Military Council design
Carl von Clausewitz
Overview
The Military Council is the political body of the Empire that deals directly with the war with the barbarians. Although the Council is a political body, it's primary involvement is in the strategic and tactical decisions that concern the deployment of Imperial forces on campaign and on battlefields. Players who like a very directed, unified engagement with a clear external enemy to fight against are much more likely to find that in the Military Council than anywhere else in the game.
Because the Council are directly up against the barbarians who are controlled by us, we need to ensure that there is a clear, simple, system that allows players to make intelligent, rational decisions about how to commit their forces. To give a better understanding of how the Military Council works we have focussed on explaining how war works in Empire - the best way to understand the Military Council is to understand how they do their job.
Carl von Clausewitz
The Underlying Goal
One of the most important of the core design goals for Empire was to have enjoyable battles take place at events where the outcome of the battles was critically important for the future of the Empire. We wanted the battles to be genuinely challenging so that success hangs in the balance based on the actions of the players. And it was essential for the victories and the defeats to be significant in the game setting - so that the military triumphs of the Empire were fundamentally based on the actions of players at events not some computer model.
Although we expect that most of the time the Military Council will work together, we wanted to ensure that political conflict was possible even here. Political conflict can only arise spontaneously in LRP if characters are able to make real, meaningful choices - without that possibility player-led politics is impossible. For bodies like the Senate with it's power to assign the Imperial budget that is relatively easy to achieve - but to achieve that in the military council it has to be possible to make decisions at each event about where and when it commits its forces.
Carl von Clausewitz
Keeping it Simple
In real war, logistics is incredibly important to the success of an army. Logistics is an incredibly challenging field - ensuring that soldiers, their equipment and their food is in the right place at the right time takes a great deal of skill and a great deal of hard work. We're sure that there is a brilliant LRP game in which players spend their days meticulously planning every element of a military campaign - down to how big the tins of bully-beef should be and wether the key that opens them should go on the top or on the side. However from experience running games with complex military logistics, we have realized that we have no idea how to make that fun. So we're not running that game under any circumstances.
That means the players make two kinds of military decision in Empire - where the armies go and where they attack. And where the heroes go and where they attack. All the logistical decisions about supplying and equipping the armies are beneath the abstraction layer for Empire. Detailed plans of how an army moves, how it attacks are fine for roleplaying purposes - but they don't affect the game in anyway. All of this is assumed to be handled by the civil service who automatically make the most advantageous possible decisions for the Empire.
Carl von Clausewitz
The Sharpe Model
The setting for the Empire is one of a grand civilisation - of hundreds of thousands of people living in a great empire rising to the height of its powers. To make the scale of the Empire feel right, it needs to have armies - it's difficult to believe in a mighty empire if five hundred soldiers is the most it can put in the field. We wanted the armies to give the sense of coherent narrative to the military campaigns of the Empire to give players a simple, easy-to-understand context for the ongoing wars - our soldiers are fighting here, here and here.
That creates enormous challenges - we obviously can't phys-rep armies of thousands, much as we might like to. More-over we don't want to phys-rep an army of thousands... doing so would create vast arrays of possibilities that we can't control - and we don't want the outcome of the war to be determined by these npcs - they exist only to provide the setting that makes sense of the player actions and decisions - we want the player actions to be the critical element that determines the outcome.
What we want for Empire was summed up by a friend as Sharpe from the novels by Bernard Cornwall - Wellington is on campaign with his army in Spain - his army of thousands spends months manoeuvring and fighting battles with the French - but the outcome is always critically affected by the actions of Sharpe and his small band of elite soldiers.
Carl von Clausewitz
Toy Soldiers
Empire employs a conceptually complex model to deliver the simplest possible framework that meets all the design goals. The Empire has approximately twenty armies at its disposal with a maximum strength of 5000 men each. These armies are sent on campaign by the general issuing a single order at each event, instructing them on where to go and whether to attack or defend for the next three months.
Between the events Profound Decisions will compare the deployment of the Empire's armies with the deployment of the barbarian forces and will calculate; this is the rough outcome that is taking place as the event happens and in the immediate weeks that follow. The is a purely mathematical calculation with no random element.
This projection is provided by the civil service to the generals at each event they attend, based on scouting reports, military analysis and predictions made using day and night magic. The generals are told what outcome is going to happen if they do not intervene in anyway.
They are then presented with a set of opportunities to intervene, by leading the Imperial heroes from Anvil into a pitched battle - along with analysis of how victory or defeat on these battles will affect the campaign outcome. The better they do on their battle, the more objectives they achieve, the more positive the impact on the outcome of the military campaign that their armies are engaged in. In effect the random element of the clash of armies - the key element that determines the outcome in a meaningful way - is governed by which battles the players choose to fight and how well they do.
Carl von Clausewitz
Scales
Campaign
A campaign occurs over months and years involving armies of thousands across a territory. The Imperial generals have the opportunity to change the orders for their armies once every three months - so the orders they give are appropriate to that scale. A campaign consists of dozens of major and minor encounters between Imperial and barbarian forces.
Battle
A battles occurs over a few hours involving armies of hundreds of Imperial heroes against similar numbers of barbarian troops. The Imperial use the Sentinel Gate to travel to the front line where they engage in a single pitched battle at a location that is pivotal to the outcome of the military campaign.