I was wondering about 'old school' type material the other day and the aging gamer.

Old school stuff, not to be exact, includes stuff like funky little 'get around behind them and flank' or 'prop your sniper rifle on a box to get a bonus' or 'Open door, chuck grenade in, pull back, wash rinse repeat', etc.

Now be honest, in mostly a gamist light, these were damn fun when you first did them. Well I bet a huge majority of people loved this stuff, like I did.

The thing is, we've learnt all those moves. The first time around it was fantastic being rewarded by the system for doing X move. Wow, being rewarded for smart thinking. But as you get older and do these things more often, it's not rewarding, it's just standard procedure. There's nothing really new to learn and if there is, older gamers have often learnt it prior to play by reading the system and running very accurate simulations in their head. Actual play offers nothing in addition, which is really bad if you think about it.

However, this is all at the tactical level. Combat systems in most RPG's focus on this and our own early gaming career, when tactical was really new to us, taught us that tactical is good, tactical is where it's at. But it isn't any more, really. Weve learnt the tricks, got the memories, wearing the T-shirt.

So I'd like to look at expanding from tactical toward strategic and the big picture. I'll put a quick three step scale here and then mention a pitfall after:

1. Fighting an orc in a 10x10 room
2. Fighting an orc clan with a platoon of men
3. Managing the diplomacy and conflict of a continent spanning war, with orcs. Damn orcs!

Right, now this heads you in the right direction. However, I get the strong impression that it sounds great to be economic and simply design rules around the second level, leaving the tiny skirmish stuff alone entirely. I want some feedback on a hypothesis that this is actually a very bad idea indeed.

I get the strong impression that if you remove the first level from the rules, the second level simply becomes the first level. Once you eject the requirement for older players to engage level 1 knowledge, they will simply absorb completely the level 2 rules. Without level 1, the probability map of level 2 is so much more simple, there is nothing new to learn there (easy to learn it all before play by reading).

Still, there is the problem of level 1 stuff is just going through the motions so as to make level 2 really engaging. If you heavily abstract level 1 stuff so as to speed it up, it then simplifies the probability map, so your in the same postion AND level 2 stuff isn't as intersting now (easier to grasp).

If you've kept up so far, how do you get around that last problem? Have the second level significantly effect the first, so the fun parts sort of rub off some of their fun on to the more dull first level?

I'm really betting it's easy to suggest the removal/so abstracted its basically removal of the first level. But really, that just leaves you in the same position, the second level becoming the first now as the easily understood/humdrum part. That sounds right to me, what about the forge?

Well, I'm developing a computer game that incorporates gameplay from the strategic down to the personal level. I'm calling it STRIKE (for Strategic, Tactical and Roleplaying Integrated Kit Engine). In it, you basically play a general of your armed forces. Not THE general, nor will you have total authoritarian control of your country's economics or diplomacy. You can put in requisitions for war material and also determine the logistics of getting war material from the homelands to the warfront, but you're not going to micromanage the economy.

In essence, you the player are represented by an Avatar on the screen. You also have several Commanders of various ranks. The trick to my wargame is that it requires a high level of Aritificial Intelligence (which in the Pen and Paper roleplaying game could be alleviated by having other players assume the role of these Commanders). It requires a lot of AI because you the Avatar only issue orders to your Commanders, who in turn actually do the nitty gritty of the work. In other words, this is the strategic element of play...only looking at the big picture.

As the ranks of the Commanders gets smaller, the level of play becomes more and more tactical. In fact, you can "hop into" any of your Commanders and the scale of the game will be adjusted. In my game, there are Units, Clusters and Battle Groups. Units are your individual fighting pieces, like tanks infantry squads, Single artillery pieces, etc. Clusters are the organized groupings of several Units combined. Clusters are always commanded by a low-ranking Commander. In turn, several Clusters make up a Battle Group and depending on the size of the Battle Group, are headed by mid to high ranking Commanders. If you jump into the Commander of a Cluster, in essence you are playing at the roleplaying level, or the smallest tactical based level. This would be a first person view wherein you see exactly what your troops would see.

