Most gamers tend to think of fantasy warfare as a clash that centers on heroes of outlandish skill, immense power, and blistering charisma. Wading through common soldiers to find other champions is equally pervasive in literature and cinema (Lord of the Rings, Troy, etc.). To that extent, DMs reserve massive warfare for characters of mid to high level. This article intends to look at a few ways of showcasing low level PCs in large scale warfare and the inherent advantages to taking your game in a warfare based direction.
Hired Scouts: Imagine that the drums of war are beating: armies are mustering, conscription is beginning, and the great game of thrones is reaching its zenith. However, military units take time to move and march. So, an enterprising Kingdom/ General/ Officer decides to do something unusual: hire adventurers. When you think about it, the versatility of a group of 1st -3rd level PCs make them an ideal group to throw into the wilderness and nose around. You can easily take things on an exploratory angle, or it can evolve in to one of the adventure ideas that follow.
Got There First: Military history is filled with examples of soldiers changing the course of a battle through intelligent decisions rather than military might. One of the easiest decisions to portray is holding a key piece of terrain. A PC’s skill role can very easily inform the party that a hilltop (or whatever) provides a critical vantage point (or supply point, etc.) and that losing it would doom the kingdom’s forward forces. This leaves the PCs to hold the hill against more traditional forwards scouts, whether they be kobolds, goblins, or a more traditional military unit. Success means that they gain a degree of renown, not for their godly combat prowess, but for tactical acumen.
Guerrilla With A Cause: Another thing that PCs can manage to do is nip at the heels of a major military force. The enemy makes efforts to guard its men and material, but a well run team of adventurers are an ideal group to destroy wagons, steal valuable equipment, and kill hapless sleeping soldiers. In a way, this is the more active alternative from the “Got There First” idea. There, they react to a situation and defend. Here, they are told to plan on their own means of being general nuisances. This kind of task can easily evolve into a full scale guerrilla warfare series of adventures where the PCs spend their time causing trouble for an occupying force. When word of their success spreads, the PCs could find themselves as beacons of hope for subjugated peoples or propaganda pieces to spur on the main military force.
War with Low Level Benefits: Having the PCs operate as a group of military troubleshooters gives the campaign a definitive direction and bond. You can run the game brutally and kill off characters if you want to emphasize the “War is Hell” aspect. Moreover, at low levels you can have them graze against the REAL powerful entities that populate their world. Sure, they might be being dealt with by others, but if you play long enough it will inevitably be the PCs that has to figure out how to deal with the high level Wizard. Moreover, once the PCs do reach those mid to high levels they’ll get the chance to turn the tide of battles single-handedly, but they’ll be doing it having had endured the terror of being a scrub during the early days of the war. And that will make the epic battle all the more satisfying.
Your post reminds me of one of my favourite campaigns from the past. Our characters had all been recruited into the army and were sent as advance scouts. Our goal was to explore a vast forest, perform reconaisance on the enemy and engage where possible. However, we had to ensure that no enemy survived as the kingdom we were fighting for wasn’t ready to engage in a massive war yet.
We had many small skirmishes, taking out patrols and enemy forward observation posts. That game eventually went to epic levels and we unofficially retired the characters at 27th level. Many accolades were awarded to our characters. My characters final full title with all honours was: Chas Lockwood, Warden of the North, Commander of the Kings Own, Champion of the Giant Wars and Companion of the Ghosts.
Wimwick´s last post: Split the Party
DM’s wishing to run a campaign like this can get some great inspiration from Glenn Cook’s Chronicles of the Black Company. The Black Company is a small, skilled mercenary band that operates like a medieval “special forces” unit. They have skilled warriors, rogues and middling or weak wizards, but the enemy often includes very powerful sorcerers or large armies.
It’s a great example of a military-style RPG campaign for low to mid-level pc’s.
wickedmurph´s last post: Writing an Adventure, 4e-style
@wickedmurph: The Black Company is great for that… so is the Black Company inspired Malazan book my Steven Eriksons (though only portions of those books focus on grunts in combat).
I completely agree. I’m a huge Erikson fan, but reading it as a DM, I would use his stuff as a handbook for incorporating high-level NPC’s into a game world. Guys like Icarium and Kharsa Orlong are more like natural disasters than characters.
I find the similarities between the authors quite interesting, and although Cook was definitely an influence on Erikson, I find both authors are drawing a lot from Vietnam-era military novels. The soldier in a high-magic setting like Cook’s and Erikson’s is fundamentally similar to the modern-era soldier, in that they have to deal with extremely powerful forces on the battlefield.
A powerful wizard or demon is pretty similar to a modern tank or helicopter – capable of dealing terrific damage and requiring specialized tactics to defeat – unless you have a tank or wizard of your own.
Another military-type series that might be good is the Damastes a Cimabue series, the Wizard King, Demon King and Warrior King, by Chris Bunch, now that I think about it.
wickedmurph´s last post: Writing an Adventure, 4e-style
Low-level war-based campaigns are perhaps the optimal time to run a very brutal kill-the-PCs-in-droves game, if ever there was one. The PCs don’t feel so bad because 1) its war, and 2) they are low level, so they don’t have as much invested in their characters and it is easy to make a new one.
As usual, I get 7 or 8 ideas for my game from reading this, thanks! I think you could actually build quite a lot more around the “grazing with the REAL powers on the battlefield” concept, giving the PCs a glimpse of what they could become but also reminding them of how utterly outmatched they are. Plus you could have a PC get very lucky and have a crowning moment of awesome and actually manage to take out (or at least help) one of the big bads!
What I think is great about these ideas is they force the party right into the crux of the fates of nations. In order to make low level PCs matter in a large scale war, they have to be involved in that one crucial fight or that special tide turning position. That’s where the good stories come from.
@Sultan: Yeah, if you want to really make a game gritty its a good time to be liberal with the body count. After re-reading my own article I was considering the possibility of running this kind of game with a ‘stable’ of characters (like a four man team) for each player where after the brutal low levels end each person has 1-2 dudes survive.
@Bart: Glad you liked the article. Having the PCs encounter the uber powers is a double edged sword: its a good foreshadowing device, but you have to temper it with them having the ability to affect things. One of my early DMing mistakes was to have sensible things occur between NPCs in “Cut Scenes” that really stole the limelight from the PCs. Its a very tough call sometimes, but just cognizant of it and you’ll probably do better than I did… oh… 12 years ago…