As seen on http://www.fudgefactor.org.

Fudge Battles

by Helge Lund Kolstad (helge @ nvg.org)

Every now and then, especially in fantasy settings, you might end up tossing your players into a large battle, whether as generals, officers, common soldiers or simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. You now have the choice between deciding beforehand how the battle will take its course (and hope the players won't mess it up), and to actually play it out. The second way is generally more desirable, only that very few GMs actually have any idea of how to do this in any remotely realistic way.

What to Choose?

The first problem is striking the balance between sufficient realism and ease of use. While we might make detailed rules based on historical examples, they will most likely be useless for any other purpose than exactly that region at exactly that period in time - we want to make such rules portable, too.

In designing a battle system, remember above all that Fudge is a roleplaying game, not a wargame. Inventing a light framework will take the GM's mind off that particular task, but complex and realistic rules are more than likely to bog down play and draw focus away from what we're really after - roleplaying.

A Short History of Warfare

The goal of this article is the describe the field battle, i.e. where both agree on a time and a place and line up to face each other. This type of warfare was the norm, in one form or another, from ancient times until the American Civil War. It was only in World War I, when one first experimented with machine guns, chemical warfare, and other nasty business, that its role had finally been played out.

Although this was true for both Europe, Asia, and North Africa, I'll focus on Europe in this article.

Medieval Armies

In medieval days, you tended to have armies no larger than about 15,000 warriors. When I say warriors, I mean the the armies would number around three times that, but only about a third would be the actual fighting force. The rest would be wives, cooks, whores, and cleaning-women. That last group usually consisted of old women who had nothing to do at home and so joined the army. Indeed they were an important part of any army, for they kept hygiene at acceptable levels, cleaning clothes and scrubbing pots.

Armies were centered around the elite warriors, the knights, with additional forces being more or less haphazardly recruited. Common practice during times of war was to rally the peasantry, equip them with weapons, and direct them towards the front. Training was rarely given to anyone but knights and heavy infantry.

In medieval times, stamina was more important than keen tactics; courage and ferocity were the prime qualities. You needed leaders who would be an example to his soldiers, who would stay with them on the front line and ride boldly with them into battle.

Age of Reason

The Renaissance saw a shift towards more uniform armies, with more centralized support staff and better training. Uniforms, which previously had been at most tabards with the lord's coat of arms, now became whole outfits. One began to think in terms of standardized equipment.

New inventions, like firearms, required a new type of officer. One now needed generals and officers who could keep a more level head in battle. Leaders no longer rode in the front line with their knights, they stayed at the rear where they could monitor more of the battle.

Note that until now, there had been very few actual battles. Those that were fought were mainly because of some mistake on one of the sides (oops - the enemy!). Armies were used more for raiding enemy territories than fighting the enemy's soldiers. Plundering and pillaging were more preferable because:

1. It was easier and less dangerous to remove the enemy's basis for army upkeep than fighting his soldiers. You need luck to win a battle, but only a measure of nastiness to burn a field. No one likes being killed, and professional soldiers are no exception.
2. It was expensive to keep an army; even peasants need to be paid. Plundering enemy villages was an easy method of payment.
3. To supply an army in friendly territory, you would need to buy food from the local farmers. Nothing raised food prices as much as an army passing through.

Napoleon's New Era

Along came a short Corsican who changed all that. Napoleon invented a whole range of new tricks to keep the edge in warfare. First and foremost, he broke with the chess-like thinking by forcing the enemy to do battle. Armies also started becoming much larger than before, numbering half a million where twenty thousand was earlier thought to be the upper limit.

The reason he was able to keep such large armies was that he was the first to get the idea of supply lines. If you kept a steady line of depots and supply trains going between them, you could supply your army from friendly territory without having to worry about paying the local farmers.

Although armies would not for a long time be as large as Napoleon's, his thinking left its indelible marks on the minds of Europe's military thinkers.

However different the periods might have been, they all shared some common traits. The unquestionably most important one would probably even hold true today, even though I'm no expert on modern warfare: How one counted victory in a battle.

How to Win

Too many people think medieval battles were all about eradicating the enemy. This is a misconception. Throughout history, very few battles have ended with one side being completely wiped out. You have won a battle when the enemy has stopped fighting. This can generally be achieved in three ways. Ranked from more to less common:

1. Breaking the enemy's morale,
2. Getting them to surrender, or
3. Wiping them out.

As one can see, the two most common ways to win a battle both have to do with morale.

Army Traits

The simplest way to describe an army is to give it a single Trait, Morale. An army with Poor Morale might be for example a poorly trained column of peasants with pikes and spontoons, a band of marauders, or a group of desert nomads. They might be more or less ferocious, but will all flee quite early in battle - victory means relatively little to them. How to treat casualties is entirely up to the GM in this variant - the numbers could be fudged or just left out entirely. Remember, the point is just to create a backdrop for roleplaying!

If you feel up to the task of adding a bit more crunch, though, you might jot down:

Training	Fair
Morale	Poor
Ferocity	Great
Offensive Factor	+2 (modified for Ferocity)
Defensive Factor	-2 (modified for Morale)

In this case you would roll against Training and let the other two modify the success (or failure).

