Linear Warriors/Quadratic Wizards > LW/LW in D&D.

[name_here]

Actually, in the later half of the series most battles involve combined arms where both channelers and thousands of normal people matter. And honestly even at Dumai's Wells, while the overall battle was ultimately decided by the surprise intervention of hundreds of channelers, it's not like the earlier part of the fight didn't happen.

[ACOS]

nice dodge on the rest of my post, Frank.

[Omegonthesane]

That being said, any and all of the major battles involve a fist-full of channelers laying massive waste to the area - case in point: Dumai's Wells.

Giving an example of a "mass" battle where unit composition and tactics didn't matter because some magical trump card got played is just as irrelevant as giving an example of people sitting around talking and not having a mass battle at all. There are of course lots of places in every high fantasy series where there wasn't a mass battle where the force composition and tactics of team hero mattered, but that doesn't mean shit. The point is to find a book series where every place in the book series fails to include a mass battle where the force composition and tactics of team hero matter. And tWoT fails that because Emmond's Field is a thing that happened. Also some other stuff, but that's not important because if a mass battle where the force composition and tactics of team hero matters is a thing that happens even once then the book series fails to be an example of a book series that you could satisfactorily handle without having access to some kind of mass battle shenanigans.

-Username17

Do you or do you not expect the same minigame to handle both a skirmish of a few hundred men and the Battle of Helm's Deep?

As has been said at least once, more eloquently, just having a working skirmish minigame would be a literally unprecedented achievement in TTRPG history before we even get into grand battle minigames.

[Foxwarrior]

Working skirmish minigame with like 30-100 troops per side? Sounds impossible. [/disingenuousness]

[Dean]

Since we're talking "hundreds" of men then the requirements are that it be able to run with something like 300, and the difference in complexity between modeling 30 men and 300 is considerable.

Your average Warhammer or Warmachine game does things in the 30 to 100 model range. It's when you multiply those numbers a few times that you're in pretty lonely territory. Flames Of War puts 5 or 10 models to a stand and I dont think I've ever seen someone field 300 men there. Napoleonics is the only exception I've ever seen.

[Chamomile]

I'm not entirely certain that scaling up from 300 to 3,000 or 30,000 would be very hard once you figure out how to scale up from the ~15-ish that D&D already handles. It seems like you could probably just repeat the process for credit. But since I don't actually know what the process would be, I dunno.

[Username17]

nice dodge on the rest of my post, Frank.

Who gives a shit about the rest of your post? FatR made a claim about the relative lack of large battles where the unit composition and tactics of the protagonist faction mattered and gave as an example a piece of historical fiction. Now whether you agree with his assessment of that story or not, the reality is still that D&D is primarily based on high fantasy rather than historical fiction, what with it being high fantasy rather than historical fiction. And I said that I couldn't actually think of a high fantasy book series at all that lacked mass battles where the unit composition and tactics of the protagonist faction mattered.

And you responded with some rambling bullshit where you also failed to mention any. So honestly, why am I responding to any part of your post?

I'm not entirely certain that scaling up from 300 to 3,000 or 30,000 would be very hard once you figure out how to scale up from the ~15-ish that D&D already handles. It seems like you could probably just repeat the process for credit. But since I don't actually know what the process would be, I dunno.

Exponential Scaling. Really, it's just that simple. Once you linearize logarithms, scaling from 300 to 3000 is just addition.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

An elaboration on what "generate approximately the same results as not using the mass combat system" means. We will use example of a composite unit of 100 peasant spearmen:

• If you're immune to 100 independent peasant spearmen, you're immune to the composite unit.
• If you can kill the 100 independent spearmen all at once in one attack, you can kill the unit in one attack
• The results of the composite unit's rolls are 10x less random, as one would expect from a basic understanding of statistics
• If you have something like "Great Cleave", "Whirlwind Attack", or "Fireball", you're going to hit this unit a bunch of times with each attack.

[ACOS]

nice dodge on the rest of my post, Frank.

