Run a Mass Combat Style Dungeons and Dragons Campaign
The pen-and-paper fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons can be played in an almost endless number of ways. The mass-combat style game focuses on frequent large-scale battles between many combatants, which can make it easy for the fun of the game to get lost in the details if you don't run the session properly.
Instructions
1. Prepare any maps, tokens or miniatures you will be using in the course of the game well ahead of time. Make any extra copies of the maps, character sheets or stat blocks you may need. The mood of the game will be ruined if you have to call a time out because you forgot to print something that's vital to the encounter.
2. Focus on what the characters can do individually within the overall battles being fought. The players will find the game unrealistic, boring and unchallenging if they are able to single-handedly turn the tide of a war against an entire army of orcs and goblins.
3. Break down large-scale combat into single rounds, and have important events occur in predetermined rounds. While the party is busy fighting off a wave of gnoll invaders at the east side of the town for the first five rounds of combat, have a unit of bugbears break down the south gate and start lighting houses on fire at the beginning of the sixth round. Perhaps on the 10th round a goblin sapper digs up into a house's basement, letting other enemies in, and on the 20th round a group of villagers are cornered by the invading host and will have to be rescued before the group can resume fighting other enemies.
4. Remember to use the surrounding environment appropriately, and encourage the players to do so also. While simple-minded goblins will waste time trying to chase down cats or grab frying pans to use as improvised weapons, a battle-hardened group of mercenaries may take hostages, throw torches at barrels of explosive material or dam up a river to cut off a city's water supply.
5. Have specific victory and defeat conditions set before the battle begins, and stick to them, even if they don't work out to the players' benefit. If the characters are unable to prevent the church from being set aflame, allow the villagers to be killed, and do not repair the breach in the town's walls should the battle be lost and the characters forced to retreat.
6. Allow the party plenty of time to role-play in between large-scale conflicts, or the game may become stale. It's better if the characters can get to know the townspeople they are defending, or become acquainted with the soldiers in the army they have joined, so that they have more of a motivation to fight.
Tags: Dungeons Dragons, Combat Style, Combat Style Dungeons, Dragons Campaign, Dungeons Dragons Campaign, Mass Combat