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Other Stuff => General Wargames and Hobby Discussion => Topic started by: Easy E on November 29, 2022, 03:39:33 PM
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Everyone knows that the basics of wargame design are the 4Ms. Those stand for:
-Movement
-Missiles
-Melee
-Morale
I have spoken about the 4Ms and individual aspects of the 4Ms at various times. However, as a designer one of my big fascinations is how to effectively deal with Melee as one of the 4Ms. In many genres, Melee is the great "decider" and is the crucial mechanics for the period or genre. That weight of decision for the game should come from Melee.
Yet, despite the importance of it I have found Melee is often the anti-thesis of fun and instead simply bogs down into a game of Yahtzee where you roll and pray for a better dice roll. The core of good game play is decision making, and in many games once you get into Melee there are no decisions to make. As a player, you simply completing the mechanical process of the game to get a result, so you are not playing the game. The game is playing you.
If you are inclined, the rest of my thoughts are on the blog: http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2022/11/wargame-design-avoiding-melee-yahtzee.html
What are some clever ways you have seen games add choice to Melee? What games do you think are successful and making Melee really exciting and meaningful? What made it work so well?
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Agreed. Whenever I see a "dice-chucker" game, I pretty much ignore it, as they appear often on KS. The Elden (?) boardgame looks interesting, as it agrees (?) with your post about melee, replacing dice with cards. Cards allow you to customize your attacks by, for example, weapon type. I haven't looked much closer, since the pledges are beyond the faith I have in a card-based game system (which arguably can be implemented badly).
Up Front is another card-based system that, while still relying on random numbers, does a better (though arguably abstract) job of first-person POV combat. Most miniatures games are "perfect information" about the terrain (I guess they had satellite imagery since the Roman days), which, imo, is anything but when it comes to actual man-to-man skirmishes.
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Hmm, probably the "best" melee I've played in a game was in Malifaux. The melee mechanics are not really any different to any of the others in Malifaux, but the fact you use cards rather than dice, and can activate certain special outcomes if you meet card requirements, was actually what made it so different and interesting (especially because the special effects you could trigger were more frequently useful than the raw outcome of just inflicting wounds too).
I think that quite often, the things that would certainly help to make melee decisive and interesting in games, are the very things that most wargames only do in a token or perfunctory way. In particular: terrain, movement, relative model position/facing, and morale. I guess these are elements that are often regarded as complicated, hard to track, or which bog down speed of play...?
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Combat should be more like Poker than Craps.
The ideal would be give each player a 'hand' of combat cards.
How/when they play them is up to them.
Best 'In game' system (for me) is Sea-Strike by WRG. All the hard work
was done by the designer with the card pack. No long involved charts,
buckets of dice etc. Depending on your 'task' (lock on, effect etc.) you
only need to look for something on the next card turned over. e.g. You
choose to try & lock your missile onto target = next card needs a cross
in the center. If you get that you draw one card (Guns would have drawn
two) for effect. As you fired a missile you look in the 'missile' quadrant of
the card.
I would love to play a system like that for Ancient Battles. I just need
someone to do all the flipping work.
:D :D :D
Easy E
, are you interested????
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The quick and dirty solution is to make facing and orientation resulting from movement and timing matter. If you flank an enemy or attack from the shield-less side it should matter. LOS and cover should matter. Maneuver, Mass, Economy of Force and Surprise are the valid military principles we act on. If that is worked into the melee roll as a modifier than it no longer is just playing craps. If your opponent lacks imagination and only rushes pell mell into your steady line frontally there maybe needs to be a modifier that punishes such rashness.
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I forget the name of it, but my brother and I used to play a simple wargame back in the 80's that had classifications of troops and troop types, armour status, plus the number of bases involved, the actions of both sides and then there was a table of possible results. Obviously the better your troops, the more advantageous circumstances, etc.. the more likely you were to win and win big, but there was still an element of randomness. All was done on one roll of the dice (3d6 I think, but it may have been % dice). The time was spent looking up the various permutations, but it got quicker as you got more familiar with the game. I always enjoyed that system and it was all very slick and quick.
