Can this work without be silly?
>>43780115
I believe the term is "Adventurer"
>>43780115
Yup, it's called Inquisition.
>Fantasy
>not silly
Choose one
The king's council knows of a threat to the kingdom and has decided that your adventuring party is best suited to deal with this threat. They have stipulations though. No one outside the party and the council may know about your missions, or that you've been hired. Even the king.
Witch Hunter from Warhammer Fantasy.
>>43780115
Haven't you ever read Black Company? They're called mercs.
Ever played the witcher? Roche and his boys are.
>>43780793
Came to post this, mercenaries. When you need a certain use of force use in a special way you hire mercenaries that may have expertise or be better trained/more experience than your troops.
>>43780115
Played one in Pathfinder.
Actually worked out quite well. Warrior shield and sword build. Carried thuderstones and plenty of points in climb for repealing down walls.
>>43781025
yeah about those, were there any historical examples of it? I like the idea of spymasters and medieval-renaissance commandos
>>43781083
Especially if you emulate one of the famous mercenary bands. Normally I'm not the biggest fan of the traditional "Norse" stuff but I would love to play a campaign where everyone was part of a group like the Varangs or Jomsvikings.
>>43780115
The Blue Strips in the Witcher Series, particularly the missions you conduct with them in the Witcher 2 are a really good explanation/showcase of this.
Also they're flat out called the King's special forces.
Wouldn't mind a medieval SWAT Team.
>Breach that door, Edmund!
>Right away m'lord!
>Johnathan clear that room!
>Knights, check your corners!
>>43780115
>special forces
>i.e. anything other than Joe Average, the illiterate peasant spearman
Guys in the best armor available, and usually mounted. Knights, men-at-arms, whatever social class they happen to be. The best of them train all their lives (including participation in hunts, jousts, melees, and other martial games and competitions) to become living weapons. They have high social status, destroy any explicit threats beyond the militia's pay-grade, and tend to protect VIPs.
Sneaky guys. Spies, ninja, rakes, etc. They do your espionage, sabotage, assassination, and other clandestine acts.
>>43780793
>>43781083
How much loyalty should a mercenary have?
>>43785365
Just enough so that people will keep hiringherwhen they need a contract.
>>43780115
Don't go full WoW, forming a taskforce for each and every threat.
The motherfucking Bridgeburners OP.
Whenever someone asks a question like this, I get the distinct impression they have no fucking idea what special forces are.
You are aware that while they might have not been called that, special forces in one form or another have existed for as long as humans have been fighting each other on an organized level, right?
>>43785688
Given the success rates and the threats being faced, the authorities in Azeroth are pretty fucking reasonable in forming the task forces.
>>43785884
>success
Nah mate. I much preferred the simpler time of my youth when fairly shady men paid fairly shady adventurers to solve their problems.
Now every alliance arc has to have SI:7, we need to involve at least 3 lore characters in everything the player does. Task forces are for nerds.
Wraith Recon is a D&D setting about this.
Also pic related.
>>43785856
They probably don't. They think special forces just = Green Berets, Navy Seals, SAS, Spetznaz, and shit like that.
The idea that those primitive people in ye olden times knew strategy surprises them. Then again, people also act surprised when I talk about the kinda shit Romans would do for pleasure that would make the biggest fucking sluts of today shy and vow celibacy. Because most people think "well, the 50s were pretty puritanical, so surely the past was even more that way!"
And why people act like Hitler's ideas were so bad and unprecedented when his ideas go back countless years and genocides happened frequently in ancient times. People have a very weird view of what people in the past were like.
There's a knightly order who runs covert stuff in just about every kingdom to protect their profit margins in my campaign. Their special forces are just a sub-section of the order who carry out field tasks like assassinations and night-raids. Everything is very compartmentalized and the order looks pretty respectable to outsiders, the high ranking knights keep their hands clean of any of the dealings with field missions.
>>43785856
This. A good example would be early (14th and 15th century) shinobi of Japan. They were soldier with special training in unconventional warfare with an emphasis on Chinese military strategy, stealth, and especially arson. I don't think that's inherently silly.
>>43785918
War(craft) has changed. We've been adventuring so long that we're basically the best of the best and if Legion has anything to say about it, we're basically the best of our classes. At least from a lore perspective. I mean you get hand picked to lead the fight into Draenor
Also i dunno bout the SI:7. I play horde and only remember killing them by the droves in a few quests.
