Sunset Realm War Machines

With the siege of Antissa, it is time to turn our thoughts to that stickiest of options in D&D: mass combat.

Over the years, many systems have attempted tot encapsulate D&D mass combat. The original version of Dungeons & Dragons evolved out of Chainmail. During the AD&D-era, Battlesystem provided a system to simulate fantasy battles with either cardboard counters or miniatures. For the parallel Basic D&D-line, the system of War Machine was invented, wherein DMs could simulate strategic warfare on a large scale. For the Birthright Campaign Setting, a system using army cards was designed to quickly fight battles between competing domains. In the 2000's, a skirmish game once again under the name of Chainmail was released and that evolved into the D&D Miniatures Game. None of the systems stuck and D&D eventually remained the sole territory of small parties of adventurers fighting for high stakes. Yet the desire of many DMs remains to run large-scale, epic battles in the vein of Game of Thrones.

All these systems sought to solve the puzzle by presenting only a piece of it. Perhaps the key to running a D&D campaign involving epic battles across the entire continent is modularity. Perhaps by combining different systems, we can provide the experience we seek. When determining the results of a battle offscreen, away from the current area visited by the players, we can use War Machine. When the PCs are directing the strategy of a kingdom yet remain aloof from the battles themselves, we can use the army card system of Birthright. And when the PCs are in the thick of it, on the front lines, we can take a page from Battlesystem and duke it out, miniature army for miniature army.

As for Antissa, the PCs are currently far to the south of the city, investigating a mysterious tower. To resolve the siege (if it can be resolved at all, considering Antissa's capacity to teleport in supplies) I will defer to War Machine and attempt to adapt it to 5E.