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The quick and dirty solution is to make facing and orientation resulting from movement and timing matter. If you flank an enemy or attack from the shield-less side it should matter. LOS and cover should matter. Maneuver, Mass, Economy of Force and Surprise are the valid military principles we act on. If that is worked into the melee roll as a modifier than it no longer is just playing craps. If your opponent lacks imagination and only rushes pell mell into your steady line frontally there maybe needs to be a modifier that punishes such rashness.
Very much this.
I think there is also a difference in approach between skirmish games and mass combat games on what works. I think in most of the mass combat games I play then flanks matter, support matters, type of weapon matters. I think in this type of game I’d be less interested in adding further mechanics around combat choices (eg feint, hold, all out attack)
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My current project, at time of typing*, is building forces and terrain for Strength and Honour in 2mm.
I like the way it handles melee, as more a way of affecting force morale then of eliminating individual units. Though units can certainly be eliminated in the right circumstances. Very much a top down rather than bottom up approach to the period.
*My focus may well be on something else by the time you read this .... even if that's moments after I post!!!
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Interesting that some of you mention cards and triggering special effects. I will admit, the use of cards in wargames is relatively foreign to me, but a lot of great games use the concept.
-Malifaux
-Longstreet
-Soldiers of God
The only one I have any personal experience was Kobolds and Cobblestones which is more of a skirmish game. The cards were used to build Poker hands to play against each other. I was not 100% sold on the game design TBH.
That might be something I will need to review and revisit again. I typically default to dice as a reduction to barriers of entry. However, most folks also have a 52 card standard poker deck of cards around too.
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The Song of Blades family provides a lot of melee-related decision-making through the combination of its risk/reward activation system and its deceptively simple combat system (DBA-style opposed rolls).
As outnumbering is often the key to a successful combat, you need to weigh up the risks of double failure when activating (ending your turn) against the rewards of multiple actions (from moving and attacking to two-action 'power blows' to three-action move/move/attack from cover for the 'ambush bonus').
But there's much more to it than that. If you have plenty of actions, do you risk attacking with individuals as they close with an enemy (thus risking upsetting your outnumbering strategy for the potential reward of disadvantaging your foe), or do you simply hold off until you've got sufficient weight of numbers to launch an attack that's heavily weighted in your favour?
If you have a single model in combat with a stronger enemy, do you leave him there to tie up the other guy for a turn or risk a 'free hack' by disengaging? Or send someone in to help him?
If you have missile troops with the Evil trait, do you shoot into combat at risk to your own fighters?
If two combats are going on close by, do you up the ante by engaging other characters with both (thus upping the ante by making things more deadly all round)?
For such a simple ruleset, it does have a lot going for it in this regard - largely because of the way the activation system amps up the combat-related options (ambush; move and attack; attack with a power blow; attack; engage but don't attack; stay engaged; disengage).
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I can see the appeal of granularity for skirmish games. I agree with Hobgoblin’s assessment of the decisions in the ‘Song of’ game engine. I hesitate about taking it much further though - when I tried Rogue Stars with my kid, rules that are a more detailed extension of the ‘Song of’ rules, it fell flat. Kiddo described it as ‘Homework: the Wargame’. The added details bogged down the game too much for us to enjoy.
For mass combat games, I don’t mind the ‘Yahtzee’ approach (within reason), because it seems like the important decision points happen before engaging (maneuvering for advantage, throwing pila, etc) and commanders had very little they could control once hand to hand started. I just reread the Peloponnesian Wars and the commanders didn’t seem to command much by mid-battle. For me, it’s like playing a corps-level Napoleonic game- ordering battalions to form square doesn’t fit the command level being depicted…
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This. By the time it has got to bayonets and fisticuffs, there's probably not a lot of meaningful command and control going on even at section level, actually by the book at that point you are nominally fighting in pairs. You probably want to hope that your chaps remember the quick orders about fighting through the objective and the reorg. Comes down to sheer guts and determination. Chucking buckets of dice is probably as good a solution as any.
