LARP Tactics 3 - Battle Leadership
Ugh. I dread this particular topic. It's among the most important, and probably the most difficult to describe well. Please forgive the length - and please bear in mind that this is geared specifically towards combat leadership in a LARP, in battle formations of ~15-150 people. Not real life, not massive armies, and not tiny squads of 10 or less. I'm sure many of the concepts would apply to more realistic situations, but certainly not all.
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So, if Tactics are about concepts like mathematical superiority and momentum, then battle leadership is about the much older art of simply understanding people, and communicating with them clearly and effectively.
My own teacher in the field was Alaric Malinruin, and I couldn't have asked for a better one really! Even though his specialty was more off the battlefield while my own was upon it, I managed to translate the lessons I learned from him to the field with substantial success.
Here are a few of the things I have learned...
A Good Leader...
...Strives to achieve a real rapport with their warriors.
...Understands the kinds of encouragement and support people need under stress.
...Realizes how much most people really want competent leadership when situations become dangerous and desperate.
...Offers a calm and comforting voice in a sea of chaos. You must radiate true confidence in both your own and your warriors abilities.
...Knows when to butt out and let people fight the way they need or prefer to fight.
...Gives warriors the proper tools to defeat the enemy - and lets them achieve victory. The victory must not be yours.
...Diligently studies the arts of warfare. You must lead with knowledge - not empty valor - if you are to win battles and earn the lasting respect of other warriors.
A Bad Leader...
...Yells Frequently - or worse yet, screams at their warriors. These are the tools of a boot camp sergeant, not a commander! You confuse your warriors when you yell, and unnerve them when you scream. A screaming commander is a sure sign of disintegrating morale.
...Controls All. You are not there to control the actions of others - you are there to help guide them. When you step over the line from guidance to control, your warriors attitude towards you will shift from respect to resentment.
...Fights Constantly. You have but two eyes, and they must be set upon the whole field, not focused on an enemy in your face. You cannot fight (or spellcast, or heal) and lead effectively at the same time. You may step forward occasionally to lend a hand - but understand that you do so for reasons of morale, not because your blade is going to make a difference.
...Seeks Glory. You must gain glory for your warriors, not steal it from them. Who wishes to follow a preening ass who claims all the spoils bought with the sweat and blood of others? No one.
Those cover the mindset you need to achieve to be a competent commander. Now to discuss some of the key details of how to execute these concepts in a LARP environment:
Conveying Orders
All battlefields are noisy, chaotic places.
This is one of the biggest problems you face. You must communicate constantly, but noise befuddles communication. Yelling is a bad solution. Most commands worth giving are only meant for a handful of your warriors and yelling is indiscriminate - it overloads people with info they don't need, can't pay attention to, and can only half hear anyway, if they are lucky.
Oh, and lets face it, yelling your orders means that an astute enemy knows what you are doing. Surprise is your friend, and quiet communications lets you use it to its full effect. Never, ever fall to the temptation to yell FALSE orders to trick your enemy - inevitably your own people will be even more confused and very bad things will happen.
If you need to talk with a select group of people, go round them up in person, send someone to go round them up, or just go and talk to them individually. Paradoxically, speed is rarely of the essence in these battles - most people spend most of their time doing very little in large battles. Unless your formations are very hard pressed, you can often take people right out of the line without really changing much - and if you have a more productive use in mind for those people, then that will easily make up the difference.
Whenever possible, set up some of your basic groups and maneuvers before the battle, so you can much more quickly trigger or move them during the fight. Yelling a pre-arranged command to your prepared formation is fine. Some things have to happen immediately all the way across a formation, and yelling is the easiest way to get this done.
K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple, Stupid
LARP players are (with few exceptions) not militarily trained. They have not been put through boot camp, they have not been trained in basic tactics or maneuvers, many of them only have a rudimentary understanding of how their weapons or spells work. Do not formulate classical military formations, maneuvers or plans of attack and expect your warriors to carry them out - they can't, and it isn't their fault, it is yours! You are trying to use tools that simply aren't available. Stick to a very, very simple script when you are coming up with plans for your LARP battles, especially if you don't have time to do your planning and communications in advance.
Furthermore, these people are players in a heroic game who did not come to have their individuality obliterated by you. Treating your warriors as if they are simple rank-and-file soldiers in a drill formation will usually destroy most or all of their respect for you. They aren't, and you cannot treat them that way and expect them to respond with anything but rebellion and disdain.
Give Orders when Necessary, Encourage in Person
A major battle can be won with just a few simple maneuvers. Your attention and orders should be focused on making sure this are carried out effectively, no more no less. If things are going well, let them be. Do not make yourself loud for the sake of being heard. If you wish to be heard by the rank and file, walk down the line and speak to them as equals.
