Power to the Goblins!

[Epoch]

Basic resolution:

I'm going to go with 1d20 + modifiers versus a consistant target number of, I think, 15 (subject to change).

It's simple, it uses a relatively common die type, it should be nice and familiar to people who play D&D3.

For attack and damage, I think that I want to take a two-tiered approach:  Roll to hit, roll for damage, using the same mechanic.

Example:  The elven cavalry charges the trollish irregulars.  There are five units in the cavalry, and three in the trolls.  The elf's commander rolls 5d20 to hit, and has a +4 total to hit, so he needs 11's.  He gets a 13, a 2, a 5, a 19, and a 10 -- two hits.  He follows up with damage rolls.  The elves' charge bonus more than makes up for the trolls' resiliance, so they roll at +3.  He gets a 12 and a 7 -- one of the trolls goes down and out.

Another nice thing about this approach is that, in the RPG, you could optionally use 2d10 instead of 1d20, for a very slightly higher average and a much more regular curve.

[contracycle]

Ahem... funny I should find this now.  Theres some half-hearted work going on designing a HeroWars battle system which I've been mulling over, and came up with a loose idea which I cannot yet realise.  This is the "design-a-feud game", probably a card-game.  You generate, randomly with player exposition, a cassus belli, generate some troops, and thrash it out on the field of honour.  The idea here is of a pickup game with little prep-time; setup is in fact part of the game.

Anyway, just thought I'd throw that into the mix.  I'm not startlingly enthused by the fairytale stuff, bu I have a cut-down HW mechanic for you to borrow if you want.

[Mike Holmes]

I'd like to see what you've got, Gareth.

I know you probably think that I've abondoned you Mike, but nothing could be farther from the truth. I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with a battle mechanic that works with what you have, and is not amazingly math intensive. If you're still looking, I might have somethng soon. Or maybe Gareth has something better. We'll see.

Mike

[Epoch]

You big abandonner!

Actually, this morning, in the shower (where all good game design goes on, not to mention pretty much all of my job-related creativity), I was thinking about formation.

See, I want to emphasize the difference between "regular" (in an army, disciplined, trained) and "irregular" (guerilla, or untrained) troops.  My thought was that regular troops could go into close formation, and irregulars couldn't.

When you're in close formation, you get a hefty melee combat bonus.

However...  You either can't "run" (move faster than your base movement) in formation, or you have to make some kind of die roll to remain in formation while running.  You can't maintaing close formation in certain kinds of terrain, and you have to roll to perform certain kinds of manuevers without falling out of formation.  You can do a single movement-phase charge and retain your bonus to combat during that charge, but after it, you're out of formation.

The idea was that you could have two groups of troops, one regular and one irregular.  They've got roughly the same stats.  If they meet on the open field, the regulars kick the irregulars asses squarely, because the regulars keep formation and provide a beat-down.  If, however, the irregulars can arrange to meet in heavy woods, where it's impossible to keep formation, it's more of a heavy fight.  Additionally, since the irregulars can manuever more freely and run without restriction, they're more manueverable than the regulars...  If the regulars want to keep formation, at least.

Seems like an interesting dynamic, and, based on the tiny ounce of military knowledge that I know, relatively realistic.

[joshua neff]

Actually, this morning, in the shower (where all good game design goes on, not to mention pretty much all of my job-related creativity), I was thinking about formation.

Wow, Jared Sorensen has also talked about how his best ideas come to him in the shower. Maybe you guys should team up and...um...oh, nevermind.

[Mike Holmes]

Formations, excellent. I think that'll fit tight into what I'm designing. And I think you'll like it as I stole a lot of it from you. Here's what I'm thinking so far.

First we want to keep handling time down, so as few rolls as possible. And I'm thinking of how to keep things scaled so that you can do 300 vs 500 as easily as 3 vs 5. So...

On entering melee each unit (formation) rolls an attack roll and a defense roll. D20 plus unit bonuses. These bonuses would be equal to the bonus for the average member of the unit. So if elves have a +4 racial stat bonus for speed, the unit gets that bonus for defense. Trolls are +3 axe skill on average, so that bonus adds to their attack roll. Attack in this case is more like skill, and Defense is more like dodge than armor. Anyhow, the difference between each sides' attack and the opposing side's defense is the number of "hits" achieved.