I think the bit that probably does get the short shrift is the reorg phase following an assault. Re-orienting your troops, resupplying them or reallocating ammunition etc doesn't just happen magically, it takes time and a short pause is almost invariably warranted after the objective is secured, even if the intention is not to occupy it. Whilst that is probably more relevant to modern games, I suspect that even in the day of spear and shield there was a requirement to re-orient troops and do some basic post assault admin. In larger scale games I would assume this to be covered by troops post melee being 'disordered' and requiring some sort of role or command presence to reanimate them. In small scale games, it should at least merit a pause.
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Agree with the last few comments.
I am generally happy with most melee systems and don’t at all see the randomness as a crap shoot ….. but rather a better simulation of being in the commander’s chair.
There are two aspects to melee from the ‘commanders’ perspective.
The first is situational - what is behind the decision that now is the right moment to attack? Is the defender disordered, weaker, lower morale, caught in the flank, in defences, supported / unsupported or is it just simply an imperative that the attack needs to be made, even against bad odds! This is a command decision and the outcome with be nudged in a certain direction by attack / defence modifiers.
Secondly if you want to assume the role of army commander, you must release direct command control from the lower elements of your army, another commander is looking after that - the local one and you are not that person.
The most you can hope for is to say I want that brigade to attack that ridge …. That is your role, you leave the rest to your trusted commanders, who are essentially the dice and the modifiers combined.
I have 2 napoleonic boardgame systems that notably do this to good effect. The commander has a plan and puts the wheels in motion. Some bits will work and others will not, whatever falls out of it, the commander’s role is to re-asses and act with new orders.
From the commanders seat, you will have reports flooding in and perhaps see that over on the right you are not capturing the village - or even running away from it etc. Time to change the plan to accommodate that i.e. reinforce the right, or pull back etc ….. not roll your sleeves up and go over there to get stuck in!
How we play our games and enjoy them is a personal thing, but it is interesting how individual character traits either wants to unrealistically micro manage the entire army or unrealistically just leave it to chaotic self determination, somewhere between those two extremes is the better play and simulation …… perhaps a different place for each of us!
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I totally agree on the buckets of dice thing, even though that does not prevent me from playing games like Dropzone Commander, because that game is still more about movement and tactics.
But I'm also of the opinion that the more dice are rolled in one go, the more chance is reduced and the stats of the units involved become the decisive factor. I often find games where I have to roll one die to get the result of a combat too swingy; one bad diceroll can completely F up your carefully planned game. In fact; lots of times in these games it comes down to that one particular diceroll that will decided the outcome of the entire game, no matter how well planned out your tactics, army composition etc. When playing that kind of game, I'd much prefer the 'softening' of the dice results by letting statistics do their work and dampen the results of the most swingy rolls.
However; the best dice-based combat mechanic I've ever played is the one in the game Bushido. It's a skirmish game, with individual miniatures (most of them named), with stat cards and their abilities on them. But when there is any type of combat involved (ranged, CC or magical), there are opposed rolls.
Each character has a certain dice pool and the players secretly decide how they split their pool up into defensive and offensive dice. these are then revealed simultaneously, and then the dice rolling takes place.
This means that there is a level of strategy and bluff involved in each confrontation; I could attack you, but only use defensive dice, meaning I won't do damage (generally), but I will force you to use your activation for the combat, which will then have implications for your further turns, etc.
It plays beautifully and adds extra tension to each opposed roll. Also, I've always wondered if this mechanic could not also be used in larger, unit-based games.
Then again; I've also played several card based games, and I do like how they play as well. Holding a hand of cards to be played whenever they're most useful also adds an extra layer. I'm thinking of Puppet's War (a Malifaux spin-off) and the recent Masters of the Universe game in particular here...
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swingy dice are not always a bad thing. My most memorable gaming experiences almost always are those where the obviously about-to-be-lost battle was actually won when a low-odds, hail-mary counter-attack rolls boxcars on the very last roll of the game.
very useful to rationalize my many defeats as well…
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A good game should contain enough certainty that my wins are entirely attributable to my own skill and enough chaos that my losses are entirely attributable to bad luck.
Unless it's multiplayer, where our losses are entirely the fault of my team mates.
lol lol lol lol lol
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Saga does a good job of making melee interesting. The combination of spending fatigue and Saga abilities (which maybe you want to use, or maybe save for another melee later in the turn) makes for interesting decisions.
