives away your position every time.

Have some backup resources available from the main force. Maybe the PCs can call upon a flying wizard with a wand of fireball, but he has to conserve his spells so they only get one fireball sortie and it takes 3 rounds for him to get there after they call for it.

I ran a military adventure as part of a larger campaign in which the PCs were part of an army marching to relieve a besieged castle. They had to hold a key bridge to prevent the enemy forces from conducting a spoiling attack against the relief column and to fix the enemy forces until the army's longbowmen could arrive and destroy them with superior range. They had to hold the bridge through several waves of enemy attacks, with a few minutes of rest in between waves. It was pretty cool how it turned out. Moral of the story is twofold: PCs' victories should directly affect the larger forces' victory, and waves are your friend when running a PC-level "close-up" of a larger battle.

[EWHM]

Once some years back I ran a game where I asked the players to make a fairly substantial number of level 1 pcs, with varying point buy equivalents, with the stipulation that they all lived in a certain village. So you might have each player controlling 2 25 pt equivalents (templates though so more organic and much less optimal), 2 20 pt equivalents, and 4 15 point equivalents. At a lesser level of control, they commanded another 10 10 pt equivalents and 20 5 pt equivalents (5 point equivalents are pretty much normal people). I gave them a 'war chest' to buy equipment, consumables, fortifications, etc in the ballpark of 3 years of that village's income.

Then I attacked and destroyed the village with a large force of evil humanoids. It was a blast. I let the players add their survivors to their character pool after they were scattered to the winds.

[marcryser]

The 3.5 book Heroes of Battle had a lot of good stuff in it.

[marcryser]

Charlie Bell wrote:

I would recommend a group character generation session. Military groups do not get put together haphazardly. Players need to be on board with the concept and bring character ideas that can fit into an ultra elite commando unit. In particular, everybody needs some sort of stealth capability. Recon missions are going to get old fast if Sir Chargey McClanksalot gives away your position every time.

This is a good point. Units need to function as units. The unit needs to have a combat style and needs to be assigned missions that it has the skills for. A stealthy unit can't have a heavily armored cleric along and shouldn't be sent to scout the enemy CP, while super-elite shock troops shouldn't be expected to take care of a squishy wizard while assaulting an enemy strong point.

The fighter may not want to rely on light (quiet) armor without some clear advantage for doing so. The wizard may not want to level dip into rogue to get stealth. When I ran my military campaign (light cavalry), I developed the 'horseman' class as a gestalt for everyone. It wasn't as tough as a base class but gave everyone access to ride and mounted combat, gave everyone e minimum of a d6 hit points and a minimum of 2/3 BAB.

You could look at what skills are necessary to pull off your concept and design a 'commando' class that gives everyone stealth and perception as class skills, minimum hit points to reflect that even the wizard is a soldier, and a few bonus feats/abilities to encourage the flavor you want in your game.

[Joanna Swiftblade]

Vamptastic wrote:

Is there any rule for multiple people firing a volley of shots? From bows, or from guns, or from whatever? Or, is there any way to show various army tactics, like phalanx positions and all that?

The Rasputin Must Die! book (part 5/6 of the Reign of Winter AP) tackled this, if I am correct. If you're willing to drop the 17$ on the PDF it should give you some good insight.

If not, just give Swarms and Int Score and some Gunslinger levels. Should do the trick!

[derrick mcmullin]

Wow thanks for the suggestions. I'm really looking forward to using the troop template for this campaign especially in upper level play

[Rudolf Kraus]

I'd think about two changes...

1) it's not your weapon, it's the army's weapon. Have gear assigned to individuals, but owned by the unit. Solves wealth by level issues, you can assign more or less gear at any time.

Check Spycraft 1.0 for a great example of this in play.

2) Keep track of military ranks, and promote/demote people based on how well they do with the mission.