I'm a newer GM writing a campaign for my friends.

The story begins with them being stuck on a transport carrying a bunch of colonist being "relocated" by the empire to a new "better" colony in the outer rim (similar to Tarkan Town for all you SWR fans).

A series of events happen, resulting in the ship dropping unexpectedly out of hyperspace, followed by a ship wide evacuation as the ship explodes.

The PC's are now tasked with helping/guarding a group of survivors who are going out to collect supplies (food or building materials for shelters).

The idea I had was using mass combat checks to determine how the overall group does gathering supplies. There will be base dice and actions taken by the PC's beforehand (helping build harvesting tools from salvage, motivating survivors, or convincing more survivors to help) to add more dice (good or bad).

I know it's technically an AoR rule, but I thought that it could apply here. The roles would be based off of a group of people and not just the PC's.

The roles would determine how the overall trip goes. Do they find supplies, do they get attacked, do they find other survivors (will they join or attack?), do they find a surprise (helpful/harmful?), etc.

I'm still going to give them the option of going out and exploring on their own of course. But unless they find something significant, it will sour the relationship with the fellow survivors who asked for help.

What do you guys think? Any tips or advice you would give for something like this?

I like the thought of this. The question is how to build the "force", other than just numbers. Maybe based on the colonist skills? ie. a small group of hunters is the base, then increase the pool because you have a group of mechanics, and another increase because of a large group of unskilled persons. (as opposed to having infantry supported by vehicles and artillery). Opposition is based on wild animals, traitors in the group, weather?

To be honest, just use the stats for the average survivor. Assign a difficulty to the task of gathering supplies. Roll. Assume that the result you get is the average result across the entire group.

Maybe you can also it for bis scale confrontations like company battles, political influence or argumentation during a rising or elections or governoment change.

Big scale thinks that if you translate them to a personal scala would be an simple check with Charm, "Combat", Negotiation...

This could work. It would really be a matter of giving PCs who make Leadership and/or Survival tests bonus blue dice depending on how many survivors they work with.

I like this idea, seems like a fun way to use some social/science/warfare type characters to have a different sort of action in-game. A character who is an entertainer could use those rules to put on a big show or play perhaps, and the audience is the opposing force lol. Diplomacy could also use those rules in a big way, especially if there is some sort of conference or summit. Good idea.

On 1/25/2018 at 2:01 PM, Archlyte said:

A character who is an entertainer could use those rules to put on a big show or play perhaps, and the audience is the opposing force lol.

Oh, I love that idea. The PCs have to recruit a theater troupe to put on the perfect show for a very discerning audience. Each act of the play is another Mass Performance roll.

I use it for most big social encounters that have many different characters that the PCs can interact with to gain favor or extract information, like an auction or an investigation.

So how would I reward them for participating in this exposition? So far, the only thing that this expedition (which can also end in failure) is how the leader of the survivors treats them and adds to the plot.

I feel like I should give them some kind of reward besides their daily hand out of rations and the knowledge that their food supply has increased and they won't starve soon.

However, that could also fail miserably, resulting in no food gained and a lot of survivors dying on the exposition. That deserves a little bit more than a slap on the wrist from the leader and the knowledge that they failed to get food and got a lot of people killed.

Make up secondary goals, 5 xp per successful completion.

Been there, planned that. Cliffs version was adding/upgrading based on additional forces. In my case it was for a medic to solve the proverbial plague mystery and come up with a cure. He had a base of something, every couple of NPCs he added gave him an extra green, an exceptional NPC gave him an upgrade to yellow. Boost dice included for possible NPCs looking to get added to the unit. Had I fleshed it out a bit more (which I still might), the adding and upgrading would have been varied based on the rest of the group and how certain situations they dealt with were handled.