The Rules of War

Intro

My GM Justin has requested a game mechanic for his Shadowrun game that will allow him to run large scale epic battles that involve hundreds if not thousands of combatants on the battlefield, as well as tanks, helicopters, pick’em up trucks with gun turrets, drones, bombs bursting in air and rockets red glare, thi -chi and all that other killer shit. Below are the rules that have been created after some discussions, and the rules are still open to discussion if anyone has any questions, concerns, insights, or ideas.

Concept

Any battle that will take long enough, and involve enough moving pieces to become more then the Shadowrun rules can handle as they are written will instead be played out through a series of extended and contested dice offs between the characters involved in the fight and the nameless enemy horde. A battle that will take 8 hours of in game time maybe divided into 4 different 2 hour increments, each of which will require a dice off to see how well or how poorly the fighting plays out for the Characters involved. The rules were not designed to determine which side of the conflict wins but merely so Justin may determine what does or does not happen to our characters within the conflict. Death and Glory are both very real possible outcomes of any of the dice offs.


STEP ONE

You will need to compare your character to the base line of the enemy forces your character will be fighting. The Baseline of any given enemy force will be it’s nameless horde of rank and file soldiers such as the Expeditionary Soldier, Infantryman, Guerilla, or the Warrior. (Example Grunts found on Pg 147 of WAR)

Below is the list of the 18 different categories that matter when comparing your character to the nameless horde you will be fighting. For every Category you win, you get 2 Dice to add to your Extended Contested Dice Pool. For every Category you lose, you gain 1 Die to add to your Extended Contested Dice Pool. Ignore every category that does not apply to your Character and the Nameless Horde, or any category that ends in a tie between that your Character and the Nameless Horde.

For Example:

Losing every category grants you 18 Dice vs. Justin’s Nameless Horde Dice Pool of 36

Winning every Category grants you 36 Dice vs. Justin’s Nameless Horde Dice Pool of 18

For Example:

If your Character does not have a “Special Defense” and the Enemy does not have a “Special Defense”, then that category is merely skipped over and grants no additional dice.

Personal

1. Armor
Compare your Armor to the Armor worn by the enemy

2. Augmentations
Count up your Physical Adept Powers, Cyberware, Bioware, and Sustaining Foci and compare them to the enemy’s

3. Weapons
Compare your Weapons to the Enemy’s Weapons

4. Stealth
Compare your Unmodified Stealth Skills + Attribute to the Enemy’s Unmodified Stealth Skill + Attribute

5. Perception
Compare your Unmodified Perception Skill + Attribute to the Enemy’s Unmodified Perception Skill + Attribute

6. Technical skills
Compare your Unmodified Technical Skills + Attribute to the Enemy’s Unmodified Technical Skills + Attribute

7. Close Combat skills
Compare your Appropriate Unmodified Close Combat Skill + Attribute to the Enemy’s Appropriate Unmodified Close Combat Skill + Attribute
(The only Close Combat Skills that matter are the Skills that are appropriate to the weapon or weapons your character is armed with.)

8. Firearm Skills
Compare your Appropriate Unmodified Firearm Skill + Attribute to the Enemy’s Appropriate Unmodified Firearm Skill + Attribute
(The only Firearm Skills that matter are the Skills that are appropriate to the weapon or weapons your character is armed with.)

9. Special Defense
This category is here to provide a bonus to characters such as Nightshadow and Big Bear who have regeneration and immunity to normal weapons.

10. Magic
Compare your Magic Attribute, Sorcery Skills, and Conjuring Skills to the Enemy.

11. Mobility
Compare your Appropriate Unmodified Close Combat Skill + Attribute to the Enemy’s Appropriate Unmodified Close Combat Skill + Attribute

12. Initiative Passes
Compare your Initiative Passes to the Enemy’s Initiative Passes, whoever has the most IP’s Wins.

Army

13. Mechanized
Whichever fighting forces has the better Tanks, Drones, and other swift and sweet killing machines wins this category.

14. Critters
Whichever Fighting Force has the better X-Men, Sprits, Critters, Freaks and Geeks then the other side wins this category.

15. Terrain
Terrain is a tricky dickey in that which side may or may not have the Terrain advantage has very much to do with what is happening in the moment and ultimately it is up to Justin to decide which side if any has the Terrain Advantage.

16. Air Support and Artillery
Whichever side has the better Air Support and Artillery aiding their ground forces wins this category.

17. Communications
Whichever side has the better Tac Net wins this category. For example : Tac Net beats dudes with radios, and dudes with radios are better then dudes screaming Durka Durka.

