GMing Battles

How to be Benedict

  1. Handwave a Master Plan
  2. Fit in tea somewhere
  3. Have players scene
  4. Put it all together and call it a victory

How to GM a Battle

If you have not read GMing Fights read it now. The biggest problem with an IC battle is that it defaults to people making detailed poses while trying not to get ahead of others. There is a way to deal with this: divide up the scenes.

Rather than having a left flank and a right flank and a centre and a command point all in the same room, run them at different times. Make sure the characters each know their job, but then send them away to do it.

This means that you can run scenes that begin 'Meanwhile…' at different times, so no one GM has to deal with five players in one room, all of whom could have a starring role. Make each objective tactically important, and try to make them visually independent of one another. As you do not know what will happen in each scene beforehand, it is important not to have to retcon.

What this means for game-play is that the GMs will be running many different scenes, each ICly happening at the same time, but OOCly happening as characters are available.

In the end, a summary of all should be provided by the GMs or the propco.

Command Scenes

Any 'Command' scene that is run should probably happen afterwards, and be the only scene where players can see what is happening.

If the Commander has been GMing, he should know what has happened in each scene, and be able to play it through for anyone who wants to have been in the rear with the beer. However, this tends to be just one GM or Commander posing 'x happens, y happens', and other people standing around trying to make light chatter. Avoid these scenes unless there is a genuine call for them.

ooc
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