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

[ACOS]

Damn it, Frank - why do you have to be so pedantic and doctrinaire? (edit: I was giving you too much credit)
Seriously, I know you're smarter than this.

Orion was clearly trying to highlight a distinction; and just because his specific verbiage isn't necessarily to your liking doesn't mean that the distinction isn't real, significant, and (in regards to his intent) obvious. If you wanted to say something useful, you'd address the ideas - which any imbecile can identify - instead of being ticky-tack over the verbiage.

You've also been challenged with the task of simply acknowledging the distinction between mid-sized skirmishes and nation-swallowing legions.

When you refuse to actually discuss the content, and instead opt for attacking verbiage and otherwise get hung up on minutia, you miss the "big picture" and the point. And the degree to which you've now taken this is absurd (which is actually par for the course; I don't know why I'm surprised).
You're allowed to reconsider your position; no one will think less of you. You are similarly allowed to discuss the topic without already having hard answers - that's the purpose of discussion.
Or you can continue to hide behind your pedantry; but at this point, that just means you have nothing useful to say.


@ Schleiermacher:
Remember who you're talking to there.

[Orion]

This is the actual first sentence of the wikipage: "High fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy fiction, defined either by its setting in an imaginary world or by the epic stature of its characters, themes and plot. Okay, there are two ideas there -- one about the ontological status of the setting (the one you're discussing) and one about the nature of the actual story (the one I'm discussing). Let me stop here and note that D&D does not have epic plots or themes as it is usually played and it's unclear whether it is even capable of supporting them. That's an aside because I'm aware that this isn't the half you're interested in.

The wikipage itself is deeply incoherent when it talks about setting. As you quoted, it says that high fantasy takes place in an alternate/secondary world, but it goes on to list three ways a world can be secondary. And you know what? The third way of being scondary is by not being secondary at all. A "wainscot" is seriously just an obscure or little-known part of our world. Some of their examples do have some kind of supernatural barriers or metaphysical distinctions. London Below in Neverwhere is effectively another plane even though it is also in London. But the rest? Click through to their wainscot article and they're citing Harry Potter. Harry Potter is not another world is any sense. You can seriously just *walk* to any location in the books, except the ones you need a boat to get to. They cite The fucking Borrowers, which is about small people living in a completely normal house that is also occupied by regular size people. The Highlander movies are cited despite not even taking place in hidden locations. Nothing is behind a glamour, or most easily accessed by teleport, or too small for humans. In short, wikipedia is not any kind of authority on setting and you can go fuck yourself for even trying to appeal to them. Their definition makes it trivially true that D&D does high fantasy, because it makes essentially every story with any kind of supernatural element "high fantasy." I think it's pretty obvious that this isn't what you have in mind. Now, if you *really* want to shackle yourself to fucking wikipedia: Harry Potter has literally one scene you could call a mass combat. It happens at the very end of book seven, involves literally entire dozens of people, and does not matter at all. The protagonists don't even participate in it. Twilight doesn't have a mass combat because the big fight never happens. I'm not sure The Borrowers even has a squad level combat.

Are you ready to stop moving goalposts and admit that when you brought up high fantasy in the context of a thread about mass combat, you were really obviously talking about the high fantasy plot structure, with its emphasis on continent-spanning warfare; special blood, demigods, and prophecies; ancient artifacts; and supernatural evil on a scale that existentially threatens all human society?

[Omegonthesane]

Ninja'd by Orion but it bears repeating.

We've already had, repeatedly, the discussion about how "high fantasy" in literature terms is not the same as "high fantasy" as used here when discussing whether a game setting is high or low fantasy.

Frank, you are being an ass and (more to the point) you are categorically wrong. As a sometime fanboy I am deeply disappoint. Stop it.

[Orion]

Omegon,

there are actually three ideas that fall under "high fantasy." In a game setting it really has to do with the amount of and power level of supernatural ability. In the analytic literary sense Frank brings up, it has to do with the relationship between the fictional setting and the real world. I'm talking about the other literary sense of high fantasy, as a set of plot tropes. It's different from what you propose is that superhero-style stories may happen in a "high magic/high fantasy" game setting but they aren't "high fantasy" plots.

[Kaelik]

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.

I can't tell if this is a continuation of your stupid frequentist arguments or supposed to be separate.

Assuming it is separate, both Wheel of Time and Game of Thrones (well and also Tolkien, so basically everything) fail this test. (Or pass it, whatever.)

