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Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2015 6:25 pm
by Prak
Krusk wrote:a bunch of comments on a bunch of the thoughts in this thread.

As an american christian, our religion is full of all sorts of crazy shit, that would be awesome in an RPG. Instead, I get annoyed by all the BS pandering stuff about how "all gods are inherently good, even the god of evil".
First, suck a barrel of cocks.

Second, take a look at Dogs in the Vineyard. I don't know how shitty the rules are, but the fluff seems like something you might find interesting.
You really shouldn't put real world religions in your RPG. Because then you have, Krusk the christian playing "Shin Jun, the Confucian scholar" using my best guess at what a Confucian believes. I literally studied east Asian religion for about a year in college. We literally read and discussed the four books, and all that jazz. I wouldn't feel confident in my ability to do that in an inoffensive manner. I can't imagine asking most others to do so. Hell, my mom still won't go out for "oriental food". By which she means anything where they serve rice. Asking her to play a shinto priest in anyway that isn't a characture isn't going to happen.
Well, while certainly people should try to not be racist... when you're playing a game, you really just need to worry about not offending the four or five other people around the table. And if one of them is seriously Confucian (unlikely), you can just fucking ask them about it and try to do more than your best guess.
As for what we want from an OA sourcebook, thats pretty basic. I want to call my swordsman a samurai. I want to call my rogue a ninja. I want elemental magic with a couple of schools. Some sort of elaborate rock paper scissors mechanic between some combination of earth, wind, fire, water, wood, metal, life, blood, shadows, void. Pick 4,5 or 7 of your choice. Those should probably be spellcasters of a sort, but you probably want to consider giving them to my ninjas. I also want to be able to have some sort of animal totem clan. So I can be a Fire Ninja of the Crane Clan. That should make me different somehow than being a Fire Ninja of the Ox Clan. I should have a couple of races. Human, but also Ogre, ratman, crowman, and turtleman probably. Alternatively, you ditch the animal clan choice, and you tell everyone they have to plan kung fu panda. I could go either way on that, but playing furries immedaitley makes the game less serious. Lastly, people expect some sort of "Honor" or "Ki" mechanic. Thats probably because of some subtle racism in the same vein as asians are good at math, but you probably ought to include it if you don't want people to be confused. To me, that sounds like the combat mechanic isn't the primary mechanic. It means you've got to figure out how to do a good social mechanic, and its got to be about 50% of your game, and just as important as fighting.
I broadly agree, really. Honestly, you could probably mostly refluff the classic D&D races into Youkai and roll with it. Orcs become Oni, elves can become tengu, halflings become nezumi, and so on. Honor only appearing in fantasy Asian games is pretty racist, but part of that is because it treats all of Asia as a single culture with a single idea of what is honorable. If more games used the ideas of honor and duty that existed in the cultures they're taking inspiration from and fantasy Asia games offered an honor system for each culture they're adapting, I think it'd be a lot less racist.

Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2015 7:56 pm
by Judging__Eagle
erik wrote:Now more than ever I feel that no real world religion should be in the game.
Personally; I've long since decided that the opposite is better in the long run. Partly because I'd rather just be blatant and say "this is a science fantasy future set in a post-apocalyptic dark ages Earth"; than to say "this is my Sci-Fant [Oerth], it's not Earth at all; now let me introduce you to my [Cultural Analogues], for Earth cultures" (heaving gag!). This is mostly because for the most part; every RPG setting has their "bullshit homebrew religions" that are attempting to be "real" or "plausible"; and always leaves me rolling my eyes, because actual human religions on a supposedly 'mundane' Earth are rife with otherworldly monsters and supernatural entities that have to generally have to be toned down for mainstream consumption, such as D&D.

Going for a direction that discusses faiths as "Missionary" and "Regional" is more practical than outlining every detail about any possible religion in a setting. Missionary faiths are those which were formed with structures and distinct dogma whose members are amenable to their faith actively engaging in missions to proselytise to other cultures to 'save' them from from their "Regional barbarisms". While Regional faiths are fairly static and not necessarily given to rigid dogma.

Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2015 8:18 pm
by Chamomile
Prak wrote:Second, take a look at Dogs in the Vineyard. I don't know how shitty the rules are, but the fluff seems like something you might find interesting.
Firstly: Dogs in the Vineyard uses a bizarre but playable and passably entertaining dice system so long as you ignore that one thing where you can get extra dice in your pool as a so-called consequence of losing.

