Are there good examples of games that simulate real-world adventuring parties? For example, Cortes in Mexico or Henry Stanley's trek through east Africa. Mass combat should be the rule, the characters control armies or at least bands where the PC's individual fighting power is not important. There should be good rules for using porters, caravans, ships, laying sieges, negotiating, that kind of thing.
To use a sci fi example, I'm looking for Battlestar Galactica, not Star Trek. Kirk, Spock and McCoy would beam down and deal with a problem by themselves. Admiral Adama would go backed up by a wing of Vipers and a platoon of marines.
I'm not really looking for a skirmish combat game. Simplified mass combat rules would be fine.
The closest thing I know to what I'm thinking of is actually Rogue Trader.
We have a Steam curator now. You should be following it. https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44994899-RPGHQ/
Games that better simulate RL adventuring parties?
- WhiteShark
- Turtle
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ACKS (Adventurer Conqueror King System) has rules for hirelings and many different types thereof. After a certain level one can also establish a stronghold, attract followers, and transition into domain play. It has rules for mass combat as well, which are apparently made to statistically parallel the outcomes of normal-scale combat.
Birthright focused on just that: players were the lead of organizations (realm, religious order, thief guild, or wizard tower), and had a demesne to manage between session. It featured mass combat, and the adventures usually mixed personal adventuring with large scale engagements. The issue is that the demesne management could be a bit cumbersome to keep track of for the game master, but with new tools to manage campaigns(there is now a Brithright campaign manager I have not tested) on your computer, it should be feasible now.Emphyrio wrote: ↑ September 26th, 2023, 19:58Are there good examples of games that simulate real-world adventuring parties? For example, Cortes in Mexico or Henry Stanley's trek through east Africa. Mass combat should be the rule, the characters control armies or at least bands where the PC's individual fighting power is not important. There should be good rules for using porters, caravans, ships, laying sieges, negotiating, that kind of thing.
To use a sci fi example, I'm looking for Battlestar Galactica, not Star Trek. Kirk, Spock and McCoy would beam down and deal with a problem by themselves. Admiral Adama would go backed up by a wing of Vipers and a platoon of marines.
I'm not really looking for a skirmish combat game. Simplified mass combat rules would be fine.
The closest thing I know to what I'm thinking of is actually Rogue Trader.
Torchbearer (and Burning Wheel) have good fantasy warfare rules, if simple. You can extrapolate and increase the complexity if you're used to strategy/tactics games. The rules are not in the corebooks but I believe they are in their respective additional sourcebooks. Ask me for details if you're interested.