Belegarth

Just trying to brainstorm here and get ideas...

Essentially, what I'm looking at are ways in which we can make our battles mean something more than just whichever side has people left alive. By linking the individual battles together, they start to impact what would amount to the "grand scheme of things". It's been tried before to varying degrees of success or failure depending on your perspective.

As an example, if you think of the "Lord of the Rings" movies as being a campaign, a couple of the strategic objectives were the destruction of the Ring of Power and of Saruman. To do that, there were different operations such as the Fellowship whose mission was to return the ring to Mt. Doom, seeking out the army of the dead, and moving the people of Rohan to Helm's Deep. Over the course of the campaign, you had several critical battles such as Helm's Deep, the battle versus the Orcs in the first movie, and, of course, Pelennor Fields in the final movie. The loss of any of these battles would have severely impacted the strategic goals and would have required changing approaches(flying eagles dropping the ring into the volcano, anyone? ) and rethinking the objectives of the campaign.

Is this something a lot of people would embrace and is it really worth making the effort?

It's a neat idea. We had a scenario planned for Geddon's Friday fighting that was used at 'Geddon last year, but a lack of castle and props for the field nixed it.

Having an end purpose to the field battles would encourage competitive fighting and roleplaying, both good things. It would make for even more memorable superb tactical decisions and brilliant individual performances. I'm definitely up for trying to formulate a way to make this work to everyone's benefit.

it would be nice, but I see most battles as a huge disparity in balance of the 2 sides, I think linking this into a longer run just exasperates the issue.

some sort of system to balance sides before starting a campaign would be important imo.

if balance can be obtained, I think its a spectacular idea that will add lots more fun to our sport.

agreed

perhaps we could adopt a currency and land grid system like darkon?

Balance would be the biggest issue. Spot on, Aegis.

Unless the teams were meant to be unbalanced, per the scenario. That'd be cool.

Wasn't there a castle battle at some event where if the assaulting team won a particular fight, then the gates were opened, then if they won the next one, they made it past the wall, then if they won the next one..., and so on?

That, to me, sounds like the way to make it work. Balance the teams with a lot of meleeing beforehand, then set one team up with a certain set of goals and the other with a certain different set and cause them to oppose one another. That sort of concept can be adapted, with some planning and forethought.

See what you can do with that. I'm too tired to think and my eyes still aren't back up to 100% yet (I just had PRK).

Yeah, a darkon-esque system would be really cool, but the only reason it really works for them is the high local concentraion of fighters and having 2 events a month to move the story along.

Something to give each battle a little more meaning would definitely be cool though.

How about a Live Action Risk (like the board game) type war? A commander/king could actually use the little men and game board to move troops around but the battles would be fought on the field instead of throwing dice.

Uhm, that would be kind of awesome.

Let a command team set up Units and Sub-Units of exactly who they want and set up subcommanders and such and then group them up and play it just like Risk. That would be too awesome.

Arrakis wrote:Uhm, that would be kind of awesome.

Let a command team set up Units and Sub-Units of exactly who they want and set up subcommanders and such and then group them up and play it just like Risk. That would be too awesome.

except for the OMFG boring time where youre not fighting and just waiting around, oh wait youre the unit in the back of australia all by yourself...with the defense at the thailand location preventing you from seeing action.

then you get the top fighter who gets used to take all the 1's rolling thru them like candy.

I dont see how this could work and be fun nor fair for all the participants.

Don't use 1 person to represent 1 piece, use one unit/realm to represent all of your pieces. So the same people will be fighting for every attack you make on the game board. If that makes sense.

Regardless of how you set it up, belegarth risk would have its ups and downs.

Jesus Christ, Aegis, I'm gonna start calling you Debbie Downer.

Ok, Debbie, what do you think would liven things up?

And yeah, I meant that 1 Risk "piece" would be, say, 3 fighters.

This kind of points to an issue I have with Belegarth in general... what's the point? We just fight... not for any real reason except for the joy of fighting. That used to cut it for me, then I wanted to create a functional effective miltary unit. I did that. I wanted to fight with them at events and be effective in unit battles. Did that when an event allowed it. Now I just want to fight with them on a regular basis and have the battles mean something in a more grand scheme. Doesn't really happen much.

I find this a critical reason as to why I don't enjoy fighting nearly as much anymore. Leading my unit and my army into battles where I knew we would be fighting together the majority of the day always inspired me inbetween events to work on refining my team, training my team and recruiting for both Belegarth and the Uruk-Hai/Iron Crown. If I was guaranteed time to fight with my group for more than one hour per day per event, then I might consider becoming more inspired and motivated. I know what to expect with Octoberfest, but it's always a crapshoot with Spring War and attendance is poor at Arm (hopefully will change soon).

