What systems/mechanics provide good rules for simulating progress of a war effort?How would you portray moving frontlines and exchange of territories during a war? Both from perspective of commanders and boots on the ground.Any games where you did something similar?
>>96471343What do you need it for?
>>96471456I'm preparing an interstellar war campaign where players are a merc band doing jobs for each faction involved in the conflict. I could just wing it and move the lines on the map as it feels right, but I was wondering if somebody came up with rules for simulating this sort of thing.
>>96471343Draw your instellar map, place down a few factions, and play a game of Risk. However that goes tracks the story structure of the war for your game, and adjust as needed. It tracks troop movements and big victories/losses just fine, and that's about all you actually need to know. Where are troops, who owns what, when did surprising victories happen. What is where when. It's all done after the game of Risk. Write down all the moves. Now call each turn a month or year or whatever and voila: you've got a timeline of how a war progressed. Which is all you really needed anyhow, because it's mostly a question of "who and what is where when, fighting whom, when the players did thing."
>>96471724Doesn't have to be Risk, specifically. I'm just saying "play any war game" and write the moves down, to build your chronology of how the war progresses. Then allow players to get involved and turn the tides by stealing the deathstar plans for that fight that your timeline says the rebels are going to lose, or whatever.
>>96471724that's awesome and probably the fastest way to do it other than something completely arbitrary like flipping a coin for each front
>>96471343"Stars without Number" has some grand strategy rules, which sounds like what you need, even present rules on how to incorporate your players into it but I havent tried them out myself so they might be ass
>>96471547IMO this is really a matter of presentation. You produce a map. Preferably a cool looking one and update it with visible changes each session. Its basically a graphic design/UI design task.
>>96472909What tools do you use for graphic design?How would you make a map like in the one in the OP?
>>96472984I'd probably use GIMP but thats because I've been GIMPing for 20 years and can crank out something like that pretty fast. Most photoshop-like software would work. If I was going to use a VTT I would break things down into elements.
>>96471343For fantasy, I would suggest ACKS. It uses hex map and has rules for mass combat that integrate into standard heroic adventuring. For sci-fi, I got nothing.
>>96472984I tend to use Inkscape, since it's easier to go back and tweak parts later
>>96473149>or fantasy, I would suggest ACKSit's also clunky as fuck, this comes pretty close to being the worst advice to anybody in a similar situationdon't listen to this anon he is a blantant and delusional acks shill
>>964713432d6 roll on, above 7 is advantage, below 7 is disadvantage, 7 is stall
>>96473743I don't find it to be clunky. The mass combat resolution is simple af.
>>96474214>The mass combat resolution is simple af.NTA but no it's really not. It requires you to re-do calculations on a round-by-round basis and is pretty time consuming for how uninteractive it is.t. Mass Combat Connoisseur
>>96473924You could add +/-1 for every player action swaying the battle one way or the other.
>>96474236I didn't think so? I'm not talking about Battles, I'm talking about Campaigns, where there it's just scouting, command ability, and BR calculations.
>>96476482Those didn't look particularly straight forward either, but the battles were a nightmare for how little input players had.
>>96472909This>>96472984You can do perfectly fine just with a random space picture, a couple of tokens for planets/star systems/stations/fleets/whatever with nametags and your VTT pen.Assuming the two sides are roughly equal having a nonsensical line of battle is perfectly plausible if they've been at it for a while. Pushes, retreats,failed plans will leave an ungodly mess behind.The most I'd do towards realism is mark down supply lines for large pops to find out where you have famine, where you have surplus and where you have massive battles taking place (and leaving juicy wreckage drifting in space.)Your choice of FTL method should well defined though. Too easy and the fronts can't hold. Too hard and your merry band will be hard pressed to navigate the fringes.
>>96477842OP hereI'm adapting the Dawnline Shore from Lancer, which is very friendly in terms of simple logistics, since it's 12 systems positioned in roughly straight line (when seen from the direction of galactic core) in two clusters separated by a gap of empty space. Reinforcements are coming from the rest of the galaxy at perpendicular angle. I'm changing some details, trying to make it more engaging that a single frontline, while also having it align well on a map, as well as fixing some of the setting's lore. Mostly I'm shrinking distances to reduce travel times, so that players can respond to developing situations without battles having to last for months for them to arrive in time.
>>96471547Check out Stars Without Number's sector creation and faction turns. I'm using it for something similar. RPGs originated as an additional part of large scale wargame campaigns with maps that linked battles. Tony Bath's Ancient Wargaming is an interesting read on the development of various processes and might give you some ideas. Talking with /hwg/ about various game's campaign systems might help.
>>96479064Thanks! That's what I was looking for. I'll take a look at them later.