The key to my game is that the Avatar has no God-like control over anything. He only knows what his subordinates know if they are able to tell him. His Commanders can only follow his orders if they receive his orders and are in good enough morale to follow them. He can only communicate with his Commanders if the level of technology of communication allows it. In other words, there's no guarantee that if the Avatar clicks on his Commander to activate it (to give it Orders) that the Commander will respond. And even if he can, the Battle Group may not necessarily obey.

I think many of these ideas can be incorporated into the play you are looking for. I think that the tired feeling of tactical competency comes from the fact that there is no uncertainty. In other words you tell your character to pop smoke, find the ditch and lay down suppressing fire for the other characters behind you and it all happens perfectly and automatically. The only fear (in the real world) comes from the possibility of getting hit. But if you can effect fear to your character, make him pause, stumble or hesitate then it becomes another ballgame. While movies have done this so much it has become cliche, the "drop the keys" affect has this same "what the F*&K are you doing!! Get up, get UP!!!" to the audience and could do the same to you as a player.

That's why I'm a big proponent of the idea of not always having 100% control of your character(s). It eliminates the complacency we have in regards towards our actions. We have to direct our actions in uch a way as to minimize these losses of control and if we do lose momentary control, then we have to try to overcome these obstacles.

Noon wrote: 1. Fighting an orc in a 10x10 room
2. Fighting an orc clan with a platoon of men
3. Managing the diplomacy and conflict of a continent spanning war, with orcs. Damn orcs!

Ahhh, the semantics of tactics vs. strategy :)

We used to go over this in great lengths on the gamedev.net forums, so I thought I'd chime in here as to my own definition as applicable to my own game.

I've always referred to the strategy portion of my rules as a "Combat Leadership Simulator". I've taken the root meaning of the word strategy (from the greek strategos) to mean "Generalship". In turns this means the leadership of large numbers of men. Tactics to me is the implementation of strategy. To somewhat simplify things, strategy is the planning, tactics is the implentation of those plans. So in a way, I agree with both timfire's and Noon's definitions of strategy.

There's definitely a scale involved. While it's correct to say that even in one-on-one fights there is a strategy involved if you only look at strategy as the plan of combat, it misses the true etymology of the world which is generalship. So strategy in the classical sense means the control of large groups of men and how to use them effectively.

What complicates this issue more is that in modern warfare not only do they group things tactically and strategically but also operationally, or what Napoleon would have called "Grand Tactics". My game actually deals with Operational Warfare with some strategy elements involved.

Thanks for your responces Dauntless and Timothy,

I think the main thing I wanted to impress with using the words 'tactics' and 'strategy' was the onion skin effect, where each layer co-ordinates the manouvers of the inner layer, with a seperate plan. Obviously the onion can have many layers, so really its hard to call any of them tactics (except the inner most layer...wherever that is) or any of them 'the' strategy. The semantics aren't so much important as the idea of upper layers managing lower layers.

So with that in mind, that's why I gave the rough example with layers 1, 2, 3. Keep in mind, it doesn't matter what 1, 2 and 3 actually are, its just that those are the layers of management.

To sum up my post: Older gamers tend to find the first layer boring...they enjoyed the challenge of it years ago, but now they know it all too well.

However, if you remove or abstract level one, it makes level two as easy as level one to learn and get bored with.

The proposed problem: Level one is boring, but its needed to maintain the excitement of level two and higher. How do you sex up level one stuff?

First point: Fear & Confusion! (see http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10977 and http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=11420). These apply just fine at the strategic level -- perhaps even more so, given the commander's removal from the actual events and the time lag as orders move down while reports move up and events move on. Arguably the French lost in 1940 because the German blitzkrieg moved too fast for the rigid French staff system to adapt and the French command system had a collective nervous breakdown.