In Wheel of Time, the battle is covered during the battle by the commander and the composition and tactics of the army is important on many many occasions. They have a main character Point of View Dude who explicitly has the ability to direct armies of tiny men better in order to win. That's one of his actual powers that makes hims a valuable contributor. (And many other battles where he is not present are won or lost by force composition and tactics. And those battles do in fact matter.)

And in Game of Thrones, many many many battles are not described on the page "while" they are happening, but who fucking cares. It's a goddam book, How is reading a letter about how the battle went in which force composition and tactics mattered in any appreciable way demonstrating that it is less important than the same thing being done in character?

[Mask_De_H]

But literary and gaming high fantasy are the same thing, folks. D&D is high fantasy for levels higher than 6th, possibly earlier. The prevalence of magic and categorically evil shit like undead and outsiders necessarily makes things play out like literary high fantasy. You're conflating high and low magic settings (which we have talked about) with high and low fantasy settings (which we rarely talk about). 98% of fantasy heartbreakers are high fantasy, even if they're low magic. Even low magic worlds like Abercrombie's and GRRM's have skirmishes and large battles.

The thing is, the fantasy or magic level doesn't actually matter for deciding if there's going to be a mass combat minigame. No magic, historical fantasy in the Iron Age, the Middle Ages or the Renaissance would still require a mass combat minigame. Ignoring Frank's pedantics, there is a need and a desire for large scale combats. They may be glossed over in the books we draw material from, but it's been shown they still exist. Nobody's done it well, but damn near everybody takes a swing at it. I'd personally work for skirmish level and if you can scale up mathematically, then there's no reason not to.

EDIT: Omegon, I'm pretty sure Frank said the same system would work skirmishes and the Battle of Helm's Deep. He didn't say it straight up because he was busy insulting people's ideas, but there's this:

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

[Omegonthesane]

Orion,

Correction appreciated, I was trying to support the general point that Frank is fucking around with semantics to avoid adcually discussing the actual point. There's legitimate room for confusion there, of course, as "high fantasy as in epic narrative romanticising a bygone age that was actually rather terrible" is half the source material while "high fantasy as in superheroes" is what D&D games actually look like past level 6.

Of course I'd settle for Frank ceasing to dodge my earlier question:

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?

This one, right here:

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?

This one:

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?

If nothing else, it's a lot easier to imagine PCs derailing having a meaningful effect on skirmishes with their actual character abilities, as opposed to huge combats involving tens of thousands. (And I mean their combat-time abilities - obviously a necromancer whose army of tens of thousands is all the dead bodies they have reanimated over the last like 3 months is using their abilities to have a meaningful strategic effect, but not a unique one like emitting fireballs in a world with no frag grenades.)

[Orion]

Kaelik,

I didn't make any kind of claim about the contents of wheel of time or game of thrones, at least not intentionally. That would have been foolish, because I don't know what is in either of those series. I'm saying that I agree with the principle articulated by FatR in that I don't believe you need a mass combat minigame to run a game inspired by war stories unless army battles took place on screen under the tactical leadership of named characters. I make no representation about the extent to which any particular series matches his description.

[mean_liar]

Either providing a zoomed-in "characters fight officers/engage in a series of challenges, each risking their Victory Points against the opposition's" where scaling up the challenge increases the risk:reward ratio, or "you actually have to fight hordes of tiny men" are fine ways of representing mass combat.

I'd argue that the latter feels more epic if done appropriately. Killing hordes of tiny men is awesome.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I believe the answer is "yes".

Once you have that exponential-scaling composite-unit system that's necessary for wars of tens of thousands, you can use it for battles of hundreds.

[Dean]

Aside from the fact that Dean was proposing a 4E-style metagame cop-out.

What?

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

Oh man its just a simple math function! So easy! That's why the Tome mass combat rules are something we all use and not a ruleset which has been declared nonfunctional by its creators. If only they were around to tell you that fitting a scaling mass combat system into D&D won't be easy but rather absurdly difficult. Wait here's one now!

I've never seen a good RPG mass combat system. Ever.

Actually good mass combat systems are really hard to do. The major players in that arena (such as Warhammer) are actually not very good for the most part. So to make a good RPG mass combat system, you have to design a game that is actually very hard to design, and you have to make it play nicely with another game that was designed to care about very different things.

