Re: Theory of the game

[email removed] writes:
>
<Summary: he saw "The Longest Day", and wonders what happens if PC's get
involved in a really big battle.>
>
>   I normally supports the idea that there shouldn't be any difference between
> a PC and an NPC from a game-mechanical point of view, but playing out an entire
> planetary invasion looks as unappealing as rolling all the 'to hit' and 'to
> penetrate' tasks of a 200 battery batron salvoe:)

This is a job for a computer.

>   One workable solution might be to look at it from the characters standpoint:
> They see just a small part of it, and they don't know about all those bullets
> that arn't aimed in their general vicinity.
> ...
> Has anyone done something like this? Did it work?

Yes.  I had a group of PC's who were mercenaries, and who were involved in
a big war on some planet.  There were several actions going on at once; the
PC's were only involved in one.  I used "Book 4 - Mercenary" and its abstract
system to handle all the other fights, and ran the PC's battle directly.  (If
I did "The Longest Day", I'd have use Book 4 on all beaches except Omaha, and
run that one directly.  If I were in a good mood, maybe I'd let the PC's be
on a different beach.)  After the whole thing was over, there was a debriefing
in which the commanders of various units discussed their parts in the whole
thing.  One was proudly describing how his forces had shot down a Zhodani
fighter, although he didn't know what the Zhodani were doing there.  The PC
commander chose not to reveal that he had been using a captured Zho fighter
which he allowed to stray from his battle area.

- - --
 "Keyboard?  How quaint!" - M. Scott

 Adrian Hurt			     |	JANET:  [email removed]
 UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!adrian     |  ARPA:   [email removed]