Large Scale Battle idea

mechanics
inspiration
#1

Greetings!

I just thought of another possible way to represent large scale battles and other macro situations using ICRPG. The idea isn’t original, and I must attribute it to a different system (Fate). Also, I found only one other thread discussing this, and couldn’t see in it something akin to this beyond representing it as Chunks, but there may be many others my search Fu couldn’t detect, so my apologies if it’s been discussed before.

The pitch is that anything could be a character. That said, a group, battalion, army, or even a country or planet could be represented as a single character, with individual characters (or elements) represented as its Loot items in its own Character Sheet! As an example, maybe you have Rome, with such items as Senate (+2 Wis), Centurions (+1 Con), Spymasters (makes Stealth checks EASY) etc.

#2

This is also a great idea for people that like more mechanical faction turns. For the GM turns in between sessions.

Or for player factions if your group is doing that kind of campaign.

#3

Sounds very much like the Origins of RPGs…funny how things go full circle. Not a fan of Kotaku, but it was a really interesting read when I needed a time sink.

#4

I saw that article recently too, it was a very interesting read.

The design philosophy is the most interesting part. It seems like even from the very beginning they had the two major lines of thinking; between strong mechanics or strong narration.

It’s also good to read about some of the darker parts of the start of our hobby. It’s better to see them all as humans and not something above all that.

#5

I remember way back in the day, many people had bad opinions about Gygax, but that all went behind the scenes with WotC.

Don’t remember the reasons though.