Second point: Not just tactics vs. strategy. Soviet, and now US, doctrine recognizes an intermediate level, "operational art" -- the art of a campaign within a war, e.g. the Western Front in WWII, or Iraq within the current global conflict. And political scientists talk about "Grand Strategy," which is the long-term, often multi-generational approach of an entire sovereign entity to the world, e.g. containment during the Cold War, or empire-building by the Romans (strategy at this high a level is often the result not so much of any conscious Grand Plan as it is the result of lots of smaller ad hoc choices steered by unconscious cultural-political biases).
The most articulated division of levels I've seen is

individual
tactical (squads and companies)
grand tactical (an entire battle, e.g. Waterloo)
operational (a series of battles, e.g. the Western Front)
strategic (an entire war)
grand strategic (a world-wide strategy encompassing several wars over many yeras -- and other wars avoided)

The real point: If you want to capture the difference between tactical and strategic, it's not just about scale. It's not just a quantitative difference: It's a qualitative one as well. Very different factors come into play as the scale changes. The strength of my sword-arm matters at the individual level; the strength of my economic base matters at the strategic level; the strength of my cultural identity matters at the grand strategic level.

The bottom line: Maybe you don't need to keep the "level one" stuff at all. Make your game about the factors that matter at the higher level you choose, and just include the tactical issues as minor modifiers -- even simply say, "tactics are what the die roll depicts."

Hi Sydney,

Ah, thats sort of the answer that I mentioned before, one which continues a problem which I haven't illustrated all that well yet, but I will here:

Okay, I'll go through some levels and give rough system mechanics to each.

1. The individuals strength. It gives a bonus and is added to a d20 or some other die type. There are various target numbers to roll over with this.

2. The units morale strength. Again, there's a bonus to a D20 roll or something and target numbers.

Okay, now say the target number is 15 or such. Once you have your strength and moral bonus, you could sit down and do the math on passing level 1 AND passing level 2 (hit the individual orc, then route them), because you need to do the former before getting a shot at the latter.

Okay, now although my example is simple, consider how long it would take to do the math.

Now, imagine that we abstract level 1 out.

2. The units morale strength. As before it's a bonus to a D20, AND in addition, if the unit has the 'strong' attribute, you get +1 to this roll.

Sounds good and simpliefied, right?

Consider how quickly you can determine the odds of success.

Yes, you can figure them a lot quicker than before. In fact you can do the math on them as quickly as if you were only focusing on level 1 strength rolls before...the level which is boring to more experienced gamers. You've effectively made level 2 into level 1.

Now my examples were simple, but imagine if level 1 has ten rules to it and so does level 2. Imagine trying to figure out the probability map of it all before game or in play. Much trickier.

Now imagine taking those ten level 1 rules and abstracting them to just a bonus or two in the level 2 rules. How much easier is it to figure the probability map now? Much easier, to the point (quite possibly) where the experienced gamer can figure it all in their head and running a squad of men is as boring as running one man in a 10x10 room.

So the prob is, you just can't skip to the good stuff by abstracting away the boring stuff. You just make the next layer up easy to figure out/boring, by doing so.

Anyone read Edward Luttwak's "Strategy: The Logic Of War And Peace"?

Simply put, the essence of Strategy is the deliberate weakening of your forces in one area to gain advantage in another.

eg:
- concentrating your forces in one area for an offensive means taking them away from others
- deliberately doing things in a non-optimal way (choosing the 'bad' road, attacking at night, not preparing fully, etc) in order the gain a greater advantage by surprise.

Then, theres the issue of the different levels that Sydney mentions - Ill have to reread to say more than that there is conflict between them and success at one level doesnt necessarily lead to success at another - and can even lead to failiure at another. For example, German initial success in North Africa was a defeat at the level of Grand Strategy, by diverting forces to a peripheral theatre.

What this means for RPGs Im not quite sure: but my feeling is that Strategy lies in the Setting, not the Mechanics.

Noon, I think the answer is that the Grand Strategy Of The Fourth Great Orc War isnt really about winning battles by killing orcs in the most efficient manner. Its about winning thw war, which is all Setting.

