What are the Top Things that Attract You to a Rules System?

[flatpack]

1. FUN
2. FUN
3. FUN

If it ain’t fun, why play it ?

You only live once, so why waste your time playing boring rules ?

If you meet with mates, roll some dice, move some nice figures, and the banter flows, then that’s a winning set of rules.

[carlos marighela]

Good syntax, grammar and punctuation or at least a decent stab at them.

A logical flow to the concepts espoused and written in a lucid and concise manner.

Illustrative examples are always nice as are neat diagrams, where required.

I don't want my rules to read like Habermas and nor do I want them to read like Phil Barker.

[DivisMal]

I don't want my rules to read like Habermas and nor do I want them to read like Phil Barker.

 
Two examples with a deserved ill reputation!

[Ruarigh]

Interesting to see what others are looking for. For me, I want:

• To be involved at all times. I want a reason to be at the table during the whole game. The most boring games I have played were ones where one side moved all their figures and attacked with them, and then the other side does the same. Yawn! So, I want opposed die rolls, alternating activations, and similar mechanisms that give me something to do while my opponent is destroying me.
• A sense of control over my fate, or at least the illusion of that control. This goes back to opposed die rolls or to hit and saving rolls. I want to feel that I had a chance to stop my opponent, so systems that subsume all combat into a single die roll made by my opponent don't do it for me.
• Command friction. This is a bit of a contradiction with point 2, but I love systems that limit what you can do and when you can do it, and find those where you are an omnipotent general whose orders are instantly obeyed boring. I like dicing to see if I can persuade my troops to do what I want them to do. Something like the THW reaction system works very well for me, as units react to what happens without direct input from me. Also the system in Impetus where both players nominate a command and roll to see who will get to activate theirs is one I enjoy. Related to this is the desire to have one specific role in the game. If I am playing a massed battle, I want to feel like I am the general, and not also every single battalion commander on the field of battle, so the command system should take care of the battalion commanders' actions and I can focus on the generalling.
• The game should fire my imagination. A game that occurs only on the tabletop is a bit sterile. I want to feel the excitement of the story unfolding in my head too.

[fred]

Interesting to see what others are looking for. For me, I want:

• To be involved at all times. I want a reason to be at the table during the whole game. The most boring games I have played were ones where one side moved all their figures and attacked with them, and then the other side does the same. Yawn! So, I want opposed die rolls, alternating activations, and similar mechanisms that give me something to do while my opponent is destroying me.
• A sense of control over my fate, or at least the illusion of that control. This goes back to opposed die rolls or to hit and saving rolls. I want to feel that I had a chance to stop my opponent, so systems that subsume all combat into a single die roll made by my opponent don't do it for me.
• Command friction. This is a bit of a contradiction with point 2, but I love systems that limit what you can do and when you can do it, and find those where you are an omnipotent general whose orders are instantly obeyed boring. I like dicing to see if I can persuade my troops to do what I want them to do. Something like the THW reaction system works very well for me, as units react to what happens without direct input from me. Also the system in Impetus where both players nominate a command and roll to see who will get to activate theirs is one I enjoy. Related to this is the desire to have one specific role in the game. If I am playing a massed battle, I want to feel like I am the general, and not also every single battalion commander on the field of battle, so the command system should take care of the battalion commanders' actions and I can focus on the generalling.
• The game should fire my imagination. A game that occurs only on the tabletop is a bit sterile. I want to feel the excitement of the story unfolding in my head too.

Great list - the one I would add is that the rules have to give the feel of the period. This is very hard to quantify, but a WWII game needs to feel like its set in WWII and what happens feels like it focuses on what you read about WWII and how weapons and troops worked in WWII. And this applies for each and every period (including fantasy and Sci fi).

[jon_1066]

Are the rules internally consistent with what they are trying to portray?  So does the ground scale, unit footprint and ranges make sense?

Can I use them to fight battles I'm interested in?  If I want to recreate the battles of the 1809 Danube campaign then I'm going to need large scale rules so I'm not interested in units forming square when I want to recreate Wagram.

Will the rules lead to a result in a reasonable length of time?  I don't want to spend 8 hours fighting something that took 30 minute in real life.

