rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑
December 13th, 2023, 07:18
They inspired their troops, not just because they wanted to go adventuring. It would be putting your entire kingdom at risk for your own personal whims, someone would kill you and put a pretender on the throne.
They did actually fight from the front in the middle ages, and it was expected from the king to lead from the front. It was not only for inspiration, but because there was no clear hierarchy between the nobles, and in many cases, only the presence of the king would make them kind of follow orders. Actually, the disaster at Agincourt partly came from the fact that the leading constable didn't have sufficient authority over the barons to delay the battle and choose a better place to fight.
There has been kings killed (Harald against William), or captured(Jean 2 at Poitiers) in battle actually, and many who did risk their lives (King Henry V at Agincourt, Philippe Auguste at Bouvines).
However, the risks were mitigated by several factors:
- The armors offered much more protection than in your typical RPG.
- Kings were almost always mounted, making it easier for them to retreat if things went south.
- Killing prisoners of noble birth was anathema, until the English and Swiss did so on a regular basis in the late middle ages
Another factor, that works well in Kingmaker, was that medieval European armies were comically small (typically less than 10.000 for kingdom defining battles like Hastings or Formigny, and around hundreds most of the time. Some reported battles featured as few as a dozen warriors on each side), so having some of the best equipped warriors not fight, and needing a retinue for protection would have been much more detrimental.
After all, the kings were only the first among the nobles, who were the warrior caste and derived their privileges from that, so they were expected to fight themselves.
But it was far from a medieval only thing. Julius Caesar and all Roman generals were expected to fight (but usually not the Emperors), and Alexander the Great did lead his cavalry.
So given the scale of your "kingdom" in Pathfinder Kingmaker, it is perfectly reasonable for you to take risks. That said, going on risky errands for random NPC might be pushing it a bit too far... My main issue is not the risks taken by the player in all these games, but the low importance of most of the tasks assigned to the player.
In RT, so far, the tasks are usually a bit less mundane than usual.
But the core issue of RT for me is the fact that they ported the filler RTwP combat from previous games to Turn Based. It just doesn't work as well when you cannot just autoattack trash mobs while making more coffee, and it triggers flashbacks of Jeff Vogel encounter design.
But as a 40K fanboy, the game is very compelling nevertheless...