Noon wrote: ....imagine if level 1 has ten rules to it and so does level 2. Imagine trying to figure out the probability map of it all before game or in play. ....Now imagine taking those ten level 1 rules and abstracting them to just a bonus or two in the level 2 rules. How much easier is it to figure the probability map now? Much easier, to the point (quite possibly) where the experienced gamer can figure it all in their head and running a squad of men is as boring as running one man in a 10x10 room. So the prob is, you just can't skip to the good stuff by abstracting away the boring stuff. You just make the next layer up easy to figure out/boring, by doing so.

I've layed a number of operational level roleplayign games, and written and run one myself. The key for me is that they are roleplaying games. Realy the combat game mechanics are a low priority for me because I'm not running or playing a wargame. Anything more complex than DBA as a combat game engine would be a distraction from the fact that what the game is realy about is the inter-personal relationships between the commanders, their aids, advisers and the often conflicting goals and agendas they are all pursuing.

Simon Hibbs

Hi Sydney,

Oh yeah its gamist ( :) ), but you've gotten me wrong on the sim part. I only want the lower layers there to make a more complicated probability map. I don't want them because the 10x10 simply must be represented. Your absolutely right, you don't need complicated rules to have really complicated results from them. But you can in my example that the reduction in how complex the rules were didn't do this. I just mentioned having more rules because, although there is a better way to do it, more rules do tend to lead to more complex outputs. Smaller rules that do the same or better are possible...its just that I think they are a lot harder to design (so I tried to keep the example simple and not mention them)

I'll pitch what I mean in another way here. The 10x10 room is boring (well actually its still fun for me, but not as fun as it used to be). But the tiny scale effects it has can disrupt greater plans. Remove those tiny effects (as boring as they are to play out) and the greater plans aren't going to get disrupted and become easy enough to master that they become bored.

I can think of one game where I think the designer ran into this very same problem, but his approach to solving it is a bit different. I'm talking about riddle of steel. I really think Jake Norwood got sick of the 10x10 room and went on to produce an interpersonal combat system which is chess like in its massive probabilty maps.

So instead of adding extra layers of complexity, he sexed up the first interpersonal layer.

I'm not sure I want to go this way, in the spirit of 'system does matter', the more you sex up the first level, the more people are going to focus on that level because its rewarding enough on its own, in terms of providing challenge. Expanding out from the interpersonal into other higher levels would really be enjoyable for gaming outside the 10x10 room in a more satisfying way than the traditional GM handwaves/makes it up as he goes along big picture stuff.

Hi Simon,

...from the fact that what the game is realy about is the inter-personal relationships between...

Noon, I'm a little confused but what you're talking about. Are you discussing the interaction between group tactics and individual tactics (or vice versa)? Or are you asking about the interaction between specific tactics/techniques and broad tactics/ strategies?

While I'm not trying to debate the meaning of the words 'tactics' or 'strategy,' I think it would be helpful to differentiate the scale of a battle (individual/ squad/ army) with the level of detail (what I was referring to with technique/ tactic/ strategy).

I think there is a difference between scale and level of detail.

You know, something else I've noticed while re-reading this thread. Noon, you seem to have this idea that tactics are something you can 'master.' I really like what NN said:

NN wrote: ... Strategy is the deliberate weakening of your forces in one area to gain advantage in another.

Scale is best thought of as the mechanics of one conflict relying on resources that are left over or generated by another conflict. That conflict is usually described as smaller, but in terms of detail it might be more detailed or less. Resources are things like how many HP you have when you get out of the 10x10 room, how many men you have after fighting the orc clan, etc.

How many HP you have left affects the descision of the player whether they lead from the front or rear when fighting the orc clan for example, which can effect that level of conflicts moral system.

Ie, how well you fought in the 10x10 room can drastically effect the orc clan fight. As the player fights in that 10x10 room, they could need to re-evaluate their grander strategy.

The combinations of two conflict handling levels increases the probability map considerably, as they rely on each other.

The actual detail level of each obviously contributes to the map. But its the interelation thats more important to focus on rather than trying to bulk up on detail.

