Rooted at the intersection of wargames and The Lord of the Rings,* early #ttrpg often had an interesting tension between the desire to be about wandering heroes exploring a world of wonder/peril and the urge to be about heroes commanding mighty armies in a massive/fantastic battle.
The wanderers obviously won out, but a door was often left open for the commanders.
* And the rest of Appendix N, whatever; but have you read Appendix O, a far more insightful dive into the core influences to D&D?
Alex P. 👹
in reply to Epidiah • • •silverwizard
Unknown parent • •@Epidiah @Alex P. 👹 Welp - that's a thing I didn't know I needed - but now I'm buying it.
On topic - I constantly live in this space of wanting to play different RPGs for different scales of play. Been thinking about mixing Reign and Burning Wheel to manage the high scale conflict and the small personal scenes, and stuff like that.
Vampire LARP often ends up with players having large teams of staff who do a whole bunch of stuff, so you play your vampire close up, and then you have this sprawling team of staff for the downtime.