if I wanted to run a game where the characters are "staff officers" to a general, are there any regiments that would help me do this?

I'm thinking options that make it easier for characters to get command or something like that...

Look into "The Few" and "Regimental Rivalry" as drawbacks, both can provide ample opportunities to have officers eliminated and players promoted fairly quickly, because either the number of troops is small in the first place, or their rivals keep bopping their Ruperts.

You may also want to consider how you want to run such large confrontations, as will be par for the course later on when they do gain command. Personally, I'd go for a narrative approach, but there's some mass combat rules over in the rogue trader section under development and Lupa, I think, has punished their own as well someplace around here.

Thanks for the reply, I'll check those out.

However, I realise I may not have been entirely clear. I'm looking for regiments etc that give command/Fel etc.

My plan is that the characters play the command squad of a general and are sent to various trouble spots to take charge.

I'd like for a way for everyone to have at least some command/influence abilities.

Under normal circumstances, a general's staff officers being drawn into the fight is something that should never happen - however, this is 40k, which means that given the wide range of military tradition within the Imperium of Man, almost anything is possible.

I think I would recommend regiments that are either of underdeveloped or a rather undisciplined/suicidal nature, where the commanding officer would feel a need to participate in the fighting as a result of his or her homeworld and its culture, which would in turn influence the tactics of the regiment and the personality of its soldiers, specifically the definition of "honourable conduct" and what is expected of the leader.

This means your options would include Feral world barbarians like the Attilan Rough Riders, regiments recruited out of various gangs like the Necromunda Spiders, or "suicide units" like the Last Chancers penal battalion or the Death Korps of Krieg.

The Command and Fel aspects should not actually have anything to do with the regiment, as they are perks based on role. If every single one of your player characters wants to command NPCs, you're looking at a squad full of Sergeants. This is not how I understand Command Squads to work, but in the end it is entirely in the hands of the players and their GM.

What you can do without straying from the concept of Command Squads would be to use the Advanced Specialities from the "Hammer of the Emperor" supplement and have one of your characters assume the role of Commander and another the Master of Ordnance, then add another Sergeant with a vox-caster comrade for communications, and fill the rest up with other Guardsmen classes to serve as either bodyguards, drivers (if the squad is mechanised) or medic. Keep in mind that to have made it into the Command Squad, these characters should be above the norm, which means you should probably give them some free XP to buy various skills or talents with before the game starts.

Look into "The Few" and "Regimental Rivalry" as drawbacks, both can provide ample opportunities to have officers eliminated and players promoted fairly quickly, because either the number of troops is small in the first place, or their rivals keep bopping their Ruperts.

Why not just have the players start in these positions if that's how they want to roll? >_>

No reason not to, I misunderstood where OP wanted to go with this

Under normal circumstances, a general's staff officers being drawn into the fight is something that should never happen - however, this is 40k, which means that given the wide range of military tradition within the Imperium of Man, almost anything is possible.

I think I would recommend regiments that are either of underdeveloped or a rather undisciplined/suicidal nature, where the commanding officer would feel a need to participate in the fighting as a result of his or her homeworld and its culture, which would in turn influence the tactics of the regiment and the personality of its soldiers, specifically the definition of "honourable conduct" and what is expected of the leader.

This means your options would include Feral world barbarians like the Attilan Rough Riders, regiments recruited out of various gangs like the Necromunda Spiders, or "suicide units" like the Last Chancers penal battalion or the Death Korps of Krieg.

The Command and Fel aspects should not actually have anything to do with the regiment, as they are perks based on role. If every single one of your player characters wants to command NPCs, you're looking at a squad full of Sergeants. This is not how I understand Command Squads to work, but in the end it is entirely in the hands of the players and their GM.

What you can do without straying from the concept of Command Squads would be to use the Advanced Specialities from the "Hammer of the Emperor" supplement and have one of your characters assume the role of Commander and another the Master of Ordnance, then add another Sergeant with a vox-caster comrade for communications, and fill the rest up with other Guardsmen classes to serve as either bodyguards, drivers (if the squad is mechanised) or medic. Keep in mind that to have made it into the Command Squad, these characters should be above the norm, which means you should probably give them some free XP to buy various skills or talents with before the game starts.

The point about running it in a feral regiment is a very good one - it's something that fits the campaign I'm planning. That and very green armies that need constant officer attention.

You're correct that it's not strictly the command squad (as seen as the table top) - I'm more envisaging it as a young officer's school. You're quite right that a squad of sergeants would do the job, but the way I wanted to do it was to spread out the command skills and let people specialise in other ways. I was thinking that the regiment rules might be the best way to do it.

Mark

You're correct that it's not strictly the command squad (as seen as the table top) - I'm more envisaging it as a young officer's school. You're quite right that a squad of sergeants would do the job, but the way I wanted to do it was to spread out the command skills and let people specialise in other ways. I was thinking that the regiment rules might be the best way to do it.

With "envision" do you mean a different take on the Command Squad, or just what you'd like to play in the game? If the latter, perhaps you could solve it with a special Doctrine rather than Regiment type - where the player squad gets some bonus skills because this regiment trains its junior officers in a "hands on" type of approach, letting them grow into the job.

