Nuadaem

Let's project ourselves back to, say 1973. We are a U.S. Army 1LT or SFC as either PLT Leader (1LT) or PLT Sergeant (SFC). A round comes whizzing out of who knows where! What do you do? I deploy my platoon to engage the son of a gun. I destroy the vegetation in our path of march and continue the mission. If I happen to suppress the sniper and/or the mission of his/her higher, then I am Happy. Happy means that I can continue on my assigned mission without deterrence. If the sniper pops off another shot, then I saturate the area with artillery. The King of Battle, which dispenses hot flaming portions of High Explosive Shells throughout the battle area. A 105mm or 155mm will do the job equally well. the possible exception being that overrunning a 105 mm Battery may be more costly in terms of lives due to their Beehive rounds. The 155's can still fire their hand tools and such through their barrels to SHRED the advancing enemy, but it won't be as effective as Beeehive rounds at zero elevation.

In my experience a critical element to removing the monetary award from adventuring is to get player "buy in". What I mean is that the players must "buy in" to the concept that they are not adventuring to make money and that adventuring will not make them rich. I stumbled onto this in my last campaign completely on accident. Before starting I had each player fill out a character background sheet. It had all the standard biographical information (Mother, Father, Siblings, Place of Birth , etc.) at the bottom I added Short Term Goals and Long Term Goals. Not a single player listed money or wealth as either for their character. Sure, the "fighters" wanted to master their warcraft, the "wizards" wanted to master their spellcraft, the "clerics" wanted to be the preimminent servant of their greater power, the "rogues" may want wealth. However, since the established path to wealth is that of the merchant, or the nobility, the "rogue" should jump at any chance to "go legit" and pursue their monetary bliss. With the character backgrounds in hand, I spent more than the next two years (gaming weekly) offering the characters opportunity to seek their goals without monetary reward. Occasionally they were able to make the adventure it's own reward (ala the dragon being it's own reward). However, it was only the introductory scenario (the return of a prominent merchant's daughter) that offered a reward of money. Hopefully this post doesn't disappear when I attempt to post like it did the first time I tried to a few days ago.

I generally do not award CP on a session basis. I generally wait until the "plot thread" has been resolved. Then I apportion CP based on how long the "plot thread" was and how well the characters reacted. Many "plot threads" take two or three gaming sessions and result in 2-5 CP. Others take ten or more sessions and result not only in a CP award of ten or so, but allow the characters to purchase abilities which are restricted in the setting.

cyst13 what I meant, and I assume the author of my source meant, by "lower incidence of combat" was that the average VC/NVA soldier was involved in a combat situation (live rounds fired by a hostile force) less often than the average U.S. G.I. As far as any statistic quoted by Robert McNamara as to body counts on the enemy side, I'd assume those numbers to be exaggerated. As I mentioned earlier, the U.S. focus was on body count and battallion days in the field. When an officer's career is dependant on a high body count, it's amazingly easy for that "body count" to result from the most minimal contact. Belive me, a small little lie like one body becoming three is easy if you like the officer, and even easier if you dislike him and want to get him promoted out of your unit, which is easier to deal with than "fragging". In any case, I think the disparity in "incidence of combat" had to deal with the fact that VC/NVA units tended to disperse until the day or two before a major operation and the U.S forces generally operated in force. So a contact involving three to six VC/NVA may involve 12-50 U.S. personnel. Just my take on the situation. Unfortunately the logistics of the game became too difficult (players belonging to different platoons with exclusive schedules) and we switched to game that worked better with a "pick up" sort of feel.

I think my campaigns tend to run along the same lines as Midhir. I create the setting and the players determine the plot. I try to figure out what plotlines will be occurring in the world and give the players an idea of what they are and let them choose to involve themselves or not. I figure that the world has been humming along for quite awhile before the characters showed up and has been doing just fine, so it'll probably continue to do so. That doesn't mean that there aren't various nefarious plots afoot to influence the world, it's just that the players aren't the only people in the world capable of dealing with the situations. My games are not like novels, though if the characters put themselves into a position where they need to save the world, it could become that way.

cyst13 you've hit on an idea that I hadn't thought of. I hadn't considered having the players be on the VC/NVA side. I went with the U.S. side since I'm familiar with the organization (as were all the players). It's an interesting idea and the campaign would definitely be different. From the research I've done, the VC/NVA on average had a much lower incidence (about an order of magnitude) of combat than the U.S. forces did. This fits with the VC/NVA strategy of prolonging the conflict to erode support and the U.S. obsession with body counts and battalion days in the field. We were looking for a fight wherever we could find it and they were willing to attack (or defend) only when all indications pointed toward victory. The VC/NVA were willing to scrap military plans months in the making when they felt they had been compromised or the situation changed. Most of the large scale conflicts took place at the beginning of the war as we were "feeling each other out" and at the end.

It's strange that RECON should be mentioned as my memories of playing that game were prime motivator in generating my VietNam Hero game. The players in my group were new to the Hero system so I wanted them to get familiar with the basics before throwing in the optional combat rules. I agree that they would add to the sense of realism, but I was concerned with turning them off the system by making combat too confusing. The characters were all members of a LRRP team built on 25+25. So I was using the SpecOps angle to reduce the unit size and increase the player's autonomy. Had the game continued, they would have been recruited by SF and eventually the Phoenix program. With the point totals BODY, CON, and SPD were all at reasonable levels. As far as the weapons go, I ended up tweaking the published list a bit, making carbines with plusses to hit and rifles with greater plusses as Range Modifiers. Small changes to reflect the ease of wielding a carbine in built up and congested areas and the ability of a rifle to reach out and touch someone. I was considering adding a reliability roll to reflect the legendary hardiness of the AK series and the relative fragility of the M-16 series. It would have been a simple Jammed/ Burnout roll, but I went with the simplicity of ignoring the issue due to the player's inexperience with the system.

Has anyone tried a Hero Game set in a recent war? And I mean recent in a pretty liberal sense. I tried a Vietnam Hero game with the guys from my last deployment and while it worked well while it lasted it became increasingly obvious that the distinction between an AK-47 and an M-16 were almost nonexistent. Battles occurred far too rapidly. There is no such thing as a fifteen minute engagement in Hero. By the time you've called for air or artillery support the enemy has overrun your position and the only option is to "pop smoke" on your location and hope for the best. Getting a Quick Reaction Force to your location to relieve pressure is hopeless as well, unless you're engaged within about 500 meters of the wire. I appreciate any thoughts on the matter.

I've not had the pleasure of running FH since the sourcebook came out. However, I have run Mass Combat prior to the sourcebook's release. I created a spreadsheet that calculated the average number of BODY done to the bad guys (zombies and skeletons) and the average STUN and BODY done to the good guys (living creatures). Then each group took the average amount each turn with the PCs rolling for their damage individually and adding to the good guy totals. An appropriate number of bad guys would be designated as attacking the PCs and their hits and damage rolled for individually and applied to their designated PC. As GM, I felt it was a good system. Unfortunately, I believe my players were fighting a battle that I enjoyed and they would've preferred to do without. I'd love to check out the Mass Combat system in FH, but my players will never let me GM again if I subject them to another unit level battle.