If you need to communicate with someone who is fighting or otherwise occupied in a battle just put your hand on their shoulder and talk in a clear voice. This lets them know that you are talking to THEM without them having to turn around. Less intuitively, human contact in the midst of a large battle is a surprisingly good morale booster. I sometimes move down battle lines and simply talk to warriors who are inexperienced, or who look exhausted during battle. I ask them how they are doing - do they want some help? or a rest? or even a few pointers on line-fighting? If you have the luxury for this kind of small talk or humor during a battle, it can be a remarkable morale booster. The longer and more grueling a battle is, the more you need to think about this kind of activity.
Do not grandly shout to all and sundry to 'Hold The Line' or 'Fight Harder' - that is what they are doing, and your yelling it at them indicates a marked lack of respect for their efforts and their intelligence. If the line is holding, leave it be. If the line is buckling, then you must do something about it! Those who are buckling are most assuredly already giving it their all, and it is not enough. You must choose and move the people you wish to reinforce it, or attack on another front to shift the pressure. Yelling for some mythical, unknown hero to fill the gap will do nothing but shatter morale.
Loud speeches and group oratory are for before and after the battle. During the fight, try to stay off the podium.
Cultivate a Command Voice
A command voice is relatively deep and projects from the diaphragm, just like your drama teacher tried to teach you in high-school theater. It helps project a sense of confidence and certainty, and is particularly useful when you are working with people who don't know you well (or at all).
Oddly, the best command voices I have heard are kindly and comforting. Think Mustapha of the Lion King, or in the not quite so deep range, Gandalf. Deep is good, but not necessary - any of you who have heard me in real life know that I don't have a particularly deep or resounding voice, though I do drop it a fair bit in these instances.
You must never allow your voice to become shrill while commanding. This vocal range automatically registers in listeners as panic or rage - and either will immediately undermine people's confidence in you. This is of particular importance for female commanders, simply because your voices start closer to and more easily slip into this vocal range.
For some people this concept seems to come naturally, while others may want to take time practicing it much as you would for singing or acting, so that it comes more naturally and is less likely to slip under stress.
Building Relationships of Respect
How do you gain the respect of other warriors and leaders? First off, give them the respect they deserve. All respect ultimately comes from the rank and file - it cannot be granted by a king or claimed by force. If you cannot respect the people who are willing to put themselves under your command, they most certainly will never respect you - except perhaps out of fear, which is a very poor motivator in a heroic LARP.
As the ultimate leader of an army, you deserve no respect at all save what your warriors are willing to grant you. You essentially bring nothing to the battle save for knowledge and organization, all of which is useless without the arms and valor of your warriors. Demanding unearned respect gains you nothing but resentment, which leads to rebellion.
One of the easiest ways to gain the trust and respect of another leader is to quite simply ask them intelligent questions. What forces have they brought to the battlefield? What are their favored methods of battle? Are there any tactics or strategies they would care to offer? Are their warriors exhausted or fresh? Etc... First off, this is important information you simply need to know to lead effectively. Secondly, it shows that you value their contribution to the battle even before it has begun, and that you understand that they bring unique and important strengths to the mix.
Forming a Command
Start small. The way to begin forming a command is with your own personal team or friends. This is actually the hardest part, in my opinion, because the individual tides of personality and day-to-day relationships transcend the scope of 'battle leadership' and can present some awfully intractable problems. That's a whole treatise unto itself, and I'll be honest, its not the part I'm best at.
Now, it is theoretically possible to lead an army with no personal force following you directly, but it is much more difficult and your ability to act will be limited. It's just easier to work with multiple groups and leaders if you already have one yourself.
Once you have your own group who follows and listens to you in battle, then it is more likely that other entire groups might be willing to listen to you in larger battles. Once there are more than 15 or so people in a battle, the 'army' will generally consist of multiple smaller groups, often with their own leaders. Cultivate relationships with other group leaders in the game and earn their respect. Without that, you cannot go any further.
Once you have a decent rapport with other teams and team leaders in the game, then you can attempt to weld them together into an army, and that process can be surprisingly swift and simple. When the time for battle comes - NEVER try to grab the reigns of their own teams away from them, as this will flat out fail and lose you any respect you did have from that leader or group...
Read this part closely because this is probably the single most important thing I'm going to say in this whole treatise:
Simply ask another group or leader if they are willing to perform a particular role in the battle.
Note, I didn't say ask them to follow you. I said perform a particular role. The distinction is incredibly important. In the first case, you are asking them to subordinate themselves to you - a very bad start. The second approach is just asking them for their help. The rest of the battle relationship should follow suit.
Which approach do you suppose Heroes are more likely to respond positively to?
Right. Don't ever forget that.