[carlos marighela]

Will the rules lead to a result in a reasonable length of time?  I don't want to spend 8 hours fighting something that took 30 minute in real life.

Ah, a man clearly scarred by playing Empire or possibly Harpoon.

[ithoriel]

I am slightly taken aback by the number of people responding to this post who seem to want to play games with half a dozen figures on a tea tray using a set of rules written on the back of a post card.

I want rules that will scale up to the point where I can play games with thousands of figures on a ballroom floor with a rule book thick enough to allow me the option of beating the author to death with it if the rules significantly disappoint! Assuming I could ever find the time, terrain, painted miniatures and opponents to stage such a thing.

OK, so more than a little hyperbole, but am I the only megalomaniac gamer on this forum?

[Elbows]

While I have no interest in 1,000's of figures - I am definitely surprised at how diverse peoples' interests are.

Almost every post I read I think "Yeah, he would never buy my games..." 

It does make sense though, as listening to varying wargaming podcasts I often think 'that sounds like a game I have zero interest in...' ---- but the game exists so obviously somewhere someone wants to play it.  Back when I used to sell cars, many moons ago, we had the phrase 'an ass for every seat'.  I think the huge variety of stuff people here game and enjoy is probably the strength of Lead Adventure.  You need only look at the "Post a Picture of the Last Game You Played" thread to see how much stuff people here play.

[Easy E]

That is why I started this thread knowing that I have no idea what people like to play. 

[fred]

I am slightly taken aback by the number of people responding to this post who seem to want to play games with half a dozen figures on a tea tray using a set of rules written on the back of a post card.

I want rules that will scale up to the point where I can play games with thousands of figures on a ballroom floor with a rule book thick enough to allow me the option of beating the author to death with it if the rules significantly disappoint! Assuming I could ever find the time, terrain, painted miniatures and opponents to stage such a thing.

OK, so more than a little hyperbole, but am I the only megalomaniac gamer on this forum?

I think in part this is the demographic of LAF - there is a definite preference to skirmish games here (note preference not exclusivity, there are examples of big games on LAF too)

I very much want to be able to play big games with lots of figures and lots of players - and this needs a set of rules that is geared to this. One of my worse recentish gaming experience was a giant Warhammer game that looked absolutely splendid but was a chore to play, for two reasons, one tactically it was pretty much attackers walk towards the defenders, secondly the magic phase took 30-45mins each turn, and barely anything happened at the end of it.

Compare this to Warmaster games where there were sweeping movements, dogged defences, continual engagement of players - all on the same sized table with the same number of players in the same time!

[Hobgoblin]

Great discussion!

One observation I'd make is that "miniature agnostic" is a bit of a strange concept. It's almost unnecessary because hardly any games (if any) aren't miniature agnostic. Things like Malifaux might get close, but even then, you can match cards up with alternative miniatures easily enough. When Warhammer Underworld came out, we played it with friends and substituted ogres for Stormcast from the off (we had painted ogres; the Stormcast never got painted); it worked perfectly well. So I think non-miniatures-agnostic games are largely a manufacturer's myth!

The one thing that's really important is basing; lots of games aren't basing agnostic. That doesn't mean you can't play those games with different base sizes to the prescribed ones, but either you'll have to change the bases of all units proportionately or you'll be changing the game quite fundamentally.

As an illustration, Hordes of the Thing/DBA or Warnaster can work with elements of just about any size (with movement rates and table size adjusted), but won't work if players bring elements with different frontages. By contrast, a 'base-agnostic' game like Dragon Rampant or Of Armies and Hordes will work just fine if players turn up with radically different basing systems.

I suppose one could see WYSIWYG as a sort of anti-agnosticism when it comes to miniatures. But it's more of a player-agreement point than a real
thing like basing. Games like Pulp Alley gleefully flout WYSIWYG and are the none the worse for it. But it can be a useful principle for keeping more equipment-centric games clean and clear.

These are my preferences:

1. Short 'time to table'
I like games where you can decide to play and be playing in five minutes flat. Hordes of the Things/DBA, Saga, Song of Blades and Heroes, Battlesworn and the Rampant series all fall into this category. If you and an opponent want a game, you can stat up your army or warband in a minute or two and have the game on the table. That means many more games played.