I guess my main point is while a campaign of sorts would help, I think a series of events with a consistent schedule with the same judges that scored all attending GROUPS on a certain criteria (attendance, garb quality, on field and off field attitude, etc,) and awarding those groups at the final event of the year would be a great way to motivate and inspire more attendance, better looking pictures, friendlier events and attract other groups participation.

I hate the fact that I spent many years building a unit that works well together and recruited enough soldiers to actually pull off certain tactics only to have heralds divide my group up. It's not worth it anymore. Two events that are worth it a year (three if you count Rag). Each event (cept rag) gives about 1-2 hours per day per event to unit battles. That's about 8 hours total per year that I get to fight at a national event.

Lame.... Perhaps I'll just fight SCA...

(I have a lot more to add, but I'll let someone else take the ball and roll with it. Maybe it'll happen and I'll get my uruks out to more events besides o-fest).

We now have the event site to do this. I think this is one of the reasons I get bored with field battles. It is just the same thing over and over.

I think settting up specific events that are staged aournd strategy and tactics would be very refreshing. There is no reason we could not do these bi-monthly. I too have some ideas on this.

V'hil wrote:[...] I think a series of events with a consistent schedule with the same judges that scored all attending GROUPS on a certain criteria (attendance, garb quality, on field and off field attitude, etc,) and awarding those groups at the final event of the year would be a great way to motivate and inspire more attendance, better looking pictures, friendlier events and attract other groups participation.

Physic wrote:I think settting up specific events that are staged aournd strategy and tactics would be very refreshing. There is no reason we could not do these bi-monthly.

Judas wrote:How about a Live Action Risk (like the board game) type war? A commander/king could actually use the little men and game board to move troops around but the battles would be fought on the field instead of throwing dice.

Arrakis wrote:That, to me, sounds like the way to make it work. Balance the teams with a lot of meleeing beforehand, then set one team up with a certain set of goals and the other with a certain different set and cause them to oppose one another. That sort of concept can be adapted, with some planning and forethought.

It seems like since most people are offering ideas to make this work that most people are in favor of making something like this happen.

If we could get downtime to a minimum, and keep people interested, I'd love to try some of this stuff at an event. However, as Kyrian and others know, it's a problem of keeping a large majority (80% sounds like a good number) happy with that sort of fighting, and having something for others to do who don't want to have those objectives. Most of us who have been around for a while have seen a few of these things implemented in the past, and unfortunately 1/2 the people or more * about it during and after this sort of activity.

Also, you have to keep in mind, not everyone reads the boards, and not everyone who does is comfortable with posting.

But as I've said, I would love to try some new stuff, especially once Kegg gets some of the "permanent" castle/city things i've been hearing about going.

I beleive these should be separate to all main events. We could hold a quarterly or bi monthly event each year with a distinct winner at the end of the year. We could do some pretty cool stuff like keeping history books of the battles. I suspect these events would get about 100-200 fighters which is perfect for most scenarios.

People would have to realize that these will be slower but they are more scenario based and require time to think and plan the strategy which is the whole point. I personally would rather have well thought out battles then just keep doing the same field battles all day. We can leave that type of fighting for the main events.

I've heard randomly in other places[cannot verify the truth of it] that instituting campaign scenarios to things like this make cheating a little more prevalent on both the judge and player side. Human nature and all that makes this a little believable.


With that said, I think having a campaign type deal would be a fun thing to do. To institute something like this would involve a sort of dedicated team. Not all battles should be a field battle with equal force, different terrain, different equipment [maybe one side has a little more missile support or something to that effect], and heck whats a war without a gripping back story.

As for winning any battle it shouldn't be pure attrition. Maybe a "general" can decide to have a tactical retreat in return for maybe a slight bonus on the next map.[The side that chooses to retreat has to actually has to run for the hills.]

I also think it would be fun if done right. As alluded to above though, this sort of thing can cause a few problems.

At Rag this year, Laconia camped directly across the path from us (the red and yellow greek unit with the jew-fro guy from the darkon documentary). I was talking to a couple of the guys a little bit about the differences between the games, and they mentioned that cheating does get to be a little bit of a problem, and that sometimes tempers can run pretty high when there's a lot at stake. They enjoy coming out to beledag events for an event of just fighting, rather than having all the pressure.

They did say at one point that Darkon would be fine if we took their rules, maybe modified it to fit our style of combat, and formed a chapter somewhere else. Maybe you guys that really like the idea can form one up somewhere between champaign and chicago or something (or down south a little more and I'd be able to go regularly).

I dunno, just a thought. I wouldnt mind if we formed something else that would incorporate this style of game, but I think there are a lot of people in belegarth that would like to just go out and fight, though I personally would be quite interested.

