Not so favourable reviews of FGV-GA

[Bloggard]

Interesting, I never have the need to modify Blood Eagle, In Her Majestys Name, Ronin, En Garde, Lion Rampant, Dragon Rampant, Pikemans Lament, Daisho, Freebooters Fate, Dragonlance ADnD 2nd Edition, d20, or Pathfnder, Scion, A Fistfull of Kung-Fu, Rogue Stars, Chain of Command... 



Joe has right, I do not like how he write down the Rules. I really admire his creativity, because the Ideas are great and I like them. 

I am not telling you, you do not have to play the game, or that the game is bad. Or you do not know how to properly play Skirmish Games - something you are trying to happily imply on us. (guys you have to use LOS, you are competetives, you are.... blah). I am reviewing how the rules are written so the people can decide. This is something I miss in WSS reviews by the way.

The biggest argument here - the game is a TOOLSET. So you are implying that FGV and GA is like DnD 5E, or ADnD 2nd Adition Players Option?You choose the rules... Well still those games are explicit how to handle the rule. Lets speak about FATE for example. Wonderfull RPG, making great toolset to players with narrative approach with all those modern tools like Priority to Player, Camera on Player, shared role of Narrator... Still the rules are explicit how every rule works and how to hand them. Can you tell the same about Frostgrave. With 106 pages of ruling how to handle the rules?

Well, this is more or less all I wanted to tell.

I certainly haven't suggested in any sense that you don't know how to play skirmish games - and if that what you RAW in my opining, it's time to leave it for sure. All a bit too negative for me (edited for use of 'flipping' .... oops  ).

[Bloggard]

Of all the games Dalcor mentions on his post I probably played a third of them and have modified them all in one way or another 

Different gamers, different tastes I guess.

Andres

that was my general impression of the nature of the hobby and rule-sets too.

[Bloggard]

No, that's not implied at all. Nothing about what I was describing indicates or necessitates any kind of overdesigned, "planned out" linear game. You're assuming something WAY more extreme than what I was talking about.

apologies 'bob - that's how the last paragraph in your first post comes across to me, re-reading it again ... just shows how easy it is to get this RAW thing confused.

** - btw, further apologies that I haven't put all my replies of this morning into one post - not up to speed on the multi-quite front.

[Jiron]

Hello,
I am Dalcor's Brother and one of the founding members or Wargaming Against Serious Play (WASP).
I think some explanation is due:

1) It's not true that we don't like the games Joe writes. On our blog you can see whole narrative serie of story-reports (in czech) playing Thaw of the Lich Lord (we still didn't finished that, unfortunatelly). In every occation we promote Frostgrave in our area and always emphasise that the game is great fun. If I'm not entirely mistaken, even Dalcor never said the game is not fun. In Dalcor's review of Frostgrave he have given the game score of 90%.

2) On this link: http://wargamingasp.blogspot.cz/2015/07/frostgrave-review.html, there is Dalcor's review of Frostgrave from 4th July 2015. No need to read it all again but check the disclaimer on top of it.

TL:DR
When Dalcor reviews the game, he reviews if the text of the rules is well understandable and clear to everyone.

We believe in games, which play the same way everywhere. When house rules and modifications are applied, I can hardly play with my friends in other gaming groups. They just applied other house rules. That's why we like to have rules clean and clear.

[Dalcor]

Yes that was my first review of Frostgrave. On that time we have it for two weeks and played about 10 games. Two Months later we go for other games as we did not want to use book, cell phone and houserules and faq printout to keep the game running the same between 10 people.

Let's say that a lot of things came with additional gaming and I got additional experience with other games etc. Now I would grade the rules writting somewhare at 50%. And i am not including the fact that I do not like mathemathical model (if any) behind the rules. Thats my preference, not the issue of the game as thats its intent.

[Major_Gilbear]

I don't have the GA rules myself, so I can't get nitty-gritt with this, but one thing I've noticed about the base FG rules, which seems to be corroborated for GA by your review, is that the balance for movement and ranged combat is actually VERY dependent on the terrain layout.