The regiment should probably come from a civilisation where the officer class comes from its own respected caste (nobility), so that the common soldiers are not surprised by random greenhorns commanding them in battle. Perhaps these noble scions have already received some preliminary training in a military academy on their homeworld before being assigned to the regiment, so that the upcoming battles are merely the practical part of their training - a trial by fire, if you will.

This solution is partially inspired by GW's "Commissar Training Squads", but since you mentioned that the various specialities should still be open, that did not sound like a viable option.

Still, how exactly do you plan on letting your players command others? It's still a single squad, isn't it? That sounds like a huge risk of characters issuing contradictory orders. Not that this would not fit to the Imperium.

The latter (i.e. how I want it to work for my game). Yes, a doctrine would work well - I should have been more generic and asked if there were any regiments/doctrines/etc in my first post. Anything that gives the whole party skills/bonuses.

I'm almost to the point where the "regiment" is solely the command school - the characters will then spend their time interacting with other regiments (The overall general is basically forging a crusade out of many different forces).

As to how the orders work; I'm not 100% sure yet. There are a broad range of orders out there between all the books so there is opportunity for different characters to be giving different orders. I'm thinking of making "sweeping" versions of most orders so they can command other comrades as they come across them.

Mark

p.s. As you can probably tell, I've only just started working this out. I know what I want for the game, now I'm working out how to get there.

I'm almost to the point where the "regiment" is solely the command school - the characters will then spend their time interacting with other regiments (The overall general is basically forging a crusade out of many different forces).

Ah, that's why I recommended something a little more on the squad level.

Most sources, including GW's original material, treat Imperial Guard regiments as "standalone" units. They can be and often are grouped into Army Groups to combine their various strengths (especially artillery and siege regiments that are extremely specialised in their application), but at the same time they're expected to stand their own ground in appropriate assignments as well. Even more important: though such Army Groups see a lot of temporary reassignments between smaller units, every single regiment is still recruited with its own officers from its own homeworld.

As such, an entire regiment of junior officers raised only to order other regiments around seems somewhat redundant, even troublesome as the existing officers and the other troops may not take too kindly on "outsiders" messing with their way of war. There's a good chance the other regiment's troops will speak a different dialect (most Imperial Guard Army Groups are assigned at least one Sister Dialogous to act as translator between the general staff and the colonels of the other regiments), and they will very likely employ completely different tactics and doctrines which the player characters will have no experience in.

Even trained Commissars are said to have a tough time establishing their grip on soldiers hailing from a completely different culture; how likely is it this would work out well for a bunch of junior officers who are still green behind the ear and in the process of learning how to lead men and women into battle?

But, as mentioned before, this is just the more or less established version of the setting, and there is nothing wrong with cooking up your own interpretation of the setting. Indeed, one could argue we all do this anyways, as contradictory sources force us to pick one version over another. I'm just pointing this out because if you do, you should take a look at other aspects of the background to check what else must be changed in order to conform to that particular vision. After all, if you change the way that Imperial regiments work, it would be prudent to see what consequences this could have elsewhere, specifically the chain of command, the recruitment of regiments, or the grand strategy and logistics of the Adeptus Munitorum. Best to get a clear image of how it all ties together beforehand.

As to how the orders work; I'm not 100% sure yet. There are a broad range of orders out there between all the books so there is opportunity for different characters to be giving different orders. I'm thinking of making "sweeping" versions of most orders so they can command other comrades as they come across them.

Oh, no no no, I didn't mean "orders" in the sense of the gameplay mechanics, I really just meant how you expect the player characters to interact with NPCs they encounter. I mean, you'll end up with a bunch of players all potentially competing for authority if you give each of them the necessary rank to issue orders.

Will the squad still have a hierarchy and thus a singular leader? How do you expect the player characters to gain NPC subordinates - meaning, the process of establishing who gets to issue commands?

And no worries -- working things out is half the fun.

Thanks for the replies, it's helping

Yeah, I'm aware that it means more changes - what I'm not mentioning is that there are going to be setting specific reasons things are like they are. The sector in question has been isolated and the source of authority has fragmented - there are almost mini empires that have formed around Armies when everything collapsed. The nearest thing to an imperial centre was based of the not very numerous Arbites/Schola Progenium (Not finalised) so that's forming the core - as it takes back or does deals with other armies the challenge is to integrate them into the wider army quickly to keep the reconquest going to capture the wider whole (or deciding that a particular faction has fallen so far it needs to be wiped out)

For history fans, this is a game meant to capture the feel of Belisarius recapturing the Western Roman Empire (or at least trying)

I get what you mean on orders - that's something that I'm leaving up in the air. I'm not a fan of chains of command within character parties so the advantage for me is that the players are all equals, nominally. I expect the characters will specialise enough that it would make sense for who gives the orders at what time (for example, if a player has spent time to get to know the a Atillian rider eqv, then it makes sense for him to order them).

They'll gain NPC subordinates as they gain the trust of the forces that they meet - how they do that will be a lot of the game.