------------------------------------
Ok. Sorry about the length, but I actually got this part shorter than I'd expected. There's a lot more that could be said obviously - people write very long books about this kind of thing - but I'd prefer to leave it at this for the moment, and just field questions if anyone has any.
-------------------------
So, if Tactics are about concepts like mathematical superiority and momentum, then battle leadership is about the much older art of simply understanding people, and communicating with them clearly and effectively.
My own teacher in the field was Alaric Malinruin, and I couldn't have asked for a better one really! Even though his specialty was more off the battlefield while my own was upon it, I managed to translate the lessons I learned from him to the field with substantial success.
Here are a few of the things I have learned...
A Good Leader...
...Strives to achieve a real rapport with their warriors.
...Understands the kinds of encouragement and support people need under stress.
...Realizes how much most people really want competent leadership when situations become dangerous and desperate.
...Offers a calm and comforting voice in a sea of chaos. You must radiate true confidence in both your own and your warriors abilities.
...Knows when to butt out and let people fight the way they need or prefer to fight.
...Gives warriors the proper tools to defeat the enemy - and lets them achieve victory. The victory must not be yours.
...Diligently studies the arts of warfare. You must lead with knowledge - not empty valor - if you are to win battles and earn the lasting respect of other warriors.
A Bad Leader...
...Yells Frequently - or worse yet, screams at their warriors. These are the tools of a boot camp sergeant, not a commander! You confuse your warriors when you yell, and unnerve them when you scream. A screaming commander is a sure sign of disintegrating morale.
...Controls All. You are not there to control the actions of others - you are there to help guide them. When you step over the line from guidance to control, your warriors attitude towards you will shift from respect to resentment.
...Fights Constantly. You have but two eyes, and they must be set upon the whole field, not focused on an enemy in your face. You cannot fight (or spellcast, or heal) and lead effectively at the same time. You may step forward occasionally to lend a hand - but understand that you do so for reasons of morale, not because your blade is going to make a difference.
...Seeks Glory. You must gain glory for your warriors, not steal it from them. Who wishes to follow a preening ass who claims all the spoils bought with the sweat and blood of others? No one.
Those cover the mindset you need to achieve to be a competent commander. Now to discuss some of the key details of how to execute these concepts in a LARP environment:
Conveying Orders
All battlefields are noisy, chaotic places.
This is one of the biggest problems you face. You must communicate constantly, but noise befuddles communication. Yelling is a bad solution. Most commands worth giving are only meant for a handful of your warriors and yelling is indiscriminate - it overloads people with info they don't need, can't pay attention to, and can only half hear anyway, if they are lucky.
Oh, and lets face it, yelling your orders means that an astute enemy knows what you are doing. Surprise is your friend, and quiet communications lets you use it to its full effect. Never, ever fall to the temptation to yell FALSE orders to trick your enemy - inevitably your own people will be even more confused and very bad things will happen.
If you need to talk with a select group of people, go round them up in person, send someone to go round them up, or just go and talk to them individually. Paradoxically, speed is rarely of the essence in these battles - most people spend most of their time doing very little in large battles. Unless your formations are very hard pressed, you can often take people right out of the line without really changing much - and if you have a more productive use in mind for those people, then that will easily make up the difference.
Whenever possible, set up some of your basic groups and maneuvers before the battle, so you can much more quickly trigger or move them during the fight. Yelling a pre-arranged command to your prepared formation is fine. Some things have to happen immediately all the way across a formation, and yelling is the easiest way to get this done.
K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple, Stupid
LARP players are (with few exceptions) not militarily trained. They have not been put through boot camp, they have not been trained in basic tactics or maneuvers, many of them only have a rudimentary understanding of how their weapons or spells work. Do not formulate classical military formations, maneuvers or plans of attack and expect your warriors to carry them out - they can't, and it isn't their fault, it is yours! You are trying to use tools that simply aren't available. Stick to a very, very simple script when you are coming up with plans for your LARP battles, especially if you don't have time to do your planning and communications in advance.
Furthermore, these people are players in a heroic game who did not come to have their individuality obliterated by you. Treating your warriors as if they are simple rank-and-file soldiers in a drill formation will usually destroy most or all of their respect for you. They aren't, and you cannot treat them that way and expect them to respond with anything but rebellion and disdain.
Give Orders when Necessary, Encourage in Person
A major battle can be won with just a few simple maneuvers. Your attention and orders should be focused on making sure this are carried out effectively, no more no less. If things are going well, let them be. Do not make yourself loud for the sake of being heard. If you wish to be heard by the rank and file, walk down the line and speak to them as equals.
