This is Dundermoose!

 I had the opportunity to join DunderMoose on his yootoob channel for a long and wide-ranging discussion of Campaign Prep, Wargaming in D&D and the Downtime Player's role (sometimes called Patron Players, or Faction Players).

It was a great time, and I look forward to any sort of follow-up from gamers watching the video!

Here is the video:

Here is a link to the itchio page for a free download of the Leader of Men: Basic Massed Combat System rules

This Massed Combat system is designed to be used with any RPG system to facilitate Massed Combat encounters at the table with a minimum of preparation & in a short amount of time. Your RPG system may have its own rules for Massed Combats, and these are likely to be more appropriate for very large, set-piece battles, or battles that take place ‘off-screen’.

Setting Up the Combat

Massed Combat between large forces is relatively easy to manage with just a few rules regarding unit descriptions and combat tactics.

To make massed combat manageable, reduce the number of actual combatants by a 10:1 or 20:1 ratio. For example, a unit of 100 Cavalry would be represented in the battle by just 10 (10:1) or five (20:1) “figures”* or “miniatures”.

In the Basic Massed Combat System, we dispense with miniatures and represent each unit with cubes or tokens (especially for play at an IRL table), and an index card (or just a piece of paper!). 

Naval Battles Too!!

We also had a brief chat about how the Downtime Players run their own activities, only coming to the DM for adjudication if they don't know what to do, or if it involves another player.

One of these situations resulted in a Downtime Player running a naval combat with miniatures, and fighting a battle on the table top with his nephew!

You can download those rules, based on Ancient Naval Battles by Don Featherstone and Tony Bath: Ancients Naval Battles, edited by The Purple Druid

I hope you have fun with these, and I look forward to your feedback!