Running Battles
Running Battles
The combat rounds system is great for running the firefights that so often crop up in Star Wars adventures. But what if you want to tell a story with full-scale conflicts like the Battle of Hoth? Since the battle lasted several hours, does that mean you should run it round by round?
Of course not! That would take years…
Instead, use the battle as a backdrop. A battle shouldn't be the only thing in an adventure, but it can make for an exciting conclusion to one. The best full-blown conflicts keep the game moving rather than getting you and the players bogged down in a round-by-round reenactment.
The Set-Up
First, decide what causes the battle scene. You could foreshadow the major conflict throughout the adventure—the Rebel Alliance plans to strike at an Imperial facility in the Colonies—or have an unexpected ambush—the characters are on a space station when pirates attack.
The Course of the Battle
As gamemaster, you should have a good idea of how the battle will proceed, but you should also include encounters that give the characters a chance to change the course and outcome of the conflict.
Example: In The Empire Strikes Back, it's clear that the Rebel base on Hoth is doomed. Luke Skywalker comes up with the idea of using harpoons and tow cables to trip the AT-AT walkers. This technique slows the advance of the Empire's soldiers, giving the Rebels an opportunity to evacuate more personnel and equipment.
Scenes
Scenes occur during the battle independently of the character's actions. The gamemaster should narrate these scenes to give the players a sense of what's going on.
Example: A Rebel soldier, advance scout for Echo Base, paces nervously inside his advance duty post. He feels the ground shake beneath him as his comlink rolls off the counter and under a shelf. Quickly he scrambles to his observation array, and the sensors confirm what his gut had already told him—Imperial walkers advancing on his position. He reaches for the comlink, screaming, "This is Echo Post 64. Imperial walkers coming in at…"
The duty post explodes in a ball of flame and the broadcast cuts to static. Inside the cockpit of the lead walker, a gunner smiles.
Encounters
Since the players are taking part in the battle, present their characters with several major encounters. These scenes personally involve the characters and give the players the sense that their characters can make a difference.
When running a battle, you should give the players at least three or four encounters. The more fast-paced the action, the more encounters—but you shouldn't have more than a dozen.
Remember, not all encounters will have a victor and a loser; sometimes the tide of battle sweeps opponents apart before any decision is reached.
Give the players a map of the battleground based on what they can see and what they learn from their fellow soldiers. When using encounters, try to make them as exciting as the battle scenes of the Star Wars movies.
Example: Luke Skywalker's snowspeeder has been shot down over the battlefield of Hoth. He has been dazed by the crash, and only the ground-shaking advance of an AT-AT walker alerts him. He sees that the walker will squash his speeder in seconds.
An encounter should give a character a chance to respond to what's happening—to do something that's exciting or heroic.
Example: Luke's first instinct is to flee in terror, but he comes up with a plan. Crawling into the back of the speeder, he grabs a land mine and the fusion disk launcher.
He crawls from the speeder just in time to avoid being squashed. Then, he runs beneath the great striding legs of the walker as it looms above him. He fires the fusion disk to the bottom of the walker, and climbs up to its belly. Slicing a maintenance hatch open with his lightsaber, he hurls the detonator into the power flash-back ducts. The detonator explodes, its blast overloading the power generator.
As Luke falls to the ground many meters below, the walker explodes in a brilliant ball of flame.
Choosing Critical Moments
Most of the encounters in which the characters have an opportunity to affect the battle should involve a critical moment: • the enemy is about to break through the front lines • the hangar blast doors won't open and Imperial starships are about to engage the Rebel fleet • a monstrous enemy vehicle puts itself into a vulnerable situation for a brief second
This is especially true for combats that have only one or two encounters. Make sure the outcome of events during the critical moment has dramatic consequences that change the tide of the conflict.
These encounters should involve one-in-a-million shots, strategic planning, and all-out bravado. If the characters can complete a task with little or no effort, the entire battle will seem less threatening—and therefore less exciting.
In longer battles you may wish to include scenes and encounters that affect only a particular segment of the combat without altering the conflict as a whole. The characters could: • save vehicles • capture an enemy starship • rescue captives • steal military information • spy on enemy commanders • slip behind enemy lines and escape to rejoin allies
Cliffhangers
Sometimes the player characters will split into a number of groups during a battle—trooper squads, SpecForce units, starfighters, capital ships, or any combination.
At the Battle of Endor, for example: • General Solo took his team down to the forest moon to destroy the shield generator • Admiral Ackbar led the assault on the second Death Star • General Calrissian, as leader of Gold Squadron, penetrated the battle station to destroy the main reactor
Your goal in these cases is twofold: 1. Give all players equal time. Don't spend an hour with one group while everyone else has nothing to do. Alternate between groups every couple of minutes so no one feels left out. 2. Cut on cliffhangers. Let each group perform an action, then cut away at the most suspenseful moment: the Rebel characters launch grenades at an oncoming AT-ST—cut.
After everyone has acted (and they're waiting on the outcome), describe the results at the beginning of the next scene.
As you run these confrontations, think back to how the Star Wars films depicted them: grand shots of the entire battle → focus on one section → focus closer on a character → cut to another section, and so on. Weave all the scenes into one exciting, fast-paced conflict that keeps the players on the edges of their seats.
Source: REUP:140