Quote from: Larsdangly;1028591I don't really understand what this means, but I can guess. If you are resolving a battle in an abstract fashion (basically, talking), and there are no rules involved, then I suspect it could go one of two ways: First, both sides might accept some sort of implicit 'rules' about what each side can or can't accomplish in a loosely understood period of time ('my troops hide in the woods and then swoop down on their column as it passes', etc.), and ideally both sides agree about how this should work and accept each other's statements and judgements, until it is obvious to both which side should win (or whatever other outcome should happen). Sort of like Kriegspiel, except instead of judges the players and DM are using their own super ego's as referees. Second, it could turn into a railroad situation where the DM makes you listen to his or her interminable blather for a half hour before telling you what happens to your characters. In some utopian universe it would always work the first way, but my life has made me cynical - I think resolving dramatic, uncertain events without rules (and usually some kind of die rolls to settle uncertain things) will always or almost always devolve into railroading nonsense.

Intermediate between those two extremes is where the battle plays out at the level of the PC's involvement. If they're on the field of battle that means X number of opponents is going to end up in range and you're going to have a skirmish between the PC's and their opponents in the midst of the larger battle, during which reinforcements from either side might show up in range of the PC's or they might get a lull of a few moments or even minutes as there's nothing else in range unless the PC's act to engage a new set of opponents.

I could even see the GM using as a guide for the battle's outcome the number of times each side has to send in reinforcements to either further hinder or aid the PC's in X amount of time. If the PC's wipe out everything the GM throws at them during the time with no need for aid and are even looking for more targets to take out, then the battle is probably going very much in the PC side's favor (relatively speaking... going in the PC's favor could just be that the PC's 300 men still hold the pass against the 300,000 strong Persian army with minimal casualties, not that their force can ultimately win the day while outnumbered 1000 to 1).

If both sides have reinforcements coming into the PC's skirmish then the battle's probably suffering equal losses (meaning the bigger force can win by attrition if it chooses the meat grinder path to victory).

If the PC's are constantly needing reinforcements (extra clerical healing, a wizard dropping a fireball on the enemy from outside the skirmish proper, infantry to screen the PC's while they do a little healing, etc.) then the enemy is probably scoring disproportionate casualties on the PC's side.

After X period of time, give the PC's an update on how the battle seems to be going around them (is the battlefield littered with their allies' bodies with only a few left standing or fleeing? Are they instead hearing the blare of the enemy's horns sounding a retreat and friendly units of soldiers are rallying to your position to learn what your next orders are?). Give them the opportunity to decide their next move (do they see the battle is hopeless and withdraw from the field? Do they order a charge upon the retreating enemy's flanks?) and roleplay that out accordingly.

In the case of them deciding the battle is hopeless and they retreat they'll probably have to face at least a few more foes before they can clear the battlefield to relative safety. If they decide to stay regardless and fight to the bitter end then their final hopeless battle deserves to be played out in full against ever greater waves of enemies descending upon them. If they pursue the enemy a lucky arrow could still take out one of the PC's before they get to celebrate victory. If they let the enemy retreat without further fighting there is still the grizzly task of sorting the living from the dead and what to do with any prisoners taken.

* * * *

By contrast if the PCs are simply in command of the army and directing it from the generals' tent then I find it fairly easy to use a few proxy skirmishes to determine the battle. If the PC's send their cavalry to strike the goblin army's right flank, use a proportional number of cavalry and goblins to the actual number (40 cavalry vs. 100 goblins would be 4 cavalry vs. 10 goblins) and use that outcome as the success of the tactic (i.e. if you lose two cavalry, kill 6 goblins and the other 4 fail their morale checks then the cavalry smashes the goblin's right flank, killing 60 and routing the rest , but takes 20 casualties in the process).

Keep it interesting for the PC's by letting them roll the dice for their side and run as many such proxy skirmishes as needed to determine the victor.

Even as a GM I'm not a big fan of pure GM fiat on the victory of a battle, particularly one that the PC's are taking a part in. It has always felt like it was left to the GM telling a story about what happened instead of just running the world as the PCs interact with it.

