Help with Ideas for Wargame???

[AdamCurry]

Hello all,
I'm currently in the first leg of developing my wargame, WARLORDS, and I still need to flesh out a lot of the rules.
If you guys have any Ideas on how I could represent the followiing in 10mm, It would be greatly appreciated. Everyone who posts in this thread will also get special thanks in the back of the book if he/shee wishes.

The statistics in this game are as follows:
Movement: In inches
Fighting: 1-10 Human avg is 3 / Dice roll needed to hit targets at range (if equipped with a ranged weapon)
Strength: 1-10 Human avg 3
Toughness: 1-10 human avg 3
Attacks: Number of attacks per Base/ Number of shots at range (if equipped with a ranged weapon)
Resilience: Wounds a base suffers before removed
Courage: 1-10 Works similar to GW leadership

So far i'm stuck on:
Siege Rules
Army lists for : Dwarf Holds, Woodland Realms, Empire of Man, Knights of the West, Eastern Sands.

If you have any pictures of your painted Pendraken miniatures that you give consent to use in the book, it would be much appreciated. I would prefer if they were based 40 x 20.

Thanks in Advance,
Adam 

[nikharwood]

Hi Adam

Sounds interesting - although I think your biggest challenge is going to be making this significantly different from WFB / WM [especially if you are thinking of 10mm on 40mm x 20mm bases!]

Looks to me that you've got some core stats for units which is fine - some questions to help me understand what you're after & where you're headed:

- what level is your game: skirmish, 'company', army?
- how are you treating command / control?
- any magic?
- sequence of play?
- army / force differentiation [other than core stats]?

If you progress this, I'd happily paint up some figures for your use - plenty examples of my painting knocking around here 

Oh - and welcome to the forum BTW 

[AdamCurry]

Thanks Nikharwood,
I plan on making the game playable on all of those sizes, with a Star system for rarer units. For example, in your first 1000 points, you have 3 stars, with 1 extra star for every 500 points after that. The core units in armies will either cost no stars, or half a *, with rarer units costing more *s.
For, Command, Heroes will be based seperately to other units, and have a Command Stat, and units with in "x" inches benefitting from that characters abilities, For instance, a Vizier, a mage like character from the Eastern Sands army list, can inspire other units around him to greater feats, giving them +1 Courage.
On Pictures, could you please take a few photos of Painted Pendraken Models if possible. Try to keep them Pendraken though, as I dont have permission from other manufacturers.
Thanks Again,
Hop[e this helps,
Adam.

[Luddite]

Welcome to Pendraken Adam.

'Warlords' eh?  Reminds me of the 'Fantasy Warlord' rules!  These old rules were a bit of a mish-mash but had some very interesting mechanics in there, especially the core combat calculation mechanic.

Thanks Nikharwood,
I plan on making the game playable on all of those sizes,

Thats a bit of a 'Holy Grail' thing isn't it?  

After all the 'friction' and C&C differences are significant between a skirmishing posse of 12 men and a mobilised army of 120,000 men.

For, Command, Heroes will be based seperately to other units, and have a Command Stat, and units with in "x" inches benefitting from that characters abilities, For instance, a Vizier, a mage like character from the Eastern Sands army list, can inspire other units around him to greater feats, giving them +1 Courage.

Um.



I'm not sure what this has to do with command really.

This kind of 'inspiration' might do well at tactical level gaming, e.g. with historcial characters who become personally involved in a local action such as William at Hastings rallying his men by proving he hasn't been killed, or by Alexander leading the Companions into the heart of the Persians at Issus.


I'll echo Nik's questions.

What 'scale'?  
Understanding this will dictate what rules you need.  I would suggest that traditionally the larger the 'scale' the smaller the figures!  28mm is best for representing skirmishes, or at best company level actions where 1 figure = 1 man.  With 10mm figures you're looking at 'brigade' scale or larger.  The rules requirements for both, while sharing common themes, are likely to be significantly different.  This, along with ground scale considerations, will also determine basing conventions of course.

Command and Control
I think this is vital to any rules above skirmishing.  Skirmishes are perfectly workable without C&C since depending on setting you're dealing with 'individuals'.  Any game where you're looking at formed units must have a C&C system to determine how units act, how commaders exert control, etc.

Magic
Aye, since you're developing a fantasy game, magic seems like a staple to be included.  I've always felt that magic systems are usually just 'enhanced shooting' rules though so making magic unique and interesting in the way it adds to play is certainly a challenge.

Sequence of play
Essential to model the friction of your setting and the scale mentioned above.  E.g. WWII rules will need a different sequence than Napoleonic to represent the different friction of those two conflicts.  Of course in fantasy, the sequence you choose is pretty open!  But what you choose will have a significant effect on play.  IGOUGO?  Single unit activation?  Initiative retention?
When is shooting phased against movement?  Etc., etc.

Force differentiation
Essential, especially for fantasy races.  There are long established (and pretty stereotyped, i.e. dull) racial qualities in fantasy.  Pendraken minis reflect these while offering some interesting alternates.  Samurai Apes anyone?  Your lists seem to follow these patterns closely ('Woodland Realms', etc.); why?!  

