Why don’t we already have the perfect wargame?

[blinky465 17028xp 1]

^^^ THIS

(edit: on previous page! I’m only sorry I can only give the comment one thumbs up)

[horus500 11505xp 0]

I’ve heard many good things about Walking Dead in terms of mechanics. Are they something that would work in other genres?

Fog of war (to back track a few posts) is always difficult to simulate in terms of set-up though I did used to like when GW battle reports would show them setting up with a screen between the players. @blinky465 is 100% right about once play starts regarding knowing what the other player is doing (I often don’t know what I am doing!) and the only example I can think of is probably Space Hulk or the mechanic it uses are good examples that I can think of, that continue it after play starts. Random Objective cards can kind of do it, but I’m unsure how else it could be done.

[timchubbKeymaster 3166xp 1]

@horus500 walking dead is a fantastic game in its own right, but yes the rules lend them selves very well to mixing and matching and are very malleable, if nothing else the 50/50 dice lends it self to what if play style, some great examples from the bootcamp a few years ago include, a game (I forget who might have been @avernos) asking if they could climb a pylon and use the wires like a death slide to escape the walkers, one roll resulted in yes you can climb up, the next roll of dice determined if you managed to hang on very cinematic…

Game I played we decided to put a tank on the table, played the car alarm action card, tank car alarm was roll scatter dice for random direction and fire, as the walkers are effectively hostile terrain with an “ai” to attract them to noise that was a lot of fun to play.

As I mentioned a few posts back used the core rules for a game I played with my kids with the walkers replaced with toy cows, and have replaced them with dinosaurs too and an electric fence with a simple 2 roll success check, one to see if you scale it, one to see if the powers still off. Wouldn’t be hard to replace them security guards/drones, rioters, wolves what ever would make sense in the game your playing

So yeah you can pretty much pick the mechanics out like lego blocks and drop them into other games with minimal tweaks and effort.

[oriskany 60771xp 0]

Thanks for the mention, @limburger .  Great conversation.  I look forward to everyone’s thoughts.

[limburger 21704xp 1]

@horus I think the combination of named characters, the ability to create your own as well as a neutral ‘enemy’ make this a great game for experimenting.

There’s also the fact that it doesn’t focus on defeating the opponent, but on completing your objectives.
You can play games very ‘rpg’ like because shooting/killing your opponent actually has negative consequences whereas in most wargames there rarely is a reason not to attack an enemy.

‘Clash of spears’ and ‘Chain of command’ that sort of do a ‘fog of war’ thing by having a ‘scouting phase’ where you move counters instead of actual units. It really adds to the strategy, because it is no longer “I place my strong unit here to oppose his” as it adds a bit of bluffing to the mix.
Instead you have to guess where his forces could be and you can find that the units that could counter his are on the ‘wrong side’ of the battlefield. It might not make a lot of sense in futuristic settings altough one could argue that when there are sensors that can ‘see’ more there’s bound to be tech that defeats said sensors (electronic warfare …).

Heck … overall the goal of a battle is still the same regardless of the hardware available. The real trick is finding a way to make period/technology specific tactics viable in game without adding a ton of exceptions and special rules (with slightly modified naming because flavour is more important than being able to remember them … ).

@athelstane I think having named characters helps. It even makes for better battle reports when you read ‘Gerry walked out of the house with a pistol’ instead of random enemy armed with pistol appears …

[phaidknott 7023xp 0]

Would not Chess be the perfect wargame (and it’s already created)?

It’s got all the variation of different troop types, no random modifiers, and is quick to set up and play……

I do remember seeing a variation of chess back in the 70’s where a “map” was drawn on the chess board with hills, rivers, and woods. Ofc the “map” was symmetrical across the mid board, and the terrain elements either blocked movement for certain pieces or stopped movement (such as trying to cross a river). I think there were a few maps meant to copy certain historical battles, but it was more of a novelty type thing (and it was a long time ago, and it’s all from memory, and it did have a “name” for this variation of chess). The “maps” weren’t dense on the chess board (like just a single river and maybe one or two hills or woods appearing), but players were using custom pieces to reflect historical units (I remember seeing an Middle Ages and an AWI set of chess pieces). It all appeared in a magazine somewhere and was supposed to be the next big thing as an “accessible” style of wargame (although very abstracted from the battle they were supposed to reflect).

 

 

 

[crazyredcoatParticipant 13642xp 0]

There’s a phrase I have used quite often with people asking questions like this. I’m sure I nicked it from somewhere…but I don’t remember where. Simply put, ‘a perfect compromise pleases no one’. There was a project (I think in the U.S. air force) to make a ‘one size fits all’ ejector seats using the average measurements of all (or most) of the serving pilots. Mathematically it sort of makes sense, but they discovered that no one in the air force fit properly in this new seat. Diversity is the spice of life, as they say, and while I love bacon sandwiches, I wouldn’t want them for every meal. War gaming is the same. Think about applying the same question to minis rather than rule sets; what is the perfect mini? I think we all agree there is no ‘real’ answer there beyond what is perfect to ourselves.