Who gives a shit about the rest of your post?
[...]
And you responded with some rambling bullshit where you also failed to mention any. So honestly, why am I responding to any part of your post?

I'm not entirely certain that scaling up from 300 to 3,000 or 30,000 would be very hard once you figure out how to scale up from the ~15-ish that D&D already handles. It seems like you could probably just repeat the process for credit. But since I don't actually know what the process would be, I dunno.

Exponential Scaling. Really, it's just that simple. Once you linearize logarithms, scaling from 300 to 3000 is just addition.

-Username17

Well, then you have an argument with Lago, 'cause I suggested that very thing, which he immediately shit on.

And you still haven't really answered Omegonthesane's question (which was also my primary assertion, as demonstrated by the summary sentence in that post that you didn't deem worthy of comment):

Do you or do you not expect the same minigame to handle both a skirmish of a few hundred men and the Battle of Helm's Deep?

I mean, you've certainly danced around it, and it looks like you've implied something; but given that more than one of us just aren't seeing it, perhaps you could slum it long enough to give us some insight to your magnificent brilliance.

[FatR]

Second, how often warfare plays such a big role in fantasy plots, that both commanders' tactical skills and force composition matter, so we can have a real minwargame?

Well... we have Tolkien, Jordan, Brooks, Martin, and so on. Actually fuck it. Can you name a high fantasy series that doesn't call time to do a massive set piece battle where the force composition and tactical skills of the heroic team matter? Seriously, I'm coming up empty. Not in providing counter examples to your claim, but in finding a single example supporting your claim.

-Username17

Is that an "I'm just pretending to be retarded" joke?

In 550k+ words of LotR tactical military decisions are featured exactly thirce, two of them being dubious: Theoden's decision to go to the Helm's Deep, Theoden's final sally at Helm's Deep, and Denethor's decision to give a fight at the outer wall. Outcomes of the battles are decided primarily by stiking new alliances and bringing reinforcements at key moments, secondary by heroic feats of individuals and small groups on the battlefiled, and managing one's forces on the battlefield, while undoubtedly happening somewhere in the background, is of tertiary importance. And it is repeatedly stated that military-wise the outcome is predetermined, all battlefield successes of the good guys are meaningful only as far as they can be used to support the main quest.

George Martin's books so far had featured a grand total of one battle shown from a viewpoint of someone theoretically in commanding role: Blackwater. And that commanding role had counted for jack and shit in the end, the battle was decided by a political alliance struck way before it and a clever trick that made much of Stannis' force turn coats. Every other battle happens in the backrgound, from the viewpoint of common warriors, or the outcome is just told to us postfactum. Tactical acumen or lack thereof of certain personalities is a factor in the game of thrones, but it is passive factor, something that needs to be considered while measuring their value on the game board, but not something that the author pays any attention to. And not even a big one - "having a magic wolf" seriously impacts the war about as much as "having a military talent", and neither is remotely as important as making alliances and keeping your vassals in line. ASoIaF is Crusader Kings, not Total War, warfare is an afterthought.

As about Jordan, it has the problem I mentioned above related to DnD settings. His books have casters that can take over major states or wipe armies off the map in small groups. Come earlier parts of book 3 MC by himself can instantly massacre an enemy force of hundreds, and that force was not even massed before him, but scattered across the citadel he recently took over with a party of comrades (and some mooks that only really did cleanup). Jordan needs to pull force numbers that are absolute bullshit for a pre-railroad world to make armies of small men remotely relevant. They are still not very relevant - securing allegiances of various groups of casters, finding artifacts and so on is of far greater narrative and strategical importance; WoT is simply so very wordy, that gathering, movement and use of armies get plenty of attention anyway.
Also, Jordan sucks and not a writer to aspire to.

If by Brooks you mean Terry Brooks of Shannara books, then they are a primary example of warfare serving only as a background for quests that actually solve the conflicts depicted.

And so on.

