 October 15, 2011 - 12:00pm | Its probably more realistic to have officers and enlisted in a party but it seems to me to complicate things. And then you have issues of party leadership. Then you get players acting totally out of character with insubordination that just would never fly in a real world military. So how do we handle rank in a RPG with a military theme? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
October 15, 2011 - 12:04pm | One thought is to make each player a NCO with a squad of privates and run the game like a skirmish level war game. An other thought is to put an NPC in charge (a captain Nemo if you will). I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 October 18, 2011 - 2:30pm | I've run into this in Twilight:2k and Star Trek games, and I've read how other people do it. Some observations: NPC commanders seem to work pretty well. A PC commander needs to act as a group member, IMO, listening to the other players and not running roughshod over them. PCs as co-equal group leaders (as mentioned above) works pretty well. PCs within an irregular team, such as guerrillas or special forces, where the rigidity of military hierarchy is greatly flattened, do well. |