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Interesting that some of you mention cards and triggering special effects. I will admit, the use of cards in wargames is relatively foreign to me, but a lot of great games use the concept.
-Malifaux
-Longstreet
-Soldiers of God
The only one I have any personal experience was Kobolds and Cobblestones which is more of a skirmish game. The cards were used to build Poker hands to play against each other. I was not 100% sold on the game design TBH.
That might be something I will need to review and revisit again. I typically default to dice as a reduction to barriers of entry. However, most folks also have a 52 card standard poker deck of cards around too.
To be clear, it's not that cards are specifically or inherently better than dice or anything. It's more that cards offer a few interesting considerations that you can take advantage of quite easily. Consider a standard Poker deck:
- Four fixed sets of number outcomes ranging from 1-13 inclusive, plus Jokers if you wish to add them.
- Four fixed suits.
- Two fixed colours.
- Possibility of Trump suit, with options for changing this via various means.
- Possibility of drawing more than one card, and the interpreting the results in various ways.
- Possibility of linking action results to specific numbers, colours, suits, card combos, etc.
- Possibility of having a hand of cards (with possibly varying sizes) instead of or as well as a "blind draw".
- Possibility of keeping results secret until a reveal, or having results open for players to each react.
Now, plenty of this could be done with dice; that is, if you move away from the "handful of plain D6" model that most wargames seem to follow. We live in an age where you can buy all sorts of polyhedral dice online, in lots of colours, relatively cheaply. Therefore, to me, the majority insistence of sticking with what are essentially regarded as "board game dice" these days is honestly a bit baffling.
Beyond that, there are now plenty of games that use customised dice which add symbols to faces and have different results distributions on different dice colours. I don't inherently mind this too much, especially for something like a board game which often has defined components in each set, but for a wargame which is often much more open-ended to each player, any dice used should be fairly readily-available and non-proprietary in my opinion.
I also find many people's reactions to different solutions interesting to observe:
- Buckets of dice (averaging out though sheer number) vs a couple dice (potentially quite "swingy").
- Modifiers for everything vs minimal amount of "maths".
- Simplified gameplay vs extreme micro-management and specific model placement.
- Decisive outcome of melee that's purposefully sought vs what happens at the end of the game when it's nearly over and models are close to each other.
Personally, I like having a mixture of random outcomes that I can modify or influence in some way, and that depending on specific and/or relative outcomes, different combat results can apply. I don't feel this is something that needs to be bound to combat size either - whether it's Warhammer Fantasy Battles with a hundred models involved in a combat, or Mordheim fisticuffs with just two models, the process of resolving should be similar as it's still one combat in each situation. Sure, modifiers and such factors for each would differ due to game scale, but the process of the thing doesn't have to be reinvented.
If you're interested in how Malifaux does things by the way, the rules for it are completely free:
https://www.wyrd-games.net/m3e-languages (https://www.wyrd-games.net/m3e-languages)
A few more things on more general likes/dislikes in games, but which seem to often come up particularly in relation to melee;
- I dislike having to roll butt-tons of dice again and again and again to resolve simple things that happen often. Re-rolls within these systems are even worse. I think that any time you're into a situation in a game where you're looking at rolling more than about eight dice, or are needing more than two separate rolls of dice to determine an outcome, needs to be carefully looked at and re-thought if at all possible.
- I'm also not a big fan of charts, unless it's a single chart that can be reasonably memorised after a few games. Sure, it's easy to put a few charts on a reference page to look at when you need to, but that moment of disconnection from the game whilst you stop to look up the result is precisely what kills immersion and drama in the game for me.
- Results where nothing happens, or where the fights take many turns to resolve. More common than you might think, and it often turns many an exciting game into a grind where the outcome of that fight in question ends up determining the rest of the game.
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There are two things at play in my mind: the age old simulation vs game which then leads on to: if it is simulating anything what scale is the game at?
