I wish I could run really large battles in SR, HOW DO LARGE BATTLE!???!!!!!! Options

[Wounded Ronin]

Today, I wrote up some thoughts on my large battle experience in a computer game: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...50&#entry448908

These thoughts made me realize how much I wish it were practical to run large battles in Shadowrun with maybe 40 combatants being the typical amount that attack the PCs. Firstly, on a personal level, I think they're far more dramatic and thrilling than battles with only a few entities. Secondly, I think it would accentuate how the characters are supposed to be a small team of freelance mercenaries in a world of large paramilitary organizations. A lot of GMs complain about munchkinism or the PCs doing things that are ridiculously powerful. That's fair enough, but if the PCs often were running up against 40 decent enemies (not necessarily non-wired-reflex stooges, even), that would kind of undermine the extent to which a PC could be overpowered. Maybe in a samurai movie style vengeful last stand, the "regular" character could kill only 5 guys and the "munchkin" could kill 10, but if the amount of enemies coming at the PCs is absolutely huge it dosen't matter too much at the end of the day because both the "regular" guy and the "munchkin" still have to focus on accomplishing their objective ASAP and then withdrawing. And that's how it should be, isn't it? After all, the PCs are supposed to be a small special forces team and no matter how good they are the name of the game should be get in and get out before the enemies pin you down with artillery, snipers, and endless hoardes.

The problem is that as a human I can only keep so many entities in my RAM before I begin to forget how many boxes of damage soldier #27 has and how many rounds #7 is still carrying. Also, since I used to play over IRC doing all those dice rolls and reporting the result in the channel would be very slow and generally running combats could take hours.

Nevertheless, if there were some way of running games in which the PCs basically have to do something while 40 guys are trying to attack them, I think that would allow for a truly extraordinary gaming experience. I wonder if there's some way of doing that. Using minatures might work, or I wonder if it would be possible to write a C application or something that you could use to prepare large battles, do dice rolls for pre-defined opponents, and keep track of everyone's stats.