In which system have you been able to run the biggest combats without abstraction?. For me it was and still is AD&D 1st edition at low level.

In Age of Heroes I've ran battles with 300 characters on the board- using the complete RPG rules without exception.

Nothing that big with HERO System, I think it topped out around 50 characters.

Quote from: gleichman;572091In Age of Heroes I've ran battles with 300 characters on the board- using the complete RPG rules without exception.

Nothing that big with HERO System, I think it topped out around 50 characters.

For me the biggest was probably in 1E.


I should say though, that in 4E I was able to do remakably large battles with minions. What I did was assume that the characters were swamped by groups of 50 or 100 minions at a time and deducted the number of dead minions from the grand total of the enemy army.

1E was similar considering the weaker soldiers were often 'one hit wonders' from fireballs, etc...

I once suffered through a 3e (Iron Heroes) fight of 60+.  I had a brawler with cleave and the ability to one-shot guys.  Still took all night...

The largest battle we have had was set on a 4' by 8' table, complete with a valley sculpted out of Styrofoam, and contained upwards of 750 enemies. We used 3rd Edition D&D rules.

The battle pitted our three heroes (along with some allies) against a base camp of followers of Tiamat including three red dragons, and numerous dragonspawn and kobolds. There was some abstraction where each kobold miniature represented five actual kobolds. Kobolds accounted for the bulk of the enemy forces.

Probably either AD&D or original D&D.

But for really large battles I'd probably run it with tabletop miniatures rules (Chainmail, et cetera).

when you are a complete moron like myself, you have 5 sessions in a row go by playing a mass combat of a giantclan and thralls (some 80 creatures) fighting 200 warriors led by heroes in a complex skill based system.

Not my brightest hour.

Quote from: gleichman;572091In Age of Heroes I've ran battles with 300 characters on the board- using the complete RPG rules without exception.

Nothing that big with HERO System, I think it topped out around 50 characters.

You also have the ability to play multiple simultaneous winning games of Chess without a board.  For someone without that ability, do you think they could do the same feat with Age of Heroes?  I'm asking because I'm imagining AoH to be a complex system.

Quote from: andysyk;572087In which system have you been able to run the biggest combats without abstraction?. For me it was and still is AD&D 1st edition at low level.

By "without abstraction" do you mean individual scale, where each creature is individually represented on the map? If so, probably AD&D since that was the last time I was motivated to do such a thing.

I've used Battlesystem for AD&D, Downtown Militarized Zone for Shadowrun, and Great Rail Wars for Deadlands, but I think by far the system I've run the largest combats for "as-is, no abstractions" is AD&D, probably about 100 per side.

Quote from: CRKrueger;572151You also have the ability to play multiple simultaneous winning games of Chess without a board.

I think I claimed being able to win a game, not mutiple simultaneous games (that's like Grandmaster level stuff). And to be honest, I'm not into chess like I used to be, and might not be able to pull off that stunt off today.

Quote from: CRKrueger;572151For someone without that ability, do you think they could do the same feat with Age of Heroes?  I'm asking because I'm imagining AoH to be a complex system.

I'm of the opinion that complexity isn't a issue once you've mastered a system, after all we've all learned more complex things than any RPG.

But to answer you question about AoH, with respect to combat it's a d100 system requiring one to add/subtract double digit numbers, it also requires one to be able to divide the percentile range by half, 20% (1/5) and 5% (1/20). Oh, and you'll need a map and minis or its equal.

If you can do that, you're golden. Unlike many games it's not an exceptions based system and combat flows logically with more importance attached to position than is common in RPGs.

Quote from: andysyk;572087In which system have you been able to run the biggest combats without abstraction?. For me it was and still is AD&D 1st edition at low level.

Savage Worlds.

Without abstraction, we had a party of five versus...40 combatants, I think.

I'm sure we could run bigger, it's just never come up.

AD&D 1E, battle with 500 goblins once, took all day but we did it.

Behind Enemy Lines (the new one), large land battle for it we broke out Flames of War and my Miniatures did the setup, battle and had the players play as heroes during the battle, was quite the experience.  Two whole divisions Americans vs. Germans.

Well, if War Law counts then 500 combatants.

Otherwise Castles and Crusades with about 150.