If the game is 1:1 skirmish then I can see the sense in putting decision making into the melee since 1 person/creature is going to be making decisions on what they are going to do. Once you get to a large group up to a Battalion the whole acts based upon thousands of individual decisions, at that level things like training, experience, muscle memory are baked in and there is much less control for one person to influence the outcome once the commander orders charge.
So I would be put off by a mass battle game with fancy card play and decisions to make in melee - it feels too gamey to me. It needs to be resolved quickly with minimal mental effort for the effects obtained. So I also don't want a long winded WHFB combat resolution with the result of 2 goblins being killed from twenty dice rolls. This is why I like the Rampant engine - one set of dice rolled, pick out hits and simple maths. The melee is resolved quickly and you can get on with luring his knights into a bog with your peasants.
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Excellent discussion all and very interesting to see all of our various preferences when it comes to this topic. It cements my personal belief that as an amateur game designer and playing games for two decades, I still have no idea what other people want to play!
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I’ve started to reply to this thread about four times, but always end up typing way too much…so apologies as this will probably occur yet again.
I’ve designed many games which include melee combat, but in each game the melee combat is at a different level.
In Shoot N’ Skedaddle, melee combat is a secondary consideration as the bulk of the game is maneuver, and shooting each other with sixguns. Melee combat is handled by players rolling Strength tests simultaneously then rolling to wound, etc. Pretty bog standard.
In Caverns, Crypts, & Catacombs the entire game is driven by action dice…spending dice to move or spending dice to perform basic attacks, or…spending dice to combine them to perform advanced attacks your character has learned by unlocking treasure/reward cards. So slightly more in depth, but secondary to the cooperative teamwork you’ll need to beat creatures/baddies.
In Merciless, melee combat is instrumental as it’s a fantasy skirmish game. There is more depth to the melee combat simply because it’s a core component. Using a three tiered system (fail, partial success, success) means you can have a number of outcomes, with attacks generating combat cards – the combat cards having various attack results, including: stunning, wounding, destroying your opponents weapon/shield/armour, etc. Weapons and skills can have a big influence, with models being able to set a defensive status (whereby the attack simultaneously on partial successes), or counterattack or flee if their opponent rolls a failure, etc. Counterattacks can then be…counterattacked so that occasionally you have a 5-6-7 dice roll off going back and forth until someone decides to run, or scores a success. Your choice of weapon dictates a lot of additional considerations …so all combined it makes for a hectic, quick, violent, fun melee combat. Stunning enemies grants you a bonus on your follow up (or lets you depart the fight without penalty), while outnumbering your opponent grants you bonuses as well, etc. Lots of depth.
In Scrapheap (Merciless’ sci-fi-post-apocalyptic-gang sibling), the system is the same, but models have vastly different weapons including power gauntlets, cybernetic limbs, laser whips, etc. But the depth is still there.
In Famine, Sword, & Fire melee combat is a big deal because the game is ImagiNations style ancient rank-n-flank. Units fight simultaneously, with units attempting to stack the most dice in their favour. If two equal units are fighting eachother, it will be a slap-fight…and it’s means you’re doing it wrong. You want to flank, outnumber, double, attack broken units, charge, etc. All these options that add dice to your pool so that you’re rolling more than your opponent, etc.
For FSF I took the token concept from games like Battlegroup and apply it to the units. So if you score one or more hits on an enemy unit, you draw tokens – some are concealed, some are revealed. It’s not just “kill their models” (as you remove whole bases, with units consisting of 1-10 bases), but you can break their formations, kill their commanders, waver them, inspire them, force them to make a loyalty or command test, etc. So there’s a bit of depth and chance there. Units can generate ad hoc “heroes” during the fight which can assist the units, etc.
FSF also allows for players to create their units using a big list of traits – these traits obviously change the combat interaction. Example: Unit A performs an action to enter Shield Wall…gaining a bonus to armour and a bonus against missile attacks. Unit B charges Unit A and successfully puts a hit on Unit A. They draw the “Break Formation” token, so Unit A becomes open order and loses its Shield Wall bonuses, etc. FSF also have secret unit commanders drawn from decks of cards – meaning your opponent won’t know the qualities or traits that your unit commander adds to your units.