-Username17

Slotting a mass combat system into D&D will require dealing with massive incongruities between scales. It will mandate meshing characters who can Dimension Door and cast Sunburst every six seconds with huge squadrons of men with every monster in the MM. Time, distance, and the RNG will all cause huge problems when multiplied on a mass scale. Trying to solve these problems for a mass combat engine of just hundreds of men would be a massive challenge if it is a solvable problem at all. Pretending that the issues aren't exacerbated by increased numbers and are simple to solve is both self contradictory and disingenuous.

[Avoraciopoctules]

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.

Have we had any threads that talked about this approach before? I was thinking of doing a game where you build up resources to take on a big threat, and just boiling it down to victory points might simplify things considerably.

[Lago PARANOIA]

A mass combat minigame definitely doesn't need to be able to handle armies of hundreds of thousands. That is totally unnecessary. If the mass combat minigame could handle armies of a few hundred it would be completely useable. D&D is already a world whos identity is molded around its mechanics, and in a world where groups of 5 people regularly save the world I dont think it is a WSOD breaking assumption that armies rarely hit 4 figures.

Your proposal of limiting armies to a few hundred within the context of a D&D-like game is simultaneously ahistorical and violates genre convention. If you're proposing a mass combat engine that can't be used to model actual warfare because it's too fucking small but then declaring it sufficient because it only needs to be of interest to PCs (whatever the fuck that means) then guess what? That's a metagame cop-out.

Have we had any threads that talked about this approach before? I was thinking of doing a game where you build up resources to take on a big threat, and just boiling it down to victory points might simplify things considerably.

If you're going to boil a conflict down to structural factors but then add a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card of 'but PCs make a direct intervention that turns the tide' then I don't see why you don't just scrap that and use Magic Tea Party. Seriously, your mass combat system completely disregards positioning and decisions made during the battle -- why not just MTP the entire thing if you're going to discount the two most important elements of warfare? It's like trying to build a diplomacy engine that can only handle the discovery of rumors, because you feel that convincing people of your position and wheedling favors are just minor adjuncts.

[ACOS]

@ Lago:
I think one of us may be misunderstanding Dean. I don't think he's saying that skirmish rules should be the end-all be-all; it seems as though he's simply suggesting a crawl->walk->run methodology, which would seem to be the only sane way to approach this.

---

Okay, I'm going to throw some shit at the wall (stream-of-consciousness, no less), and see if any of it sticks long enough to be able to lob some darts at it. Here goes nothin':

Start with a couple of goals and objectives. I presume we'd want to tactically move some units around the battlefield. I also presume that we'd want the mass battle minigame to dovetail with a kingdom management system. That right there informs an assumption that the narrative context in which these battles take place involve prolonged stretches of time (weeks and months), and involve a lot of pre-battle domino alignment. This appears to form an expectation that the pre-battle is an entire multi-session adventure in its own right; and if that much table time is spent on the pre-battle, I'm sure that the battle it self may also be multi-session (especially if you work in sieges).
BTW, I'm also working from the assumption that this is simply to server to scratch the mass battle and kingdom management itches within the larger confines of D&D and D&D-like games.

From there, you have to choose which one of these sub-systems take priority (mass battle -or- kingdom management); as one of them is going to have to serve as the basis of the other. Personally, I think that reverse-engineering a kingdom management system so that it can accommodate your mass battle system will be easier than the other way around; so we start with the mass battle system.



So does this thesis seem about right?
I have some ideas I'd like to discuss; but I want to make sure I'm at least pointed in the right direction, before I go and waste a lot of time typing that shit out.

[Username17]

We've already had, repeatedly, the discussion about how "high fantasy" in literature terms is not the same as "high fantasy" as used here when discussing whether a game setting is high or low fantasy.

Uh... yes we have. However, I thought it was a given that when we are talking about book series that we were obviously talking about High Fantasy in the literary sense, because novels are literature and not games. I mean honestly, did that really have to be said?

Of course, high fantasy in a game sense generally means that the magic is ubiquitous enough that it has player accessible rules. A genre of gaming that is virtually defined by Dungeons & Dragons. So even if Orion was completely incoherently claiming that D&D shouldn't emulate literature that was high fantasy in the non-literature definition of the term, he's still obviously wrong. Because magic in D&D has rules and players get to play the wizards and know what the rules are.

