SKM Development: Military Matters

The Combat system of a RPG is key. In the case of a kingdom management game, the combat system is the army (or the garrison).

As I stated previously, I decided on a Defense Value or Security Value for military units. This isn’t much different then ACK’s BR system they use for mass combat, but I wanted to aim for someone less granular. See in their system when you go to war you commit a certain amount of BR from your force, and then you’d roll, and see the damage rates fly. ACKs also has stout, hardy rules for being out of supply range, damaged units, demoralized units, and so on.

I don’t want to sound like an asshole, but, I don’t think we need all of that for the game we're running.

A kingdom management game is more about the individual decisions, and the actual tactical movement of armies around hexes might be valuable, but I doubt anyone wants to get too involved in the nitty-grit of it, so the parts I think we’d need to keep are..

1.       Supply. Supply routes and logistics are absolutely key to military operations at the Kingdom level.

2.       Army composition. Who’s in an army should affect things like speed, adaptability, and so forth. Terrain should affect the army based on who and what it’s made of.

3.       Resolution of armed conflict.

4.       Ease of book keeping.

This is moderately conflicted by the fact that my players want a research system. But the research system can actually help us a bit here.

By envisioning what potential ‘upgrades’ could be, we can start imagining the mechanics of the ‘baseline.’ That applies to all aspects of this design.

I also enjoy the idea that the starting hex and its terrain will have effects on troop type availability and such. A light footman from a mountain region might do well on plains and mountains for example, whereas a light footman from a desert might be faster on open terrain, and so on.

That’s for later development. For simplicity’s sake, I still like the simplicity of dedicating Security or Defense Rating to a die roll, adding a modifier and then a commander modifier (as applicable).  I don’t think it’s important to worry about sergeants, individual squad leaders, and the like, not when we’re taking a top down approach. We’re aiming for Crusader Kings, not Command & Conquer.  

We’ll need to revisit this once we’ve actually figured out what the hell those ratings will be though.