[Chamomile]

In 550k+ words of LotR tactical military decisions are featured exactly thirce, two of them being dubious

Are you suggesting that D&D should only have one combat every two or three adventures so we can make room for walking through Midgewater Marsh and the Redhorn and other places which are perilous only in that they are very hard to walk through? Games have different needs from books. In-genre, combat is occasional, in-game, combat is like 60% of encounters if you aren't in a dungeon crawl. In the source material vital tactical decisions happen on-screen very occasionally, in a game, they will happen as often as mass combat does. Because sure, GRRM likes to gloss over strategy so he can continue masturbating to his 14-year old Mary Sue, but those battles still happen and players will want to actually be making the decisions we hear about secondhand in them.

ASoIaF is Crusader Kings, not Total War, warfare is an afterthought.

Yeah, ASoIaF is Crusader Kings, but Total War is Total War. And since both of those series' are enjoyed by people who play D&D, that gives us a good idea of what kind of gameplay D&D players are after, and it includes commanding armies.

Also: Jordan is indeed not my favorite author but whether you like it or not he is popular and his stuff is therefore source material. Unless you, personally, are the one designing the system (and since this is a general discussion, you aren't), "I don't like him" is not a good reason to reject a popular author from your source material.

[ACOS]

In 550k+ words of LotR tactical military decisions are featured exactly thirce, two of them being dubious

Are you suggesting that D&D should only have one combat every two or three adventures so we can make room for walking through Midgewater Marsh and the Redhorn and other places which are perilous only in that they are very hard to walk through?

No, he's balking at Frank's dismissive obstinance.
Nobody is denying that mass warfare happens, or that is isn't genre-appropriate. The point of contention is that company-sized skirmishes do also happen and are genre-appropriate; and that 100-vs-150 is a different thing than 25k-vs-30k (both in the narrative and in needs-of-the-game). Further, the existence of one does not invalidate the existence of the other.
And all this, despite Frank's claim to the contrary.

[sandmann]

And that commanding role had counted for jack and shit in the end, the battle was decided by [...] a clever trick that made much of Stannis' force turn coats.

Uhm, isn't that the textbook definition of "tactical acumen"?
And by this measure, Robbs decision of splitting his army and Greyjoys attack on the north could be counted as strategy/lack thereof. Just saying...

[Omegonthesane]

And that commanding role had counted for jack and shit in the end, the battle was decided by [...] a clever trick that made much of Stannis' force turn coats.

Uhm, isn't that the textbook definition of "tactical acumen"?
And by this measure, Robbs decision of splitting his army and Greyjoys attack on the north could be counted as strategy/lack thereof. Just saying...

That depends. The wildfire was tactical acumen, but far as I know the only clever trick used was Garlan Tyrell playing dress up as Renly to a bunch of superstitious peasants who might think reanimation of the dead was possible.

[Kaelik]

And that commanding role had counted for jack and shit in the end, the battle was decided by [...] a clever trick that made much of Stannis' force turn coats.

Uhm, isn't that the textbook definition of "tactical acumen"?
And by this measure, Robbs decision of splitting his army and Greyjoys attack on the north could be counted as strategy/lack thereof. Just saying...

Well that definitely does matter, but you see, FatR is playing a giant game of Cop Out.

Frank asked for a series in which the unit composition and tactics doesn't matter. FatR then proceeded to say "we never see a battle from the point of view of a commander but this once."

Because his implication is that all the battles that happened when we didn't see the point of view of the commander... somehow the tactics and composition didn't matter.

Which is bullshit of course.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Well, then you have an argument with Lago, 'cause I suggested that very thing, which he immediately shit on.

No, you fucking didn't. Aside from the fact that Dean was proposing a 4E-style metagame cop-out rather than an actual stack accumulator, even if we used his numbers as a baseline that doesn't necessarily mean that you would have a template for modular expansion. 3E D&D itself has a template for modular expansion; it's called the CR system. See, the basic template for combat challenges is 4 vs 4 belligerents but it can handle 4 vs 8 or 2 vs 6 or 4 vs 16 well enough. But that doesn't mean that it scales all the way. For a number of reasons (action economy, LWQW, interrupts and special exceptions, unique stat block tracking, etc.) 3E D&D can't really do 16 vs 16 or 4 vs 32, for example.