The reason why I'm laughing at Orion from a purely semantic standpoint is that it's turtles all the way down. Every part of Orion's claim is wrong if it has enough meaning to have a truth value. You can't really untangle a true or even arguably true statement from that shit. It's garbage and gobbledegook from top to bottom and I can only assume that he was extremely drunk when he made the argument in the first place.

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 RadiantPhoenix points out, I didn't dodge it the first time, so there's no reason to spam the boards with it. Any system capable of handling battles of thousands will necessarily be exponential in its scaling and be able to handle battles of hundreds as well. I know you think you have some sort of weird trump card, but you don't. If you have to abandon linear scaling, then going from hundreds to thousands really isn't a big deal.

Oh man its just a simple math function! So easy! That's why the Tome mass combat rules are something we all use and not a ruleset which has been declared nonfunctional by its creators. If only they were around to tell you that fitting a scaling mass combat system into D&D won't be easy but rather absurdly difficult.

I don't even know what your point is supposed to be. The mass combat system we tried in Races of War isn't an exponential system. It's an X:Y scaling of regular D&D combat. As such, like regular D&D combat it only works within a small range of absolute numbers of combatants and thus we regard it as a failure.

As long as you scale things linearly, the game can only handle a limited range of guys on the field. You can increase the number of guys on the field by making individual units less complicated (Warhammer) or by having units represent X number of dudes (BATTLESYSTEMTM), but the range is still pretty static. If your mass combat system is as good as your man-on-man combat system, a linear scaling model will thus have doubled the range at which your game can function by switching between the two modes, but that is still bullshit.

You need to cook exponents into the system in order to handle the range of conflicts that appear in high fantasy source material (for any definition of high fantasy you insist on using). As Lago pointed out, that is much easier to do if you happen to be using dice pools. More generally, it's really hard to shove exponential scaling into a game whose basic combat mini-game isn't exponential to begin with.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

it seems as though he's simply suggesting a crawl->walk->run methodology, which would seem to be the only sane way to approach this.

Crawl -> Walk -> Run only seems like a sane progression because they're using one device (human limbs) emergently. If you were building an optimal crawler, walker, and runner from scratch they'd be tripping over themselves trying to emulate other travel modes because the design requirements of each phase can lead to dissonant solution spaces. This is why every single attempt to scale a skirmish engine (which works best with a linear accumulator) to a mass combat engine (which works best with an exponential one) has failed and in my opinion will continue to fail if people keep thinking that everything will fall into place once they get a set of satisfactory user stories at the lower end of the scale.

For something that's inherently exponential as mass combat, you can't just design pieces and stick them together unless you already have the gestalt in mind. As stated before, a system that can satisfactorily model 30 and 300 belligerents does not mean that it can model 3000. AFAIK, 2E D&D can model 100 1st-level PCs versus 500 orcs just fine. But it can't scale up by a factor of 10. That your combat system can handle 100 vs 500 just fine does not tell me that it can handle 1000 vs 5000. And 1000 vs 5000 is the absolute minimum what you need to model to have a warfare engine that can advance the metaplot; it can easily get much, much larger than that. The Battle of Agincourt is something like 5000 vs 25000.

More generally, it's really hard to shove exponential scaling into a game whose basic combat mini-game isn't exponential to begin with.

What's more, there's no reason why the basic combat engine of D&D and especially 3E D&D shouldn't have been exponential to begin with. The game flat-out says that characters should double in power with every two levels. 3E D&D does an acceptable job of modelling that from levels 1-9, but it relies on special pleading, operator experience, and some creative interpretation of the rules. And in any case because the RNG is linear it ends up falling apart for the second half of the game anyway.

[Avoraciopoctules]

If you're going to boil a conflict down to structural factors but then add a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card of 'but PCs make a direct intervention that turns the tide' then I don't see why you don't just scrap that and use Magic Tea Party. Seriously, your mass combat system completely disregards positioning and decisions made during the battle -- why not just MTP the entire thing if you're going to discount the two most important elements of warfare? It's like trying to build a diplomacy engine that can only handle the discovery of rumors, because you feel that convincing people of your position and wheedling favors are just minor adjuncts.

If I MTP it, then I might have to actually remember more of the details of the PC's base of support. Putting together notes for easy, medium, and hard versions of key adventures bridging chapters would be easier. Of course, it'd only work for more linear games. Still, that would let me throw some pretty cool quest options into the open-ended segments without puzzling over how exactly to quantify the benefit of putting an elevator in your castle or getting better-quality steel.