Remember that until mid-Renaissance, armies did not have standard equipment. In Norway, each community was required to provide and equip one fully armed soldier each. This practice lasted well into the 18th century. Therefore, when you assign these numbers to an historical army, think more of general prowess than equipment stats. In a fantasy setting, of course, you have more freedom deciding. Fantasy usually leans towards more modern army configurations.

Tactics

Experience

How experienced an army is certainly is a factor. Veteran troops have much higher survival rate. As a matter of fact, if you survive your first battle, your chance of surviving the next goes up by 25%. Therefore, an army with less than half veteran soldiers has -1 Morale. This goes up to -2 for less than one quarter veteran soldiers.

Sieges

Historically, sieges rarely ended with battle. More often than not, they ended with an agreement being reached through negotiations, as either the besieged or (most often) the besieger ran out of food. Not very heroic, although it could be used as a plot hook.

Terrain

For moving armies, speed and supply cost is modified by terrain and infrastructure. How to apply these modifiers I leave up to the individual GM, but here are some suggested scores:

River (in direction of travel)	Good^
Lake	Good^
Sea	Fair^
Forest	Mediocre
Plains	Fair
Road	Good
Hills	Poor
Marshland	Terrible
Mountains	...let's go home.
^Assumes some form of transportation across the water.

Bridges are also important strategic points. Even a narrow bridge is better than nothing. You can always find some means to get one person across, or ten, or fifty, but 20,000 heavily equipped people is quite another matter. A Roman legion once spent the better part of summer building a sufficiently large bridge across the Rhine. This is a situation where a character with Engineering or Bridge Construction skill could be invaluable...

Rolling the Dice

How you resolve the actual combat depends entirely on the amount of realism you want in your game. You might make only a die roll for Morale or another Trait, or you might make several, adjusting each as appropriate for whatever actions the players take. Whatever system you choose, remember to be consistent when balancing casualties and loss of morale. A cinematic campaign might put more emphasis on casualties and less on morale, and a horror campaign might lean more than usual towards spirits breaking quickly, with the characters usually being on the receiving end.

Simple Action Resolution

For a simple yet elegant way of deciding the outcome of a battle, you could assign each side a Morale Trait. Then, as combat starts, make opposed Morale rolls, and find the winning side's measure of success. Compare the measure of success to this slightly modified wounding table, and check off the loser's boxes accordingly:

[ ][ ][ ]	Standoff (1-2)
[ ]	Rattled (3-4)
[ ]	Shaken (5-6)
[ ]	Cornered (7-8)
[ ]	Broken (9+)

Keep rolling at regular intervals, modifying results for whatever madness the players might attempt, until one side is reduced to Broken. At that time, they flee, and the winner is free to do something glorious (whatever fits the story).

|Example: The characters are having an audience with King Auberon of Faerie when his castle suddenly is attacked by fierce goblins. The King's Guard of warrior sidhe rush to the defence. At this time, the GM decides that Auberon's warriors are nearly fearless (Great Morale) while the goblins have a Mediocre Morale score. Initially, Auberon rolls +, +, 0, and -, while the goblins roll +, 0, 0, and -. The sidhe win by 4, which is a Rattled result. The goblins' Rattled box is checked off. The players then decide to storm the enemy lines to try to kill the goblin leader. This might give the sidhe a bonus in the next round, as well as winning the players enough favour from Auberon to grant them what they wanted from him in the first place..._

Remember always that if you give away too much detail, the scene will quickly turn into a wargame. You should only recount as much as the characters can see. This is how the above example might be played out:

GM: (rolling Superb for the sidhe and Mediocre for the goblins) The goblin leader sounds a rusty horn, and the vast army starts pouring towards the castle gates. The sidhe seem undaunted, though.

Player: Ack! Are we outnumbered?

GM: A paltry five to one. Hah. Child's play for sidhe warriors, wouldn't you say?

Player: More ack! OK, here's what we do. We'll try to outflank the enemy and kill the goblin leader to confuse them. That might just do the trick.

GM: (grinning evilly) Perhaps. The sidhe archers are firing now. Some of the goblins fall screaming to the ground.

Player: OK, errr... Wait! There's a sortie gate! I remember seeing it on the way in. We'll make for it.

GM: As you wind your way down to the sortie gate, you hear the din of the battle outside. The guttural screams of dying goblins seem louder somehow. You finally reach the gate, and as you open it, you see there's a good fifty paces to the front ranks. There's a clump of forest beside the great army, about sixty paces away from you.

Player: Eureka! We'll make for it.

GM: OK... (rolling Perception for the goblins) A small group of goblins spot you. They're running towards you.

Player: Oh boy. We'll run for the forest and hope to defeat them there.

GM: Very well. Some more goblins join those chasing you. The initial onslaught seems to be over now, by the way. The goblins are falling back and regrouping. There's still lots of them.

If the players can dispose of the pursuers and kill the goblin king quickly enough, the sidhe will roll at +1 the next round. If they are too slow, the invaders will have finished regrouping before the kill will have any effect on that roll. However, the GM might modify the next roll.

These rules should provide a guideline for bringing the sense of mass-combat to your games without changing Fudge into a war game.