In short, it all varies tremendously depending on the style of game I’m trying to write. I always start from the goal of “What do players enjoy?” I’m not writing simulation games for button-counters and history geeks…I’m writing Hollywood-esque games for people to enjoy pushing minis around. I find players generally enjoy a lot of things:
-Interactivity (reactions or simultaneous combat)
-Dice pools (to a very limited extent, no 60-dice Warhammer nonsense here)
-A larger range of outcomes vs. “wound” or “kill”.
-Drawing cards
-Drawing tokens
-Almost always having a chance (everyone likes to see a meagre underdog slay a huge champion by sheer chance on occasion)
I just try to design around things my friends and I enjoy (and I try to take note when we’re playing other games and systems, what “felt good” to me when I was playing – what steps or mechanics did I look forward to?).
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I don't have a lot to add here, but I would chime in and say that systems which use opposed rolls (often with some player selection) has been a good solution which incorporates both luck and decision-making, and that use of varying polyhedrals for different skill/power levels helps to cut down on dicesplosions.
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Excellent discussion all and very interesting to see all of our various preferences when it comes to this topic. It cements my personal belief that as an amateur game designer and playing games for two decades, I still have no idea what other people want to play!
The truth is that the players don't know what they want to play either, until they play it.
Take my aformentioned current passion for Strength and Honour. I started off being,"2mm figures in blobby formations and one unit is a whole legion AND it's grid based, Hah, not for me!" but the more I saw, the more I read and eventually getting a chance to play it and I was hooked.
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I think that's always a decision every designer will struggle with - do you make a game you enjoy and want to play with your friends, or do you research what "sells"? I just make games I enjoy and want to play - then if other people happen to enjoy it, bonus.
However, I don't make a living selling games, lol.
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A very interesting topic you have started here Mr E. I certainly see your point about melee- I have experienced that feeling a couple of times during games that the outcome was going to be a forgone conclusion- but feel I am only an "intermediate" wargamer and don't have enough experience of different systems to comment much.
It's been great to read all these answers and possible solutions.
Having said all that, the Ancients rules I have played most of is DBA and plenty of times inferior troops have upset the applecart and defeated superior troops. Enough times to always make DBA interesting for me.
About cards, I am quite familiar with them through boardgames and do like some of the mechanics. You should certainly look at them again.
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I think that's always a decision every designer will struggle with - do you make a game you enjoy and want to play with your friends, or do you research what "sells"? I just make games I enjoy and want to play - then if other people happen to enjoy it, bonus.
However, I don't make a living selling games, lol.
Save me a seat next to you on the bus! I am the exact same. lol
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I don't have a lot to add here, but I would chime in and say that systems which use opposed rolls (often with some player selection) has been a good solution which incorporates both luck and decision-making, and that use of varying polyhedrals for different skill/power levels helps to cut down on dicesplosions.
Burrows and Badgers does this brilliantly.
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This is very interesting thread. Thanks, Easy E.
I'm always trying to avoid that 'grind-n-lag'. And overly complicated mechanics that bump me out of the action.
As an amateur game-designer, I just want systems that get my toy soldiers on the table and go on adventures with my friends.
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To be clear, it's not that cards are specifically or inherently better than dice or anything. It's more that cards offer a few interesting considerations that you can take advantage of quite easily. Consider a standard Poker deck:
- Four fixed sets of number outcomes ranging from 1-13 inclusive, plus Jokers if you wish to add them.
- Four fixed suits.
- Two fixed colours.
- Possibility of Trump suit, with options for changing this via various means.
- Possibility of drawing more than one card, and the interpreting the results in various ways.
- Possibility of linking action results to specific numbers, colours, suits, card combos, etc.
- Possibility of having a hand of cards (with possibly varying sizes) instead of or as well as a "blind draw".
- Possibility of keeping results secret until a reveal, or having results open for players to each react.
