Orders of Battle

  A refrain commonly heard among RPG module reviewers is "there is no order of battle".  The complaint is typically caused by the tendency of modules to key and run dungeons with living, sentient denizens as if they were non sentient undead or automatons, just sitting in rooms or zones waiting for the party of adventurers to blunder in and have a fight. A wise order of battle acknowledges that intelligent and social monsters will react to any invasion with reinforcements, alarms, and at times even offensively. The reason for not having an order of battle is laziness...sometimes on the part of the module writer, but also sometimes because the writer might guess that the GM running the module would also be lazy about actually tracking time and movement. 
  Fortunately, we are talking about Role-Playing Games. A disciplined order of battle is something we can expect from organized and professional soldiery, but it's typically easier for the game master to do what comes most naturally...just put on the role of the opposing force's characters. The goblin king will have made plans with his lieutenants, but those plans aren't going to be strictly adhered to and the lieutenants themselves will have their own ideas about what to do. For the intelligent but typically chaotic goblins, kobolds, orcs, bandits, pirates, lizardmen, bugbears, raiders, gnolls, or other rapscallions who populate most dungeons, lairs, and fortresses in these games the thing more important than an "order of battle" is the GM deciding what orders are going to be given by panicking characters of questionable wisdom, thus think orders of battle.
  This brings us back to that other oft-neglected part of original D&D, the morale system and reaction rolls. The party arrives at the goblin-infested Keep on the Land's Border, and kills off the initial guards. One goblin flees to Lieutenant Gleebsnorp, who then has to make his own reaction roll and morale check. Does he send a runner to King Gorf the Obese? Does he attack immediately? Does he hide? This is where an otherwise linear-seeming assault can also have numerous branches. If the player characters seemed ruthless, then Lt. Gleebsnorp certainly won't consider surrender, but maybe he's more likely to cut and run. If the party advances hot on the heels of the escapee, then they get to hit the lieutenant before he has a chance to dither, maybe then he's more likely to stick to the plan. Having an order of battle is important, but giving the players real living foes is much more about them acting out choices rather than just following a script. 
  And then way when King Gorf the Obese crushes them at the gates with the entire goblin warband, they can perhaps assign more blame to themselves. On second thought, maybe they should have been a little less merciless in that initial push...