Combat mechanic
Again this will depend on scale as to the granularity you go for here.  If a base represents 1000 men is it really neccessary to have them mechanically worship the GW trinity mantra (roll to hit, roll to wound, roll to save).  That's perhaps appropriate for skirmishing where each model has an individual effect.  For a body of 1000 men?  Less so.

Also there are issues of originality.  Most mechanics have been developed before so coming up with innovations is hard.  You could go the DBM route and have a simple opposed die (modified and measured against the opponent's characteristics), or something more complex (and less abstract).  Anything by Avalon Hill produced in the 1970's will send you to far end of a coma on this one.
And how is what you're producing any different to what's already out there?  Taking Occam's Razor to the terms of reference. if they aren't different, why bother?  


You list the stats you're using.  They seem to mix skirmishing stats (strength & toughness) with larger scale abstractions (Resilience).

Your ratings top out at 10 too.  OK, so in a fantasy game a human is 'average 3', so everything lesser has just 2 'slots' to define them, while a God is maxed out at 10, giving only 7 improvement slots between a normal man and a god?
It might be worth taking a look at a few probability curves on these various ratings and their effect on how your dice resolution will pan out.
Is '6' really twice '3' in probability in task resolution terms?

What dice are you planning to use?


Good luck with the project though and as Nik said, give us a bit more to go on and we'll try and help.

[Maenoferren]

a bit more info would help 

[AdamCurry]

Yeah,
I'm still stuck on Magic, but thats what i was hoping you guys could give me your ideas on :p As for playing on smaller scales, I'm thinking of writing a bit in the rules on using smaller units and weakening heroes etc.
I have some more Ideas for armies, but for the moment I'm going to stick with the classic fantasy archtypes, as they were what the people in my gaming group said they wanted to see.
If you have any Ideas for interesting armies, then feel free to tell me, as the more ideas the merrier!
For the Combat Mechanics, I'm unsure of having you roll to hit / wound GW style, or some other Ideas my gaming group has floating around.
I don't fully understand what you mean as to Command and control, so could you please explain that to me?

Thanks for the feedback,

Adam

[GordonY]

Command and Control is what turns a Blegh game (think GW Snorehammer) into a proper wargame, where your cunning plan (a plan so cunning that you could pin a tail to it and call it a weasel!) falls apart because that unit of Goblins on the far side of the woods dont actually move to the position that you want them in. Warmaster/BKC/CWC/FWC/Black Powder and a host of other derivatives achieve this by modelling the C&C into the army's commanders. Command rolls are made based on the commanders quiality, typically 8, modifying this for distance -1 for every full 20cm between the commander and the grunts he's trying to command and -1 for intervening terrain (the woods mentioned above), so if those Goblins were 45cms away from your commander the roll you'd have to make would be 8-2(for distance)-1(for the woods)=5. 5 or less on 2d6 and the Goblins hussle their skinny green butts into the position you want them, 6 or more and they continue staring at the clouds and picking their bogies. Simple really, but it does turn what can be a very predictable affair into something with a lot of uncertainty in it.

The same sort of thing is found in the likes of DBA with the Generals PiPs, Peter Pig with Activation rolls, etc, etc etc. Most good systems model it in some way, bad systems, let you move and fight with everything in your army every turn, FoW/40k/Warhammer/the list is long and undistinguished. Try to model it into your rules in some way, and good luck.

[AdamCurry]

Thanks Gordon, I appreciate the Blackadder reference
Now I get it. Would all of you guys like to help me to develop those?
All Ideas are appreciated, and If you have a plan for units or races i should include, then post it here and ill have a read

Thanks again,
Adam

[Luddite]

OK, lets go all 'technical'..

'Command and control in a military organisation ('C2' in military parlance) is the exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commanding officer over assigned and attached forces in the accomplishment of the mission'.

So in wargames terms it means how your commanders, and the command structure of your army works in order to get GordonY's aforementioned goblins to actually do something you want them too.

GordonY gives a good rundown of how some systems approach it.

'Traditional' wargames had all sorts of complicated systems for writing orders, transmitting and interpreting them, etc...
It all got a bit out of hand to be honest and so some luminaries took a step back and decided 'ok, how can we achieve the same effect without all this mucking about'.  Hence you get the 'command test' or 'command resource' mechanic.

The command test invests in the commander a notional representation of a command structure and how effective it is.  GordonY gives a good review of that from games like DBM, or the more recent Warmaster, its variants and descendants (Blitzkrieg Commander, Black Powder, etc.)

There's a variant of that mechanic that vests this command 'initiative' in the units themselves, and provides the commander as a 'bonus' to the roll, e.g. the excellent Fire and Fury rules.  Hre, irrespective of what you plan for each unit to do each turn you have to test to see if it will do it!  The local commanders may have other ideas and decide that instead of edvancing they are quite happy where they are thank you very much!

These command functions introduce a significant element of randomness, so you as commander are often at the mercy of your dicerolls.  The effect is to limit what your army can do each turn, hopefully based on the quality of the command and control functions of your army.