Even if their part in the battle is comparatively minor (say 4-5 low-level PC's in some completely anachronistic battle with over a million combatants duking it out over a ten mile front), the results of the PC's skirmishes in that battle will still determine how they and those allies in immediate proximity to them likely fare in the battle... and for some PC's the outcome of the immediate skirmish may be all that actually matters to them anyway (ex. a peasant hero fighting alongside a levy from his village may not care if the overall battle is won or lost, just that he and his kinfolk survive to go home again when the lords are done with their pissing contest over who gets to collect taxes from them).

Short version... if the PCs are involved it deserves to be played out in some fashion where they have the level of influence their PC's would have on the battle itself.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1028251Wow; you really don't understand anything about Panzergrenadier. And the point of my post was clearly the opposite to what you are suggesting

I was agreeing with you. I was not suggesting that you were advocating arithmetic exercises nor that you thought or that Panzergrenadier is a simple arithmetic exercise.

Quote from: Bren;1028098Yes. I just can't get very excited about systems that are simple exercises in arithmetic abstraction.

The first word, "Yes" was supposed to be the tip off that I was agreeing with you. The second sentence was expanding (or expounding if you prefer) on why I agree.

Quote from: Bren;1028605I was agreeing with you. I was not suggesting that you were advocating arithmetic exercises nor that you thought or that Panzergrenadier is a simple arithmetic exercise.

The first word, "Yes" was supposed to be the tip off that I was agreeing with you. The second sentence was expanding (or expounding if you prefer) on why I agree.

Got it; my bad

Quote from: Larsdangly;1028612Got it; my bad

No worries. Next time I'll try to agree harder.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1028591I don't really understand what this means, but I can guess. If you are resolving a battle in an abstract fashion (basically, talking), and there are no rules involved, then I suspect it could go one of two ways: First, both sides might accept some sort of implicit 'rules' about what each side can or can't accomplish in a loosely understood period of time ('my troops hide in the woods and then swoop down on their column as it passes', etc.), and ideally both sides agree about how this should work and accept each other's statements and judgements, until it is obvious to both which side should win (or whatever other outcome should happen). Sort of like Kriegspiel, except instead of judges the players and DM are using their own super ego's as referees. Second, it could turn into a railroad situation where the DM makes you listen to his or her interminable blather for a half hour before telling you what happens to your characters. In some utopian universe it would always work the first way, but my life has made me cynical - I think resolving dramatic, uncertain events without rules (and usually some kind of die rolls to settle uncertain things) will always or almost always devolve into railroading nonsense.

Well I was thinking free kriegsspiel - with plenty of die rolls. When I've seen free kriegsspiel the referee would declare a probability then roll a d6. That's what I do. (Along with resolving stuff around the PCs using the game's standard mechanics).

These days I just prefer to abstract all the non-PC stuff to groups that just roll off against each other (with the roll for each one based on their size/strength). I've moved more and more toward simplicity.

Quote from: estar;1028012In general Macris knows his stuff and in every respect except for the die roll itself he got it covered. The damage done by 120 guys taking a whack isn't a linear probability but a bell curve. But using a d20 the way Macris did is a more playable than the chart lookup that Battlesystem has you do.

It's certainly the case that if you take any one combat round between any one unit, the use of the 1d20 is not accurate, no!

Instead of dealing either 1 or 0 points of damage, the unit should deal some fraction. The original version of D@W (unpublished) did just that, just like Battlesystem. But my playtesters didn't enjoy that; they wanted it to "feel" like a d20 RPG.

Fortunately, Domains at War isn't simulating one unit against unit in one round. It's simulating, e.g. 12 units against 12 units over typically 6-12 rounds. At that scale, you do get the appropriate bell curve of results. If you zoom in on any one unit in any one round, the effects are more random than they "ought" to be, but at the level of a whole battle it's great.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1028583I'd say the most important first-order question about 'abstract' approaches to this is, does the DM decide in advance who is going to win and/or how the battle will unfold, or is the outcome something that emerges from some sort of rules-bound process.

That is an interesting question! It becomes even more interesting when you're doing historical or quasi/pseudo-historical gaming.