On weakening in one place for an advantage in another: If you think about it, the grenade example is that. Your using up a grenade on a potentially empty room (when you use this as a default clearing tactic), making a hell of a lot of noise and defening yourself to potentially very important background noises. There's pluses and minuses.

But the thing is, it works out being more plus. You can't exactly have a system where all tactics are equal all the time...whats the point of choosing between them? If there's no greater tactic, you can't input anything as a player, a coin could do it.

And when they are roughly equal in the system but some become better options when they come into contact with the game world situation, well you have a problem there. Thats why certain tactics become better, because the situation presented consistant reward the same strategy, because the game world is consistant. Yes, it would be terrible if there were explosive barrels in the room you chuck a grenade in, should have thought your way around it.

But the thing is, in real life you don't try to have perfect plans, you have robust plans. Perfect plans fall apart at first contact, and you don't have the time to make them. In game its the same, except for some gamers who check for traps on every floorboard, you have a robust plan and you go with it. Anything where the GM makes things inconsistant to 'make people think because of blah' rewards slower play. Slower play is just as boring as before. Spending a session clearing out one corridor isn't any sexier than clearing out a whole building without really thinking.

So you throw that grenade into the room, the barrels explode and kill you and the GM punishes you for what the system and his previous consistancy rewarded. Meh.

Anything where the GM challenges the players and does so without delay is more than likely a product of him and not the system itself. What they had to think about was provided soley by him, and not in any part by the system.

However, if the GM can apply apt pressure at several levels of conflict, even with consistant world delivery, small fluctuations butterfly effect into the other conflict layers.

And I have no idea what NN ment about it all being setting. Really.

Noon wrote: .... Thats why certain tactics become better, because the situation presented consistant reward the same strategy, because the game world is consistant. Yes, it would be terrible if there were explosive barrels in the room you chuck a grenade in, should have thought your way around it. .... you throw that grenade into the room, the barrels explode and kill you and the GM punishes you for what the system and his previous consistancy rewarded. Meh.

Well, throwing grenades around is only going to work if the ...er... 'strategic' aim of the dungeon-delve is to destroy as much of the enemy as possible. If the aim is to rescue the prisoners, or secretly copy the battle plans...etc...throwing grenades around, while supremely effective at killing guards, is totally useless for the wider aim. Which is sort of what I mean about setting being the key, although maybe im using the term wrong.

Sydney Freedberg wrote:

Noon wrote: .... Thats why certain tactics become better, because the situation presented consistant reward the same strategy, because the game world is consistant. Yes, it would be terrible if there were explosive barrels in the room you chuck a grenade in, should have thought your way around it. .... you throw that grenade into the room, the barrels explode and kill you and the GM punishes you for what the system and his previous consistancy rewarded. Meh.

Aha. But presumably if you have a real, live, thinking enemy, they'd notice you chuck handgrenades into rooms as a matter of course and try precisely that kind of trap. The reason why real-world conflict is so hard is that the world is NOT consistent, and therefore does NOT consistently reward the same strategy, because "the other side gets a vote."

This is tricky to implement in a standard RPG where the GM is both adversary and referee at once (and there're whole threads on splitting those roles). And there are, as you say, "robust" (never perfect) tactical options in real life -- that's why, say, the Roman Legions were a dominant force for centuries, or all modern day tanks have a single turret and one big gun. But if a group of players is getting bored with tactical options, my guess is that the GM has stopped "stepping on up" back at them. Any tactic, used predictably, becomes a trap.

I'm going to call attention to my most recent Game Ideas Unlimited: Resources on this. (Due to a glitch in the transition to the new system, the last four Game Ideas articles are all free, so no membership is required.) It makes several points about running adversaries in-game that I think are relevant here.

As far back as OAD&D, referee advice has included that monsters should learn from player tactics. If the players use an easily acquired weapon against them, they will acquire it to use in response. If they consistently use the same tactic, the monsters will find responses to that tactic.

