Picture this fantasy episode: Somehow,
the inhabitants of a world have been
warned of an impending invasion by
natives of another, evil world. They learn
where it will occur, and approximately
when, and set up a variety of traps --
including an interdimensional gate of
their own ? in the projected path of the
invaders. The day arrives. The invaders
stream out of an inter-world gate; first,
scouts who are trapped or shot with
arrows (none of them escape), then flyers
who are caught by invisible traps in the
air as they avoid the ground traps, then
thousands of orcs who pour out of the
invaders? gate and right into the defenders
? gate ? which leads to oblivion. For
hours the invaders come, and all are
caught. Finally, there are no more, and
the invasion is annihilated without loss
to the defenders.

I understand that this actually happened,
more or less, in a D&D® game. It
is a good example of excellent generalship
by the defenders, and appallingly
bad generalship by the attackers (who
were, it must be said, controlled by a referee
rather than by a self-interested
player). It also helps to illustrate how
generalship in a Fantasy universe, subject
as it is to magic and a greater variety of
creatures and capabilities than in our
own mundane world, is very different
from the historical generalship we know.
The subject of this article is not the
"principles of war" as such, because they
are so abstract, but a discussion of how
strategy and battle might be different in a
Fantasy game, and why, so that referees
and players can make the necessary
adjustments. The article uses examples
from the AD&D game ?universe?
because that is one of the most magic-rich
and creature-rich games.

Fantasy battles aren't medieval battles
Some people have suggested that warfare
in a fantasy game would be much
like medieval warfare, and fantasy miniatures
battles rules tend to reflect this view.
Somehow, one notion goes, the magicians
and heroes ("adventurers") will
cancel each other out while the armies get
on with the battle. This is hogwash. Relatively
inexperienced adventurers may be
too weak to significantly affect a big battle,
but more experienced ones will make
a great deal of difference. True, if the
adventurers on each side are of equal
strength && numbers, the outcome of the
battle -- winning and losing -- may turn
out the same as if no adventurers were 
present; but the course of the battle will
be quite different. And if one side has
stronger adventurers, as will ordinarily be
the case, that side will have a big
advantage.

Magick strongly affects tactics. The only
way to counter the effects of large-scale
magic or bestial power (such as dragon's
breath) is dispersal and long-range weaponry.
In effect, in the fantasy world the
analogue of heavy artillery is the magician,
and the powerful monster resembles
a tank. Battles in a highly magical environment
are probably less like a medieval
battle than like an 18th-century or perhaps
19th-century battle, where units
spread out both within themselves and in
their relation to the rest of the army. But
the speed with which events can happen,
when magicians and monsters are
involved, means that individual initiative
of unit commanders counts for more than
it would in an 18th-century battle. In fantasy
warfare, a well-trained, experienced
army has an even greater advantage over a
less well-prepared army than in medieval
warfare.

Flying creatures also change warfare
radically. In effect we have the opportunity
for air-mobile cavalry in a short-range
weapon environment. Commanders or
other valuable persons, objects, and places
must be heavily guarded against airborne
raids. Commanders tend to be
within an army rather than behind it --
in a place where they're less likely to be
seen and singled out by the enemy
?artillery? (magicians). Flying creatures
also change strategy because small units
of great potential power can MOVE rapidly
from place to place.

A well-known military maxim asserts
that "He who would defend everything
defends nothing." This applies particularly
well to most FRP
universes, where so much power can be
concentrated in a small area or in a few
individuals. In the real world, one battalion
used to take up as much space as
another, with about the same combat
power. But there's no comparison in
strength between 1000 orcs and ten
adult dragons, though the latter group is
smaller and moves much faster.

The strategy of medieval (and some
ancient) warfare was based on the moreor-
less impregnable castle. Yet, because
magic is so prevalent in fantasy games, a
medieval castle is unsuitable as a fortress,
and certainly far from impregnable to
assault. That topic is discussed later; the
point here is that generalship in a fantasy 
world will not be like medieval generalship
because forts are much easier to capture.
Also, because of flying creatures and
teleporting, supply lines for small forces
are easier to maintain in fantasy than in
the medieval world. Even if fantasy forts
could be as strong as medieval castles,
they would have less effect on strategy
because supply lines are harder to cut.