I think, more importantly, that cards can remove the abstraction inherent with numbers, because you can write more on a card than you can a six-sided die. I really like the *idea* of Ender (?) KS that each weapon has its own cards, so you build a deck that reflects your equipment, not just have the usual combat stat. Obviously, this sort of thematic use of cards works better for miniature skirmish games, although I wouldn't be surprised if you could use a mass combat game with specific cards, particularly if you redesign the mass combat to be as communication-inefficient and imperfect information that reflects the confusion that actual war entails. That said, cards (eg. "command cards") often have a player issue of "why can't I at least try to do XYZ", that dice-based games do not (eg. player tries to make a lucky roll of the dice).
And, then, there're the Lost Worlds "one on one" combat books! Anyone remember them? (:
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I could do a whole damn thesis as to why I like using cards in games... :D
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My experience with gear cards in TT wargames is quite limited - but I've always found them to be an unnecessary component - an illustrated reminder for a dice modifier. One more thing you have to buy to play the game but is little more than pretty table clutter.
Now a tactics/maneuver card for melee sounds interesting.
But do they bog down combat resolution? Instead of rolling dice are you playing cards one after the other, trying to trump your opponent? Are you substituting randomness of dice for randomness of the draw?
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Depends entirely on your system, though there is a difference between "randomness of dice" and "randomness of draw".
For example; in Shoot N' Skedaddle for normal games, players draw random characters (from a deck), and they are then equipped with random weapons (from a deck). So in this instance the weapon card includes the stats and special rules for the weapon, meaning a new player doesn't have to have a rulebook or know the stats of a weapon - it's right there on the card. I can dictate the rarity of weapons by reducing the number of weapons of a certain type in the deck, thus removing the possibility of everyone showing up with the bestest/strongest/fasterst weapon, etc. Now SnS isn't terribly melee based, but those are some benefits. If I want a weapon removed from the game I simply yank the cards as opposed to editing a table, or random dice roll, etc. Likewise if players don't own a miniature or model with that weapon and they want to play strictly WYSIWYG, you can remove weapons or characters from your decks to suit your model collection (or the theme of your particular game).
If, by contrast I had a dice table to generate a character or weapons...I could accidentally end up with a bunch of the same characters with a bunch of the same "best" weapons by some fluke rolls. So with a deck of cards you're more in control of the actual "average" of what someone draws or generates. If there is one single Buffalo Gun in the weapon deck...I won't randomly have a game where six characters draw the Buffalo Gun, etc.
For combat resolution - I used cards in other games. Scrapheap, for example uses combat cards to resolve several things, the deck being multi-purpose. Each card includes:
1) Number of activations a player gets on their turn.
2) The value of loot or treasure (which can in turn be money, relics/treasure, or traps)
3) Up to three damage results along the bottom of the card (which include wounds, stuns, and destruction of protective items)
4) The card can also feature the protective items, which indicate the attack is blocked if the model has the indicated equipment.
5) Some cards feature an Event icon which generates events (and can be used as timers for game scenarios), etc.
So the deck does a lot of the game's heavy lifting. Weapons and special skills will affect the cards you draw, and in some instances you may be able to draw two cards and pick one, etc. Some weapons such as clubs, etc. can trade a wound icon for a stun icon (stunning being pretty pivotal in both the fantasy and sci-fi versions of the game). The club, while not being particularly deadly, is immune to being broken by an enemy attack, etc. Swords allow you to parry, etc. etc. etc. So combining weapon rules with the card system makes for a lot of really fun/interesting engagement.
The card shown, for example has the damage result of: stun and destroy helmet. If the target Model is not wearing a helmet, well he's just stunned. But these cards naturally develop a "story" when you resolve them. Instead of "I wound you, make an armour save" it becomes "Oh man, I hit you and smashed your helmet in and you're almost unconscious!", etc.
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Sounds interesting - altho I thought the original question concerned streamlining combat resolution so that massive quantities of dice and/or endless modifiers weren't required.
If I understand your examples correctly, you're talking RPG- levels of detail where you're tracking not just general weapons and armor classes, but specific distinctions between weapons, hit locations, and degrees and various consequences of damage. That seems like a lot of book keeping - and that you've traded lots of dice for lots of cards. Cards or dice, that degree of grit seems fine for individuals in melee: gladiators or single Big Stompy Robots. But not large-scale battles.
