game management for campaigns

[kgpanzer]

Have a question for those here...

Do anyone here have a system for promotions in a campaign game setting?
thanks
Ar

[groundlber]

kgpanzer - I assume you're referring to changing the morale status of a unit during the course of a campaign. In the campaigns I've run, I've kept an informal history of the various units and commanders. When a trend developed in how a unit performed, l would make an adjustment to the unit's status. Sometimes I even told the player commanding the unit that it's status had changed.
Example one is from an American Civil War campaign I ran. The campaign was based on Stirling Price's invasion of Missouri in 1864. The main body of the Confederate Army was advancing from southwest Missouri to Saint Louis. There was a Union cavalry brigade scouting the Confederate forces. The Union player wrote a series of aggressive orders for his unit, and the Confederate players were suprisingly defensive. In several skirmish games and one large battle, the Union forces dominated the Confederates despite being out numbered. For the rest of the campaign, I simply gave the Union divisional commander far more information about the Confederates than the Confederates. I also raised the unit's morale level to 'Elite', but didn't bother telling the commander until the unit first had to make a morale check.
Example Two is from a World War Two naval campaign. One ship involved in the campaign survived numerous (50 +, if memory is correct) torpedo attacks. I gave that ship a bonus to avoid torpedo attacks for the rest of the campaign.
Hope this helps, or at least gets the conversation started.
Groundlber

[1ComOpsCtr]

"Do anyone here have a system for promotions in a campaign game setting?"

What type of promotion are you talking about?

Experience?

Morale?

Training?

Officers?

Equipment?

Please be a little more specific what you are looking for and I am sure someone can help... Will

[kgpanzer]

that is informative thanks...

also I am looking for how one might take individual tanks and promote...for example say a Tiger tank had "X" amount of kills how would you promote or get say "X" points to purchase additional vehicles to build your campaign force

[kgpanzer]

"Do anyone here have a system for promotions in a campaign game setting?"

What type of promotion are you talking about?

Experience?

Morale?

Training?

Officers?

Equipment?

Please be a little more specific what you are looking for and I am sure someone can help... Will

>>

In doing a campaign say each person has a company of tanks....as the campaign continues and slowly get larger how would one purchase additional items for there unit and how would one promote after there combat sucess or loss

[1ComOpsCtr]

Realistic of Fantasy?

In a real military organization Company commanders don't get more equipment... they are promoted into positions of greater authority and become Battalion, Regimental, Brigade, Divisional, Army, etc., commanders. But that doesn't happen after just one battle, it takes months of fighting to gain a promotion unless those above are killed or moved up to fill vacant positions. Often a company will fight at reduced strength for some time before replacements arrive. All depends on the Army, and their replacement and supply system, if they have one.

In a Fantasy organization you can do whatever you want...

In the Afrika campaign we are running it is all based on GHQ's points system. Replacements come out of the replacement pool points (that come by convoy) that cover the whole army, which means not all units get replacement equipment. We use the units performance to determine if they deserve replacement equipment, but you also have to be able to fight so you must give all units something, that's why you use a larger campaign as the basis so your unit gets realistic replacements, etc..

Will

[hauptgrate]

One way to do this is to give the individual unit -- tank crew, infantry squad, etc -- an extra bonus of some kind. Years ago I played a 1/1 scale HO game with a percentile "to hit" system. In one battle, a StuG commander named Ritter killed four vehicles and survived several hits on his own vehicle. For the next battle, his StuG now sported four kill rings painted on the barrel and we gave him a +4 percent "to hit". Over the course of several battles, Ritter managed to always survive and rack up 14 kills.
Another way to do this is to allow a well performing unit to reroll one or two die rolls per game. With this method, acutal game statistics and/or points don't need to be fiddled with, a certain number of rerolls is a good bonus that can be added to or subtracted from over a number of battles. Look at the campaign rules for the original Squad Leader from Avalon Hill -- they had a neat system of what they labelled "elan" points and "cowardice" points that allowed a character to advance or not.

[voltigeur]

While most people answered to unit promotions I prefer the individual promotions. Squad leader had a system by which every "player leader" started out as a 2nd Lt. The player got a seris of elan and cowaride points resulting in promotion to Battalion Commander then out of the game. If your character got promoted out of the game it didn't count against you. If your character was killed, wounded, captured or perfomed so badly he was court martialed and shot then he was counted as one point.

The idea is to get through the campaign with as few characters as possible. (Example: If you had 2 characters kille and 3 promoted out of the game your score would be 2; if you opponent had one killed and one that couldn't aquire enough points to get promoted he would be at 2 but you would be the winner because of the promotions.

Since a group of players very seldom finishes a campaign this allows for a campaign to run with independent games.

[kgpanzer]

This is very informative gentleman...thank you

I like all the ideas now I have to sit and think this out....I am going to origins so I will follow up some more....anyone else going?
Ar