Secondly: Dogs in the Vineyard absolutely ignores all of the things Krusk says he wants in an RPG because it adheres to the very boring and modern Mormon interpretation of demons and Krusk wants the crazy medieval Catholic stuff with Ophanim and such, while its psuedo-Mormon religion is exactly the kind of thing that Krusk probably feels he would be ill equipped to properly portray. I'm not sure if Krusk would be more confident running a different flavor of Christian as opposed to an entirely different religion, but that's definitely not what he asked for.

Thirdly: Dogs in the Vineyard works best as a criticism of trying to use religious morality as the basis of laws anyway. Without the directive to place the dogs in morally ambiguous situations that highlight the uselessness of strict adherence to doctrine in maintaining law and order, all the game has is some moderately interesting escalation mechanics that were printed in the proof-of-concept stage rather than being fleshed out into a fully developed mechanic.

Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2015 8:27 pm
by Username17
I think you definitely are going to want to have different flavors of human. These might be animal flavored clans (L5R) or element themed kingdoms (Avatar), or some hybrid of the two, or something else. But there should be something to make one flavor of human samurai different from another flavor of human samurai.

While there should definitely be furries because source material is full of them and East Asian furry peoples are awesome... most people still want to play a human. And those players shouldn't have less character creation options than the people who want to play beastmen.

You definitely don't want to do the L5R thing where wizards have to be from the Firebird Clan or be game mechanically worse. But there's a lot of design space to make the Serpent Clan different from the Tiger Clan without making it "Social characters have to be from the Scorpion Clan or be terrible."

One thing I will say about East Asian stuff is that mass combat rules are not optional. I mean, in Western Fantasy we can fall back on the fact that War of the Roses stuff is all bullshit small gang fights and we can marginalize the battles with casts of thousands and not lose a tremendous amount of sleep over it. In East Asian themed fantasy, you really can't. Things get "all Dynasty Warriors" from time to time, and sometimes battles with ten thousand people on a side are supposed to happen. The game needs ways of handling that shit.

-Username17

Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2015 10:23 pm
by Prak
Chamomile wrote:
Prak wrote:Second, take a look at Dogs in the Vineyard. I don't know how shitty the rules are, but the fluff seems like something you might find interesting.
Firstly: Dogs in the Vineyard uses a bizarre but playable and passably entertaining dice system so long as you ignore that one thing where you can get extra dice in your pool as a so-called consequence of losing.

Secondly: Dogs in the Vineyard absolutely ignores all of the things Krusk says he wants in an RPG because it adheres to the very boring and modern Mormon interpretation of demons and Krusk wants the crazy medieval Catholic stuff with Ophanim and such, while its psuedo-Mormon religion is exactly the kind of thing that Krusk probably feels he would be ill equipped to properly portray. I'm not sure if Krusk would be more confident running a different flavor of Christian as opposed to an entirely different religion, but that's definitely not what he asked for.

Thirdly: Dogs in the Vineyard works best as a criticism of trying to use religious morality as the basis of laws anyway. Without the directive to place the dogs in morally ambiguous situations that highlight the uselessness of strict adherence to doctrine in maintaining law and order, all the game has is some moderately interesting escalation mechanics that were printed in the proof-of-concept stage rather than being fleshed out into a fully developed mechanic.
Eh, all I knew was that it was a game about gun and sword wielding Mormon proselytizers trying to convert the heathen masses. Dunno how adaptable it would be to another flavor of Christian or how amenable Krusk would be to it.

Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2015 7:01 am
by Judging__Eagle
FrankTrollman wrote:I think you definitely are going to want to have different flavors of human. These might be animal flavored clans (L5R) or element themed kingdoms (Avatar), or some hybrid of the two, or something else. But there should be something to make one flavor of human samurai different from another flavor of human samurai.

While there should definitely be furries because source material is full of them and East Asian furry peoples are awesome... most people still want to play a human. And those players shouldn't have less character creation options than the people who want to play beastmen.

You definitely don't want to do the L5R thing where wizards have to be from the Firebird Clan or be game mechanically worse. But there's a lot of design space to make the Serpent Clan different from the Tiger Clan without making it "Social characters have to be from the Scorpion Clan or be terrible."

One thing I will say about East Asian stuff is that mass combat rules are not optional. I mean, in Western Fantasy we can fall back on the fact that War of the Roses stuff is all bullshit small gang fights and we can marginalize the battles with casts of thousands and not lose a tremendous amount of sleep over it. In East Asian themed fantasy, you really can't. Things get "all Dynasty Warriors" from time to time, and sometimes battles with ten thousand people on a side are supposed to happen. The game needs ways of handling that shit.

-Username17
Seeing as how several of the world's largest conflicts (in terms of casualties) began, were fought; and ended entirely in the Chinese subcontinent.. yes, please.