To a degree, it seems like the referee is being unfair. Certainly he is being unfair if

• his monsters are prepared for tactics the referee anticipates but the monsters couldn't possibly know;• the monsters have the ability to pull a rabbit out the the hat, that is, to immediately have a satisfactory counter to some surprise tactic the players present.

However, part of the step-on-up is that the players are going to have to out-play the referee, and the referee is going to challenge them with enemies who are smarter and more prepared, and probably who have heard about how "The Hero Party" managed to massacre those orcs not so many miles away by surprising them with this amazing tactic.

There is nothing unfair about having adversaries learn from their mistakes, or from their defeats, or from information which reasonably could reach them about the successes of their potential enemies.

--M. J. Young

Noon, surely in a game like D&D the tactics evolve anyway as the party gains levels? At first Fireball is a devastating weapon...but eventually diminishes into a mook-clearing convenience.

There may be a problem in that dungeon-bashing tactics become boring...so dont send the party dungeon bashing...send them on a mission with an unusual constraint, which means they have to devise new tactics.

Noon, I dont see Sim as a problem for the gamist. Surely a consistent, realistic background can give the players a greater chance to anticipate and plan than gamist adventures determined by GM whim? (Ok guys...we are facing orcs with experienced uruk officers and thule cultist leadership..therefore we will need....)

What do you mean about pushing broader? Would an example, be, the players are facing an orc invasion, and as well as having the - tactical - challenge of battle, they have a -strategic- challenge of where and when to fight?

Noon wrote: The foundation of the problem here is that older gamists have an entire repotoire of tactics in their head. It was enjoyable to develop them, but its not so enjoyable simply remembering them. And if the GM does something to add inconsistancy, like all hostages always choke to death on the grenades, its just penalising good tactics...which feels more like a switch to simulationism (or even nar) than a step on up challenge.

1. The age thing is silly. It's experience you're talking about, and more importantly, novelty. That is, doing anything over and over gets less interesting with time. So, yes, to the extent that you may have seen a tactical situation before, seeing it again isn't interesting.

2. Thing is, that scale, "level of action," Strategy vs. tactics all miss the point. TROS has a combat system that focuses on the smallest of interactions. And by doing so well it makes the game nigh infinitely playable. In this way it shares the "easy to learn, but difficult to master," feature that you find in a game like chess or go.


I'm relatively old, but I still enjoy a good tactical game (I'm playing Advanced Civilization this weekend). Yeah, most RPGs make crappy tactical games. But that's a problem with design, and not with RPGs in general. Make a good design, and scale, strategic level, all that doesn't matter at all.

Mike

MJ Young and NN,

I have to say, there's a certain currency you can collect in a gamist game, and it's not represented in the game. It's understanding the conflicts of the system and having a solution for them. Collecting this currency is much like collecting trophies for sports in RL. It says you got somewhere with the pursuit.

Now, the thing is, the behaviour patterns of bad guys in games are, in light of this, almost as important to be relatively static as their stats are. For example, if kobolds aren't challenging enough, cranking up their strength till they are isn't on. It removes the understanding currency you had before, that was all based on a certain strength. This is somewhat like trying to make a game more fun for someone by just taking away the thousand gold they had collected, so they can have the 'fun' of collecting it all again. It's just destroying progress.

So, like their stats, the behavior of foes can't change so much it can simply skip around player tactics. Your just destroying progress/trophy knowledge that way. You can destroy a bit...no one minds a small upset, but any larger and your stealing from peter (destroying trophy knowledge) to pay paul (increase required thinking).

Mike Holmes: Yeah, the age thing isn't relevant, but it is useful short hand for describing what I mean. Besides, I think TROS references the demographic as well.

Speaking of TROS, I mentioned it before and its chess like qualities. The thing is, notice how tros goes into fine detail...its almost like creating sub levels of tactical moves. Levels below the individual level, if you get what I mean. If you don't, just think how it deals with the smallest of actions. Instead of going micro I want to go macro, and that's just as valid a direction.

