Strategic-scale 1910's war

[Susan Calvin]

A group of players in a LARP steampunk-fantasy campaign will have the opportunity to play military commanders, intelligence personell and high-ranking officials and politicians. I would like to try using a boardgame to simulate their orders on a large scale. But which boardgame would be best to simulate 1910's strategic warfare and still be simple enough for non-boardgamers to get into it? Some retrofitting will have to be done to match the whole system against our world as well.

[rafial]

Clash of Giants is an excellent low complexity hex-and-counter system for large scale (division level) WWI battles.  It has a couple nifty command and control features that could be places to hook in roleplaying level actions.  The original CoG set is out of print, but CoG II is currently available from GMT Games.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Heh. You know, Diplomacy would be perfect for this, even if all the players were playing just one side of the conflict. It'd work even better if they were on slightly different sides, so that there could be some tension in what sort of orders each is actually submitting to his troops.

The game's strengths for this sort of thing include non-random, simple rules that can be completely faded out of sight of the players - they can quite well just decide where the armies should be going and which armies are going to do the pushes and which are going to support the attack, without referring to any sort of overt game mechanics at any point. The game was also originally designed with the era in mind, so it works well for massive troop movements.

Diplomacy is also very flexible - you can't completely remove the feel of massive troop movements that its roots as a WWI simulation carry, but then why would you in this case...

[Vulpinoid]

How large do you mean when you say "simulate their orders on a large scale"?

If you mean Global,then I'd be inclined to agree with Eero. Diplomacy would work for this straight out of the box...there is also a decent community of modders for the game, who have developed alternate boards, and rules variants to reflect different effects in the world.

Diplomacy is simple enough that I've played plenty of games with non-boardgamers and they've picked up the nuances within a turn of two...there's a strong ability to roleplay and interact strategically with one another in this game too.

If your "large scale" is continental, then Diplomacy has some boards that represent a smaller portion of the world, divided into smaller and more detailed regions. I don't know if there are any diplomacy boards that reduce the scale of conflict to a specific country, but if you're talking 1910's warfare, then I'd imagine that global would be the scale you're after anyway.

V

[Nath]

I agree with diplomacy.

Another option if you want slightly less abstraction might be use Axis & Allies as a basis, modded back to WWI.

Another approach would be to use the computer game civilisation, set to run in multiplayer hotseat mode on one PC. You simply translate the player's orders into the game functions and enter them yourself, with it to track the world and do resolutions for you.

[Susan Calvin]

Simplicity is the key here. I can't assume that the players have played the game, and it is still predominantly a LARP campaign. Perhaps one round per couple of months, real time. Which positions will be players, and which will be filled with NPC officers, depends on what they decide to choose. It's quite possible that certain people will play higher ranking officers, or even some high command members. The scale of the conflict is global, and set in our alternate world.

Axis and Allies could fit more into the steampunk level of technology, and provide more focus on rapidly progressing technology and the rather diverse assembly of nations. Some of them are more mechanised than pure WW I, with even small air fleets (or very large in some cases).

[Vulpinoid]

The reason I instantly agreed to Diplomacy as a game is because the first time I actually played this game it was at a convention 15 years ago, as a LARP.

I didn't have any prior experience of the game and it was quick to pick up.

I've since played it three more times at conventions in the form of a LARP and have played it with friends on a more intimate scale (both as one night sessions with turns lasting half an hour to an hour, or epic struggles where turns have been set with a weekly time limit).

The game plays out in a series of turns, where everyone gets to make orders to move their troops (these moves are blind to the other players until the resolution of orders takes place). In the lead-up to these turns, the players negotiate with one another with the intention of finding out where their allies and enemies might be moving their troops and where their best moves could be deployed.

It also has the advantage over Axis and Allies, that anyone can backstab anyone else; rather than automatically defining the players into two sides.

I'm, actually looking at doing something similar, in real-time, using a combination of google-maps, local electoral boundaries and a monthly turn cycle to play out an ongoing game of intrigue about supernatural beings manipulating the multi-cultural population of my home town, Sydney, Australia. Each month a game cycle will be played out with the resolution of orders that are sent to me through a secure web-server, then calculated on the internet at the midnight starting every month. Players will be recommended to meet up with one another when and where they can, with a series of monthly LARP sessions to focus the ideas and the developing storylines.