Personally... I've toyed with After Sundown style Resources Ratings being equal to the amount of Hits that a Resource of that Rating would get (i.e. a 1 Rating [Combat] Asset has 4 dice to throw at most combat problems); mostly as a way to 'use' them in an unpredictable manner when used in a scene. I'm not sure how abstracted military assets would work in an Asian Adventures campaign; but I have a feeling that Dominions: Pretender Wars levels of Tiny Man detail is out the window.

Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2015 11:47 pm
by Krusk
Prak wrote: First, suck a barrel of cocks.
Not clear on what specifically garnered that. I'm open to the idea that I said something super shitty and you hate me, but I am curious what specifically?
Second, take a look at Dogs in the Vineyard. I don't know how shitty the rules are, but the fluff seems like something you might find interesting.
this thread, and a google makes me think its an RPG about pretending to be a real world religion I'm not, and converting followers. My whole point was that you shouldn't include real world religions in your RPG, you shouldn't RP a religion you are not. Not super interested in this at all. This review http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10742.phtml says its "A definite gem in the rough for gamers who prefer more free-form games." I tend to hate those on principle.
Well, while certainly people should try to not be racist... when you're playing a game, you really just need to worry about not offending the four or five other people around the table. And if one of them is seriously Confucian (unlikely), you can just fucking ask them about it and try to do more than your best guess.
That sounds a lot like "its cool to drop the N word when no black people are around." You still probably shouldn't do it just because no one who sees you is offended.

Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2015 12:24 am
by Prak
Krusk wrote:
Prak wrote: First, suck a barrel of cocks.
Not clear on what specifically garnered that. I'm open to the idea that I said something super shitty and you hate me, but I am curious what specifically?
More just a general "fuck you," from a Denner satanist to a Denner christian :tongue:
Second, take a look at Dogs in the Vineyard. I don't know how shitty the rules are, but the fluff seems like something you might find interesting.
this thread, and a google makes me think its an RPG about pretending to be a real world religion I'm not, and converting followers. My whole point was that you shouldn't include real world religions in your RPG, you shouldn't RP a religion you are not. Not super interested in this at all. This review http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10742.phtml says its "A definite gem in the rough for gamers who prefer more free-form games." I tend to hate those on principle.
Fair enough. I was just thinking that you might be interested in the general idea of "playing soldiers of christ" if you get some other christian gamers together. Another thought is the Solomon Kane game, but that's 1) a Savage Worlds game, 2) about a puritan, and 3) putting real world religion into a game as you said you thought shouldn't be done.
Well, while certainly people should try to not be racist... when you're playing a game, you really just need to worry about not offending the four or five other people around the table. And if one of them is seriously Confucian (unlikely), you can just fucking ask them about it and try to do more than your best guess.
That sounds a lot like "its cool to drop the N word when no black people are around." You still probably shouldn't do it just because no one who sees you is offended.
That... isn't what I was trying to say, but I take your point. However, there is a long history behind the N-word, which all leads up to it being an inherently offensive and dehumanizing word to perpetuates attitudes that harm real people.

Joking about fish hats and supposed virgin births only causes problems when there's an actual uptight christian around.

Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2015 11:22 am
by magnuskn
deaddmwalking wrote:The real problem in my mind with 'Eastern Settings' is that they're forced into an Earth analogue. You get fantasy China and fantasy Japan, and since they're based entirely on stereotypes, you end up with something that ends up seeming racist and lacking substance.
Quite honestly, have you seen any anime lately which deal with Japans past? The Japanese are quite busy making their own history seem over-the-top and ridiculous, so what I've seen of most major RPG publishers does not seem out of place in the least compared to works like Sengoku Basara or The Ambition of Oda Nobuna.

Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2015 5:14 am
by Judging__Eagle
magnuskn wrote:
deaddmwalking wrote:The real problem in my mind with 'Eastern Settings' is that they're forced into an Earth analogue. You get fantasy China and fantasy Japan, and since they're based entirely on stereotypes, you end up with something that ends up seeming racist and lacking substance.
Quite honestly, have you seen any anime lately which deal with Japans past? The Japanese are quite busy making their own history seem over-the-top and ridiculous, so what I've seen of most major RPG publishers does not seem out of place in the least compared to works like Sengoku Basara or The Ambition of Oda Nobuna.
Not really; but sort of is "Folktales from Japan".

Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2015 8:16 am
by FatR
FrankTrollman wrote: One thing I will say about East Asian stuff is that mass combat rules are not optional. I mean, in Western Fantasy we can fall back on the fact that War of the Roses stuff is all bullshit small gang fights and we can marginalize the battles with casts of thousands and not lose a tremendous amount of sleep over it. In East Asian themed fantasy, you really can't. Things get "all Dynasty Warriors" from time to time, and sometimes battles with ten thousand people on a side are supposed to happen.
Actually no, mass combat is even more optional. For the reasons you can glean if you read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and then maybe River Margins, and then some actual Chinese history of the period which they reflect (or even the periods they nominally describe).