[ACOS]

Crawl -> Walk -> Run only seems like a sane progression because they're using one device (human limbs) emergently. If you were building an optimal crawler, walker, and runner from scratch they'd be tripping over themselves trying to emulate other travel modes because the design requirements of each phase can lead to dissonant solution spaces. This is why every single attempt to scale a skirmish engine (which works best with a linear accumulator) to a mass combat engine (which works best with an exponential one) has failed and in my opinion will continue to fail if people keep thinking that everything will fall into place once they get a set of satisfactory user stories at the lower end of the scale.

I understand this; but "proof of concept" is a thing. Being able simply to demonstrate the ability to hammer on an extension of the combat engine that competently changes magnification levels is a huge step. That's all he (and now I) is saying.
Again, I could be wrong (but doubtful at this point).

For something that's inherently exponential as mass combat, you can't just design pieces and stick them together unless you already have the gestalt in mind. As stated before, a system that can satisfactorily model 30 and 300 belligerents does not mean that it can model 3000. AFAIK, 2E D&D can model 100 1st-level PCs versus 500 orcs just fine. But it can't scale up by a factor of 10. That your combat system can handle 100 vs 500 just fine does not tell me that it can handle 1000 vs 5000. And 1000 vs 5000 is the absolute minimum what you need to model to have a warfare engine that can advance the metaplot; it can easily get much, much larger than that. The Battle of Agincourt is something like 5000 vs 25000.

So, top-down approach? Yes, you have to have the gestalt in mind; but you do have to choose a single place to actually start. Coming at it from all angles simultaneously is just madness.
In any event, I think practicality demands that there be some break-points defined. I don't think it's even theoretically possible to have something that smooth-scales from 1-vs-1 to ∞-vs-∞; instead of adjusting the zoom, you're going to have to simply change lenses. To expect otherwise is to make the perfect the enemy of the good (enough).


That being said, did my previous post come close to being an approximate assessment of what is needed/desired? (this is just for my own edification)

[Omegonthesane]

We've already had, repeatedly, the discussion about how "high fantasy" in literature terms is not the same as "high fantasy" as used here when discussing whether a game setting is high or low fantasy.

Uh... yes we have. However, I thought it was a given that when we are talking about book series that we were obviously talking about High Fantasy in the literary sense, because novels are literature and not games. I mean honestly, did that really have to be said?

Yes. Yes it fucking did. Because we were only talking about literature insofar as it applies to fucking games, so clearly the gaming definition is the dominant one for the purpose of the discussion. Only an idiot would assume that if we start talking about bipeds in a context of measuring things that suddenly "feet" means "those things you walk on" instead of "an Imperial unit of length".

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 RadiantPhoenix points out, I didn't dodge it the first time, so there's no reason to spam the boards with it. Any system capable of handling battles of thousands will necessarily be exponential in its scaling and be able to handle battles of hundreds as well. I know you think you have some sort of weird trump card, but you don't. If you have to abandon linear scaling, then going from hundreds to thousands really isn't a big deal.

If you're going to claim you answered this at any time before right fucking now I'm going to need chapter and verse. Though at least now it's a moot point.

I didn't think I had a trump card, I thought I had a thing you were dodging, and was disappoint.

Oh man its just a simple math function! So easy! That's why the Tome mass combat rules are something we all use and not a ruleset which has been declared nonfunctional by its creators. If only they were around to tell you that fitting a scaling mass combat system into D&D won't be easy but rather absurdly difficult.

I don't even know what your point is supposed to be. The mass combat system we tried in Races of War isn't an exponential system. It's an X:Y scaling of regular D&D combat. As such, like regular D&D combat it only works within a small range of absolute numbers of combatants and thus we regard it as a failure.

(etc etc)

If you want a mass combat system for D&D or D&D-likes that people actually use, it's going to have to be something that can be retrofitted onto 3.5 or Pathfinder or Tome or whatever as it actually already stands.

Simply iterating the linear scaling function used for going from "handles 1s" to "handles 100s" seems like a dirty messy kludge, but a dirty messy kludge that would work if there is any maximum number of combatants beyond which you stop caring.

So next question - is it acceptable if the mass combat system can only handle, say, 100,000? One million? One billion? One trillion?