I'm very interested to hear how you progress with this idea.

V

[Susan Calvin]

I know both the rules systems, but Diplomacy seems like the best system. A&A have a little more tactical variation, but that is outweighted by it's complexity. And I really like the hidden orders. Modding the game to include CoC-style Royal Corpse of Magickal Engineers, independent goblin air pirates and giving some nations advantages (or disadvantages, the low-tech orc tribes would start with 2 centra) shouldn't be so hard. Any links to Diplomacy mods would be useful.

If it all goes through, each round will play out in between LARP sessions when the players implement whatever policy they set during the LARP.

[Eero Tuovinen]

The Diplomatic Pouch is a good website to start with for Diplomacy material. We can also look through some modifications you might consider right here if you want to - I have some little interest in varying Diplomacy, so it might be interesting to try to figure out how each of your in-fiction martial concepts should translate into Diplomacy-style rules.

[Susan Calvin]

Lots of interesting ideas there, but no Call of Cthulhu-style magic rules. :/ Magic is unwieldy, sometimes powerful, ritualistic and available only to a select few. Most nations would be able to scrape together at least some people for a magical wizard corpse. There are no fireballs, magic missiles and others.

Tech will play a part. Some nations have invested more in cutting edge research. The simplest way would be to just assign these nations more centra reflecting their increased industrial capacity and their armies' use of high-tech weapons, communication, transport and armour.

[Eero Tuovinen]

So magic is being used as a military scale force by literal magical army regiments? It's relatively geographically limited, so that the magicians actually need to march around the map to influence things? The simplest way to deal with this in the rules is to make the magic unit a work just like other units, except that it can move on both land and sea (so few people in it that it's not a problem to requisition a boat when one is necessary), move longer distances (less logistics resistance to moving a couple hundred people as opposed to thousands) and coinhabit an area with other units (concentration of force not being an issue). These rules would make the unit quite different to play with already, but if you want to throw in a twist, you could decide that on the war room level where the players operate they really can't influence the minor details of what happens on the field with the ritual magic. Might use a die whenever the magic is being deployed, for instance: the magic unit might only work 2/3rds of the time, say. Or on a roll of '1' the magic unit destroys itself when Cthulhu comes and eats it; whatever fits your vision of the rough possibilities of magic, here. (Difficult to say without knowing everything about your game; might be that having the foolish magicians open gates to hell and release demon armies onto the map would be a distraction from your real goals, or the exact sort of thing you'd want to throw at the players.)

For details, here's how you might arbitrate the above suggested special rules for a small magician corps:

• Moving on both land and sea: simple, just don't consider a distinction between the two. Still allow the magician corps to use convoy, too, even if they're at sea. Perhaps don't allow them to attack through convoy like military troops get to do, as the conditions are unfavorable to ritual preparations.
• Moving long distances: the player ordering the magician corps around could order them to move several spaces with a special move order (different from the normal move/attack) that can't be used to attack, but can move through the country's own areas quickly. Might be that the unit can only move through areas that have been established as having civilized and friendly infrastructure, such as railroads they can use. At the beginning of the game this'd be basically all areas that belong in the home country, later it would depend on the events of the game.
• Coinhabiting spaces: just allow the magician corps to reside in the same area with friends or even enemies. Decide whether they can defend, attack or support - might be that the ritual magic can't really help with defensive fighting due to timing difficulties or whatever. Or perhaps the unit by itself can't defend or attack, and needs to only act to support other troops. Having an enemy move into the space with the magicians could result in them disbanding outright, as they're not used to escaping; or if you picture the unit as so small as to allow them to blend in with the civilian population, then perhaps they'll just slink out of the area by themselves.

Yes, I can see something like that as pretty balanced and potentially interesting: an unit that can move through friendly areas quickly, can co-reside with other units and can support both attack and defense with uncuttable support but can't attack or defend itself. A force multiplier, essentially, which I'd imagine a magician corps to necessarily be - surely you still need an actual army to take and keep territory even when you can call the ire of the stars on your enemies.