You see, the number of actual combatants worth counting on battlefieds of War of the Roses was greater and often much greater than those Chinese could field in the same century. Oh certainly, Chinese armies boasted huge total numbers. Except that those numbers largely consisted of peasants forcibly pressed into military service. Who had no motivation, little training and piss poor equipment. Even RoTK, never mind River Margins with its smaller scale action, is absolutely rife with examples of troops and whole armies routing after their leader (often meaning the only person who knew how to fight and was properly armed and armored) is slain.

And that was pretty close to reality too, even if specific deeds of mighty heroes were exaggerated. Why do you think Mongols or Japanese pirates were such a major threats to a state whose population and wealth dwarfed their home countries to a ridiculous degree in the time when the source of inspiration for Dynasty Warriors was written?

Tl;dr, you don't need mass combat because things really went all Dynasty Warriors from time and, like in that game, hordes of mooks then were just a background to duels between heroes.
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Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2015 6:49 am
by Mechalich
RoTK is set in 200-ish AD, even a highly trained army would be relatively poorly equipped and trained given the limitations of the regime and the technology level. The War of the Roses occurred in the second half of the 15th century, the comparable Chinese force would be the military of the Ming Dynasty, which was considerably betting equipped and had conducted several aggressive campaigns against the Mongols (albeit with mixed success, the Mongols tended to just shift northward) with upwards of 100,000 troops.

Likewise later Ashikaga shogunate and sengoku period Japanese armies were quite large (though many of the numbers in extant sources are questionable) and well trained.

However, the major difference that leads towards a mass combat preference for an East Asian setting is the role of inspirational characters. Lancelot vs. Yukimura Sanada or Guan Yu. Lancelot roles around the British Isles with a posse of a handful of fellow knights and squires. Yukimura's a samurai warlord with a huge force to his name at various points in his career and Guan Yu's personal guard is five hundred swordsmen.

Now you don't need to incorporate those rules in the same way you don't need to incorporate those character types. An East Asian setting based around a smaller scale backdrop and more folktale oriented stories doesn't need to worry about mass combat, but that will probably preclude characters from participating in major conflicts in a command capacity and will make certain archetypes difficult to play.

Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2015 8:10 am
by Almaz
A lot of people seem to assume "mass combat rules" means that the mass combat events are huge and consequential, that they are things that really matter for everyone! But uhm, there's no reason to assume that.

I mean, Asian stuff did have people heroically dying to thousands of arrows... after, y'know, killing all the dudes firing the thousands of arrows... but the real thing that you need out of it is something which gives stuff for players to meaningfully interact with the war going on. In a lot of games, "how you win a battle" or "how you win a war" are huge "lol, I dunnos" aside from the obvious "kill everyone." But rolling out killing thousands of dudes is tedious if you roll for every single swing -- so you need some means of either sweeping through those opponents like the chaff they are, in a time-efficient manner so combat resolution doesn't take longer than the expected lifetime of the universe, or a rule that allows you to coherently attempt to win a battle via means that do not add up to "roll to kill everyone."

If there is a rule that states that units rout when you take out their leader, and you should ignore the thousands of dudes who could shoot at you because they aren't important except as window dressing, then that is still a "mass combat" rule. I expect it would be mildly unsatisfying, but it would still be a rule.

Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2015 7:59 pm
by JigokuBosatsu
Hell, there was a Water Margin RPG but IIRC it didn't have mass combat rules.

{I got the rules from the author an embarassing amount of time ago, and I may have them in an ancient ZIP file somewhere, but otherwise they seem to be unavailable online. There's a game ripe for an OSSR!)

Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 6:27 am
by Leress
JigokuBosatsu wrote:Hell, there was a Water Margin RPG but IIRC it didn't have mass combat rules.

{I got the rules from the author an embarassing amount of time ago, and I may have them in an ancient ZIP file somewhere, but otherwise they seem to be unavailable online. There's a game ripe for an OSSR!)
Do you mean this game:

