So, I've been thinking.

Down on the IC forum, I run the Blood in the Water campaign. Basically, a modified cyberpirates concept.

Now, forum games can get huge. I knew that. I'm still surprised the game hit 12 players, and have been fortunate to recruit an assisstant GM from among them to help me with the crunchier side of SR, which is where I'm weak.

That still creates a problem.

12 people. Even assuming, in an average boarding, 1 or 2 characters stay behind on their base boat, that's 10 players.

More importantly, even 10 on 10 is stretching the capabailities of SR to run combat in a reasonable timeframe.

So here's my question.

Especially with the War sourcebook coming out soon, I see a big uptick in shadowrunner teams acting like special operations forces and, say, attacking an enemy battalion's camp.

In short, lots of situations where the number of combatants goes way up.
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With that in mind, has anybody ever pondered mass combat rules for SR?

I know of some techniques (advised to me on the IRC server), like running the grunts in groups, but I've had it noted to me by players that they do like being able to whip out their dice pools and use em.

So, any ideas on how to run a mass combat in SR in a reasonable timeframe?

(Better question, to the devs: Could we please see mass combat rules for SR somewhere?)

12 people?! I'm so sorry.

If nothing else, I suggest using teamwork tests for combat. Everyone with guns gives assistance dice to the best person in the group, and have enemies do the same thing. It's far from the best solution, but then not everyone needs to do everything. You just say that everyone assisting rolls alongside the main person.

I also suggest rolling for enemies in advance. Print out large amounts of dice being rolled, how many hits are in those amounts of dice, and so on, and just cross off the next mark in the list whenever that many dice needs to be rolled. It can help save a little time.

You can have players figure out what they want to do in advance as well, and just flat tell you the hits they got. That'll save seconds on the minute but that can add up with so many people.

Really, what I want to suggest is splitting the group into two groups of six, by any means possible.

I hope some of that helps.

Do a google search for Necromunda (the rules should be available as a free pdf, completely legit, direct from Games Workshop). It's a gang-skirmish game in a gritty sci-fi setting...quick conversions for characters would leave you with just about the right number of guys per side, and it turns every roll into opposed 1d6 tests, with a target number based on the relative skills of those involved.

The good thing would be that Games Workshop's wargames are based on about the same rough scale as Shadowrun -- in theory they go from about 2 to about 6, with an average human having a statline of 3's down the line (Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill, Strength, Toughness, etc). Many Shadowrun characters could just be swapped over stat for stat, as long as you swapped over everyone the same way, and things wouldn't break down. Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill could be handled by just assigning whatever the character's highest appropriate skill would be (melee/unarmed, appropriate ranged weapon) and calling it a day.

To attack, you compare attributes (Weapon Skill versus Weapon Skill to stab someone, let's say). Based on the relative attributes, you need to roll X on a d6 -- if the two are even, you need a 4+ to succeed, if the attacker is up by one point, you need a 3+ to succeed, if the defender is better in melee you need a 5+ to succeed)...then damage is handled the same way (comparing Strength and Toughness, this time).

It's sloppy, don't get me wrong. It's an imperfect conversion system, etc, etc...but it makes combats fly. We've used it for Shadowrun a few times, and even for other RPGs -- just a quick and dirty way of saying "does this guy hit half the time? Two thirds of the time? Almost all the time?" and then saying "And will this attack wound this guy half the time? Almost never?"...and then you sling a single die per attack, handling whole groups of guys at once, and call it a day.

I would think if you could find a copy of DMZ, it might convert over for your needs

I love the suggestions, but for one thing.

I'm running the campaign here on Dumpshock. Makes some things, like using DMZ or Necromunda, impractical at best.

But that being the case - I do like the ideas. However, I so wish SR4 included rules for these sorts of situations. Admittedly, around a table it's unlikely at best that groups would ever get nearly as big, but. They did include cyberpirates as a campaign option, like they did mercs.

Running combat with 24 or more participants causes some issues - but nothing compared to having 12 actualy PCs. I mean imagine a move with 12 main characters all getting the exact same amount of screen time, cool action scenes and good dialogue.. very difficulty to make it fun.

You risk either having some PCs either running "npcs" while other get all the attention, or having a group of 12 very bland characters doing practically the same thing.

SR4 combat already takes alot of time because of minituae and excessive dice pools/tests.

I have no good fix for the PCs, but for the NPCs I advise having fairly similar opponents acting on the same initative count and using teamwork rules. Also, it might be a good idea to use a grid of some sort to place enemies. Plan out likely actions for the NPCs ahead of combat, at least for a few rounds, as in assault fireteam A moves to flank PC team from the rear, opening fire with SMGs, corp mage c summons spirit, etc. etc.

It works better (re screentime) than you'd think. Well, so far anyway.

Otherwise, thanks for the ideas.

