In the late 90's the games company TSR produced a new gaming system called SAGA. SAGA was a system that used numbered cards rather than dice for its task resolution system, enabling for more tactical and less random play, which in itself made for more storytelling based games. Or that was the intention anyway. The system was launched as two separate games; the very popular Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game and Dragonlance: The Fifth Age (or DL5A), which was considerably less popular, largely because the game brought along with it a revamp of the well-loved (but let's be perfectly honest, bloated and moribund) campaign setting. The system has many strengths and few weaknesses, and perhaps would have been a bigger success if TSR had been more aggressive in pushing it and hadn't gone out of business almost immediately after its release.
Many supplements were released for both game lines, including a "warriors and combat" supplement for DL5A which presented the inevitable rules for conducting battles between armies in the game. Given that the design philosphy of the entire SAGA system was one of simplicity and storytelling over rules and number-crunching, the complex and fiddly system presented in that supplement, Heroes of Steel, struck me as strange and out of place. So I set about constructing my own system, based on the mass combat rules from Legend of the Five Rings, a system that I find simple and inobtrusive to use and yet open enough to allow for many outcomes and possibilities, and one that seems to share DL5A's storytelling emphasis.
The rules are presented (as a pdf) for download below; in order to use them, you will need a SAGA core rulebook (preferably the DL5A version). Heroes of Steel is handy to have, but not strictly necessary. I welcome any comments on the system; I've not had a chance to test it in a game, so I don't know how well it works. If you use it, let me know how it went!
SAGA Mass Combat Rules v1.1
(To download on nasty Window$ machines, right-click and choose "Save As...")
The SAGA system is probably © Wizards Of The Coast, and Legend of the Five Rings is © Alderac Entertainment Group.
Unless otherwise specified, all content is © Kelvin Green 1993-present.
Please contact me if you wish to use anything from this site.