Outlaws of the water margin

https://web.archive.org/web/20050320030 ... utdown.htm

Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 9:01 am
by FatR
Mechalich wrote:RoTK is set in 200-ish AD,
RotK largely reflects the realities of the time when it was written, which is 14th century.
Mechalich wrote:even a highly trained army would be relatively poorly equipped and trained given the limitations of the regime and the technology level.
Somehow Roman legions of the time weren't. And Rome is often considered to be technologically behind Han China. Though about "limitiations of the regime" you're correct. And those limitations got worse later.
Mechalich wrote:The War of the Roses occurred in the second half of the 15th century, the comparable Chinese force would be the military of the Ming Dynasty, which was considerably betting equipped and had conducted several aggressive campaigns against the Mongols (albeit with mixed success, the Mongols tended to just shift northward)
Uh huh. Mixed success like the Mongols taking one of the emperors prisoner and sacking the Ming capital at least once. And not Genghis Khan's mongols, their far degraded successors. Meanwhile, Japanese pirates - not actual Japanese armies, just random seascum - sacked multiple major cities and besieged the capital, though they failed to take it.
Mechalich wrote:with upwards of 100,000 troops.
The entirety of Chinese history - including eventual fate of Ming - suggests that, once again, numbers by themselves do not mean combat value.

Mechalich wrote:Likewise later Ashikaga shogunate and sengoku period Japanese armies were quite large (though many of the numbers in extant sources are questionable) and well trained.
Japanese armies before mid-to-late Sengoku period were quite superior to Chinese, because at least most people showing up on the field knew how to fight, but battles were fought with little in the way of order, and usually disintegrated into duels between individual samurai.

The Sengoku period did feature what we can call regular warfare, with pike-and-shot formations and shock cavalry, even if poorly equipped compared to European equivalents of the time. But it was an exception.

Mechalich wrote:However, the major difference that leads towards a mass combat preference for an East Asian setting is the role of inspirational characters. Lancelot vs. Yukimura Sanada or Guan Yu. Lancelot roles around the British Isles with a posse of a handful of fellow knights and squires. Yukimura's a samurai warlord with a huge force to his name at various points in his career and Guan Yu's personal guard is five hundred swordsmen.
Which might as well have been five hundred cheerleaders. I mean, read through RotK and tell me when they ever amounted to something useful.

If we look at examples from contemporary fiction... sure, heroism and mighty feats of great warriors is more important than numbers of nameless mooks in both Asia and Europe. That's just genre conventions. Even if saracens bring forward 400 000 men against 20 000, Roland's named companions almost all die to an unnamed opponent. But in Europe, you have to kill off the hero's army before you can deal with him, unless you stage an assassination or something. Roland and Gunther are the last to fall in their final battles, Arthur and Mordred take each other out after their forces are mutually nearly annihilated. In Asia the hero is the lynchpin holding his entire force together. You generally don't need to go through his whole army, rather, his army will cease to exist without him. Even if the hero is just too damn hardore to kill in a straight battle, and you have to gradually corner and exhaust him, like Lu Bu and Guan Yu, the contest is over not when everybody around the hero is dead, but when everybody around the hero no longer believes in his ability to be that lynchpin, the most important part of the force who single-handedly turns the tide, so they betray him.

So, while you might want to provide a mass combat system anyway, because why not, the actual need for it is not any higher compared to a European setting, on the contrary, the narrative importance of masses of little men compared to individual heroes is even lower.

Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 10:33 am
by name_here
Dude, the wikipedia article on Chinese military history before 1911 is like a minute of googling away.
By the time of the Warring States, reforms began that abolished feudalism and created powerful, centralized states. The power of the aristocracy was curbed and for the first time, professional generals were appointed on merit, rather than birth. Technological advances such as iron weapons and crossbows put the chariot-riding nobility out of business and favored large, professional standing armies, who were well-supplied and could fight a sustained campaign....The Confucian adviser Xun Zi claimed that foot soldiers from the Wei state were required to wear armor and helmets, shoulder a crossbow with fifty arrows, strap a spear and sword, carry three day's supply of rations, and all the while march 50 kilometers in a day.

...

Under the Wei Dynasty, the military system changed from the centralized military system of the Han. Unlike the Han, whose forces were concentrated into a central army of volunteer soldiers, Wei's forces depended on the Buqu, a group for whom soldiering was a hereditary profession. These "military households" were given land to farm, but their children could only marry into the families of other "military households". In effect, the military career was inherited; when a soldier or commander died or became unable to fight, a male relative would inherit his position. These hereditary soldiers provided the bulk of the infantry.
Yes, they lost to the Mongols. Lots of people lost to the Mongols. Cavalry archers of the era were extremely difficult to defeat.

Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 10:57 am
by JigokuBosatsu
Leress wrote:
Outlaws of the water margin

https://web.archive.org/web/20050320030 ... utdown.htm
Yep! I couldn't get that archive page working earlier but it does now.

And looking at it, yes, there are mass combat rules. Go figure.

Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 8:38 pm
by FatR
name_here wrote:Dude, the wikipedia article on Chinese military history before 1911 is like a minute of googling away.
Dude, you should be ashamed to pop up with your opinion if Wikipedia is your only source.
Lots of fairy tales
These have about as much relation to history as Herodotus' account of the Persian army being nearly two million strong.