[Username17]

FatR, is your argument seriously "what about all the pages that don't have battles on them?" Because that's such a completely ridiculous argument that I'm finding it hard to properly make fun of you. It's like arguing against the inclusion of Dwarves because of all the characters who aren't Dwarves. Just by admitting that the number is less than 100%, you've forfeited.

ACOS, wtf are you even talking about? You cut out my entire argument to claim that I am too dismissive. At this point you are a parody of yourself.

[Orion]

It's like arguing against the inclusion of Dwarves because of all the characters who aren't Dwarves.

Is that really a bad argument though? I mean, if dwarves were massively problematic to model in your RPG, you'd be justified in cutting them and pointing out that many other high fantasy characters that are not dwarves are still available. Similarly, enough fantasy books have enough plot points that are not large army battles that you can stitch together a story out of high fantasy tropes without resorting to that one.

Also, FatR didn't explicitly develop the argument from obscurity, so I will. If the army fight doesn't happen on the page, and the overall flow of the battle si not visible to the narrator, you don't need a mass combat minigame. You just need Mass Effect 3 war assets. Tell players the orc horde is expected to be 500 strength points, +/- 100. All the various pets, armies, and mercs they can raise contribute points to the hero side. The side with more points on the field wins unless the PCs make a direct intervention that turns the tide. Boom.

As it happens I'll agree that most multivolume high fantasy series do have an actual mass combat visible to the narrators, but as mentioned above I'm not sure that matters. I'm also not sure D&D is even supposed to be high fantasy anyway. Sword & sorcery seems like a way better fit.

[Schleiermacher]

I'm also not sure D&D is even supposed to be high fantasy anyway. Sword & sorcery seems like a way better fit.

In my experience, 3.x Works out to Fantasy Vietnam scaling into Sword and Sorcery, then into the gonzo, pulpish sort of Wuxia, then into some sort of idiosyncratic magic-fuelled superhero stuff that, inasmuch as I've ever seen it in source material, most resembles the more fast-paced bits of Steven Erikson's Malazan books.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You just need Mass Effect 3 war assets. Tell players the orc horde is expected to be 500 strength points, +/- 100. All the various pets, armies, and mercs they can raise contribute points to the hero side. The side with more points on the field wins unless the PCs make a direct intervention that turns the tide. Boom.

And just what does 'direct intervention' entail? If I rally the army inside Gondor, how many War Points is that? Hell, why wouldn't that make me lose War Points if I'm fielding something like a cavalry? But wait -- what if my army is half archers and half cavalry? What's the change to my War Points?

Also: 'Direct Intervention that turns the tide', when used without elaboration, is such a weaselly rhetorical cop-out that you should be ashamed that you used it in that manner.

[Username17]

I'm not sure that matters. I'm also not sure D&D is even supposed to be high fantasy anyway. Sword & sorcery seems like a way better fit.

I thought that ACOS was going to win the thread for most stupid post by posting content-free challenges to stop "dodging" his earlier incoherent posts like he was Justin Bieber returned from the grave. But no. You sir, win the internet. You have actually said the stupidest thing on this thread. So, do you have any other words you want to carefully explain to us in no uncertain terms that you don't have a fucking clue as to their meaning? Because by explaining that something wasn't high fantasy because it was Sword & Sorcery, you've pretty explicitly shown that you do not know the meaning of either term in any context.

Seriously. Just go wikipedia these terms and come back when you're ready to join the conversation on the level of someone who knows what words mean.

-Username17

[Orion]

Wikipedia lists Elric, Conan, and and Mouser as iconic S&S stories. It cites Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and Wheel of Time as high fantasy. If you genuinely don't recognize these as distinct genres I have no idea what to even say to you.

EDIT: Suppose I grant that D&D ought to cover high fantasy content. What do you think of the rest of the post?

