The Campaign: Mechanized Adventure Campaigns

As the saying goes, "Amateurs study strategy. Professionals study logistics."

Fantastic adventure wargames are no different, and nowhere does this become more obvious right away than when the adventuring scenario involve mechanization.

Be it Traveller, Twilight 2000, RIFTS, Robotech, Mechwarrior/A Time of War, Battlelords of the 23rd Century, TORG, Heavy Gear/Jovian Chronicles/Gear Krieg, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, etc. you have a milieu where adventures rely on using tools that have significant wear and tear just from intended use as well as consumables like fuel and munitions.

What does this mean? It means that there is an implied economic element to successful play, economics means logistics, and logistics (a) means mandatory downtime and self-generating scenarios for gameplay.

Guns need ammunition. Explosives (including missiles and rockets) need to be replaced. Machines need repairs, great and small alike, which means parts (etc.) need to be sourced and labor employed in spaces capable of allowing (if not improved to facilitate) such work- shops, factories, yards, etc. Vehicles (and some other things) need fuel and have limited range.

The stupid thing to do is to ignore all of this. Conventional play ignores all of this because players whine about it being inconvenient. Conventional play is stupid.

There are ways to handle this.

Most Like AD&D

This is where RIFTS, Twilight 2000, the default modes for Traveller as well as MechWarrior, and Robotech's Invid Invasion are (among others). They are most like standard fantasy play, as I said yesterday:

The player is in the driver's seat, has to operate entirely on an autonomous basis, negotiate a factional environment, and can grow into a leader by his own hand over time if he is willing and able.

This is what, in AD&D1e, is how you have to play when you run a warband or a warship. You have to recruit your subordinates. You have to pay all of the expenses--repairs, resupply, medical are, transit, compliance, etc.--and you reap the rewards for when a gamble goes your way. This is the mode of play most familiar to RPG hobbyists.

And Then There's This

The Macross, Southern Cross, and Shadow Chronicles/Sentinels settings for Robotech (as well as the post-OG addons to SDF Macross) as well as House/SDLF/Clan forces for MechWarrior are examples of a standard setting for this sort of thing. The characters that draw players into the game are not in the driver's seat, are the subordinates of those that are, and trade the autonomy (and responsibility) of being in charge for the security of not having to source their own logistics.

The complaints by Conventional Play people are that this constrains play to tactical combat scenarios.

Not when run competently, which means having players maintain stables of characters that rotate on and off the bench. In this setup, one week has the spies and forward scouts setting up the unit's attack on an enemy location. They extract and debrief, putting them into downtime. The next week is the approach where the infiltrators attempt to rook the orbital defense garrison, making the attack wave easier if they succeed. The following week is the attack itself, which is either a well-earned cakewalk due to players successfully setting up an easy win or a harder slog due to alert defenders being able to sortie upon detection.

The joy here, for players, is in moving between leader roles and subordinate roles--between the main man and one of his Henchmen or Followers, in AD&D1e terms--as they play different characters to do different things (and use different gear, vehicles, widgets, etc.). In addition to any medical costs compelling downtime, repairs and resupply will put men and machines alike out of action until repaired; unlike the Like AD&D mode, there can be (and, for smaller craft, often are) replacements on hand to move available men to while repairs are underway.

Your House MechWarrior got his 'Mech shot out from under him? He'll get another walking tin can. It may be the stock model or another model entirely, but he'll get one as soon as he's cleared for duty. The same applies to your Valkyrie pilot, your Heavy Gear driver, or your Mobile Infantry trooper.

That's because, in this sort of campaign, your real character is the unit and not any particular personnel within it. You don't play Richthoffen. You play the Flying Circus. This is the mode of play that is native to the Faction Play level of campaigning, and is closest to Braunstein; people familiar with wargames, tabletop and video alike, won't have a hard time getting this or how it works.

Logstics Is A Perpetual Content Generator

Procuring the supplies needed to operate and securing their transit from point of origin to where your man needs them are the core issues for players to address. Referees do not have any obligation to let players shirk this problem. Instead having players addressing logistics becomes scenario generation procedures, akin to entrepreneurial leaders like the American business magnets of the Gilded Age over a century ago or the mercantile explorers from the Early Modern era through to the 19th century.

Those who win, who conquer, master logistics. This is part of being able to #winatrpgs.