Hard Boiled Ideas: Armies (2009)

From the Publisher's website:

If you’re a fan of the fantasy novels of Glen Cook, J.R.R. Tolkien, and others—or maybe you just pine for the days of Birthright—you might just have an itch that needs scratching. It’s the itch to take armies onto the field of battle, where swords by the hundreds clash and contend for victory.

There’s just one problem. Right out of the box, Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition does a lot for combat on the personal scale, but when it comes to the broader field of battle—when things go macro—the tools to handle a clash of thousands just aren’t there.

Or are they? In Hard Boiled Armies, you’ll find an examination of how to take the existing tools in the game—with just a few additions and changes of perspective—to get right where you need to go for medium- and large-scale military conflicts. And by looking at these existing tools with new eyes, you’ll be able to add large scale battles to your game in a way that feels both fresh and yet completely familiar.

Inside this 35-page full-color PDF, you’ll find:

- A detailed examination of questions to ask & answer when taking things from a “character” to “military” scale of conflict.
Details on how to build your own military forces using tools you already have at your disposal.

- A sample military tradition to use as a basis for player armies.
Options for making the fighting feel gritty and threatening.

- Seven military force “feature powers”

- Six ways to integrate your game’s player characters into battlefield action

- Three sample forces: The Doomkeepers, the Laughing Skull Brotherhood, and the Corpse-Child Army.

- Invasion! A fully-detailed military encounter, where the players take on the roles of city watch garrisons charged with defending their city against an invading force. Invasion! Includes five enemy armies for your players to repel, and a map of the city and its surroundings, broken into nine 8″x6″ printable map tiles.

- Counters and power cards for streamlining your Hard Boiled Armies experience.