I've banged on about this before, but vanilla FG rules VERY much take a dungeon-like terrain logic for granted, but a lot of people play it with terrain placed loose as if it were Warhammer or something, resulting in numerous balance issues. In order for the rules for movement and ranged attacks to balance out, the map should read like a roofless dungeon, not a field with loose obstacles. Even if you've got a high density of terrain per square foot on the table, the game won't play optimally if that terrain is placed like seeds on a bagel instead of linked up to form a structure of "halls and rooms".

With all due respect, that you tried to play GA with a set of small islands with elevated connections kinda highlights that you guys haven't figured the above out yet. That kind of map is the exact evil mirror of what a good FG layout should be. You did spot the problem, but only after playing, when the #1 heuristic for how to build FG maps should have prevented it from even occurring to you to begin with.

To be totally fair, this IMO is the fault of the rules. They are written with a particular sort of terrain placement logic in mind, and they never explicitly communicate that. I think there's some throwaway line in there about FG being intended for terrain heavy setups, but that's it. It never actually explains how players should be arranging their terrain or why, and it REALLY needs to. I don't think there's anything wrong with the rules being designed around specific styles of map, but if they are, that NEEDS to be both communicated and emphasized, otherwise lots of people are going to blame the rules when their games play imbalanced because they don't know their map is bad.

Most games are like this, and it's often compounded by the fact that most terrain rules are added on to the core rules rather then being an integral part of the game.

What's weird to me is that:

1) Terrain (and therefore table set up) is effectively the "third player", but is often treated as an afterthought by many.

2) It's not hard to have 3-4 pages showing example tables with some author's commentary on particular features.

3) Terrain rules are often clunky, which leads to players avoiding anything detrimental or complicated - terrain therefore often just functions to make areas of the table no-go areas, rather than providing opportunities for a clever tactic, an interesting choice, or interaction.

For skirmish games, where every model counts, this importance is exaggerated.

[FionaWhite]

Most games are like this, and it's often compounded by the fact that most terrain rules are added on to the core rules rather then being an integral part of the game.

What's weird to me is that:

1) Terrain (and therefore table set up) is effectively the "third player", but is often treated as an afterthought by many.

2) It's not hard to have 3-4 pages showing example tables with some author's commentary on particular features.

3) Terrain rules are often clunky, which leads to players avoiding anything detrimental or complicated - terrain therefore often just functions to make areas of the table no-go areas, rather than providing opportunities for a clever tactic, an interesting choice, or interaction.

For skirmish games, where every model counts, this importance is exaggerated.

Regarding point 2 - I'm not sure if it was Joe or someone else who mentioned it in some other thread but my understanding is that Osprey is pretty strict about the page limits on the books which is likely to limit the amount of pictures that can be included when one needs to get everything else in.

[Dalcor]

Most games are like this, and it's often compounded by the fact that most terrain rules are added on to the core rules rather then being an integral part of the game.

What's weird to me is that:

1) Terrain (and therefore table set up) is effectively the "third player", but is often treated as an afterthought by many.

2) It's not hard to have 3-4 pages showing example tables with some author's commentary on particular features.

3) Terrain rules are often clunky, which leads to players avoiding anything detrimental or complicated - terrain therefore often just functions to make areas of the table no-go areas, rather than providing opportunities for a clever tactic, an interesting choice, or interaction.

For skirmish games, where every model counts, this importance is exaggerated.

Yes in GA, the fact that you need at least some LOS block is very weirdly described in descrtiption of bow...

[joe5mc]

In my own defense, using lots of terrain is suggested in both the 'Table' Section in the Introduction and the 'Setting Up the Table' section the the 'Playing the Game Chapter'. The second instance specifically mentions line of sight.

It is mentioned again under 'bows' just for good measure.

With that, I think it is time to lock this thread. Dalcor has made his point. We've all had a chance to respond.

We have reached the point, where, as Dalcor said, we should probably all just agree to disagree.