[mean_liar]

I'm pimping this draft. It's my attempt at a game incorporating this discussion, which has been had several times, and its predecessors.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_nu50 ... sp=sharing

I think one thing that this discussion is missing is the value of abstraction in extending the bounds of the possible. Right now it feels like the only way to collapse an enemy faction is to burn it to the fucking ground, rather than... undermine its popularity, bankrupt it, isolate its allies, or basically do anything other than swing a metaphorical hammer at it.

Sometimes that'd be what you need, but some people want to run assassin's guilds and thieves' guilds and merchant houses and not necessarily also be a general.

The rest of this stuff isn't so bad. Frank's (earlier) ideas really hit the center: exponential scale with abstract areas (also tied to scale), with abstracted effects. Your battle against a lvl3 creature is like a battle against a weaker but more resilient group of lvl2 creatures is like a battle against a very weak but much more resilient mass of lvl1 creatures.

Hell, I don't even think you should be having one man armies against the hordes anyhow. Not seriously. The horde goes around him. There's a reason why you need an army and lots of grunts to control territory, and it's because no matter how awesome that jet fighter is you can't have it everywhere at once: you can only meaningfully fight an army with another army of some kind. The presence of heroes should be a force multiplier, but not an equivalent.

[Username17]

Wikipedia lists Elric, Conan, and and Mouser as iconic S&S stories. It cites Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and Wheel of Time as high fantasy. If you genuinely don't recognize these as distinct genres I have no idea what to even say to you.

God dammit Orion, how the fucking hell did you get this so wrong? You know what? Never mind. Apparently you can't do even the most basic due diligence in researching "what words mean" after it has been pointed out to you that the primary problem with your entire framework is that you obviously don't know what words mean.

Here, to help you get over your problem of having no idea what words mean and also having no idea how to look them up, I will just focus in on the first sentence of the genre overview on Wikipedia:

High fantasy is defined as fantasy fiction set in an alternative, fictional ("secondary") world, rather than the real, or "primary" world.

Got that? From a literary standpoint, whether fantasy is "high" or "low" has to do with the amount of world building in it, not in what actually happens in the stories. All D&D worlds made for the purpose, whether they be Greyhawk, Spelljammer, Birthright, Eberron, or Planescape are high fantasy by definition because they are fantasy worlds. Most Sword and Sorcery books are high fantasy, and those that are not tend to be set in Greece, England, or Japan. But it is the fact that the setting is Nottingham or Thrace which makes it not be high fantasy, and not any particulars about the adventures being had.

And really, until you wrap your mind around "what words mean" in this or any other context, we can't even have a conversation with you.

EDIT: Suppose I grant that D&D ought to cover high fantasy content. What do you think of the rest of the post?

Like the part of the post I singled out, or indeed this section of your latest post that I am responding to now, it was basically gibberish. There's the parts that are wrong, and there are the parts that aren't even wrong because they don't convey enough meaning to have a truth value.

Today I was admitting a woman who had decided to end her life by taking well over the acceptable dosage of mephedrone. Yet despite her suicidal levels of depression and having taken enough amphetamines to go out the other side of mania into near unconsciousness, she was still making more sense than you were in that post.

Seriously? Frequentist arguments? Are you out of your damn mind? I guess we shouldn't have wizards, because they almost always show up in stories one at a time and don't count. That is the dumbest thing on this whole thread that wasn't just some ranch dressing away from being a proper word salad like most of the rest of your post.

-Username17

[Schleiermacher]

On the other hand, the closest corresponding sentence in the article "Sword and Sorcery" defines that subgenre in spesific contrast to "high fantasy":

Sword and sorcery (S&S), or heroic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy and historical fantasy, generally characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent conflicts. (...) Unlike works of high fantasy, the tales, though dramatic, focus mainly on personal battles rather than world-endangering matters.

So perhaps we can agree that these are somewhat vague and inconsistently used terms, that Wikipedia is not the be-all-end-all authority on their usage in any event, and that semantic arguments aside, the distinction Orion tries to get across between Conan and Elric's personal quests for glory and adventure vs. Frodo and Rand's quests to rally the Forces of Good to save the world from the Forces Of Evil (tm) is one that does exist and is relevant to this discussion.