I usually only see crappy attitudes when there is something at stake, such as tournament prizes, or Unit pride. It's when these games are played purely for fun that they add the greatest amount of enjoyment to the game. We did an Orc invasion battle at our first event, and a lot of people said that was the funnest battle of the day. (it was a one day event)

There is nothing wrong with scenario/campaign battles, as long as people are in it for the fun.

Soo Ma Tai wrote:We did an Orc invasion battle

Sounds sexy. What exactly is that though? We are trying to do more scenerio battles with units a the next WOF.

Even with the added stress, if things could be kept fair I'd be all for anything that upped the level of competition.

Unfortunatly in every battle where something like this was at stake, I've seen rampant problems with shot taking and such. It's the same reason I refuse to enter into tourneys, I don't want to put myself in that kind of position, nor the hearlds who have a hard enough job with realm and unit battles.

i ran a battle called total war at arm last year. ran great people hd tons of fun. bsically you have 2 tems and they fight open field bttle, winner loses 5 fighters. it then goes to team A bridge battle, if team a wins again they move forward again to a city battle and then a castle battle, finally a battle of kill the monarch. each time the winner loses a few fighters, i scvaled the skill of the fighters based on the margin of victory. at the end i had the teams so close that i left it alone and we let one side go all the way to the win.

something like this could be used to spice uip large battles. another option is to keep track of unit battle winners and have a land grab type game. slo a unit battle winner would get a square on a map, start a kingdom by expansion, take away others land and so on. just fun way to keep track of games, with nothing real on the line.

See, bo, now that's thinkin'.

Arrakis wrote:Jesus Christ, Aegis, I'm gonna start calling you Debbie Downer.

Ok, Debbie, what do you think would liven things up?

And yeah, I meant that 1 Risk "piece" would be, say, 3 fighters.

Sorry to offend Whiny Wilma.

I personally recommend, Wilma, that you keep people engaged. If you wanna play risk, have it where everyone participates every battle, each time, the # of people on each time would be split by the # of each side during the pieces, so if its 12 armies attacking 8 armies, then 60% of the people would be on the offense and 40% on the defense, and then you figure by how many survive on the winning side, how many pieces are left,

also figuring a small % bump for the defense blah blah blah...


OR.


We could hit people with foam. Thats my favorite part.


Seriously tho, Fort Battles, Woods Battles, Castle Battles, Bridge Battles, Island Battles, Rift/Portal Battles, the list goes on and on....

there are so many cool scenarios that dont require a second game, why not just enjoy the game we are playing, instead of playing a game within a game.

and when not at an event, Ill happily engage people in games of Risk, Diplomacy or any other strategy game we can get our hands on.

Allrighty then....The Orc Invasion scenario

There are a few things to consider in running this battle, # of participants, etc. When we did this, we (the Orcs) ran the event, so we played the part of the bad guys (Orcs aren't really bad, it's just the spin the pinkys put on it)

Credit where credit am due: This scenario was taken from a goblin battle run by Izzy and crew at an old, Dur-D event in 95-96' timeframe.

1. The Orcs have their own valhalla, opposite from everyone else. Orcs instantly rez when they hit valhalla, as they are invading in force, this helps to represent the overwhelming numbers. Orcs all carry several tokens, we used strips of cloth and twine. When an Orc is killed he gives his killer one of these tokens, then goes to valhalla. Other than that Orcs just kill pinky all day, or however long you run the battle.

2. Have the rest of everyone sign up for the battle in teams of X (3-5 I would say depending on how many players there are) The player teams start in their valhalla, and head out into the scenario area in 30 sec intervals until all the teams are out. (this prevents valhalla camping and killing teams as they leave) The players must kill as many Orcs as possible and return to valhalla with the proof of their kills (the tokens). The token must be brought to the valhalla herald while the player is still alive. If a player is killed they must drop all tokens they are carrying and go to valhalla. This let players steal each others bounties. Players count to 50-100 in valhalla before rezzing.

3. That about covers it. Run the battle as long as you see fit, 2 hrs should be good depending on the size of the event. Which ever team turns in the most bounty before the end of the time wins.

4. Make sure your Orcs have a ton of tokens, or you will be trying to run them back to the Orc valhalla 1/2 way into the battle. I would suggest a couple hundred for a larger event, at least a hundred were used at our 30-40 man event.

5. I suggest running the scenario as a woods battle, though I guess it could work for a field battle as well. You will need a valhalla herald, a time/score keeper and a good few heralds for the woods, I suggest one per 2 teams, all depending on size of course.

That's it, any questions, just ask.