>>43786080
Man. Ultimatly including the players in lore events was a bad idea.
I much preferred the "oh fuck, things are going wrong. Jangle a few coins and let's hope the adventurers stop it by dying in droves."
>>43786125
eh it kinda makes sense that we'd have to be included by now. It's just been too many years and too many achievements for shit to go unnoticed forever.
>>43786080
>We've been adventuring so long that we're basically the best of the best and if Legion has anything to say about it, we're basically the best of our classes. At least from a lore perspective.
How? You and how many others are the "best of the best"? If you meet another paladin in game, he's also the best of the best. How is everyone the best of the best?
>I mean you get hand picked to lead the fight into Draenor
You and a ton (and hilariously decreasing amount of people) of others. You mean jack shit in the game. You're the "best"? XxXDarkIllidanDieNoobzXxX is right there to take your place. Except now he's not taking your place as just yet one more adventurer trying to tackle bad shit, but he's now the fucking best there is. And everyone gets the legendary weapons too. Fabled and lost weapons available only to a few basically got cheapened to "You have an Ashbringer! And you! And you! You all get a free Ashbringer!"
That makes it cheap. There's no sense of tackling a major threat, no sense of accomplishment when you and your party truly rise up and take down the big threats coming from your lowly roots as an adventurer and coming up and becoming a hero. And that's why WoW is dying. They tried way too hard to appeal to ADHD addled kids who just want cool shit and it came at the price of making everything feel cheap. Rather than supposedly being one of the best, I feel like just another useless cunt with a legendary weapon I didn't even earn. And rather than having the option from being shit to rising up through skill and merit and being a hero, the game tells me I can't get any better. I'm already the best, but so is everybody else. Lorewise we've reached the peak of the mountain, and rather than enjoying the sight alone or with our fellow guild mates, anyone playing is automatically the best too and he's sitting there saying:
XxXDankMemer69XxX: ur a fgt fuk u.
Really a glorious moment to bask in, isn't it?
>>43786261
Suspension of disbelief m8.
>>43786146
I suppose it should have ended at some point.
It's lost the magic for me. Today is a sad day.
>>43786303
So what happened to the armies in this World of Warcraft? Why is a bunch of no name adventurers doing the work of armies? I miss when this game was about armies and not random cunts.
>>43786306
Eh the game is 11 years old now and there is enough material hinted for Legion thus far that they could end the game if legion doesn't do well enough.
>>43786378
There are a fuckton of armies in WoW. WotLK had a couple hugefuck fights, Cata had a bunch. Pandaland is half armies fighting and WoD starts with a counter-invasion.
>>43786303
Suspension of disbelief is what WoW was before. It's a fantasy world full of fantasy shit. We're there taking on bad guys and becoming a hero, and so is everyone else while we're not aware of it. That's cool. But now we've been added into the lore. The random adventurer you saw before who you could brush off as a random dude now wields the legendary Ashbringer, a weapon only the truly mightiest of people may wield. But I have one. So does the other dude walking around. And the other dudes behind him bunnyhopping through the landscape like we're in fucking Quake.
You can't suspend disbelief when Blizzard said "no, you're all in the lore now and YOU are the best!". Because, what, we're all the best? Two paladins in the same group are both the mightiest paladin? If there's to much of something that makes it decrease in value. These legendary weapons now mean fuck all. They're shit and a dime a dozen in the lore now. Being the best means shit now, because just by playing you are stated to be the best of the best. You didn't become the best by beating bosses with people and earn it. Did you log on? Good, here's your complimentary weapon of untold power and now you're the one true leader of your class. Now fuck off and go into a world where everybody else has the same weapon and is also the leader of their class.
The game is cheap now. They forgot what made a world feel alive and what made compelling story telling and instead decide to just whore out as hard as they can hoping people who want cool shit will just keep subscribing. You want Illidan? He's here! You want Ashbringer? Take it, you can all have one! PLEASE JUST SUBSCRIBE! PLEASE! ANYTHING YOU WANT WE'LL GIVE IT TO YOU! The problem is casual gamers get bored of shiny shit and move on, and core gamers left because the lore and gameplay was dumbed down and raped trying to appease said people who just want to move on.
>>43780115
Is that a Dalek siege tower?
>>43786396
Suspension of disbelief also means ignoring the shit out of everyone else of your spec. Really are you even trying?