18. Size
Size matters, Size matters, Size matters…..Which ever fighting forces has the numbers wins this category.


STEP TWO

Once you know what your Dice Pool will be you have a choice to make in regards to your Character’s general behavior during the fighting. You may choose to fight Aggressive or to fight Defensively. Fighting in an Aggressive manner will subtract from 1 to 4 dice from your Dice Pool, but will grant you 1 to 4 additional successes added to your net hits if you manage to win the Dice Off. Fighting Defensively will grant you an additional 1 to 4 dice to your Extended Contested Dice Pool, but will reduce the rewards and glory you may receive even if you win the Dice Off.

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Aggressive -1 to -4 Dice from Character’s Dice Pool but increases Character’s chances for greater glory

Defensively +1 to +4 Dice To the Character’s Dice Pool but reduces the Character’s chances for greater glory.

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Note: that fighting Aggressive reduces your Dice Pool which may result in dieing a glorious death.






STEP THREE

ROLL THEM BONES!

Once you know your Character’s Dice Pool and have determined if you will be fighting Aggressive, Defensively, or just normal old school casual fighting……

You Roll your Character’s Dice Pool and Justin Rolls the Nameless Horde’s Dice Pool, and compare the results.

If the Hits Scored by you and Justin are a tie, congratulations! your Character has just survived that increment of the battle.

If you have more Hits then Justin does, congratulations! your Character has done well in that last increment of battle.

If Justin has more Hits then you do, congratulations! you may have the opportunity to have a new character.

STEP FOUR

What the actual Dice Results Mean.

If you win or lose the Extended Contested Dice Off by 1 to 4 Hits, your Character will receive either a bonus or a penalty of 1 to 4 Dice on the next Dice Off for the Next Increment of the Battle.

If you Win the Dice off by 5 or more Net Hits, your character has not only managed to survive the last increment of the battle, but has managed to thrive. Your character may have managed to pull an allied Commander from a burning vehicle, Your character may have managed to find an advantage on the battlefield that will grant a bonus to your Dice Pool to the rest of the Battle, Your character may have managed to single handedly taken an enemy machine gun nest, Sniper Nest, Nest Egg, Whatever it was your character did something cool.

If you lose the Dice Off by 5 or more Net Hits, you take 5 or more Net Hits of Damage. This Damage taken may have been from an enemy’s bullet, a grenade going off near you, an enemy’s spell effect, or from any number of potentially painful things that exist on a battlefield. What is important is that the damage can not be healed through regeneration, Med Kits, or Magic until the end of the Battle. If your character’s damage track fills up completely, your character is either going to need to burn edge to stay alive and hope his allies find him after the fighting is over, or die.

Note: Wound Penalties will effect your Extended Contested Dice Pool, so after you rack up enough wound penalties it might be time to start fighting Defensively.


Closing

These rules were created to provide Justin a method of involving our characters in very large scale battles without the fates of our Characters being left up to GM fiat. If anyone has any Questions, Gripes or Concerns, let me know.

Shadowrun is complicated enough! I would tell a story from the Shadowrunners perspective and maybe determine success of campaign based on how many missions the Runners successfully complete. Maybe make random War encounters.

Wow. Thats complicated. Make it an extended leadership test. Add +1 die for every X units over the enemy (for superior numbers), add + for superior tech. make the interval something like 1 day to 1 week, depending on how drawn out the military campaign is.

It may appear a massive wall of complex text but I honestly believe it is a fast and easy way to determine how things may play out for any given character fighting in a large scale battle.

Lets say Street Sam is doing Merc work down in South America and is fighting on the side of Amazonia against Aztecnology.

Lets say Amazonia's Forces are making a big push into a section of a city that the Azzies have under control.

You simply run down the check list of the first 12 categories on the list comparing Street Sam to the Infantryman Grunt out of the War book.


1. Armor = Sam's Armored Jacket vs the Azzie Light Military Grade Armor_____________________________Sam 1 Azzies 2

2. Augmentations= Sam's Smartlink, bone lacing, etc.... vs the Azzies nothing__________________________Sam 2 Azzies 1

3. Weapons= Sam's unmodified AK-97 vs Azzie Assualt Rifes with High Powered Rounds and grenades ______Sam 1 Azzies 2

4. Stealth= Sam's Agility 5+ Infiltration 3 vs Azzie Agility 3 +Infiltration 0______________________________Sam 2 Azzies 1

5. Perception = Sam's Intuition 3 + Perception 3 vs Azzie Intuition 3 + Perception 2______________________Sam 2 Azzies 1

6. Technical skills = Sam's vs Theirs ____________________________________________________________Sam 2 Azzies 1

7. Close Combat skills= Sam's vs Theirs ________________________________________________________Sam 2 Azzies 1

8. Firearm Skills = Let's say it is a tie ___________________________________________________________Sam 0 Azzies 0

9. Special Defense = Not really applicable here because neither are critters ____________________________Sam 0 Azzies 0

10. Magic= Once again NA_____________________________________________________________________Sam 0 Azzies 0

11. Mobility= Sam's Athletics Dice Pools > then their Dice Pool_______________________________________Sam 2 Azzies 1

12. Initiative Passes= Sam has 2 IP's lets say, which is more then the Azzies ___________________________Sam 2 Azzies 1


________________________________________________________________________________
____TOTAL: Sam 16 Azzies 11

Next you take in some modifiers for the Sam's allies vs the Azzie Forces.