The only problem with macro, as I struggled with in the first post, is that the individual level is still repetitive to play out. Expanding into the micro of it (as well as the macro) is likely to lay most focus on individual combat than get any benefit out of going macro.

And I'll be honest, I'd just like to play around in the bigger picture (as well as the small). At a mathematical only level its sort of like just playing tros (with all its micro detail) I realise, but still I'll call it big picture and say I want to go there.

Andrew Martin: Err, that's almost exactly what I mean (a little off, but almost). Except the aim isn't to play at any of those levels you mentioned exclusively, but at all of them.

Noon wrote: Andrew Martin: Err, that's almost exactly what I mean (a little off, but almost). Except the aim isn't to play at any of those levels you mentioned exclusively, but at all of them.

Noon wrote:
On weakening in one place for an advantage in another: If you think about it, the grenade example is that. Your using up a grenade on a potentially empty room (when you use this as a default clearing tactic), making a hell of a lot of noise and defening yourself to potentially very important background noises. There's pluses and minuses.

But the thing is, it works out being more plus. You can't exactly have a system where all tactics are equal all the time...whats the point of choosing between them? If there's no greater tactic, you can't input anything as a player, a coin could do it.

Noon wrote: MJ Young and NN,
Now, the thing is, the behaviour patterns of bad guys in games are, in light of this, almost as important to be relatively static as their stats are. For example, if kobolds aren't challenging enough, cranking up their strength till they are isn't on. It removes the understanding currency you had before, that was all based on a certain strength.

Noon wrote: Mike Holmes: Yeah, the age thing isn't relevant, but it is useful short hand for describing what I mean. Besides, I think TROS references the demographic as well.

Speaking of TROS, I mentioned it before and its chess like qualities. The thing is, notice how tros goes into fine detail...its almost like creating sub levels of tactical moves. Levels below the individual level, if you get what I mean. If you don't, just think how it deals with the smallest of actions. Instead of going micro I want to go macro, and that's just as valid a direction.

The only problem with macro, as I struggled with in the first post, is that the individual level is still repetitive to play out. Expanding into the micro of it (as well as the macro) is likely to lay most focus on individual combat than get any benefit out of going macro.

And I'll be honest, I'd just like to play around in the bigger picture (as well as the small). At a mathematical only level its sort of like just playing tros (with all its micro detail) I realise, but still I'll call it big picture and say I want to go there.

Oooh, jeez, okay I'll nixed the short hand. 'Experienced' it is. Ouch.

In regards to details, the detail rule wise isn't so important as there being some structure. Players describing their squad level tactics and the GM going 'Hmmm, yeah, that'll do' and rough guessing is about as good as a player describing how he hits an orc and the GM going 'Hmmm, yeah, it hurts him a bit'. Freeform is lovely. But. This is not a push for detail as for a little more structure somewhere beyond the individual level. I mean, just like RPG systems don't have to have a combat system in them, when they do, they don't just have to revolve around the individual level. Unless there is a wargamming cultural cringe in the hobby if they do.

Design of a challenging tactical game involves creating a structure in which situations arise that vary enough from case to case where skills have to be employed to determine an optimal strategy (I'm using that word here in the extrememly well defined Game Theory usage, which I suggest people consider). That doesn't necessarily require more "levels" or detail. It can, but it's just one option amongst many.

Likely, but not impossible to make it work. What I'd do is to make the individual combats just "resolutions" that have an effect on the larger scale. That is, don't try to create any tactical level interest in the small scale itself, just make the results of the small scale the "detail" that needs to be accounted for on the large scale.

Ever play "Squad Leader"? Or, better, ASL?

Noon wrote: In regards to details, the detail rule wise isn't so important as there being some structure. Players describing their squad level tactics and the GM going 'Hmmm, yeah, that'll do' and rough guessing is about as good as a player describing how he hits an orc and the GM going 'Hmmm, yeah, it hurts him a bit'.

Okay, lets say rather than being bored with individual combat system wise, its more a boredom with the sole system focus on the idea of just individual combat. Mostly born from the fact that most combat systems reward tactics that work in the real world (get those down pretty well and you've got the system down pretty well).

