Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[Averjoe]

Running an adventure this weekend that will feature my first foray into mass combat. At this point it looks like 6 PCs and 12 Allies against 40 opponents.

Now, my question is, what is the best way to run this?

I've read over the Mass Battles rules and I've read the posts I could find on mass battles in the forums, but I'm not sure if I should run this with the mass battle rules, or just run it as normal combat allowing the PCs to control small groups of allies.

Any hints, tips, or suggestions? I'm a noob in the woods.

[longarms]

My suggestion, after watching other players literally get angry when our GM was running the mass battle rules as written, is to not use the mass battle rules as written. Either use an actual combat like you suggested or use Wiggy's guide is a great alternative, if you can't find it, PM me and I'll send you a copy.

I ran a mass battle using wiggy's guide with some success, you can read about it at http://pisian.com/071908.html Nobody got angry, although I still end up with some comments like this one "EDIT: removed cynical comment on mass battle rules due to offensive language", which I can't recall receiving in any normal combats or normal chases.

[Wiggy]

The Mass Battle rules require a lot of cinematic interpretation from the players and GM (like the Chase rules), but they are designed to be abstract. Personally, I love them. For the battle size you're proposing, play it out on the tabletop. Everyone will have a blast. Using the MB rules for small skirmishes like that tends to make the results skewed (how can we lose a token if we're the only people left?"
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Wiggy
Creative Director Triple Ace Games

[Clint]

Yeah, Wiggy's right. For this scale, the Mass Battle rules are overkill really; it's meant for hundreds of opponents, while the system can handle dozens in normal combat easily.

Heck, each player only has to keep track of two NPCs, and they act when the player does. The GM just has to divide up the foe into reasonable groups for him to keep track of and run with it.
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Clint Black
Savage Worlds Core Rules Brand Manager

www.peginc.com

[Averjoe]

I had a feeling that was going to be the general consensus, but I wanted to check. It seemed to me the number of combatants was right on the line between too cumbersome for regular combat and too small for mass battles rules.

I suppose I will go ahead and run it as regular combat and see how it goes. Learn by doing.

Thanks for the replies. If anyone else has any tips feel free to continue to chime in. I need all the help I can get.

[shadd4d]

Check out my post at this thread; I had 5 players plus their allies against an Injun horde led by 2 Wild Cards in my DL:R game. One of the bad guys and others of my players were AB-types, but it was easy to integrate in using the extras rules. The other thing I did was divide down the enemies, instead of having all indian braves act on one card, as they were attacking a fortified village, I divided it up by quadrants and had each quadrant act on a different card to make it more manageable, just as Clint said above. Or maybe you have a set of unique extras to act as unit commanders a la the old champions/heroes of Warhammer, and they are the ones who would get a card. Basically, there are 3 types of battles, at least as how I run SW: normal, mass combat and a slight hybrid of the two as a middle ground for battles that are showdown/skirmish level between 2 company+ sized elements. Not knowing your setting or circumstances or terrain, I'm not sure which advice would help you out best. Also take a look at the old showdown rules, which is just trying to break down combat into manageable chunks although I am at askance to actually find them these days.

If I had it to do over again, I would have made up some unit cards using the SW allies sheet prior to the game, either based on the players' defensive strategy or based on how best to divide it up to give each player a group of minions.

Hope this helps.

Don
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Don

"But there is a difference between fear and horror. An important difference.
Fear is when you worry about what might be.
Horror is when you are certain." Dannyboy01

[Ian]

I ran 6 PCs with 14 allies (extras) against 3 wild cards with 24 extras and it played out very well. Make sure that you are really organised (my combat involved muskets so I had counters to note reloading etc). Ian