"Improving the Campaign System – Insubordination" Topic

I am currently reading ‘Armies of the Caliph' by Hugh Kennedy and finished the chapters covering the period of the Umayyad. Among the list of problems Arab commanders had to solve were old tribal rivalries; if not handled well this often led to open rebellion.

This is an interesting option to add to the current campaign rule set and so I began experimenting with some historical examples. At the blog is one such example – Manzikert (1071).
link

Cheers,
Robert

Sounds vaguely like "Orc Animosity" rules in some editions of Warhammer Fantasy.

I have several campaigns planned for the 'Black Banner Project' that will make use of the Umayyad armies that were recently completed.

Until the establishment of a regular military force (Jund), old tribal rivalries disrupted many carefully laid out Umayyad operations.

Some tribes would not attack if their rivals did not and during one battle, cavalry were ordered to dismount and strengthen the line; these tribesmen refused to do so as their rivals remained mounted.

Such deep rooted rivalry led to frequent revolts in the 90 year period of Umayyad rule.

In what context will these be enacted?

Such rules may engender deep rooted rivalries among your gamers sufficient to break up the group. Your dilemma will be

1. Framing the rivalries so they are clear to players.This involves a lot of back-story making up and updating.

2. A better way might be simply to assume all this personal stuff is going on all the time, and let your players know that when they get on the board the loyalty of their units is up for grabs.

3. A simple way to model this would be to simply make the thing random. Assume you have an army of 12 units. For each unit you take five cards and on two of them write LOYAL, on one of them write DISAFFECTED, and on one of Them write DISLOYAL- and on one of them write TREASONOUS.

LOYAL- do as you wish.
DISAFFECTED – Will NOT move under your orders but will fire DISLOYAL- The enemy executes movement according to his interpretation of your orders and will defende and fight as normal in the immediate presence of the enemy.
TREASONOUS= under complete enemy control.

Now for the SIDE take five cards and write LOYAL on them .Keep these in your hand.

Now shuffle the 60 cards and pick out of the deck at random (face down) 12 cards. Place these in small 3 by 5 envelopes with the name of the unit on it. These are kept secret until the unit is ordered to MOVE by its commander. Until that time they are all assumed to fire and fight as normal. Once ordered to move, or attacked in melle the card inside is revealed and the above rules applied.

In any turn a player may use one of the five loyal cards to suppress a less than loyal unit and for that turn it acts as a loyal unit. When your cards are gone, they are gone.

There you go. This way it's all handled in a way that does not single out one player or the other and without a lot of work.

Otto
not move under your orders but will fire and defend themselves.
DISLOYem write DISLOYAL. On one of them you write TREASONOUS. Loyal means they do as you wish. Disaffected means they do nothing except return fire if attacked, but will not move under your orders.

Otto – a simple system and easily tinkered with to accommodate a larger, say 3 player side game, each with a dozen units. It would work with some of the ancients periods, Alexandrian successor civil wars springs to mind.

Your point 2) about just letting the players get on with it is very valid and allows players to role play.

It also reminds me an ancients game, using WRG 4th Edition rules, as part of a large campaign.

Back in the 70's my wargames group, Paragon out of South London, was a close knit group of friends. BUT we knew that, while we'd play it straight and solid in an alliance game, if Big Phil (and yes we had Little and Medium Phil's) wasn't given something to do immediately, or if his troops were getting hit but the others on his side were getting off lightly, then his troops would disengage, or wander off or (on this one occasion) attack his allies supply train or something similar. On that occasion he answered all cries of "WTF? Over!" with an easy smile and "Well, we are Hun's after all…"

So I do like your point 2) let the players do what they feel is best for them as the generals and get some good stories from the aftermath.

I think that the best way to represent insubordination/disloyalty without overwhelming the game with special rules is using some system of activation, based on a fixed number. For example, in Lion Rampant you use a number to "order" your units to do some or other activity; when you try to give an order, say Attack, and fail the die roll, the initiative passes to your opponent, who then can try to activate his own units. Therefore, to represent that a leader is not particularly dependable, you can simply make activations harder for that unit by adding +1 to the die roll (in LR you need to roll below the activation number) with that unit or units.

Keep it as simple as you can.

Dear Narratio

Right you are as written. One of the great difficulties with wargames is that while we can game representing armies from 2000 BC to 20,000 AD we ourselves always must be human beings from 2017 AD. Here our world view sees soldiers in strict military discipline with much of the politics left out. Guys "on our side" are "on our side." We all KNOW about things like parties and factions and insubordination in the past but somehow we think ourselves ill-used if it happens to us. Thereofre you nave to sugar-coat the medicine somehow when it goes down.

The best way to do this is to make it as random as possible. Players can then rail at fate rather than each other. You also have to have a group of gamers who are comfortable with role-playing if you are going to do it any other way than straight random.

After all role playing it may be , but still it amounts to treachery and hard feelings of "why did you do it to me?" Unless you make it very clear that it's an FYB game (F..yer buddy): like "Junta" noises get out of joint.

Several concession must be given up to equity. You cannot have "hidden rules" that is, it would be the most realistic perhaps to "spring" these things on a player unawares but that violates one of the principal rules of the game, that all players know all the rules and it's all up front. In this case doing it in some way as I outlined at lets the players KNOW their army could be riddled with disloyalty. the other is that you can have some defence. That's why I recommended the five "Loyal cards" to suppress disloyalty. You have to give players some chance of affecting their own destiny.