Re: [WW] Weapon reliability mechanics [was some silly argument]

["Dirk" <dirk00001@earthlink.net>]

> On Wed, 9 Oct 2002 00:08:57 -0400 deaconblue3@juno.com writes:
>
> > Unfortunately, this can be a major burden
> > mechanically
> > when engaged in large scale combat (unless you presume a certain
> > percentage of failure).
>
> Unfortunately, *d20* is a major burden for any combat involving more than
> say, 12 combatants.  i won't even mention actual large scale combat.
> Yikes.

I disagree - although it's time consuming, especially for the first couple
times you run a large-scale battle, both myself and my 4 players feel that
it works very well. We started the game with each PC running his own
character plus 3 NPCs, and there were 5 players at first, so even after the
first player dropped out and the death toll on NPCs got up, it's still at
about 15 characters total (on the PC side of things). The last battle we did
involved the PCs ambushing a small convoy containing close to 30
individuals, 2 trucks, 2 cars, 3 motorcycles with sidecars, and a Panzer II.
Although the battle took around 1.5 hours, maybe 2, it flowed very smoothly.
There has yet to be anything I'd consider a "small-scale battle" in my game,
and that wasn't even the largest one, but we haven't had any problems with
it so far. Sessions tend to run 3 hours (of actual game-play, more if you
count eating and BSing), with the first hour or so being role-playing, and
the second half being combat.
On the other side of things, I've spent a lot of time making up tracker
sheets for large numbers of opponents, as well as the same for the players
to quickly run their NPCs, which greatly speeds things up.
In case I've missunderstood this all and you meant "hundreds of combatants"
rather than "dozens of combatants", then yes, there's no way you're going to
run a effective d20 mass-combat. We tried doing that in a fantasy game just
recently - even with some home-made rules to speed things up (basically,
grouping creatures into units of 10 and attacking as full units), it took 4
weeks in all to finish the battle, which involved 1500+ undead, monsters,
mages, psions, and other evil-doers seiging a castle containing about half
as many "good guys".
If you're just trying to run a battle involving a platoon or so of
combatants, however, don't worry - if everyone knows the rules, it'll work
well.

-Brandon
http://www.mchome.net/dirk/weirdwars/