WAR - An Open Source War Game
Profiling Units, Equipment and Weapons
At its core everything resolves around the profile stats of any given unit. So let’s think about how we describe things in a war game.
A Unit (Whether that be one or more characters) will often need the following descriptors
Name
Points (the cost of this unit or part thereof)
Type (do all units fall into a specific classification?)
Movement (how they move)
Melee Skill (how effective are they at close combat fighting)
Ballistic Skill (how effective are they are at using weapons)
Toughness/Defence (how tough are they)
Strength (how strong are they)
Size/Height (Indicator of volume of the unit)
Armour (how effective is their armour)
Health/Wounds (how many wounds can they take)
Leadership (how effective is their leadership)
Morale/Nerve/Bravery
Save (saving throw to shake off hits or wounds)
Any Special Rules
A weapon may have the following
Range
Attacks (number of dice to roll for the attack)
Armour Penetration/Rend (ability to negate armour)
Damage (damage inflicted per successful wound)
Special Rules
The key is distilling it down to a coherent set of descriptors and work out how they interact with one another.
OK. Good reading everything so far I am presuming you want to have this ruleset for skirmish games. I just don’t think one ruleset can do everything. The same ruleset can’t really represent a raid on Pegasus Bridge one night and then something like the whole El Alamein battle the next. Favourite mechanics are rolling for unit activation as per Fire and Fury ACW rules from 1990 success dependant on officer quality and morale of the troops Also like hidden movement and spotting which keeps things interesting as well as pre game scouting as per Fantasy Warriors by Grenadier and… Read more »
Love it mate, I’ll explore these.
As for game size, I’m kinda focusing on a game that takes an evening Say 2 hours or up to three – I reckon if the game is interesting that’s a decent nights entertainment for anyone. So plenty of stuff on the table with good variety for the visual stimulus.
Really small skirmish games have lost their appeal to me a bit, and really big games should have simplified custom rules. So yeah – a good nights craic is the sweet spot I think.
I suppose the main thing I want from a game is that C&C should be the main part 9f the rules and that I shouldn’t expect units to do what I want them to do all of the time. There should be some doubt in asking morale affected troops to charge forward or fire effectively when they much rather hide behind a wall or just run away
Sounds interesting. Is the blog picture and logo AI generated?
Yep ran them up so we had somthing to stick in there lol
A couple of my thoughts. I think wounds should just be 1 for both simplicity and realism and here is how I envision it. You roll to hit, if the shot hits it already hits. Then you roll or compare armour/toughness against the strength of the weapon to see if that hit is a lethal hit. If it is, than that kind of already takes that model out of battle. I don’t think there should be a limit to range on most weapons used on the tabletop, as it is kind of odd that a bullet would just stop after… Read more »
I agree with this sentiment a lot!
Single wounds makes a lot of sense and the banding of weapon effectiveness.
I’ll have a crack at putting together some options for us all to look over.