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War from a soldier's prospective 2017-03-12 06:27:18 Post No. 52139054
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War from a soldier's prospective 2017-03-12 06:27:18 Post No. 52139054
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Ok so more and more recently I've been wanting to do is a game with large scale war, from the perspective of individual soldiers. Specifically, a scenario with high lethality and a feeling of overwhelming odds. You see it in fiction a lot, like in alien with the colonial marines, in HZD and terminator with the machine wars, Forever war, starship troopers, glitter rats, all you need is kill etc.
But the more I think about it, the more I'm sort of stuck on what system to use, or if there's even a good system you can use. War from a soldier's perspective is difficult to simulate because it is divergent from basically all the ideas of most systems; or at least how they deal with conflict.
1. In most systems, when you get in a fight it's you vs some specific other group and you both fight each other till one side wins. Usually, the conflicts are very limited in scale, a half dozen enemies vs a half dozen friendlies. In war, there are two sides but they're so huge that there's no way to win from an individual standpoint. Even in relatively small battles, you have hundreds on either side and winning is based more around controlling or destroying things. The major conflict comes in the form of incremental goals that lead to a major goal. Major goal is to take the beach, with increments of Getting out of the boat, crossing the beach, destroying a bunker, setting up a machine gun position, etc. During these increments, the enemies are a constant thing; you might kill one to get through a trench or hall, but there's always gonna be an endless line of them up there on that ridge shooting at you. At least till you get up there and clear it.
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>>52139054
2. Allies also prove a difficult thing to handle because there are huge numbers of them. Admittedly they're mostly gonna be running around in the background but their effects should still be felt. This can be somewhat helped by following the real set up of how the military works, keeping things parsed out to different groups and treating each enemy and allied group as a single unit on a larger scale map, but when you "Zoom in" to the player's unit, you still have the difficulty of them being with some hundred or more other people who are trying to complete the same objective. You have to strike a balance between the NPCs doing too much and the players just being able to hang back, or the npcs doing jack shit and the players doing everything.
3. Death, that is to say the death of any particular character, is a lot less important in the grand scheme of things. Characters will, in order to keep that feeling of lethality and overwhelming odds, no doubt have a short life span, so success has to be measured more in the overall success of the unit rather than the success of the individual. It's worrying that this could quickly cause a complete disconnect between players and characters.
Does anyone know any system that handles these sorts of things or have any ideas for me?
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>>52139056
Only War. You're an Imperial Guardsman in the 40k universe, and matches your description perfectly.
All it takes is a competent GM and you could do large-scale trench warfare easily.
System's fairly simple. Roll d100, add or subtract modifiers, compare to your skill in that area (eg. Weapons Skill, Leadership, Intelligence). If it's under, you succeed, if it's over, you fail. It has degrees of success/failure for every 10 over/under you roll.
Lots of fun, if everyone gets into the mindset.
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>>52139111
>Only War
Hows the combat speed?
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>>52139056
>3. Death, that is to say the death of any particular character, is a lot less important in the grand scheme of things. Characters will, in order to keep that feeling of lethality and overwhelming odds, no doubt have a short life span, so success has to be measured more in the overall success of the unit rather than the success of the individual. It's worrying that this could quickly cause a complete disconnect between players and characters.
I'm curious about that as well, as a player I'm not sure I would bother fluffing up characters if they have a lifespam of 1-2 sessions after some deaths, seem rather pointless.
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>>52139054
Godlike could be a good fit for you. Not too crunchy, deadly, straight forward mechanic. Just drop the super powers part.
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>>52139225
Its one of those things. Quick death means that characters that DO survive become inherently better. You get really attached to them. But it means the ones that die you don't really care about.
I've been thinking there might be a way to game people's interest with this. For instance, whenever you pass a certain point, such as surviving a mission or whatever, your character levels up AND becomes more fleshed out. In other words, you build your characters as they advance and those that live a long time become detailed and interesting while those that die quickly are little more than stat blocks.
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Twilight 2000
Fight back the bolshevik menace!
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>>52139209
>latepost
Combat speed is fast, once everyone learns the modifiers. Making quick cheat sheets is a good idea.
You also get an NPC under your control who can assist or operate "independently", so 4 players has 8 characters to make up a proper squad.
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>>52139305
Also, Only War is good for this as well.
Most of the Feats you buy with your XP have some personality traits that come with it.
At first you've got a fresh grunt out of boot, a blank slate. After a couple of missions you've got harder, and picked up some weird personality quirks along the way.
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>>52139054
That is bravery.
But this is true bravery.
Anyone can pull a trigger or march in a uniform, but it takes real guts to stand up for what you believe in, to fight for what's right. Remember this next time you see a same-sex couple holding hands in a public place, not just a sign of defiance but a sign of the changing times.
The good guys are winning!
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>>52140567
>Fighting in a war
>Not standing up for what you believe in
Tell that to the Red Army
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>>52140567
Try harder
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>>52140567
Is this some sort of pol reverse psychology? False flagging out of place equal rights declarations?
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>>52140706
I think it's just a joke satirizing images like this.
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>>52140567
>gay people are consistently in area where death is a real and direct threat, with a possibility being above 0.00001%, on a daily basis
People like you make me wish that was honestly the fucking case.
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>>52140567
They look like twins. Are they twins? Is this the fabled wincest?
>>52139054
I third Only War. Have you ever read "all guardsman party"? If not then follow the link:
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/All_Guardsmen_Party
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>>52139054
The problem is that these scenarios often have a hard time giving agency to the players, which can make them feel tedious and scripted in practice
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>>52139054
One of the other problems, and this part of why Clancy-esque technothrillers died is that an individual/squad really doesn't effect the outcome of the war. That's decided well in advance by strategy, politics, logistics, etc.
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>>52139054
This is not exactly what you asked for, but I liked Legion of Honor. Solitaire is fun, but I cannot find anyone willing to spend 12+ hours to play a campaign with me.
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