Exchange of Realities

“And Gervase ran into the thick of battle, and the enemy warriors pressed in around him. The first he slew with one blow; the second he merely grazed, and the wounded fighter fell back as his comrades pressed in. The one after that he brought down in one fell stroke, and the blood ran out upon the sand. The one after that raised a shield to defend, and…”

“….how many were there again?”

“Well, this first group is two hundred strong….”

So you’re writing a battle. Battles are usually exciting, right? One on one, with a significant risk to the participants, yes—the ending of the story hangs on the tip of every blade as it comes in. But when you get into big fights with lots of people, it’s different. Powerful enemies, enough soldiers to eat a village out of its winter stores in a day or two, lots of hacking and slashing and cloven chines and all that stuff that made such a detailed bloodbath out of the Iliad. But we’re not Homer, and it’s best if we don’t try to be. If we start covering every blow struck there, you’ll be there all day, and when will you get to the parts that matter? There’s a reason why so many people prefer the Odyssey!

One of my friends just finished running a game like this for me (hence the late post), and it… well, pretty much demonstrated this point. (I’ve never had a taste for mass combat, in gaming or writing, personally. Takes too long. But after this, I might give it a chance.)

The first thing that happened was a preliminary strategy meeting, comparing the sides and figuring out how many people to bring and what could be done to garner support for our side, or pare away the more valuable allies of the opposition. This ended up being a decently long discussion of resources and ways to remove the allies, some easier than others.

Then we had the opening salvo—or rather, the open distraction-and-attack, choosing specific individuals to play certain roles according to their strengths. That one was almost entirely summarized, as a blinding display of “Numbers! Cheese! Rout!”

Then we ran them to ground, and things got complicated. Over the next several hours of summary, we tried a number of tactics: holding what must have been the most polite siege any game group has ever conducted, infiltration of the city in which they were holing up with an eye to irritating make life difficult for the occupying forces and prove to the locals that we were functionally on their side, splitting our own forces to deal with them splitting theirs, negotiations with one of the more sensible of the enemy leaders, quick response to what was supposed to be a surprise attack, another rout, and they fled into territory we wouldn’t have worked near as well in.

Then there was a pause, as we considered our options. The decision ended up being to try to lure him back out—at some point, the “Leave the head of the operation seemingly vulnerable and then taunt the opponent into a blind rage” strategy isn’t going to work, but this time it did. (Made for one seriously fun taunt attempt, either way. I love playing with my enemies.)

And then back to a rather summarized fight, before it finished. Time it would’ve taken if we’d focused: Probably several weeks. Time we took today: Closer to nine hours. Level of fun everyone had: At least as high as if it had all been played out. (Level of fun I had: Much higher than if it had all been played out.) Difference in how much needed to be written… well, let’s just say if I tried to write the whole thing out in this format, I’d be posting for the next year or so and nobody would come back here anymore.

And this, my friends, is why summarization works.