13. Mechanized= Azzies have cooler death tanks and stuff so they get this category ______________________Sam 1 Azzies 2

14. Critters = The Amazonian Forces have more critters lets say so they get this category_________________Sam 2 Azzies 1

15. Terrain = Azzies are defending a city with fortified positions so they get the advantage here ____________Sam 1 Azzies 2

16. Air Support and Artillery= Azzies Helicopters > Amazonian's lack of Helicopters_______________________Sam 1 Azzies 2

17. Communications= Azzie Tac-Net > Amazonian radios____________________________________________Sam 1 Azzies 2

18. Size = Lets say the Amazonians have more soldiers in this particular example battle___________________Sam 2 Azzies 1

TOTAL Sam 8 Azzies 10

Add up the totals from the Personal Categories and the Army Categories to determine the Dice Pools

Sam will have 24 Dice vs the Azzie 21 Dice.

If the Battle is scripted in the GM's head to last 12 Hours, The GM may call for one Extended Contested Roll to figure out how well Sam performed in the fight with one roll, or break the 12 hour battle up into 12 different rolls to represent how well Sam performed in each hour of the battle.

I do fully agree that the rules I have presented here are far more complicated then a GM narration of a character's experiences on a battlefield, but I think they are far simpler and easier then attempting to actually play through a large scale battle using the traditional Shadowrun Rules for Rounds and IPs, and they have the advantage of presenting characters with very real chances of impressive victories on the battlefield as well as death. When you simple make use of GM Fiat to describe what happens to a character during a large battle between two armies it would be horrible form in my opinion to kill off a character, and any real impressive actions a character may take or small victories they maybe part of will have only happened because the Gm said so which is also sort of lame in my opinion.

If you want to involve the various characters in your Shadowrun game in large scale battles for whatever reason, I believe these rules can provide a mechanic that can significantly speed through things while still presenting the very real possibility for heroics and death on any given battlefield.

They seem a bit pointless, though.

Roll a dice and see whether your character performed well for the last 12 hours?

You wouldn't do that for any other run, why do it when the characters are fighting in a war? Write it up as a scenario and play it out - you don't need to roll the dice for the 100s of NPCs who are shooting at the other hundreds of NPCs.

Many of these are problematic and add quite a bit more complexity than you seem to think.

Compare whose armor? The total ratings of all armor worn by all characters involved? That could take quite some time to add up. The armor worn by the COs of each side? That's not really representative of either force.


Same deal, only here you have the added problem of quantifying all that. What are you measuring? Power points' worth of adept powers? Not all adept powers are equally valuable in combat: Improved Ability (Dance) 4 and Improved Ability (Longarms) 2 each cost 1PP, but one is clearly more useful on the battlefield. Essence points' worth of augmentation? Same thing: a penile implant and an internal air tank each cost 0.25 Essence, but only one will protect you against smoke inhalation and airborne bio/chemical weapons. Force points' worth of sustaining foci? Why only sustaining, and not power, spellcasting, summoning, etc., foci?

I could go on, but you get the point. Your system isn't actually very simple at all.

And the rules in War can not be used, why?

Can anything in War! be used?

Thor shots, for taking out the trash

Oh please, waste of a good orbital crowbar. Those things aren't cheap, you know!

Cheaper than an actual war, though.

Depends on what side of the war you're on.

Ares typically laughs all the way to the bank.

Point Taken...

One war is good for business: Desert Wars!

Ratings! Munitions Sales! Advertisement! Endorsements! And sweet, sweet bloodsports to opiate the masses!

Sure, but that is entertainment. Entertainment is ALWAYS profitable (well, mostly anyways)...

There are rules for running large scale conflicts in War?

Strategic combat, page 141.

Tell that to the companies that own Sci-Fi channels and keep cancelling high rating shows, just because they're not doing as well as the Reality TV Shows that are on their other channels.

I really need to read War! again to give it another shot. This time not when I'm in an ER Waiting Room after far too many hours of no sleep.

Yeah, I know. They Canceled Firefly.



Really is not all that bad, contrary to what some think. *shrug*