Another difference is that feudalism
need not dominate the fantasy world in
the way it dominated Europe in the Middle
Ages. This is partly a consequence of
the weakness of fortifications, since magnates
cannot safely retire to their forts and
defy authority. It is also a consequence of
possibly quite different social premises.
There is nothing in fantasy role-playing
that necessitates a feudal setting rather
than, say, a setting like the Roman
empire, the successors of Alexander the
Great, or the Renaissance. Warfare in
these eras was highly organized and professional,
in contrast to the less well
trained, of ten nonprofessional armies of
the Middle Ages.

Fortresses
Where fantasy warfare most differs
from mundane warfare is in the concentration
of vast power and abilities in
individuals. This makes it harder to protect
a specific person or place, despite the
aid of defensive spells. When one person
or creature can blow away dozens of orcs,
strategy and tactics change.

This change is most obvious in the
decreased defensibility of fortresses. The
medieval castle was not invulnerable, but
a well-built castle was sufficiently defensible
that an attacking force -- whatever
its numbers -- would need many weeks
or months to capture it. Most castles, even
when defended by 100 or fewer men, fell
to protracted siege operations or treachery
if they fell at all; a successful immediate
assault of a castle was almost unheard of. 

The strategy of the builder was to provide
multiple lines of defense in the castle,
both to slow the attacker and to
reduce his forces by attrition. Then the
attacker would run out of time before his
army melted away through disease, starvation,
or return to the harvest. Or, the
attacker would lose heart, or his losses
would be so great that the defender could
(ordinarily with outside help) defeat the
attacker in open battle. Even if the castle
fell, it could still accomplish its purpose
by delaying the enemy while defenders
elsewhere in the country gathered an
army or received help from allies. (Later 
castle-builders changed their strategy.
While still providing multiple lines of
defense, the idea was to enable all defenders
to concentrate missile fire on the point
of attack and slaughter enough attackers
to force them to give up the siege.)

Why was it nearly impossible to
rapidly take a castle? The walls were
simply too high and too thick to get over
or through without extensive ?softening
up.? Because flame was effective against
wooden castles (though less effective than
one might think), stone was the principal
building material. A few defenders, well
protected on stone battlements, could
defeat any ladder assault by firing from
protected positions, by dropping rocks
and boiling water on defenders, and by
pushing the ladders away. Consequently,
the attackers had to build siege towers,
various missile-throwing engines, rams,
and protective ?penthouses.? Often they
needed to tunnel under the walls to create
a breach because no other method was as
safe or as certain, but mining was
extremely slow work, and could be
unsuccessful if the defenders detected the
mine. Once a wall was breached or a gate
opened, the attack usually succeeded ?
only to face the next line of defense. 

Over, under, or through
The reason castles are more vulnerable
in fantasy gaming is that attackers have
many means of going over, under, or
through walls rapidly. Some of these
means are magical, some monstrous or
natural. First, going over: At night, a
thief adventurer can scale a wall undetected
if he's lucky, something virtually
no one in the mundane world would try
to accomplish. Two or three thieves, or a
single very accomplished thief, could
open a postern or other gate, let attackers
in, and effect the fall of the fortress. The
result would be similar to the effects of
treachery in medieval times, when someone
in the castle opened a gate to the
attackers in return for financial or other
rewards. 

Any creature that can fly may accomplish
the same thing, though beating
wings are likely to be heard by those on
watch. But not everyone needs wings to
fly; picture a 5th-level fighter/m-u
employing invisibility and a fly spell in a
raid of this kind at night, or a group of
ten fighters on hippogriffs.

Magic can help its users gain entry in
many ways. Invisibility is enormously
useful. A knock spell may break open a
barred door, such as a postern or the door
to a tower. Dimension door or even teleport
allows a brave magician to penetrate
deep into the fortress. Gaseous form or
etherealness enables an attacker to slip
into the fortress. 

Magic can also help ordinary soldiers
get over walls rapidly. For example, a
fireball will sweep defenders from a wall 
section so that attackers can climb ladders
unmolested by defenders on the wall. In a
well-made fortress, the hoarding or brattice
work along the battlements will protect
defenders from fireballs, unless a fireball
goes in through a slit; in that case, it
would expand inside the hoarding and
sweep an entire wall clear of defenders.

?Unnatural? powers can also help
force a way through walls. Dragons and
giants may break down gates in minutes.
Stone-digging monsters can breach a wall
in a short time. Some very powerful spells
may breach walls, though in general
lightning bolts and such will bounce off
or hardly scratch a stone wall. A passwall
spell would be great for getting through
thin walls, but most walls of a castle
would be too thick; every gate would be
vulnerable, however. Nonetheless, going
through rather than over or under is
probably the least likely method of
breaching a castle, except for an army
with extremely powerful monsters.