That said, I'm not trying to defend blizz's decisions or say that the game really needs to die so I finally have a real excuse to stop coming back every yearish or so after I quit because there are a few plotlines that still haven't been resolved that I'm interested in and it's the only mmo i can really stand playing aside from fucking runescape and I really god damn need a new mmo.
>>43786467
Am I trying? Fine, if the game is so great enjoy the game. Maybe everything doesn't feel cheap as fuck to you, but then don't be surprised when WoW is bleeding subscribers and half the accounts left are bots and gold farmers and wonder why nobody is playing this shit heap of a game.
They're called knights.
Modern special forces are dependent on stealth because we live in a world where the enmy can kill you the literal instant that you're detected. That can't happen in a fantasy world so stealth is way less important than armor and mobility.
>>43786512
I wasn't talking about the quality of the game itself. Just about how I think the story is supposed to work and what sort of perspective one ought to be taking. I'll be really surprised if I actually can stand playing Legion for a month.
The game really needs to die but at the same time I honestly don't know of any alternatives that I'd actually want to play until blizz comes out with something that starts us off from scratch.
>>43786550
>we live in a world where the enemy can kill you the literal instant that you're detected.
>That can't happen in a fantasy world
Wanna bet?
>>43786550
> the enmy can kill you the literal instant that you're detected
>That can't happen in a fantasy world
Are you fucking serious right now?
>>43785925
Broche is the best special force around.
>>43786550
What's funny as shit here is that you have no fucking clue what the definition of SF even is.
Because knights sure as shit wouldn't be it, even if everything else you said is correct.
Knights are elite infantry. They're better equipped, better trained, and better prepared, but ultimately they fill the same role of any other unit in an army(engage and destroy the enemy).
I don't need an army. I need 20 good men.
>>43786680
I'm pretty sure medieval SF would be sappers and pioneers.
>>43786814
Plus the dedicated scouts and raiders, but yea.
Pretty much any group of people tasked with extremely specific missions or goals in war time would be special forces.
>>43785797
Fucking this, I'm pretty sure in the first book they were being used as behind-enemy-lines sappers which is a particular SF role.
Ninja were basically the special forces of medieval Japan
>>43786903
No, ninjas aren't the same in real life as they were in your anime. Ninjas were just hitmen and spies. So, they were the James Bond of their day or like a CIA. Same as samurai weren't noble warriors, but just hired thugs who later on became about ethics and honor.
>>43786937
Actually, I'm a dumb faggot and wrong. Looked them up to be sure and saw they also engaged in irregular warfare and plenty of campaigns and essentially were special forces. My bad. The dude was right.
>>43786937
>Ninjas were just hitmen and spies.
Isn't that just what special forces are?
This is actually a really fun question, since it basically boils down to a question about the nature of warfare and government in your setting. Special Forces are there to do things that are easily accomplished by a smaller number of better trained and equipped men, usually because accomplishing those things with a large group of men with standard equipment and training would either be impossible, impractical, or just more expensive. This can be in either the domestic or military spheres, though I'll proceed as if we're mostly talking about military special forces. Just replace “military goals” with “domestic security goals” and it should all pretty much translate.
The reason Special Forces are special is because it's to one degree or another impractical for every soldier in the military to be as capable as them*. There's some limiting factor--usually money or a small talent pool--that constrains the number of these soldiers a particular military can field. For example, the Impirium of Mankind would love to have as many Space Marines** as they do Imperial Guardsmen, but it just can't be done; even if they had enough geneseed, and no geneseed was ever rejected, they wouldn't have enough men who met the minimum physical standard to implant them in, nor enough suits of Power Armor to arm them if they did.
That dictates the way in which Marines are used. Generally, they don't hold battle lines unless those lines are particularly important and hard-pressed, and even then they tend to employ different tactics than the IG because of their comparatively fewer numbers.
>>43787171
Similar principles should apply to your special forces, at whatever level of abstraction you're looking at it** A king who keeps a contingent of magic-wielding knights can only maintain so many, since the numbers of those who can both fight well and wield magic are limited. Their role will be dictated first by their number, and second by the tasks that are militarily important. If they represent a significant fraction of his armed forces, they'll likely be well represented in day-to-day combat operations, taking particularly hardened objectives with atypical tactics, or dealing with specialized situations (neutralizing enemy casters, performing engineering tasks, taking enemy bases in hard-to-reach areas, defeating specific kinds of enemies against whom magic is particularly potent). If they're fewer, they'll look more like SEAL Teams, dealing (often coverly) with very specific objectives (assassination, clearing compounds where only a small number can infiltrate without facing immediate resistance).