Somehow, size (and level of organization) of armies tend to rise sharply once we get look into the past beyond the time when we can cross-check historical chronicles and verify them through other sources, and China is clearly no exception.
By the time of the Warring States, reforms began that abolished feudalism and created powerful, centralized states.
Funny that most major personalities of the Three Kingdoms era (hundreds of years later) were lords and members of clans (such as the Cao clan and particularly the Sun clan) that should not be called feudal mostly because feudalism is a more advanced system of government. Those who weren't were bandits claiming noble blood for their leader to legitimize themselves.

Etc.

name_here wrote:Yes, they lost to the Mongols. Lots of people lost to the Mongols.
To Mongols of 15th century and later? Absolutely not. Even Russia managed a much better defense despite being comparatively shit-poor and suffering one of the biggest calamities in its history during the same period. Mongols also were only one of four groups of steppe nomads to which the Chinese lost catastrophically.
name_here wrote:Cavalry archers of the era were extremely difficult to defeat.
Not particularly. Even the earliest matchlock muskets were a hard counter to them - that's why Mongol-descended nomads themselves tried to establish forces of riding musket infantry wherever their industrial base allowed, from Crimean Khanate to Mongolia itself. Ming were supposed to have firearms. Theirs being so shit that Japanese had no interest in them (while European ones flew out of their sellers' hands), was a bug, not a feature, and so was Chinese inability to properly copy European ones or their Japanese derivatives.

Before that, the combination of heavy cavalry and crossbow infantry handed any horse archers, except those of Mongols under Ghenghis Khan and his close successors, their asses and could not be defeated without numerical superiority of several to one. And Chinese were supposed to be familiar with both crossbows and armored cavalry.

And of course you could maintain a force of horse archers of your own - if Russians did, surely Chinese, having, like, twenty times as much resources could do the same. In fact, the early emperors of Ming did maintain a reasonably good cavalry force. But the combination of corruption and constant fear that a military force of true professionals would usurp the civilian authority eventually reduced it to shambles.

Of course, even the best arms wouldn't have been of that much more help when placed in the hands of a de-facto serf who had to haul the double weight of tilling the land and going on military campaigns - the ruinous system of raising manpower for armies to which Chinese stuck with none-too-admirable determination throughout the ages, despite, in principle, not being so crushingly poor as to have no real other choice.

Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2015 12:45 am
by Mechalich
FatR wrote:Which might as well have been five hundred cheerleaders. I mean, read through RotK and tell me when they ever amounted to something useful.
FatR wrote: The entirety of Chinese history - including eventual fate of Ming - suggests that, once again, numbers by themselves do not mean combat value.
Having 500 cheerleaders is actually a big deal in most RPGs, regardless of their overall uselessness.

Their are fundamental differences in command and control of a 50 man force, a 500 man force, and a 50000 man force, and you'll need different rule sets to represent them.

For example, a RotK-based RPG would probably have to allow a character to command a 500-man mook force from chargen. I mean that's nothing, Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei mustered that many guys from the local village after the Peach Garden oath. A fairly low-ranking Yellow Turban commander could have that many dudes under him.

And yes, those troops are essentially a mob with some swords, spears, and the occasional bow, but they can still: 1. ransack a village 2. plunder trade caravans 3. burn large areas of countryside and so forth.

Standard d20 is not designed to accommodate characters having five hundred minions at level 1. In fact, due to the limited RNG and the critical system, five hundred goblins throwing rocks at something is actually fairly dangerous to certain enemy types of far greater CR.

So even if you can gloss over vast numbers of troops in heroic legendary combat - which you absolutely can - you need some system to represent their existence. They need food, water, equipment (and would probably like to be paid though you don't actually have to bother).

Again, there's nothing that says an East Asian setting needs to or even should strongly support military campaigning as a major element. d20 in Western settings generally doesn't (and most attempts to even write novels about high magic D&D warfare have been stupid). In fact an East Asian setting dominated by a single nominally stable state where armies are not clashing at the moment is probably more believable than the equivalent Western setting.

Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2015 1:52 am
by JonSetanta
Mechalich wrote:
For example, a RotK-based RPG would probably have to allow a character to command a 500-man mook force from chargen. I mean that's nothing, Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei mustered that many guys from the local village after the Peach Garden oath. A fairly low-ranking Yellow Turban commander could have that many dudes under him.
Speaking of which, Dynasty Warriors series of games could provide a guide for how to coordinate groups of basic soldiers functioning as single characters.

Defeat the leader, the rest run. Just make the leader stronger than the others.