I figured small-scale combat allowed for greater degrees of detail. But once you hit multi-squad games, vehicles, combined arms, a certain level of abstraction was required to keep the game flowing. Then the game mechanics either need more dice (the common solution) or need to be clever and elegant. Something like die-shifts in Stargrunt 2. (I've always thought that game was genius.)
In your last example, what's the actual difference in game between "I wound you, make an armour save" and "Oh man, I hit you and smashed your helmet in and you're almost unconscious!" ? If a hit lands without serious injury, why not simply have a Stun option for individuals the same way some games allow squads to be Pinned? Seems similar enough. Regardless of your combat resolution mechanic, the battle's story still unfolds and all you need is a token to denote status.
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I was not addressing mass ranked combat, merely pointing out that cards do a lot of stuff that dice do not. I would elaborate on the last point, but honestly I don't feel like posting the entire rulebook here to explain further. I started typing a lengthy response explaining it, but...we can skip that.
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I was not addressing mass ranked combat, merely pointing out that cards do a lot of stuff that dice do not. I would elaborate on the last point, but honestly I don't feel like posting the entire rulebook here to explain further. I started typing a lengthy response explaining it, but...we can skip that.
Yeah... I also did not address this when I mentioned cards in my post either, for similar reasons. I just wanted to write a contributing post, and not a fifteen-page discourse - and my post still ended up being quite long anyway!
I would say that cards are just a mechanism that has certain features, much like using dice. I happen to like a lot of the features that cards offer, as it "solves" a lot of issues that I typically find grating in games. And whilst cards can absolutely be used for mass-combat or rank-and-flank games of any era, and not just detailed skirmish/individual model games, it doesn't mean that they are always the best/automatic choice either. Even how cards are used has as much impact as whether you use cards to generate the results.
The biggest downsides to having cards in a game are:
# Trying to remember what each card represents if using a standard deck
# Whether using a standard deck affects how players "feel" about the game (might seem anachronous if used in an Ancients game for example...)
# Custom decks may impose an entry barrier to the game
# Custom decks often benefit from having an "almanac" of them somewhere, both as a player reference, and for posterity if the rules should ever go OOP.
I realise that most games used dice (and simple D6s at that), but I often feel that's why so many games fall into the same design spaces/traps every time, and why many new games frequently struggle to stand out from the crowd. You don't need a gimmick, but you do need to do more than just re-tread what others have done, which is hard if you're basically just using all the same tools and mechanisms as everyone else.
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I must admit that I do like cards in games; as stated, they can add something that dice cannot. But what grinds my gears is the often totally illegibility of symbols on cards, to the point of frustration!
It may be the specific games with proprietary cards I've played so far, but (to me, at least) the used symbols are often confusing and hard to make out. I'm specifically referring to Puppet's War, which is a Malifaux spin-off (I don't know if Malifaux cards have the same issues) and the recent Masters of the Universe game.
Most of this is due to graphics design I reckon, but it still irks me.
Also, I have a range of decks of playing cards, to match different genres of games, and they don't distract from the atmosphere as much as cheap, standard card decks would, so there's a solution...
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I realise that most games used dice (and simple D6s at that), but I often feel that's why so many games fall into the same design spaces/traps every time, and why many new games frequently struggle to stand out from the crowd. You don't need a gimmick, but you do need to do more than just re-tread what others have done, which is hard if you're basically just using all the same tools and mechanisms as everyone else.
Well, that is prompting me towards a different discussion about giving your game a Hook, and mechanics are definitely a type of hook you can use.
To date, I am still a big fan of using opposed dice pools with critical mechanics for smaller scale Model vs Model type games. To me, this does the job.
However, I was a skeptic about Meta-currency in Role-playing games until I designed using them. Now I am more of a fan, depending on their intent in the game. Perhaps I need to do more design work using cards to become comfortable with them?
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Perhaps I need to do more design work using cards to become comfortable with them?
Why not? ;)
Do check out Malifaux as a professional interest exercise though - it's just a poker deck plus two Jokers per player, and it yet still manages to produce quite a complex range of results through several clever mechanisms. It shows that even if you keep the bar to entry low by avoiding proprietary cards, ordinary cards can still do a lot.