 

This is probably the longest collection of cliches I have written in a long time…

[oriskany 60771xp 2]

Starting a project tonight that could be related to this thread.

In summary, I want a Roman-era classical-age warfare game, and before everyone starts clucking I’m not interested in the ones out there.   I’ll start with this … SKIRMISH-level Roman wargame?  eh … WHAT?

Of course, I’m leaving aside things like Gangs of Rome.  In that contest, skirmish wargaming is perfect.
I’m also leaving off things meant to recreate gladiatorial combat.  Again, skirmish wargames would be perfect for that.

I’m talking about Roman centuries, maniples, cohorts, and legions on the battlefield, often against each other in the interesting wars of Sulla, Caesar, Pompey, Brutus, Cassius, Octavian, Antony, etc.

So I’m doing what I always do … what I always have to do in today’s shallow little market …

Starting my own game system from scratch.

Except not really.  I’ll be stealing, and as I believe many in this thread have suggested, grabbing bits (or at least characteristics) from different games and splicing them together into what is … at least for you … the “perfect game.”

I feel a lot of games out there have great concepts and ideas, sadly saddled by other features that really let them down.  So I’ll be taking ideas like:

The basic “attack dice” and upgrade / customization capability for armies that we see in TSR’s classic Battlesystem (second edition – first edition NOT recommended).

The morale / unit collapse mechanic from Kings of War.

I will NOT be taking the “individual figure removal” from TSR Battlesystem, just as I will NOT be taking the laughable  movement system out of Kings of War … it was fine while it was just a fantasy system, but when they tried to make it historical … their movement system became just way too easy, way too forgiving, not reflecting at all about how ancient formations actually moved.

Cranking up the scale to my own personal level, not based on *ahem* “warbands* or anything, but the actual echelon formation units seen in the legions  (admittedly, some of the “barbarian” opponents will have loosley-organized mobs that will look suspiciously like “warbands”).

Anyway, starting the initial frame out tonight.  I’ve been picking at a lot of research and I think I have a “bucket list” of features I want (only sampled above) and a TON of common features I DON’T want.

It’s an exciting time … a clean sheet of paper … wire-framing a whole new system, custom-built from the ground-up to specifically feature the dynamics, background, complexity level, realism level, and scale most desired!

[oriskany 60771xp 1]

So this is more of a “chart” than a gaming picture, but these are the beginning sketchwork pieces I will have for a Roman legion.  Each piece isn’t a man, or ten men , or 100 men … it’s a Century, usually running about 80 combat troops in ten 8-man  contubernia files.  Six Centuries to a Cohort (at least cohorts II thru X), usually informally paired up into three pairs, each called a maniple.  The first cohort (elite) is made up of five centuries, but these are double sized (160 men each).

Anyway, I’m thining of designing these “counters” more like large game tiles, so I can actually put top view of 80 legionairies (plus centurion, opito, signifier, and tesserarius or course) on each large maneuver tile.  It will make for big game boards, but it’s in a computer, so it’s all good.

The point is I hope to have a FULL LEGION, every man represented, on a table rolling dice by the end of the week (at least in initial playtesting)

We’ll see how it goes!

 

[grabnutzParticipant 994xp 2]

You do realize that some of us make our living writing and selling wargames rules right? 😉

[horus500 11505xp 2]

@grabnutz You do realise that you’d be rich and not have to work if you’d written and were selling the perfect wargames rules right?

 

[oriskany 60771xp 2]

Well, spent from about 12:30 AM to 2:30 AM coming up with some beginning troop types and game values, and built some Excel logic to calculate beginning costs for the unit types (per figure).  Of course the validity of such scenario point costs will only be verified by repeated playtesting way down the road.

[oriskany 60771xp 1]

You do realize that some of us make our living writing and selling wargames rules right? ?

I’ve written and published plenty of wargames myself, and made a little spare change doing it.
Thing is, most commercially available games aren’t for me.
I design to a niche that would make any of my games, well, not “commercially viable” to say the least.

And it’s not about complexity.  Just a specific target in scope I’m going for to suite personal taste, or to zero in on the intended subject of a given media or writing project.

[athelstaneParticipant 698xp 0]

oriskany

How things go full circle.  I was chuckling about this when the flats became the new ‘new thing’.  Now I am chuckling about how we are all writing our own rules – exactly as it was in the 1960’s when wargaming first, really began.   Best of luck with your efforts and hooray for it not being a skirmish game – I think we’ve enough of those.

 

[blinky465 17028xp 0]

hooray for it not being a skirmish game – I think we’ve enough of those.

Wash your mouth out!

😉

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