GM Assistance tools

By TicToc556, in Only War

Posted at

Gentlemen,

My Campaign had been running smoothly and I've got not only one but two separate groups playing parrallell to one another in the same game. With that said I could use some help.

I'm looking for any tools, publications, tips, tricks, ect ect that any of you widened gentlemen may use to speed along your games. Particularly combat. I tend to have decent sized battles and we use minis. The battles are relatively easy to track but very time intensive when I'm having to account for HP, abilities, statuses, weapons, ect ect ect.

I've looked at the Formation rules and the mass combat rules and to be honest they don't work too well for me. They seemed to be aimed at much larger scale that what I'm doing and also assume that the PCs will be in a position of Authority. The typical scene we fight in has 7-15 friendly troops (about half of which are PCs) and about double that in bad guys (though usually not met all at once) it's just too much to track and keep combat moving fluidly. Any ideas?

Posted at

1. Use small wound markers for the NPC Minis on the field.

We used small thick paper counter with numbers on them to represent remaining wounds.

2. Don't roll on the Criticial Chart for NPCs, make them dead on zero wounds. Speeds up game a lot. Use Critical Charts for important NPCs.

3. Make yourself a chart on modifiers for different weapons the NPCs use. Because for us counting the modifiers takes usually most of the time. ;)

Lasgun: 50m Single Fire, with half aim +30

Lasgun: 50m Short Burst, with half aim +20

4. If you want to have larger number battles have a look a the Star Wars Minions, or Henchman in WFRP 3rd Edition. Several NPCs are bind together with their wounds combined. They then act as one entity. If you have four Gardsmen and the group suffers 10 wounds one of them dies. If this full group attacks, each member adds +10 for a test like shooting. So once the group gets smaller their attacks become less and less dangerous.