The joys of rules writing

[MatrixGamer]

This summer I'm working on a WWI miniatures rules set. My focus is the late war, 2nd Marne and on in particular. I'm having players be brigadiers and anticipate scenarios being division attacks. Each stand represents half of a company. It will include indirect artillery, MG pillboxes, gas, airplanes and tanks. So far the tests are going well.

This is the fun part of rules writing. It is the actual writing and everything after that that is no fun.

Another fun thing is that you get to have insights you hadn't had before. For me it has been just how big these battles were. Most of our battlefield cover just one trench line. So many battles overran the front line only to get torn up when they moved on. But the second line might be a couple of miles on. Far beyond our standard table tops. I'm not certain what I will do with that but it is an interesting problem.

Chris Engle

[fred]

Sounds good.

I think the hardest thing with WWI is to keep the game playable, while representing the problems of the higher level commanders to change the actions of units once committed to the fight.

If you can incorporate the problems of exploiting the initial break through, then that would be great. A big problem was the troops moving out of range (or observation) of their own guns, while getting hit by enemy guns and counter attacks. There are then the odd times that the attackers managed to hit the counter attack with their own guns, stopping and being able to hold the initial break through.

The troop density is also generally really high, with lots of troops on a small frontage - this is perhaps were miniatures work pretty well.

Please include stuff to work with smaller scale figures (I hope this is where you are going with half-company bases)

[MatrixGamer]

I'm pretty neutral about what scale of minis to use. I'm leaning towards using 1/72nd figs but any minis should work. Or if you are thinking more of tactical scale a stand can be seen as a big platoon and the rules reward sending men out on small scale flanking attacks. I need to do a lot more testing. For now I'm getting a full rules draft written. I'll post bits and pieces here as I go along. Love getting feedback and collaboration.

[orange dave]

Good luck with the rules writing!
I have been unsuccessfully writing a set for a couple of years now, and its been a real mixed experience.  I've had a few demo games at shows like Salute, which were really good fun and encouraging, but trying to keep the momentum going for turning a playable system into written up rules has been a real hard slog, and at times quite depressing. 

My set (Zero Hour) is about 90 % complete now, but progressing it to the next step is proving very hard.