I don't want to necro my old power19 from 3 months ago....
I've been developing some rules for a rpg/wargame for some time.

The game focuses on character development, questing & skirmish scale combat (10-100 models).
The system has been designed to be fast to play, while still maintaining granularity, player characters will die, (not often but they will not be "nigh-on-invulnerable" like a lot of rpgs).

The rules are in a 2 part document, the "main" rules which basically detail the mechanism behind resolving mass combat, and the unit/character/special power creation rules.

The system on its own merits should provide detailed campaigns & stories for players who simply wish to play battles vs eachother, the stories will come naturally and enhance the "pitched battle campaign experience" you know how it goes... "bob can you remember pitched battle 23 in our war bettween orcs and elves?  no? me neither..."

The system should also provide a fast & furious way for games masters to take their world, enemies, characters & "port" them to the system for a massed battle.

I present you with the alpha 0.5 rules for Warriors of Fantasy... http://www.rpglaboratory.com/files/Warriors%20of%20fantasy%20rules%20alpha%200.5f.pdf

What I want to know are

-do the mechanics make sense? 
-is the document comprehensible? (not in the formatting, but the clarity of instruction)

remember these are just the mechanics for combat!
Character creation, fluff, story & atmosphere are not included. The 2nd part of the document will address these things, should be done by next friday. 

I'm new here and, unfortunately, I'm not a wargamer.  However, I did read through the rules and they make sense for the most part, to the point that a noob like myself might be able to play the game rather quickly.  There were a couple of things that were a little dicey, with one in particular being outside of my understanding.  The first thing is the command check.  Being that it could be disadvantageous to have some of your troops facing in a direction other than you intended (because they did not change facing after failing the command check), do you allow for leaders (perhaps at higher cost) to have certain bonuses on this check?  It makes the difference between an Alexander and a run-of-the-mill leader freshly promoted.  You may have addressed this somewhere and I just missed it.  The bigger thing, though, is the morale check which can result in your troops facing away from the enemy.  I definitely think you should reconsider this rule.  It is not likely that trained combatants would literally turn their backs to the enemy, even if afraid of being outnumbered, since a counterattack could prove brutal if undefended.  Instead, you might say that they move backward one space without changing facing, indicating a tactical retreat.  I think this would make more sense, assuming I'm understanding your rules correctly.  In addition, I didn't notice anything about penalties to defense or bonuses to attacks when made against the rear of a defender.  In the above example, if your troops turn away from the LOD, surely a counterattack (or attack of opportunity, if you will) by the originally defending units should be able to decimate the retreating units if undefended.  Unless the commander's objective is only to hold the line, that attack of opportunity is forthcoming.

If I've missed the mark anywhere, I apologize, as I read best I could under the circumstances (I'm at work).  Other than those areas, the rules are very clean and easily run from what I can see.

Hey Roadkill,

I'm an experienced wargammer, I play a lot of Warhammer, so hopefully I can be helpful. I like the ideas a lot, and generally they seem pretty solid. The rules could use some formatting, and there are a couple places where a table or chart would be really helpful, like with the wound and hit chances, but formatting isn't a big deal yet I don't think. Line of defense is genius, I love it. It lets you spread out your units a little bit but still block enemy movement.

The only thing that makes me nervous is ranged combat and orders rolls. The idea of orders rolls sounds good in theory, but it removes a certian element of predictability that, I think, makes wargames run. As a player, you need to know what you can expect your army to be capable of in the upcoming turn, and the orders rolls could make that into a problem. I don't know how it will work out in reality though, so if you're super attached to those, playtest them out and see how it goes. As far as ranged combat goes, it seems like a lot of rolling to get an archer to shoot somebody. Hesitation, friendly fire, hit, and kill means a lot of dice rolling if I have fifty archers up on a hill. Again, this might be fine in practice, I just don't know.

Also, as a thought, you could allow archers to arc their fire over friendly units, with the same penalties as long-range shots. With the reduced accuracy, you could still provide some support with archers in the back, but not destroy the world with them. Additionally, can friendly units move through a friendly line of defense? If not, I think making them able to would be really cool. It would allow maneuvers like having a line of archers with spearmen behind them, and letting the spearmen rush up between the archers to protect them from enemy melee units.

Ranged combat seems to take a lot of control out of the player's hands, especially with target choice. Just as a thing to consider how much you want to do that. I like what you've got a lot, it looks very promising.

-sneakie

Orders rolls or something similar, work for me. its what stops a wargame becoming a chess match and more like real battle, one only has to read accounts of real battles to find that troops don't act predictably and don't do what they are capable of, sometimes they do better, sometimes worse. The ability to manage this is what makes a great general so having these in the rules works, for me at least.
good job.

opsneakie wrote:
The idea of orders rolls sounds good in theory, but it removes a certian element of predictability that, I think, makes wargames run. As a player, you need to know what you can expect your army to be capable of in the upcoming turn, and the orders rolls could make that into a problem.
-sneakie