Ideas wanted to play group games in isolation?

[Sparrow]

Brilliant!

[Menelduir]

Apparently, Tony Bath's books have been republished as a compilation:

http://www.soa.org.uk/joomla/publications/53-tony-bath-s-ancient-wargaming

I found it on kindle, which is always easier for my eyes...

The C&S systems was in one of the Source books, the purple one from way back. It was then republished in a red book cover Source book 2.

[Blackwolf]

Bloody hell! Use to play a lot of C&S as a teenager...40 years ago
Thanks for the heads up Sparrow 

[fred]

We used Google Hangouts to play a distributed remote game of Blitzkrieg Commander on Friday night - basically it worked fine!

We had 4 people involved, all in their own houses. One person created a group on GH and invited the rest of us. We were able to join easily, and share video and voice. I was the host, we had 2 players and 1 hanger-on.

I hosted the game, and setup a table as normal. Before hand the two players had picked forces based on photos of the available troops I had shared. This worked fine - with only the odd adjustment due to minor misidentification.

I setup an iPad to take a static long shot of the table, and used my phone to take close-up or directional shots. We found it easy for one person to setup more than 1 device, allowing dice cam etc. You need to be aware of audio feedback, and mute mikes and speakers on one device if you have two in play at one location.

About half-way through we changed the camera setup. We found that the hand-held phone cam wasn’t too much use as it moved too much - but could be used to give good model’s eye shots, it also hammers the battery. The POV shots are good, so will work on this.  The single shot from the iPad while giving a decent overview, was found to be too static once the game started.

The camera method we settle on was simpler - have a static camera in place during turns, then at the end of a turn, move the camera to another angle, and perhaps give some other different shots while moving. This gave the remote players enough info to understand what was happening.

We had one player who seemed to have a very laggy connection (or was just not paying attention) this was surprisingly frustrating - as everyone ends up pausing waiting, then asking again, just at the point the first person responds. He had a lot of trouble logging in, so there is perhaps some minimum spec needed. I used a fairly new iPad and and iPhone XR with no issues, the other two remote players both used PCs, and one used an older iPad as well. The slow connection was a Samsung phone - but not sure of the age.

Game wise it all seemed to work pretty well - I’d chosen BKC as its not too dependant on distances and angles of units. And the command rolls create friction anyway, so no-one is expecting precise results from the movement of their forces.

With having one neutral person measuring and adjudging LoS this was all very simple, as the players could only respond to what they were told. We did all dice rolling locally, with trust. We did discuss this before we started, but realised that if Player 1 ‘rolled’ 10x 6s to hit, then Player 2 would just ‘roll’ 10x 6s to save. We tried some dice cam options but these just added to the complexity without much value.

The bit that sometimes took a bit of extra communication was around movement orders, but this was fairly easily resolved by me indicating with my hand, where I thought they wanted units moved to - also BKC formations move as large blobs of troops so too much precision isn’t needed. 

Overall it gave is a game, let us chat and generally relax - which is what we as group want form a game at the end of the week. If your gaming is highly competitive then this probably isn’t for you, but for more relaxed gaming its fine.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Interesting.

Good to see ingenuity in play.

[Sparrow]

I am “speccing” out a possible game based in modern Afghanistan.

I will act as ref/“DM”(?)  and set out, my end, a table of an Afghan village. The player/s is/are back “at base” (at their home) and will be given a drone shot of the battlefield (mobile phone video) and ground shots from recon (ground photos with mobile) plus a detailed sit rep. Their mission is to raid the village, seize an IED factory plus, if possible, catch the local senior bomb maker. They will get drone footage plus ground helmet cam footage (again the mobile phone) each move for further radio instruction
 
There will be some teething troubles I’m sure  but let’s give it a go and try it out!

I do think modem Wargaming lends itself particularly well for remote gaming (as does Naval warfare 1900 onwards- indeed remote Wargaming may be the best way of conducting some ideas for WW1 dreadnoughts, WW2 carriers in the Pacific or the Battle of the Atlantic?). It just needs us to think outside the box and be inventive? How about a Battle of Britain game with players deploying fighter squadrons or deploying waves of Luftwaffe bombers as a map game?

 Kriegspiel anybody?

[Sterling Moose]

Played a similar game remotely last night using Contact Front rules.  Very successful and good fun.  We even had a comms breakdown when my tablet ran out of juice and I had to find and power up a laptop.

[Sparrow]

Played a similar game remotely last night using Contact Front rules.  Very successful and good fun.  We even had a comms breakdown when my tablet ran out of juice and I had to find and power up a laptop.

Laughed out loud! Brilliant!

[fred]

Sparrow - some good ideas there about fog of war. I had had a few thoughts about this myself, but hadn’t worked any of it though it a playable approach.

It does feel that umpire based gaming works very well with remote access - much easier to control the players knowledge when they aren’t in the room!

[has.been]

Fred
 It does feel that umpire based gaming works very well with remote access - much easier to control the players knowledge when they aren’t in the room!

Decades ago I played in a Viet-Nam game involving 3 rooms. To start
the VC were in one room, us Americans in another & the battlefield
was in the middle room. We had limited choppers, so had to get troops
to the LZ in 3 waves. We knew the first wave was in trouble (even before
we got the umpires update) when there was a very loud cheer from the
LZ room. I entered the battle with the 3rd wave (greatly delayed due to
losing several vital choppers) only to find our entire plan of attack
was based on an out of date map!!!!!  The umpire THEN drew my attention
to the (much) different dates on the map & briefing handouts. Damn all
Umpires!!!! (I did note that example of sneakiness for further use by me).

Of note were the two different 'Orders of the day'
USA = Zap the Jap, bang the Kong, Big John Wayne can do no wrong!
VC   = Bullets are cheap... Helicopters are expensive.

[jamesmanto]

Played a similar game remotely last night using Contact Front rules.  Very successful and good fun.  We even had a comms breakdown when my tablet ran out of juice and I had to find and power up a laptop.

I wrote up our first attempt at remote gaming here: http://rabbitsinmybasement.blogspot.com/2020/03/gaming-during-state-of-emergency.html?m=1

[Menelduir]

So we have decided to try a campaign game, using Mighty Empires, yes, Mighty Empires as a base. I will be acting as the GM with six players controlling a variety of nations.
It will be a PBEM game with updates through out club blog, it has not started yet but feel free to check in from time to time. Currently we are at the very starting stages.

Oh and I have been reading the Tony Bath book, a lot of great ideas, some that I will try to work into this campaign, and some that will be the basis of the next campaign.

My hope is to have the players send me their deployments instructions for any battles, then do a bit of solo tabletop gaming to resolve the conflict. I am hoping that all this will lead to some real tabletop gaming, either by video or in person once things settle down.

https://leagueofitinerantgamers.blogspot.com/.

[DeRuyter]

There are several PC based options out there even for miniatures. Vassel for boardgames of course.

I am surprised that no one has mentioned Tabletop Simulator. Everything is simulated on screen, miniatures, table top, terrain, movement tools etc. There is a chat function as well. I guess existing in both online PC gamer world and miniatures world helps 

You just buy the base game and many people  have made modules for it for miniatures games including Chain of Command, Bolt Action, Fighting Sail and others. You can get it on Steam for about 20 USD.

www.tabletopsimulator.com