For cutting edge research you might consider having two levels of center, cities and towns - cities would only be the places that have updated their infrastructure and production facilities to modern standards, while towns are the typical rustic thing others have. Perhaps only one center or two from even the most advanced nations is a "city". Then you could decide that cities count as two centers for purposes of troop upkeep due to their increased productivity, and they are the only places that can produce some "advanced" unit types, whatever they'd be. Could be that the magician corps, above, are produced by the cities of certain nations. If you want to limit the number of advanced unit types in play, you could make them expensive (requiring several centers of support), or better yet, limited: you can only support two advanced units per city you possess, any towns will need to support normal troops.

As for other advanced unit types, you could have an air force - units that can move on both land and sea but can't hold centers, only bombard them. Or simply better, more heavily armed and armoured troops (tanks, perhaps): an unit might count as an unit-and-half for purposes of attacking, meaning that they win ties on attack. Or they might be like two units on defense, requiring one more unit (or half-unit, presumably) to dislodge. Or you could have more abstract "units", such as having a given city dedicate an unit's worth of production into the upkeep of a railroad system that allows units to move quickly between two remote points on the map.

(If all this seems potentially complex to play, remember that in a rpg environment it's not so important for the players to get their orders exactly right and understand the fine points of the rules. You can have a neutral GM referee the orders and ask for clarifications when it seems that a player is not entirely realizing his possibilities. This gives considerable flexibility.)

[Susan Calvin]

There are no magical regiments. At most, there are task forces with a dozen mages moving attached to normal Diplomacy armies and navies. Armed forces are still made up of men and women wading through mud with an infantry rifle. A mage squad has no Strength and is destroyed if they encounter a regular enemy unit, so they travel and retreat with other units. A mage squad don't take up any room on a fleet. The default use is to add either 0,5 to 1 Strength support to an existing regular unit they are stacked with per turn. Mages don't require a Centre as of now. They regenerate in certain university cities, religious centra and mystical sites. Each nation has a cap on how many mages they can have depending on how many of their original mage centra they hold. It might be the Orc version of Tenochtitlan, a secular university town or the holy Forbidden City in the Necrocratic Republic.

My hope is that certain players would assume control of for example the elven colonial army corpse, or a fleet group. I'm not certain at what level they will end up. High Command might be filled with NPCs, or the front line units might be controlled by them. In the end it's up to their visions. Turning some extremely heavily industrialised Centra (dwarven corporate city-states come to mind first) is a good idea. They are extremely densly populated and heavily mechanised. Railroads might exist at certain routs, making travel along that rout faster.

Other regular units that would fit into the ideas the other organisers had was tank units. Not some silly little tanks, but basically a land dreadnought (Strenght 1,5-2). And units made up completely of zeppeliners (moves over all terrain). I'm not trying to make it a balanced game. The tanks can only be constructed by the dwarf corporations, and the technical expertise and the facilities to produce special high-grade fuel are only available on certain locations. WW II-level bomb planes are too advanced. Airplanes have a short range and can't carry any payload worth mentioning. They are included as a small wing in other units with no game effect. At most, a wing will consist of an airfield from which they can support 2 squares away. How about other experimental tech, like mustard gas or simple radar?

My current idea is that a squad of mages generate a certain number of magic points per round, which can be spent on creating certain effects. Some nations will have an advantage in numbers of mage squads and available spells. Some have a range 0, a single territory they are stacked on, some have range 1-2 and some few are global. Each spell requires a number of MP, which can be generated over time as the mage squads chant, experiment, trance and whatever their school of magic do. Most effects will take at least more than one turn for a single mage squad.

An airlift spell is entirely possible, as well as a more complex spell opening a portal between two points (which would). Other ideas include creating undead troops (a new army without a Center), some erosion/forest/land raising effects I loaned from another set of rules, trying to influence a certain green sea monster, influencing the mind of a general in order to give that unit your own orders for one turn, hiding or creating the illusion of another unit and scrying. The more you dabble in magic, the less stable the world slowly becomes. When Great C shows up he will eat that territory first. There is a certain faction that wants to use the war as a huge blood sacrifice. :3