Just a start though. I can't think of how to scale the damage from there other than conglomerating HP and keeping melee damage from frontline combatants capped to a certain point.

Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2015 2:32 am
by OgreBattle
JigokuBosatsu wrote:Hell, there was a Water Margin RPG but IIRC it didn't have mass combat rules.

{I got the rules from the author an embarassing amount of time ago, and I may have them in an ancient ZIP file somewhere, but otherwise they seem to be unavailable online. There's a game ripe for an OSSR!)
Konami's Water Margin RPG tho' had mass battles as a selling point
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Not particularly. Even the earliest matchlock muskets were a hard counter to them - that's why Mongol-descended nomads themselves tried to establish forces of riding musket infantry wherever their industrial base allowed, from Crimean Khanate to Mongolia itself. Ming were supposed to have firearms. Theirs being so shit that Japanese had no interest in them (while European ones flew out of their sellers' hands), was a bug, not a feature, and so was Chinese inability to properly copy European ones or their Japanese derivatives.
Yes, the Ming were impressed by Japan's teppo, and had this to say about them:
"The arquebus came from the (Europeans)...but it's cautioned against firing five or seven rounds, in fear of heat and fire and worry that it will break, we hence only adopt the Japanese arquebuses and nothing else."
-He Langchen's work "formation record"

阵纪·技用:“鸟铳出自外夷……但不敢连发五、七铳,恐内热起火,且虑其破(即膛炸),唯倭铳 不妨"
Imjin war commanders on the Korean side also remark that the Ming deployed the most field artillery "even though the Japanese have arquebuses, we have cannons, what is there to fear?"

Some 16th century Chinese sources also remark on how the quality of Chinese-made guns are of similar, or possibly quality to Portuguese:
《筹海图编·鸟咀铳》:“鸟铳之制,自西番流入中国,其来远矣,然造者未尽其妙。嘉靖二十七年,都御史朱纨 ,遣都指挥卢镗,破双屿,获番酋善铳者,命义士马宪制器,李槐制药,因得其传而造作,比西番犹 为精绝云。”

"The arquebus arrived in China from the westerners, from far away, but those who made it did not understand its secret. In the twentieth year of Jiajing (1541), the Duyu Shi Zhu Wan, sent the Du Zhihui Lu Tang, defeated them in the islands, acquired European chiefs who were adapt at making the arquebus, and ordered Ma Xian to make these weapons and Li Gui to make the powder. They attained this skill and made it as a result, which was more sophisticated than those of the westerners."
-Chou Hai Tubian, volume 13, written in 1558
While southern commanders adapted the arquebus, northern Ming commanders preferred a mix of three-barreled handgonnes ("Three eyed gun" used kind of like a 'shotgun' to ward off cavalry charges) and arquebus.


FatR, you seem like someone who's really proud of the history of your people, and quick to defend it. You've probably had your feelings hurt in the past by people who disparaged medieval european martial arts as crude and so on, maybe they were weaboos who picked weapon focus in masterwork bastard swords in RPG's you've played. But that's really no reason to be a westaboo yourself and reflexively malign everything that offends your worldview.

Say the Mongols, the Ming dynasty overthrew the Yuan nearly two centuries before the Golden Horde was overthrown in Europe, but that feat can be handwaved by an "anti-Asian" side with an excuse like "well, the Mongols only beat the BAD Europeans". The example of the Zhentong emperor being captured by Mongols can be brought up to go "see, these guys are weak because", but the example of the Yongle Emperor's successful campaigns against the Mongols is then conspicuously left out. Nevermind that the Mongols on either end of the steppes after Genghis Khan were under different rulers and developed pretty differently through the centuries.

With the capture of a leader, if I wanted to be abrasive I could say King John II being captured in the 1350's means the French super sucked throughout the whole 100 years war and bring that up any time somebody talks about the French military.

Or the threat of wokou "Japanese" pirates, we can also bring up how Ming commander Qi Jiguang lead 3,000 men in Xianyou and Wangchangping to defeat 10,000 wokou with minimal casualties on his own side and ended that threat.

If we want to talk about the quality of European troops I can be very selective and pick up on instances of poorly trained, cowardly, poorly managed troops too:
The king [Henry VII] was hiding from a rabble of ill-equipped, poorly trained commoners behind the walls of one of his most stout fortresses.

The prognostications of old Captain Edward Turnor seemed borne out: '... the sacred profession of perfect men of ware ys now by ill training growen to misorder and mischef'

The field generals were quick to cite their soldiers' lack of expertise for the failed assault in early May, which stalled 'by meanes of disorder and Cowardise of our menne except the small number of the bandes of barwick'. The English army was almost entirely 'rawe souldiors'. But, the officers complained not only of quality, but also of quantity.

