Fight! but not so much Battle!

[Z-Dog]

inspired by this thread (http://burningwheel.org/forum/showthread.php?t=5464)

BWHQ: I'm curious. BW was built to reflect the kinds of games you like to play. Do you guys shy away from medium scale battles like the ones mentioned above? Are they not as interesting to you as the one on one fights? Do you just leave stuff like that in the background?

Is that personal, one on one Fight! a priority in your play?

[luke]

We run 5, 10, 15 person fights in Fight! (you ninnies). Anything bigger than that gets broken down into individual contests -- fights, versus tests, whatever.

[Thor]

We had that one Range & Cover that was four of us against 20-some orcs. That was ugly. Those orcs never knew what hit them...

[Esteban]

And one could always port the BE FireFight! rules to be used in BWR for larger conflicts. :)

[Kublai]

Honestly, I love the huge battles in which the characters lead. We've done a lot of them, too. But Luke's always handled them differently and never did any process really work well enough to codify into rules. But that didn't really matter because we were most concerned with what our characters were doing during the battle.

For instance, in a big slave revolt (who hasn't had one of these, eh?), each of our characters led an attack against a different part of a fortress. I believe we first figured out what our character was specifically doing and rolled to see how well he did. Depending on his result, it effected a follow-up unit roll. So when my guy lept up onto the parapets and destroyed a couple of guards, my unit got a +2D advantage to their skill roll. The skill roll was just the slaves' B3 versus the guards' B5.

Or say my character shouted out Commands instead of fighting, he rolled his skill versus his soldiers' Will. Any extra successes went towards that unit roll.

This is typically how I run my battles as well. The character does his thing while the battle goes on around him. We try to keep it as simple as possible. Otherwise, we can just play Warhammer (which I love, too!). we

[Thor]

I think my favorite large-scale battle in Burning Wheel was the garrison of Knights of Sun and Splendor holding Sir Tristam's half-finished keep against the Summoner, his horde and his demons.

I still remember the Summoner using the Death's Howl spell to shatter the palisade gate, and my archer captain, Martin, plugging the Summoner in his eye with a Deeds point and then scrambling back along the top of the broken wooden wall as the two demons crashed after me.

If I recall correctly, the battle was a backdrop to those events. We didn't roll for units or anything like that. It was up to us to turn the tide of battle, or not.

[Esteban]

Kublai, Thor, thanks those sound like great ways of addressing the large scale battles without losing focus of what's important (the characters)!

[Z-Dog]

Yep, that's what I thought. The focus and spotlight is on the characters. Thanks for the replies, guys.

[Thor]

Note that it really depends on what your characters are about. If your characters are the commanders and that's the role they're taking in the combat, then you really should focus on that element. Otherwise, though, it's best just to focus on the individual characters.

[luke]

When our characters are commanders, we frame things in terms of the big picture. I let them issue orders and set up their lines of battle. Once that's out there, I challenge them -- a phalanx of samurai break through your flank, you've got to deal with them! Or the advance up the wall is faltering, you've got to take a ladder.

Then it's their characters vs 10 samurai or an awful fight against defenders of a wall while they're stuck on a ladder.

All of your fights and challenges should distill down to what's available in the mechanics. The game really can handle quite a bit, but you have to frame your fiction in a particular way.

[TimP]

Has anyone looked at the Pendgragon battle rules as a point of inspiration? I know they're heavily centered on PC actions, without the PCs necessarily being in overall (or any sort) of command.

[Z-Dog]

yah, haven't read those in a year but I remember something about being able to channel your character traits into the battle


something like, fighting for honor (if you had a high honor) and duty gave your side advantages


it was part of "stop making these fights about fights and make them about YOU"

so you weren't defending a village to defend a village, you were fighting for chivarly, honor, glory, duty, etc.

---

It gives me this idea: when designing big Battles! look at the character sheets 1st and see what hits their BITS (just like we do with adventures)

spin the battle around those BITs to an appropriate degree

seems obvious, doesn't it? yet I have to start a whole thread to get there...sheesh.