Opposing rolls achieve a (almost) bell curve.

These hits are then each rolled, attacker strength and weapons vs. defender toughness and armor, etc. Each failure to defend means ten percent of the affected unit goes down. Roll for actual casualties against toughness again after the battle.

Simpler would be to just make the outcome of the first roll a bonus to a single damage roll, or just to add all the modifiers up. There's a lot of fine tuning to be done here. Need rules for unit mass. +1 per 50% extra? Something like that.

Anyhow, this would work well opposite a regular system that is much like Mithras' Zenobia. Formation bonuses would just remain as a bonus in mass combat to the combat roll when collision occurs. This way you can rate an entire unit by its formation skill, high meaning more regular, and low meaning more irregular.

And here's the kicker - a single leader can make a difference by making a leadership roll and adding successes to the formation or maneuver die rolls made by the unit. Very large units could have rolls for subcommanders as well. Also, PCs in a unit can make a difference by adding their successes as though they were fighting a single member of the opposing unit (reduced by scale?).  

Go FitM so that the players can describe the effects of their rolls. Neato.

Ok, that's a lot in a fast confused bundle. Can you see where I'm going?

On races, the way I see it, just charage every character as though they were human. Keeps things balanced. Giants can just more reasonably buy a whole lot more strength. If anything, racial writeups will just have suggested high and low ends for stats. Want to buy a unit? Just write up an "average" soldier in the unit and multiply by the number of individuals. Balances whole units against players. So you can pit dragons against piles of Dwarves.

Howzat sound?

Mike

[Epoch]

I like the combat rolls.  I'm not sure I like the 10% damage thing, because it sounds to me like it involves lots of special cases.  Need to meditate more on that.

A nice feature of the system you propose is that you don't have to use it, of course.  If you want to, you can roll each guy individually (which might be appropriate, for small skirmishes).

I think I'd prefer to have a static bonus for being in formation.  It sounds to me like having a bonus equal to the troops discipline would be an increasing returns feature -- the better you are at staying in formation, the more you get out of it.  Or did you mean two different ratings, one for the advantage that you had for being in formation, the other for rolling to stay in it?

I'm thinking a big bonus: +5, maybe, for being in formation when your opponent isn't.

Definitely, leaders would be important, and would give bonuses for various kinds of manuever rolls.

I rolled some of these ideas around a friend at work today, and articulated something that's clichéd but important: the goal here should be to have simple rules which give rise to complex behaviour.

[Mike Holmes]

On 2001-12-13 17:33, Epoch wrote:
the goal here should be to have simple rules which give rise to complex behaviour.

Music to my ears. I frequently say something similar.

Mike

[contracycle]

OK, heres HW Lite for you to consider.  The intent here was to capture the essential structure of the HW AP trading mechanism in a form that requires less accounting.

Each combatant has a number of DICE; I was working on d20's for consistency but this is not strictly necessary.  As per HW, each side nominates an action and rolls a number of dice from their pool (their bid).

Once rolled, the dice are arranged from highest to lowest, starting at the highest for each side.  In cases where one side has more dice than another, there will be a "tail" of low-value dice hanging off the matched pairs.

A unit in combat has a number of properties other than how many dice appear in their pool; they also have a Resistance value [note: this is intended to represent the function of Edge and was originally called that; but I have collapsed two edge functions into one so it does not work in a precisely analgous manner].  ANY die rolled against a target which comes up lower than their resistance value is forfeited BEFORE die comparison occurs.

Once the dice are arranged, highest vs. highest, possibly with a tail, they are resolved, wheich esentially means returning them to the player pools.  The highest value die in an opposed pair is said to CAPTURE the other die.  A captured die is retruned to the VICTORS pool.  Any dice in a tail are returned to the pool of their owner.

Dice which come up as the same value as their opposite number are FORFEITED.  This is the same as occurs with dice which role lower than their opponents resistance, and these dice are removed from play permanenently.  This means that over time, with losses due to equal roles and forfeits, the total number of dice in play in any given confrontation should decline, and can never rise.