Elizabeth's dislike of professional soldiers sometimes placed her at a disadvantage in plotting strategy....

....as for siege works, the diminutive French garrison successfully defended old-style fortifications against the artillery of the military revolution. Finally, the English high command performed badly. Grey's decision to proceed with the assault without ascertaining the strength of his forces at a muster, contrary to the advice of the officers who had inspected the breach, borders on criminal negligence. His quarrel with Lord General Norfolk after the assault's failure betrayed the pettiness, dishonesty and incompetence of both. Recriminations between Grey and Norfolk, and the scapegoating of Croft, made an ugly scene. The performance of her generals convinced Elizabeth that she would have to question their good jugement (or lack of it). The queen saw warfare swallow up enormous amounts of money. The logistical problems, the need for carriages, naval support, etc., underscored the precarious timetables involved in campaigning, with consequent ramifications for her freedom of manoevre in negotations and diplomacy. The soldiers themselves were found unsatisfactory, poorly trained (if at all), and insufficiently armed.

-Various quotations from English Warfare 1511, 1642, by Mark Charles Fissel

And in turn I can take some selective quote about the greatness of Ming dynasty troops, like...
"Those known as southern soldiers, are from the region of Zhejiang. These soldiers are unrivaled in bravery. They do not ride horses and all fights on foot. They are good at using fire arrows, cannons, and their swordsmanship and pike skills are all superior to the Japanese."
-Korean records of Imjin war

"these people's [Portugal's] only weapon is a soft sword, their naval combat ability is inferior to our soldiers, and on the ground, long spears would have subdued them."
-Ming admiral Yu Dayou (1503-1579), in a treatise on how to deal with Portuguese fleets and other hazards

"The Dutch have no other skills but in the use of firepower. Huang Zhao, you will lead 500 gunners with 200 repeating cannons split into three divisions to face them. Yang Xiang, you will lead 500 rattan soldiers to bypass Pedel from the right, and then charge out for the kill. Xiao Gong Chen, you will prepare twenty ships. When you see their ranks cross Baxemboy and engaged with ours, wave your flags yelling while setting sail, pretending to attack their fort. Their soldiers will naturally panic, without daring to engage, and will surely be broken.”
-account of Guo Xingye (1624-1662), giving directions to his troops to drive the Dutch out of Taiwan
But as you know, the quality of troops and leadership can vary in any given time, or region in that time.

Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2015 5:58 pm
by ETortoise
Kenneth Chase gives a pretty impressive breakdown on the differences between Western and Eastern military needs and how those needs affected the development of gunpowder weapons.

https://books.google.com/books/about/Fi ... nWJkYRCJ4C

It's a scholarly book, but still pretty readable.

Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2015 10:43 pm
by Schleiermacher
I don't know that I would trust Chinese sources about the superiority of Chinese goods or troops to foreign ones, especially if they're contemporary with the things they're commenting on. Made-to-order jingoistic propaganda has been something of a hallmark of theirs historically. (Not that they're alone in that of course. And your overall point that quality is not uniform throughout a period or group stands regardless. But still.)

Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 1:23 am
by tussock
FatR wrote:Funny that most major personalities of the Three Kingdoms era (hundreds of years later) were lords and members of clans (such as the Cao clan and particularly the Sun clan) that should not be called feudal mostly because feudalism is a more advanced system of government.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Haha.

Haaa.

"feudalism is a more advanced system of government."

Hehe. You know the Franks and Angles were clans, right? You're heard of France and England, perhaps? You know that being the Konig of the Anglish was the same thing as being the King of the English. That dude is literally the lord and member of a clan, who often ruled over much of what is now France and Holland and even parts of the middle east, but not large parts of the British Isles. Sometimes as a divine emperor (in the 16th century), sometimes as a feudal first among equals (in the 10th century).
name_here wrote:Yes, they lost to the Mongols. Lots of people lost to the Mongols.
To Mongols of 15th century and later? Absolutely not. Even Russia managed a much better defense despite being comparatively shit-poor and suffering one of the biggest calamities in its history during the same period. Mongols also were only one of four groups of steppe nomads to which the Chinese lost catastrophically.
Seriously? The Ming dynasty was overthrown in the 15th century by Mongols now? You'll have to fix the internet for me, it all disagrees with you, says something about the Ming kicking out the Mongols in the 12th century and lasting into the 17th. Built the great wall in the 15th century, which kept various Mongolian raiders from raiding about as well as their coastal defences kept the various Japanese raiders from raiding.

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@Schleiermacher, you don't like primary sources for history? Because Chinese? Really?