Is there anything out there online or in print that gives information about small unit tactics for GURPS in a medieval fantasy setting? I was thinking about this after our last GURPS Majestic Wilderlands session when our group, like many tabletop RPG groups, rode around on the field of battle very much independent of one another. While we prevailed, it put me in mind of my early gaming days (back in the late 1970s with D&D) where the players had set formations and marching orders written on paper that covered various physical spaces and scenarios. The group had also worked out some basic tactical plans so that at the start of melee combat we knew who would be casting spells, who would be engaged in front line melee, and who would be using ranged weapons. The assumption was that they had trained a bit together and had developed some basic formations, marching orders, and plans.
Three of the four people in my first gaming group were wargamers prior to our discovery of D&D and its discovery of us, so the tactical aspect was interesting to us. We did this because it made sense, not because D&D rewarded this type of planning. Tactics matter in the early editions of D&D, but not nearly as much as in GURPS.
Tactics matter a great deal in GURPS. It is why I love playing it, but, like most RPG groups, our current group sucks at group tactics because no one plans ahead and no one is the combat commander of our group. We started out with 75 point characters and are now just a bit over 100, so we really need to fight as a unit to take advantage of our strengths and, more importantly, cover our weaknesses. I have some of the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy stuff and that is helpful, but I am just wondering if there is something else out there (and here I'll admit that I could have easily missed something in a GURPS publication that I already own).
Do any of you GURPS people have any advice for a group of mostly GURPS newbies on how to approach small group tactics, based on your own experience? That is my follow-up question. And here I am mainly looking at GURPS fantasy with a TL of around 3. However, even advice based on other GURPS genres and settings would be helpful.
I have a few thoughts on my own on this but I wanted to hear from more experienced people before tossing things out there. I don't think my thinking is coherent enough yet on this topic to put together a blog post (not that a lack of coherence has hindered me in the past...incoherence is my M.O.).