Anyway, there ya go.  As it happens, I also have another idea for a card-based movement and deployment systm, more closely based on the HW rules.  It came about as a result of my efforts to resolve the anomalies of ranged combat in the HW mechanic - or potential anomalies I should say.  I can post that as well, but it would be simpler to mail an attachment, if anyone wants to see it.

[Epoch]

I see a big red warning light that says, "Handling time!"  I'd need to mess with the thing in practice, but it sounds to me like it'd be really slow.

Is this mechanic modifiable?  If so, how?

[Mike Holmes]

Well, that's actually part of the HW design. Yes it takes a while to do an extended conflict. But as you describe what is happening, step-by-step, it makes it worthwhile. In theory.

Gareth, if I disengage my unit from combat, the dice lost represent casualties, then?

Mike

[Epoch]

I question that theory as it applies to wargames.  Which, I recognize, is not what the mechanic was designed for.

[Mike Holmes]

Yes, I think that we would be treading new ground here with the "Narrativist Wargame". That being said, I think that the Narrativist methods used here would not annoy the Sims too much. But if that does not sound interesting, just say so and it's back to d20 Simulationism. Yer call.

Mike

[Torrent]

I post the following in hopes it will spark thought, rather than any suggestion it be used as is.  
This is a paraphrase from a sorta GM'd wargame called Charlie Company published in 1986 or 1997, I think Im not good at reading those publishment pages, by RAFM.  It is set in the Vietnam era.  Each player had a Figure that was their Character.  One player each game would play all of the VietCong(sp?), with the others playing smaller squads of American troops led by their guy.  The "goal" was to have your character survive a Tour of 12 battles.  There is a

It was written for d6's, but d10's could be tweaked into it.  One a side note, I want to raise a point about d20.  If you are going to use a system that could resultin rolling more than maybe 3-5 d20s at a time, I would claim that could be a problem.  Even with the proliferation of 'd20' stuff, most gamers dont have large piles of them like they tend to of d6 and d10.  Something to ponder.  d20's also roll farther.  We have had several nights of 'find the d20'.  

The mechanics (paraphrased) from Charlie Co.
1)  Each Unit has a dice value in d6.  Poorly armed guys are 1/4, while normal armed ones are 1d6 and a Howtizer is like 15.  To start an attack, you count up all the dice for the unit that is attacking.
2) Apply modifier to this number for Formation, Target Cover, movement, etc.  These are either +Xd6 or X times the total.
3) Roll your total pool and count the number of d6 to come up 5 or 6.  Tally these "hits".
4) This is where the game gets different for the VietCong and the Americans.  For the VietCong, there is a single defense roll(d6) + modifiers.  For the Americans each unit gets one d10 + modifiers.  These defense values are compared to the number of scored Hits.  There is one table for each side, with the American side being judges less harshly.  

The Things I like abou this:
* Seek time and Handling time seem very low.  Seek Time could be helped with Unit Cards.  Handlign times improved with Math instead of Tables.
* Several places for possible modifiers.  Allowing the Regulars/Irregulars possibility of above.  
* The idea that certain figures are more important and dramatically treated differently.  Since you are doing the Wargame/RPG crossover, the ability to allow the dramatically important characters to exist in the Wargame without as much danger of bad dice rolls killing them off in bad times.  

The problems:
It does use alot of dice.
I have yet to find anyone to play a full battle with it.  Just a few test skirmishes. So there could be problems I don't see.

Just my thought in this...


[ This Message was edited by: Torrent on 2001-12-15 13:57 ]

[contracycle]

Gareth, if I disengage my unit from combat, the dice lost represent casualties, then?

I'd be a bit careful about that.  Losing all your dice is like losing all AP's: a defeat, a loss of influence.  That does not *necessarily* translate into actual casualties.

I think that like HW, you'd need to be careful about describing actual losses until the after-action resolution.  Essentially I would use this mechanic to determine an outcome, and then asses casualties after the effect with a Battle Results table type thing.

Epoch, the idea of physical handling time here was roll - match - collect.  Although it ain't the swiftest, its not that bad.  Probably less time than describing and narrating actions and negotiating bids.  IMO, anyway.