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Author Topic: Song of...rule sets general question  (Read 1556 times)

Offline Inkpaduta

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Song of...rule sets general question
« on: July 27, 2018, 05:29:28 PM »
I have a number of Ganesha's Song of...rules.
I have always played them one on one. I am thinking of
using them with my gaming group. There are six players so
three on a side. How do you activation with multiple players?
Just one activation per side? Each player gets to activated?

Thanks

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Song of...rule sets general question
« Reply #1 on: July 28, 2018, 09:57:42 AM »
I've run and played in lots of multiple-player Song of Blades/Mutants & Death Ray Guns games. Most of our games have been "every man for himself" rather than with two sides, but I think two sides makes it even simpler.

What we do is just go round the table. Each player gets a set of activations as normal. The trick, I think, is to keep the model count per player fairly low - three to five, say. One or two players might have more, but you'll get a much faster and more involved game by keeping the number of models low. I'd allow each player to have just one personality.

If the players are divided into two sides, you'd obviously want to alternate between side A and side B in the activations.

Games with several specific objectives work really well for this sort of thing. Most of our multiplayer games have been treasure hunts of some sort, with several treasure items on the table.

You can get round the problem of having players knocked out of the game early by allowing weaker replacement forces to take the field. So, if each player starts with 300 points, you could allow a replacement side to have 200 points, then 150. We found that that works well to keep everybody involved. Of course, if you want a short and snappy game, you can just rule that once you're dead or routed, that's that.

I wouldn't bother with the reaction rules (as in ASOBH) for a multiplayer game. You can make it work, but it makes it hard to remember who's actually the active player.

An alternative to having six players taking successive turns is to divide a long table into three zones and have three simultaneous games going on side by side. If a player's troops enter another zone, they are controlled by the friendly player responsible for that zone.


Offline Inkpaduta

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Re: Song of...rule sets general question
« Reply #2 on: July 28, 2018, 07:05:42 PM »
Excellent,
Thanks Hobgoblin that helps.
I am thinking that each player will have 4-5 figures.
Glad that has worked for you.


Offline fred

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Re: Song of...rule sets general question
« Reply #3 on: August 07, 2018, 06:01:25 PM »
We've played quite a lot of 3 player SOBH, I don't think we did anything special at all, it just worked.

With any game with lots of players you need to keep the down time as low as possible. As what is OK down time while waiting for 1 player before its your go, becomes far too long when its is five times longer as you have to wait for 5 players.


Offline boywundyrx

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Re: Song of...rule sets general question
« Reply #4 on: August 09, 2018, 02:53:35 PM »
I've run a lot of 4 player games at conventions, I use a draw system - every player has a token in the bag and I draw them out one at a time, with the only stipulation being whoever finished the last turn can't be drawn first in the next turn.

The players still have a full force of 5-12 figures each, but since I usually do Song of Drums and Shakos, it's really just a couple of leaders and a couple of groups in practice.  Play moves pretty quickly still, though I'm not sure about 6 players, at that point you might want to reduce the figures.

Chris

Offline mcfonz

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Re: Song of...rule sets general question
« Reply #5 on: August 10, 2018, 11:15:20 AM »
Didn't the advanced rules take on the mechanism from Of Gods and Mortals where a two dice fail meant initiative passes to the next player? Applying that would seem a good way of doing it.
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Offline boywundyrx

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Re: Song of...rule sets general question
« Reply #6 on: August 10, 2018, 04:25:56 PM »
Didn't the advanced rules take on the mechanism from Of Gods and Mortals where a two dice fail meant initiative passes to the next player? Applying that would seem a good way of doing it.

This has always been in the Song system, but the question then is how do you determine a next player in a 3+ player game.  Some use a fixed order, some use a draw.  Or if the battle has just two sides but multiple players per side, then you could just have the sides alternate but need a system for the individual players on each side.

Chris

Offline mcfonz

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Re: Song of...rule sets general question
« Reply #7 on: August 10, 2018, 06:13:56 PM »
Ah ok, just a confusion on my part there, been a while. I would suggest just using three cards and shuffling them. Or multiples of three as shuffling three is hard to do really.

Offline The Bibliophile

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Re: Song of...rule sets general question
« Reply #8 on: August 17, 2018, 12:01:56 PM »
I’ve run lots of multi-player games with this system. Turnovers simply go to the next person in order. For reactions, eveybody grabs a die and rolls off to see who gets to take the reaction. It’s fun, and keeps eveybody involved on everyone’s turn (thus addressing the downtime problem).
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