WAR | MAKER as an ICRPG module


#1

I’ve been looking at WAR | MAKER from the perspective of someone wanting to integrate it into their existing ICRPG campaign. For me, that’s because my time is happily locked into an existing campaign, and I think it would be cool. I’m running a session this evening, so I thought it’d be fun to open this up to the shield wall.

When your ICRPG player manages to recruit troops under their command, they can command these troops using WAR | MAKER rules. Effectively, you gain a ‘COMMAND FORCE’ action, and your character is the commander described in WAR | MAKER. The fact that WAR | MAKER lets only 1 force act per turn, allows some players to become commanders without stealing turn time from other players. It even opens up interesting possibilities where your commander might not even be present for a certain battle. You could roleplay as a goblin squad for the next session.

The biggest conversion trick then is d20 vs. binary dice. I think the easiest rule is this:

1 HIT from WAR | MAKER = 1 EFFORT from ICRPG.

This effectively means that FORCE members are 1 HP minions as far as the power level of your heroes and monsters is concerned. I’m ok with that. In fact, I love 1 HP minions. Especially with the REINFORCE action I think this works great.

The next questions is: how about rolling to hit? WAR | MAKER resolves attacks with one roll. ICRPG uses two. (Attempt, then effort). Personally, I’m all for ditching attempt rolls and only do effort, just like the RPG Into the Odd does. But that’s too core to change mid-campaign. So instead, here’s my house rule as a compromise.

A FORCE must roll ye olde d20 before rolling for hits. A FORCE has +X to ability rolls as appropriate.

This means that a full force is expected to dish out damage equal to an ICRPG weapon user of the same ability level. (average of 1d6 = average of 6 binary dice) So effectively, a single FORCE is equal to a mercenary. They do become weaker as they take hits, but they can reinforce to compensate.

Ok cool. So these two houserules are all I plan to use for me to use WAR | MAKER as an ICRPG mod. I’m very excited about introducing the WAR | MAKER rule that each player gets one turn, instead of each character. I think this allows players who are so inclined to have as many companions, hirelings and FORCES as they like, without it slowing down the game for the other players.


#2

As those things go, the session was pure roleplay, where characters took their time to reflect on their recent grueling encounters and take care of some personal business. When I introduce forces, I’ll let you all know how it went.


#3

Can’t wait to read how it went!


#4

This looks great! I’m excited to see how it works out. I’ve been interested in tinkering together something I’m calling WAR l CORE, a mashup of the two games for brutal wargame style RPG fun. Your approach to merging the two is really interesting and novel and helps me out a lot. Thanks.