Rather than rolling thirty 6-dice pools, thirty 7-dice pools, thirty 8-dice pools....etc. Roll up 100* d60 rolls, then use some binomial distribution math as a lookup table. Regardless of which NPC is rolling with how many dice you've got their result.

There is a "max hits" isn't two-thirds of the dice pool, but higher results than that are really outside results (even turning up the random from d60 to d1000 that "max" only moved up 1 success on a dice pool of 12, and the next 1 higher result was only possible at using d100,000).

*Or however many rolls you think you might need.

I can give three recommendations:

1. Use the rules for "buying hits". Having to roll each indvidual success test on such a large scale takes up absurd amounts of time (as I am sure you have noticed). Using the rules for buying hits as a standard, rather than the exception and only using the regular skill success tests for extraordinarily important individual tests (like the "money shot" in the case of wetwork or the reaction test to grab a teammate that is about to be hurled over board) frees up a lot of time. Also, I would allow players to roll individual success tests, each time they use edge.
Of course doing that will make combat a bit more bland and less random and put the perspective more on tactical flexibility rather than individual prowess but with that many people you have to make sacrifices and these should be few enough to still allow for an engaging and thrilling adventure.

2. Roll resistance Tests for your NPCs in advance and keep them at hand. Resistance test in this case means every opposed tests on a receiveing end, including perception rolls to see if an NPC notices the sneaking players.

3. Have all tests in which the entire team or a subset of the team have to succeed for the team to be successfull (like infiltration rolls) be rolled as a teamwork test, using the rules for buying hits as above where it is not critical, and using regular success tests at a story climax.


I hope that helped.

You could always just kill a few PC's off.

For combat where the PC aren't concerned, I use a simple system: I give each side a dicepool according to its "firepower" apply situational modifiers and roll opposition rolls. The winner gets the upper hand, and the margin shows the difference. What you can do is remove one die in the loser's pool per net hit for the winner. When one side's pool is down to 0, it has lost the battle.

When the PC are concerned, you can have them play as usual.

For the NPC shooting at PCs, I use a house-rule, based on the suppressive fire rules (since that's what it'll look like to the PC being shot at): I take the average dice pool of the opposition, add 1 die per NPC, don't bother with many modifiers, and have the PC roll only one dodge test. Each net hits inflicts the weapon's base DV.

That's a pretty nifty system. I might borrow that idea for my own campain =)

If you find yourself rolling large numbers of dice you may find a random number generator handy. Set one up so that you input the number of dice to roll and have it count hits for you. If anyone in your group has experience computer programming they should be able to whip one up in a hurry, or you can just search for one on the net. A program like this could even be set up in a spread sheet program such as excell.

Anyone have any leads on something like this?

I have one I could post. It'll need to wait until I'm at home, however.

I like www.random.org's intereger generator for stuff like that. Set it to give numbers from one to six, and make sure the number of columns and numbers being generated are the same.

Doing so lets you copy and paste it into a word file, while maintaining the spacing, so you can just print it off. After a quick test, 1947 random numbers will fill a regular 8.5"x11" page.

In the 'infiltration' test I would tend to deviate from the teamwork rules by using the worst skill as the base. It reflects that contrary to the usual, the best teammenbers are helping those who suck.

Which is the inverse of say a shootout, with the less competent providing covering fire while the best do the killing.

And I would tend to agree =)

I tend to take the CBT:RPG approach to mass combat. First break the combat down into squad on squad action and have each squad act at the same time. NPC vs NPC battles should be solved using either an Axis and Allies/Risk approach (each side rolls 1D6 for each NPC, and matches up their highest dice together (with the higher roll killing off the lower roll)). Any squads of NPCs have their best person roll initiative for them.

[example]
You have 12 PCs attacking with 24 other NPCs, and there are 50 NPCs defending the ship. The GM has broken the PCs into 3, 4 man squads (A, B, C) and for simplicity is using an Axis and Allies/Risk approach for the friendly NPCs. All the players roll combat their imitative but the attacking NPCs only roll imitative for their attacking squads as a whole (so only rolling 3 times for the squad facing A, the squad facing B and the squad facing C). At the end of each combat turn the GM rolls 24D6 (Attacking NPCs) vs 50D6 (Defending NPCs) and compares the results. Ties always go in favour of the PC's NPCs. Once a squad has eliminated their enemy squad a new squad takes its place (from the ever depleting reserve of 50 enemy NPCs) until all the enemy NPCs are dead.
[/example]

I have a Python script that I use for this - give it a number of dice, it rolls that many, tells you how many successes and failures you got, and checks to see if you glitched or critically glitched. It can also handle exploding sixes, for when you use Edge. I'm not sure how you would go about running this in Windows - this was written in OS X and can be run in that and in Linux straight from the command line as you would any other script.


EDIT: If you have the ability to do so, I suggest running it with a utility like rlwrap - being able to [up],[enter] is very useful.