Going under (mining) will be quick if
an umber hulk, a trained or charmed
giant boring beetle, or another sort of
digger can be used. Dwarves, orcs, and
most other non-humans are better tunnelers
than men. Medieval forces rarely
tunneled into a fortress in order to invade
it, preferring to break down a wall; but
attackers of a fantasy fortress, thanks to
the concentration of power in individuals,
could employ this tactic. Imagine a 
force of highly skilled fighters following
an umber hulk into the enemy keep while
the rest of the attackers create a diversion
outside. The defenders would be devastated
morally, at least, to see their keep
invaded (if not captured) by the enemy.

Defenders options
Granted, defenders of a fortress may
have magickal or other unnatural help.
But in most cases the defenders will be
vastly outnumbered -- the strategic value
of the castle was that a small force could
DELAY the enemy -- and will have far
fewer adventurers and monsters to counteract
the attacking force.

Defenders can partially compensate for
fantasy elements by altering the construction
of the fortress. One alternative would
be a large earthen fortress such as those
built by the French engineer Vauban, but
unless the defender has some weapon
analogous to canister-firing artillery this
won?t do: the walls will be too long to
defend. And although the walls will be
too thick to go through, and invulnerable
to mining, they won?t keep the enemy
from going over.

The other alternative is a completely
enclosed stone fortress, much of it underground.
Flying or climbing creatures
would be stopped by the roof. Someone
could enter via a spell, or through the
slits with the help of magic, but the gates
would be less vulnerable to surprise. This
fortress would be smaller than a fullfledged
castle, more like a tower-keep of
several layers, It would allow less extensive
fields of fire to defenders, and could
be held by a relatively smaller garrison
unless it extended far underground. It
would be easier than a regular fortress for
attackers to surround it and starve the
garrison into submission unless the
designer included long subterranean
tunnel-networks in the fortress plan. If
much of a fortress is underground, it will
be less vulnerable to many of the unnatural
powers of the fantasy world ? but it
would be generally easier to neutralize.
And nothing can protect completely
against underground approach, though a
fortress dug into hard stone would be
invulnerable to attack by most digging
monsters.

All in all, the abilities that fantasy adds
to the real world favor the offense, with
the result that fortresses will be more
vulnerable, and fantasy strategy will be
quite different from medieval strategy.

The indirect approach and game theory
The foregoing applies largely to battles
and strategy involving hundreds or thousands
of creatures. The following discussion
applies equally in principle to
smaller pitched battles and to the strategy
and tactics of successful adventuring.

Some military writers, led by B. H.
Liddell Hart, have argued that the essence
of strategy is indirection ? to act at a
time, in a way, at a location, with forces
that the enemy doesn?t expect, to strike
the flank rather than the front, to go over
the hills rather than through the pass,
and so forth. Liddell Hart called this the
?strategy of indirect approach.?

It is not always easy to figure out what
the proper indirect approach would be in
a given situation, but the basic idea applies
to every conflict, whether a great
war or a set-to in a dungeon. In a dungeon,
for example, the last thing you
want to do is charge right into the enemy
soldiers? barricade and spears, unless you
can find no other way to accomplish your
goal. And even if you must take this
route, you might try to draw the enemy
out by some trick. Don?t let megalomania
control you. No matter how tough you
are, you can?t lose by finding a more efficient
way to defeat the enemy.

My magic-user characters look at it this
way: Hacking and chopping lacks finesse
compared to clobbering the enemy from a
distance; and fireballs and lightning
bolts, though sometimes necessary, lack
finesse compared to other means of incapacitating
the enemy. Why risk life and
limb if you don?t have to? Sooner or later
you?ll be forced into a desperate hand-tohand
fight; why not put off the evil day
as long as possible? 

Another way to look at strategy is
through game theory, which is primarily
a mathematical analysis of game-playing
strategies. The important aspect is this:
The best strategy is one which attempts to
maximize your minimum gain while
minimizing your enemy?s maximum
gains (the ?minimax? strategy). You
assume that the enemy is a perfect player.
Then you maximize your gain by picking
the strategy which results in the largest
minimum gain for you, regardless of how
the enemy reacts. In other words, even if
the enemy does this, or that, or the other,
I?ll still accomplish at least such-andsuch:
that?s maximizing your minimum
gains. If the enemy plays less than perfectly,
your gain may be greater than the
anticipated minimum. Similarly, you
play so as to minimize the maximum
gain the enemy can make. No matter
what he does, if you do such-and-such he
can?t gain very much.