The command resource, exemplified by the DBx 'PiP' dice mechanic provides a slightly different way to limit your army's actions.  Her the commander generates a random pool of 'command pips' each turn which he can spend on his force to get them to do stuff.  This in many ways moderates the randomness, as your overall 'impetus' for a turn may be limited but you still have the ability to decide where the action will take place and which part of your army will act (while the rest stand about watching! - or the opposite of course, with your 'impetuous' troops like warband or knights storming off to look for a fight unless held in check by a good commander.)  The relative quality of an army's command structure can therefore by varied by how many 'pips' must be expended to do various things.  In DBM for example, a 'Regular' command structure (dwarves) allows you to allocate PiP totals between your commanders, whereas an 'irregular command' (orcs) will have much less flexibility.  And then, irregular troops (orc rabble) will cost more pips to do some fancy maneuvering than regular, well drilled dwarves.

A similar 'command resource' approach is taken by rules like Polemos, that also introduce initiative and friction into this command resource by extending its use to bid for who goes first etc.  Its about the only good thing about the Polemos rules mind you...

So in essence, a C&C system has to model:

1.  Quality of command structure (how good the commanders are, how well (and quickly) they can communicate orders to their subordinates, how well they can handle their troops, etc.)

2.  Quality of troops (discipline, ability/willingness to carry out orders)

3.  'Fog of war' (all the random wierdness that interferes with the above - orders couriers getting killed, commanders not writing clear orders (Charge of the Light Brigade), wilful insubordination (Hardee before Chikamauga), etc.

You can go for a complex system or take the 'one dice roll to represent it' approach...OR, and this i'd reccommend...come up with an entirely new way of doing it!

The Too Fat Lardies stable of rules represents C&C by using a deck of cards with each card representing a unti activation.  the better commanded side will therefore have more/better cards to help them activate.  Not a mechanic i care for.


Of course as GordonY mentions, there's also another approach - ignore the whole thing and just let each side do exactly everything they want to each turn.  This is a very popular approach particularly by the major game producers and by rules written for beardy tournament play.  There's a fraternity that would contest that such rules aren't actually wargames, and i think (irrespective of personal preferences) from a certain perspective they have a good arguement.  

In war, 'go there and do that' is NEVER certain.  Can a set of rules that makes that certain therefore be called a wargame?

Whatever, thats a different debate, but i would suggest that unless you include C&C you're diminising your rules and making for a less fun game.  ESPECIALLY in a fantasy setting i'd say since each army (i presume you'll be taking the racist approach of armies based entirely on race?) will have its own specific command challenges.

Orcs are likely to be an unruly lot, very difficult to get them to do anything except charge straight at the nearest enemy.

Dwarves are likely to be highly disciplined and drilled by very difficult to get them to leave their defensive positions.

Etc.



Incidentally are you planning to write these rules for your own use or are you planning to sell them?  I think using a community like this for the former is fine...for the latter...hmmm..less so.    

[GordonY]

Since its now a free download (free? from GW, you're joking right?), go here, http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?catId=cat480010a&categoryId=6700008a&section=&aId=21500023a  have a piddle about with some empty bases/bits of card with what they are written on them and just see if you're not actually trying to re-invent the wheel.

then write a checklist of what youre trying to do, and see if its already been covered by these

Fanasy - Tick
10mm - Tick
Mass Battles - Tick
Magic - Tick
No Uber-Powerful-"I am a GAWD!!"-"and I will destroy entire units with a single fart" type heroes - Tick
Differing Racials - Tick

[GordonY]

Dammit those thieves at GW seem to have stolen the rulebook, its not there anymore, just the rules update and army lists.

[sultanbev]

If we can take a step back and you tell us what the rules are intended for:
a) in house gaming group
b) publishable set to make some pennies

then game size
a) skirmish between a few creatures a la GW
b) mass armies as per Hordes of Things

then unit size your bases represents. Is one base:
a) a squad size unit, c10 men/creatures
b) a battalion or regiment, c500 men
c) an entire Group, c5000 spearmen or 4000 archers, or 2000 cavalry

then game size. Do you intend a game with:
a) 10 bases a side
b) 30 bases a side
c) simply humongous amounts of lead 

then dice. Do you want probabilites to fit the dice, or do you use a variety of dice to fit the probabilities? IE is it all D6s, or do you like using D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, D20, D% as required?

Tell me the answers to these and I'll be able to input mechanisms.

Mark
(who uses his own rules, and Fire & Fury derivatives for everything pre-20th Century)

[Luddite]

 

Dammit those thieves at GW seem to have stolen the rulebook, its not there anymore, just the rules update and army lists.

Yeah, the buggers...

I went looking for Mordheim recently only to find they've withdrawn all their free 'specialist game' (i.e. playable) rules...

I wonder why?

[nikharwood]

There was a rumour that they were going to do them as limited edition 'splash' releases a la Space Hulk...

'course, some of us have nice downloads of all their living rulebooks filed away 

[Matt J]

some of us have the original boxed games 

space hulk
blood bowl
man o war
advanced heroquest
talisman

mothers bless em never throw anything out

(still can't find adeptus titanicus or space marine though)