But, back on track. To be plausible, your special forces should be made of people who have a specific trait****, where that trait is both limited and important to achieving certain military goals. The nature of those goals and the number of people with that trait together determine the organization of the troops and the kinds of missions they undertake. Paladins in a setting where being one of God's chosen is relatively rare will tend to also be given the best training and equipment, and be arranged in small teams (3-5 men) to accomplish small, focused objectives like slaying important demons; Paladins in a setting where many can swear the oath will tend to form actual military will be organized into platoons, and might be used in atypical/asymmetrical/shock warfare.
>>43787175
*Granted, this doesn't necessarily hold for all special forces, especially those focused on covert action. Even still, it's often true to some extent, since even where the training is completely different from (and not merely more intense than) a normal soldier's training, it also tends to be impractical to give to large numbers of soldiers. The point is that the size relation goes in both directions; the nature of the mission influences the number of special forces, as well as the number of special forces influencing the nature of the mission.
**Space Marines are, admittedly, dissimilar to real life special forces insofar as they represent a unified military in their own right, with armored, airborn, and naval units. Still, I think they fulfill the spirit of the question.
**This really does matter, since we generally use “special forces” to refer to organizations of varying sizes; it could mean (for example) both Navy SEALs in general, or some specific SEAL team that is considered especially able. Your special forces might have nested or fraternal relations as well; the SEALs coexist alongside Green Berets and SOG. Though chances are, in a non-Imperial fantasy game, you won't have to worry about this.
****Defined widely. To use a civilian example, look at Public Security Section 9, from Ghost in the Shell. Togusa is recruited for his lack of cyberization and background as civilian detective, not because those things are valuable for everyone on the team to have, but because they filled a niche the team as a whole needed. This sort of “fills a niche” trait will be more common when soldiers are considered individually and attached to smallish squads, in relatively smaller and more well-equipped/able forces.
>>43786680
Knights are cavalry. Owning a horse is literally prerequisite to being eligible for knighthood.
>>43787335
And?
Yes, you could take infantry in that context to mean "Soldiers who only fight on foot", but you could also eat your own shit and tell me it's amazing.
>>43780142
Nah, Inquisition is more like the NSA.
>>43780115
>Special force as in elite force
Always existed, it was veteran regiments (Old tercios, landskreich, etc...)
>Special force as in secret police
Always existed (Spanish inquisition did this, instead of weeding out tax evasions they got non-christians)
>>43787406
So an organization with outrageous privileges, massive budget that does absolutely nothing at all and manages to catch a single person a year? I understand you might not like inquisition, but they weren't that useless.
>>43787807
>So an organization with outrageous privileges, massive budget that does absolutely nothing at all and manages to catch a single person a year?
I hope you packed your bags, cause you're getting into the van.
>>43787171
>>43787175
>>43787190
Perhaps the best example of special forces missions in a medieval context would be the few occasions when small groups of men infiltrated a castle (often via climbing up the sewers or some such) in an effort to quickly capture the gatehouse and open the gates for the defenders. I can't remember the name of a castle I know was captured this way (I think it was in western france, captured by the French) but it certainly happened (although not very often).
>>43787936
https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/do-nsas-bulk-surveillance-programs-stop-terrorists/
With their effectiveness I would rather expect a letter asking me to arrest myself for they don't have time for this shit when there are so many funny cat videos on the net.
>>43788037
How is "stopping terrorists" related to any of this?
Ynne the yeare of the Lorde Thirteen Hundred and Two, yon leal knightes were sentenced to the Tower for crimes they didst not commit
They made escape, and did conceal themselves wyth connynge
If thou hast need of their blades, and none other may provide succour, and thou mayst divine their domicile, thou mayst address
The Bande of the Aleph
>>43788313
10/10, would hire to save village from chevauchee
>>43786018
If Hitler had been born a century earlier he would've been heralded as a hero of olden germany. Instead he's juststill a hero of germany
>>43788313
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIfuaUTH9Y4
YES.
>>43788313
Why most games trend to end doing a parody of the A-Team?
>>43788549
Why not?
>>43781434
Weren't the Varangian guard Byzantine though, just with Hardrada as their leader.
He was a badass though.