[Username17]

The dirty messy kludge system just doesn't work.While I have done 3e D&D battles with four hundred dudes on a side, that was a ridiculous set piece that took a lot of effort and two evenings. Practically speaking it 3e falls apart after just a couple dozen troops hit the field. Hell, most people don't even have a game table physically large enough to have a real 3e fight with 60 fightan mans.

Really you want your mass combat battle rules to be able to kick in at around fifty dudes. And if it can't handle about 20,000 people on the field it's not much of a solution. A linear system can't handle that. The scaling from small to large is about four hundred times - which is itself a number that is too many chits to track.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

Kaelik,

I didn't make any kind of claim about the contents of wheel of time or game of thrones, at least not intentionally. That would have been foolish, because I don't know what is in either of those series. I'm saying that I agree with the principle articulated by FatR in that I don't believe you need a mass combat minigame to run a game inspired by war stories unless army battles took place on screen under the tactical leadership of named characters. I make no representation about the extent to which any particular series matches his description.

So just to be clear, you are saying you agree with FatR, but how fucking dare I criticize FatR's argument as if it is related to yours.

Go fuck yourself. FatR's argument is only related to the present argument because he also claims that it applies to specific in genre media. Your argument is either that you also think it applies to in genre media, or that you are pointlessly and irrelevantly talking out your ass. Either way, make a wax model of your own dick and shove it down your throat.

[MGuy]

Is it even possible to make a system that takes such large numbers on each side AND the individual abilities of the units involved into account without making a cluster fuck? The war between Demons and Devils is pretty canon and awesome (if stupid) so we know that DnD 'should' be able to at least model that. Even on the more mundane prime plane there've been many major conflicts in the Faerun based books (at least in a number I've read) but how could you make a system that models these events at all? Demons and Devils alone have a host of abilities. Each and every one of them have a number of options they can throw out at any 6 second interval. I honestly am unable to even imagine how to make that into something workable when fielding numbers in the tens of thousands.

[Ghremdal]

You could go the route that you design two separate systems; a (miniature) wargame and a RPG, with a way to convert characters/monsters/NPC's between the two.

Sort of what you can do with WHFRP and Warhammer Fantasy Battles. If you squint and handwave stuff. But it can be done.

High level DnD stuff I don't know how. Think its just too wonky. I mean how do you fight the Blood War battles with miniatures when 90% of the forces have greater teleport at will.

[momothefiddler]

which is itself a number that is too many chits to track.

I initially read chicks to tract

[DSMatticus]

I'm sorry I bailed on this thread on page 4. This shit is popcorn worthy.

FatR: "not everything that happens in those books is mass combat! Why, there are probably only a few pages worth in a book at all! Clearly we don't need rules for it." FatR is on to something; D&D doesn't need mass combat rules. It needs rules for generating paragraph-long lineages and poetry. Lots and lots of poetry. People care way more about paragraph-long lineages and poems than the Battle of Helm's Deep. I don't even think the movies had the battle; pretty sure they just spent five minutes letting a bard recount his family history and then sing about how Gandalf saved the day off camera.

ACOS: "In tWoT, any and all battles end in casters nuking armies. Like Dumai's Well."
Frank: "You cannot prove a for all statement with an example. But you can disprove a for all statement with a counter-example; Emmond's Field."
ACOS: "why are you so mean :(:("

Orion: "Let me stop here and note that D&D does not have epic plots or themes as it is usually played and it's unclear whether it is even capable of supporting them." I didn't even mockingly paraphrase that one. That's the actual quote. Just pretend every other word in this sentence is a link to a published D&D adventure in which the fate of the world (or a huge chunk of it) hangs in the balance. That's only 17; I'm pretty sure I can come up with that many without any real effort.

Let me say that I give far more fucks about modelling battles in the <200 range than battles larger than that, because the number of times I've wanted to drop a couple dozen dudes on one or more sides is a lot and the number of times I've wanted to handle clashes between thousands is very few. Mass battles are rare and weird enough that loosely-guided victory point MTP is something I'm happy enough with, but being able to easily drop a hundred dudes into a combat that is mostly still personal scale without it exploding would make my fucking day. And I'm pretty sure that simple "utility isn't high enough for me to care" is the only not-retarded argument against that's been made so far. And even it is subjective enough that I can't really say people are wrong for wanting to play Helm's Deep as a massive mass combat minigame instead of a series of <200 unit skirmishes at key sites feeding victory points into a loose MTP framework.