In game theory, choosing the best strategy
involves complex calculations which
usually include a weighted random
determination, strangely enough. Gametheory
calculations can?t practically be
used in a role-playing game, which is
much too complicated, but you can use
the principles. In general, the minimax
strategy encourages caution rather than
chance-taking, but calculated risks are a
vital part of good strategy. The key is to
calculate, to consider what the possible
consequences may be, including the
worst. Chucking a fireball into an enemyoccupied
room as soon as you open the
door might be a good strategy if the room
is large, but if it's small the fireball will 
expand out the door and fry you as well 
as the enemy.  The obvious thing to do is 
find out how large the room is before you 
open the door.  If you can't do that, think 
aboot the possible consequences and you 
may decide not to throw that fireball. 

Intelligence gathering
Napoleon is supposed to have said that
"The greatest general is he who makes
the fewest mistakes." Gathering information
is the best way to avoid mistakes.
The more you know about the enemy, the
more chances you have to take advantage
of his weaknesses and avoid his strengths.
In the example at the beginning of this
article, if the defenders had not learned
when and where the invaders would
appear, they would have lost.

In fantasy role-playing we have far
more opportunities to gain accurate
information than, say, medieval commanders
did. Taking the AD&D rules for
illustration, we have communes with a
deity, contact other plane, and legend
lore, among others, as pure informationgathering
spells. (Questions should be
worked out before casting the spell, so
that none are wasted.) Clairaudience and
clairvoyance powers can act as substitute
spies. Among magic items, crystal balls
are the premier spying devices. Conversely,
every general desires an amulet to
prevent enemy scrying.

In the fantasy world, there are ways to 
be certain of extracting info from 
prisoners -- methods that were unavailable 
in the real, medieval world.  Mind-reading 
and truth potions come immediately 
to mind, && certainly the 
imaginative general can think of others. 

The task of individual scouts is much
abetted by the availability of non-human
helpers, whether familiars, demons summoned
to gather information, intelligent
beast spies, or flying steeds. The last,
alone, makes an enormous difference, as
both sides discovered in World War I
when widespread aerial reconnaissance
was first used.

Strangely, in most games and certainly
in the AD&D game, magic rarely
improves communications or mass transportation.
True, if you have a herd of
pegasi or dragons you can carry around a
commando force a la air-mobile cavalry,
but beasts won?t help you move an entire
army faster. Flying creatures improve
speed of communication somewhat, but
there?s a lack of spells or magic items for
long-distance, two-way contact. If two
parties have crystal balls with clairaudience
or ESP, they can communicate,
provided they use the magic at the same
time, but this can be hard to arrange,
since no standardized timekeeping devices
exist, and cosmological events such as
sunrise and noon vary in time from place
to place.

Information is even more vital for the
adventuring party than for any army. The
worst thing that can happen to adventurers
is to be totally surprised in a strange
place which is the home of the opposition.
Adventurers should try to obtain
information about an area before going
there, from storytellers, sages, spells, or,
most important, prisoners. A large
number of players fail to even attempt to
take prisoners. Those who inadvertently
do, for instance with a sleep spell, usually
slaughter them out of hand. The players,
through their characters, show a lack of
interest in learning about a situation, and
the characters (and players) often pay for
it later. Adventurers should take prisoners
whenever possible. You can tie them up
or, if it suits your frame of mind, kill
them after you?ve extracted what they
know, but at least try to find out what?s
going on first.

The course of wars and battles
It would be nice if this article could
describe just how wars and battles would
go in a fantasy world, but it can't: Too
much depends on the power-level of
magic and on the level of military technology.
For example, a battle between
well-trained ancient troops, with magic
added, would progress quite differently
from an early medieval-style battle
between troops untrained in group tactics.
The presence of wide-area spells such
as fireballs in game rules make a big difference
in tactics. However, a few generalizations
can be made.

Warring forces will probably spread
out rather than concentrate in one place
for a big battle, at least until one side is
worn down. Skirmishes may be more
common, especially between the most
mobile (flying) elements of each side as
they attempt raids against supply depots,
treasuries, kings, and princesses. Each
side will rely on dispersal and deception
to counteract information-gathering
spells and scouts. Professional forces,
either mercenaries or a standing army,
and non-human forces will dominate
warfare; levies of farmers will be nearly
useless. Warfare will be mobile rather
than necessarily centered around castles.