If you need to communicate with someone who is fighting or otherwise occupied in a battle just put your hand on their shoulder and talk in a clear voice. This lets them know that you are talking to THEM without them having to turn around. Less intuitively, human contact in the midst of a large battle is a surprisingly good morale booster. I sometimes move down battle lines and simply talk to warriors who are inexperienced, or who look exhausted during battle. I ask them how they are doing - do they want some help? or a rest? or even a few pointers on line-fighting? If you have the luxury for this kind of small talk or humor during a battle, it can be a remarkable morale booster. The longer and more grueling a battle is, the more you need to think about this kind of activity.
Do not grandly shout to all and sundry to 'Hold The Line' or 'Fight Harder' - that is what they are doing, and your yelling it at them indicates a marked lack of respect for their efforts and their intelligence. If the line is holding, leave it be. If the line is buckling, then you must do something about it! Those who are buckling are most assuredly already giving it their all, and it is not enough. You must choose and move the people you wish to reinforce it, or attack on another front to shift the pressure. Yelling for some mythical, unknown hero to fill the gap will do nothing but shatter morale.
Loud speeches and group oratory are for before and after the battle. During the fight, try to stay off the podium.
Cultivate a Command Voice
A command voice is relatively deep and projects from the diaphragm, just like your drama teacher tried to teach you in high-school theater. It helps project a sense of confidence and certainty, and is particularly useful when you are working with people who don't know you well (or at all).
Oddly, the best command voices I have heard are kindly and comforting. Think Mustapha of the Lion King, or in the not quite so deep range, Gandalf. Deep is good, but not necessary - any of you who have heard me in real life know that I don't have a particularly deep or resounding voice, though I do drop it a fair bit in these instances.
You must never allow your voice to become shrill while commanding. This vocal range automatically registers in listeners as panic or rage - and either will immediately undermine people's confidence in you. This is of particular importance for female commanders, simply because your voices start closer to and more easily slip into this vocal range.
For some people this concept seems to come naturally, while others may want to take time practicing it much as you would for singing or acting, so that it comes more naturally and is less likely to slip under stress.
Building Relationships of Respect
How do you gain the respect of other warriors and leaders? First off, give them the respect they deserve. All respect ultimately comes from the rank and file - it cannot be granted by a king or claimed by force. If you cannot respect the people who are willing to put themselves under your command, they most certainly will never respect you - except perhaps out of fear, which is a very poor motivator in a heroic LARP.
As the ultimate leader of an army, you deserve no respect at all save what your warriors are willing to grant you. You essentially bring nothing to the battle save for knowledge and organization, all of which is useless without the arms and valor of your warriors. Demanding unearned respect gains you nothing but resentment, which leads to rebellion.
One of the easiest ways to gain the trust and respect of another leader is to quite simply ask them intelligent questions. What forces have they brought to the battlefield? What are their favored methods of battle? Are there any tactics or strategies they would care to offer? Are their warriors exhausted or fresh? Etc... First off, this is important information you simply need to know to lead effectively. Secondly, it shows that you value their contribution to the battle even before it has begun, and that you understand that they bring unique and important strengths to the mix.
Forming a Command
Start small. The way to begin forming a command is with your own personal team or friends. This is actually the hardest part, in my opinion, because the individual tides of personality and day-to-day relationships transcend the scope of 'battle leadership' and can present some awfully intractable problems. That's a whole treatise unto itself, and I'll be honest, its not the part I'm best at.
Now, it is theoretically possible to lead an army with no personal force following you directly, but it is much more difficult and your ability to act will be limited. It's just easier to work with multiple groups and leaders if you already have one yourself.
Once you have your own group who follows and listens to you in battle, then it is more likely that other entire groups might be willing to listen to you in larger battles. Once there are more than 15 or so people in a battle, the 'army' will generally consist of multiple smaller groups, often with their own leaders. Cultivate relationships with other group leaders in the game and earn their respect. Without that, you cannot go any further.
Once you have a decent rapport with other teams and team leaders in the game, then you can attempt to weld them together into an army, and that process can be surprisingly swift and simple. When the time for battle comes - NEVER try to grab the reigns of their own teams away from them, as this will flat out fail and lose you any respect you did have from that leader or group...
Read this part closely because this is probably the single most important thing I'm going to say in this whole treatise:
Simply ask another group or leader if they are willing to perform a particular role in the battle.
Note, I didn't say ask them to follow you. I said perform a particular role. The distinction is incredibly important. In the first case, you are asking them to subordinate themselves to you - a very bad start. The second approach is just asking them for their help. The rest of the battle relationship should follow suit.
Which approach do you suppose Heroes are more likely to respond positively to?
Right. Don't ever forget that.
------------------------------------
Ok. Sorry about the length, but I actually got this part shorter than I'd expected. There's a lot more that could be said obviously - people write very long books about this kind of thing - but I'd prefer to leave it at this for the moment, and just field questions if anyone has any.