I had something like this planned for a different event but we never to do it. It was basically a rip off of Beowulf, but it was an all weekend scenario battle. There were other battles as well, but this was the main fighting for the day. It started out with teams of 2, one team is in the water already with boats, and the vikings were going to launch from their rez point en mas. The other team would be spread out hiding behind the hay bale islands and such, much like pirates. The point of this battle was to cross the see and land. After this battle, about 2 hours, there would be a break before the landing battle. This is where Soo's suggestion would come into play. 2 hours of 5 man meat grinder, with people of the island having a central rez point, and the vikings would have another point where they would wait until they had teams of five, then the herald would send them out. The out come of this battle would determine the teams for the next day. If the vikings won, then they would start off with more folks for the bridge battle, if not then the inhabitants would start off with more. The rez points would be a 10 count for the side that won, and 15 for the losing side from the landing battle, or something similar to that. After the bridge battle would be the monster battle. So the idea here is to have one team in groups of 20 to represent the monsters, they can team up but no more than 2 teams at a time in a group. The 20 man monster will have can only lose 10 people before it's immobile, but they can instant rez and be back in the fight. Once all the monsters are defeated, then the boss comes out. The boss is all of team b, split into 5 teams with instant rez, but with limited number of rezzes. Team a has to kill all four heads of the monster before it can kill the body. Once the heads are gone, all of team b will represent the body. This will be a attack/defend scenario with a relic in the middle to represent the heart of the beast. The object will have to be hit with 5 red hits for it to be destroyed.


Thoughts?

The Gauntlet.

seriously. best scenario ever.

*not that im biased

I was into woodsball for awhile. They divide the teams into competing armies and either let them decide on a general / king or appoint one. Then they assign units/teams to each army. The general is given several goals to accomplish or things/places to capture. The other general is given opposing goals. This allows for as many "armies" of as many sizes as needed. It also means that individual units can stay cohesive and still be a viable part of the battle. '

It seems like the real problem is setting up the tasks, and making them interesting and varied.

An event done like that would be awesome in my opinion. You'd have to make sure to let people know that it was going to be a scenario based event so all the people who just wanna do standard field fights all day don't come and * about it.

I know this thread is a bit old, rotting and smelly, but why would people be forced to participate in a scenario battle?

As we now have stonehouse which has two fighting fields, it would be totally possible to run a scenario on one field while letting others interested in straight field battles take the other field.

I would also be worried about high instance of cheating though. If there is a reason to win then there's a reason to cheat.

There's already a ridiculous chance of cheating. More so than any other type of full contact sport. Athletics is played on a field with referees, paintball has an obvious mark to keep you honest, all we have are the heralds.

I really don't think there would be any more cheating than there is now.

I absolutely agree. People THINK the other team is cheating a whole **** more than anyone actually cheats.
Scenario battles are the coolest thing there is. I only wish we had more.
I would not only GO to an all weekend scenario battle. I would pay more for it.
FB

Has anyone had scenario battles where the teams are divided in to two (by unit), and then each side is given multiple optional objectives? Maybe each side choses a monarch.

Eg.

Destroy Unit Uruk Hai
Capture west corner pail fort
Hold East corner bail fort
Kill oppositions monarch
Move un-armed man across field to south corner, deliver him alive

Kinda like mission risk.

Then a after a set time is up who wins is calculated by how many objectives were accomplished by the end.

Is this done? If not, would it work well you think?

And the outcome of each battle/objective would determine the next battle.

For example, Team A wins the battle, so in the next round Team B has been pushed back to a defensive position, BUT since Team B completed some special objective, Team A has no missle weapons or something.

Good ideas.
FB

bo1 wrote:i ran a battle called total war at arm last year. ran great people hd tons of fun. bsically you have 2 tems and they fight open field bttle, winner loses 5 fighters. it then goes to team A bridge battle, if team a wins again they move forward again to a city battle and then a castle battle, finally a battle of kill the monarch. each time the winner loses a few fighters, i scvaled the skill of the fighters based on the margin of victory. at the end i had the teams so close that i left it alone and we let one side go all the way to the win.

i'm not usually a fan of "elaborate" scenario battles, but this makes the most sense i have ever seen.

it's basic enough for those that love regular ol' open field battles, but has that added edge for those that love scenarios. i'd love to do a campaign such as this.

Hell yeah, I missed that in Bo1's post.
That is an awesome idea.
Could you write it out in rules-ese for us?
FB

Well if it is just about giving it meaning why not do something like a year long season where at events you have battles between realms/units? You collect points for the wins. Kinda like pro soccer leagues.

Hi and welcome to the boards. This thread is 3.5 years old. Though it's a nice subject to bring back up after this long you will find that most people are already using most suggestions here. As for having points and what not. Most of us cannot get together every single event so I don't see this being viable.

Oh wow need to be better bout seeing the dates, sorry bout that.Well I am not saying it would be every event. Like you have in a "season" 4-5 battles that have scoring potential against who ever maybe and that effects qualifying in a championship tourney that would only take place at one event. So it would make Realms fight the realms closest to them, and thus each area would end up with representation. I do see the problems though. I merely mean put a title or prize on it and the motive goes up with out having to make a complex situation for battle.