In pitched battles, spell casters will
tend to "hide" in the midst of large units,
where the enemy will be unable to spot
them. Rather than expose themselves to
archery and action by enemy adventurers,
spell casters will often cast one spell, then
move elsewhere before casting another.

Non-spell-casting adventurers, on the
other hand, will probably be the moral
leaders of the army; that is, they?ll participate
in charges, rally troops, and generally
put themselves in the thick of battle.
Their positions must be well known if
they are to affect their troops. But some of
these people may have the task (selfimposed
or otherwise) of seeking out and
slaying enemy spell casters and leaders, or
at least of incapacitating or neutralizing
them. Insofar as spell casters have adventurer
bodyguards, hand-to-hand fighting
between individual adventurers may
result. Leaders may fight one another so
that the winner can gain a big morale
advantage over a loser?s force. But such
fights have a tendency to end with one
man?s troops rescuing him, or with the
larger battle separating the antagonists
before they finish their business.

Important individuals ? often adventurers
? will be captured more often than
killed in battle. First, that may be a more
effective way of demoralizing the enemy
force. There?ll be no revenge motive
because the leader isn?t dead, and greater
despondency among the troops because
seeing one?s leader captured is more
ignominious than seeing him killed.
Second, an adventurer surrounded by
dozens or hundreds of enemy troops is
almost certain to surrender or to be overborne
and captured for ransom. Third,
adventurers who are incapacitated by
spells will be captured rather than killed,
for the purpose of obtaining information
if not for ransom.

The use of ?flashy? magic will be preferred
to magic which quietly gets the job
done, because in battle one doesn?t win by
killing the enemy but rather by breaking
his will to resist. The fright value of an
advancing cloudkill will be more important
than the number of enemy actually
killed by it.

Obviously, the larger the ratio of troops
to adventurers, the less effect the adventurers
can have on the battle, other things
being equal. (In this respect, powerful
monsters are the equivalent of adventurers.)
One 10th-level fighter, say, or a
giant, can do a lot more to sway a battle
in which units consist of 10 men than
when units are 200 men each. And
finally, magic, or the fright-value of
monsters, is most likely to sway the
course of a battle. Regardless how skilled
a human fighter is, he just can?t generate
a comparable effect on enemy morale.

Adventurers may devote their efforts to
killing or neutralizing enemy adventurers,
or they may concentrate on affecting 
enemy troops. This decision will make a
lot of difference to the course of the battle,
but no one can say that one choice or
the other will ordinarily be the better one.

Naval strategy and tactics
Magick allowing long-distance communication
would radically change naval
strategy, since fleets could still work
toward a common goal even when
divided. In the absence of long-range
communication other than with flying
creatures, naval strategy might not be
affected much, but tactics would be radically
different.

In games in which fireballs or lightning
bolts will set ships afire, the effect
will resemble the historical effect of
Greek fire, a combustible and nearly inextinguishable
substance which could be
catapulted or sprayed at the enemy. The
Byzantine navy, with the knowledge of
how to make Greek fire, consistently
defeated stronger Arabian navies thanks
to the secret, and thereby preserved Constantinople
and Europe for centuries
from the Moslems. If both sides have
many fire-causing spells, naval battles
will be much bloodier, and ships will
sink more often, than was the case in
medieval or ancient times.

As a referee, I rule that spells rarely set
ships afire, especially ships not under
sail, and when they do the crews are often
able to extinguish the fires. Nonetheless,
ships must be built carefully to minimize
the effects of such spells. For example,
every ship must have a full deck, with
strong hatches, so that a single fireball
cannot slay half the occupants. During
battle, hatches must be kept closed and
locked so that a flying, perhaps invisible,
magic-user cannot dump a fireball down
a hatch to slaughter all the oarsmen in a
galley.

The presence of flying creatures will
alter naval battles, both because of their
ability to scout and because they can be
used to ?bomb? important ships or board
the enemy flagship.

Aquatic creatures that can travel
underwater will have enormous effects,
particularly if someone is able to control
groups of unintelligent creatures (such as
whales or sharks). One may doubt how
well thin-hulled galleys would survive in
battle against an enemy using large
numbers of underwater creatures. While
most large water creatures could not
seriously harm a strongly built ?round
ship? (merchant) or Atlantic-style galleon,
such a creature would be able to
ruin an ordinary galley. Galleys also have
a low freeboard, allowing swimming
creatures to climb aboard with relative
ease. The more involvement that swimming
creatures have in a naval battle, the
heavier and higher the ships must be, to
counteract their presence and their
potential.