Ah, the abstraction route. As I've said, I think this simplifies the individual level which is sort of like removing it and making the next level simpler to understand. As far as I can see, anyway.

No. Scared. And as I said, I don't nessersarily want super detail (a few people have read that in), I just want some/a little system handling of higher up stuff. And I don't think that deserves to be called a desire for a wargame. :)

Hey guys,

At a basic level things become boring if the same tactics always work. You've already talked about how TROS avoids this by having a rather chesslike interaction; but it's at a small scale. There's no real reason such a system couldn't be adopted to a larger scale with the same sort of chesslike interaction. Frankly, that's what chess sort of emulates. In order to be able to move between the layers and keep things interesting I'd suggest you start at the macro conflict and use the micro conflicts as modifiers thereof. I'll use chess and TROS to illustrate:

So, let's say you're playing a game of chess (or a gamist RP equivalent) to determine the outcome of the war against the Ork hoards. The players are down a few pieces and the GM is pretty much having his way with them, meaning the Ork hoards are running roughshod over the players.

The players call for a small scale skirmish (let's say a human group making a clandestine attack to make way for an important courier for reinforcements to the main conflict.) Chess pieces (or a gamist RP currency equivalent) are bid to decide aspects of the skirmish, the winner of the bidding getting some sort of tactical advantage in exchange for greater risk, and then the scene is played out via TROS. The winner of the skirmish gains or loses the relevent pieces bid and you return to your newly modified chess game.

This idea would need a lot of work to be functional, but it's how I'd handle the sort of thing you're looking for Noon. I don't know of anything that currently does this elegantly. Is this the sort of thing you're looking for, or have I missed the mark?

-Tim

[edit: Just wanted to acknowledge that Mike's basically said this, I just wanted to give a more concrete play example with games already brought into the discussion.]

That's pretty good, Tim. How about a system where the player bids people? Sounds like it would have interesting ramifications to me. :-)

Mike

I like that idea a lot actually. In addition to bidding the faceless masses of people you could bid those 'keylight' characters that players would be using in the skirmishes and 10x10 room sort of conflicts. I bet you can garner a lot of step on up when Mongo, your tank, is on the line if you don't win this skirmish. No to mention the fact that your fiendish ork opponents will win time in the overall war while you try to recover from Mongo's untimely death and bring a new keylight into the forefront.

-Tim

Mike Holmes wrote: That's pretty good, Tim. How about a system where the player bids people? Sounds like it would have interesting ramifications to me. :-)

Tim wrote: The players call for a small scale skirmish (let's say a human group making a clandestine attack to make way for an important courier for reinforcements to the main conflict.) Chess pieces (or a gamist RP currency equivalent) are bid to decide aspects of the skirmish, the winner of the bidding getting some sort of tactical advantage in exchange for greater risk, and then the scene is played out via TROS. The winner of the skirmish gains or loses the relevent pieces bid and you return to your newly modified chess game.

Hey Callan,

Yeah, that's pretty much what I intended, that the whole bidding process lets you define the scene that ensues. That way it gives an incentive to bid, since it gives a tactical advatage, but there's also an incentive to put yourself in a weaker tactical position because you can garner a bigger win. It was basically my way of taking care of the "toss the grenade in, clear the room, sweep sweep sweep" issues you talked about. This way, the GM just wouldn't adapt the environment at random, deciding, "Hey, the orks figured out the grenade trick." Instead the players might well decide, "Ugh, GM is crushing us at the chess game and we need to make a big hit. We'll take a shot with a low bid and have the worst of it in a small but critical enagagement." IE, you don't have any grenades... or some such.

I haven't picked up Universalis, but I'll bet you could use Ralph's framework and a bunch of rules gimmicks to create such a game. While Uni doesn't offhand lend itself to gamism, it's so adaptable (from what I understand) that you could very well build a game that way if you so chose. It would at least give a jumping point for some of this stuff. If you do so, let me know because the more I think about this the more interesting it sounds.

-Tim