I'd identify a protracted time to table as the main factor in my not playing some games I really love: Rogue Planet, Mayhem and Pulp Alley among them. None of those games are bad in that respect, really, but I'd play much more of all of them if statting things up were a bit quicker.

In that regard, I'd point out that online army builders can make a real difference. We've played lots of Kings of War over the past year because the army builders nudge it into having a short time to table. If Mayhem had the same, I'd play much more of it. Song of Blades and Heroes is an example of a game that might take longer than five minutes with pen and paper (though the extensive troop lists at the back of the book offset this), but the online warband builder means that it's almost instant.

2. Dynamism
I like games where you get a real sense of movement. Song of Blades and its ilk score very highly here: figures can sweep across the table if they have sufficient activations. Mayhem's great here too: you can burn your command points to have your fast cavalry sweep down the flank like wildfire. Rogue Planet steps it up even further with its collisions and throwing of things into other things. Gaslands is great at this too. Song of Blades is dynamic in a different way too: you get knockdowns and pushbacks and temporary routs. I've been gearing up to play Mordheim for a while; it looks like a game that utilises the long Warhammer statline to offer a dynamism that the parent game lacked.

3. Speed of play
In the past, I've had echoed Ruarigh in wanting to be involved throughout my opponent's turn. But fast-play IGOUGO games like Kings of War and Book of War have convinced me that constant involvement isn't essential so long as your turn comes round quickly. Chess is a good example here, actually, and chess clocks make the likes of KoW even better.

I very much want to be able to play big games with lots of figures and lots of players - and this needs a set of rules that is geared to this. One of my worse recentish gaming experience was a giant Warhammer game that looked absolutely splendid but was a chore to play, for two reasons, one tactically it was pretty much attackers walk towards the defenders, secondly the magic phase took 30-45mins each turn, and barely anything happened at the end of it.

If I were allowed a fourth, I'd say magic that's (a) not overpowering and (b) fully integrated in the normal turn: Kings of War, HOTT and Song of Blades have this sorted. Classic Warhammer much less so - which is why my childhood friends and I more or less banned if from our games!

[DivisMal]

I very much want to be able to play big games with lots of figures and lots of players - and this needs a set of rules that is geared to this. One of my worse recentish gaming experience was a giant Warhammer game that looked absolutely splendid but was a chore to play, for two reasons, one tactically it was pretty much attackers walk towards the defenders, secondly the magic phase took 30-45mins each turn, and barely anything happened at the end of it.

Compare this to Warmaster games where there were sweeping movements, dogged defences, continual engagement of players - all on the same sized table with the same number of players in the same time!

Metagames, like the Warhammer/40k Magick/Psionic phase, are a nogo for me by now. Give me a quick and easy system like Fantasy Warriors or one that is just an additional die roll, like LotR or Warmaster, or one that is integrated into the normal system, like SoBH. All work well and don’t make you forget the normal game.

Speeding up movements is another thing that’s certainly not wrong. SoBH and Warmaster both give you the impression of a fog of war without introducing new rules.

…

There has come together so much good stuff, I want to add something else: rules need to enable the fluff not vice versa.

The latter has been done in extenso by GW and their many copyists: unit Xy or race z is pretty good at this or that and it cannot be represented with the rules, so just add a special rule: elite elf units always strike first even when charged, space marines don’t rout even if they break. Sounds nice when you meet it first but burdens the game with endless discussions and searching through the book to find those rules.

Another option: make a system that allows for variety and use it:
Warmaster orcs have very low LD, so a player’s strategy usually involves minimizing the risk of a failed command roll and stacking up truly huge units. Just like I always imagined an orc army. The same works with SoBH armies with low Q: stack up units, add many leaders/banners etc.

This makes armies feel truly different on the tabletop without any extras.

[FierceKitty]

Good syntax, grammar and punctuation or at least a decent stab at them.

A logical flow to the concepts espoused and written in a lucid and concise manner.

Illustrative examples are always nice as are neat diagrams, where required.

I don't want my rules to read like Habermas and nor do I want them to read like Phil Barker.

Well said!

[DivisMal]

The one thing that's really important is basing; lots of games aren't basing agnostic. That doesn't mean you can't play those games with different base sizes to the prescribed ones, but either you'll have to change the bases of all units proportionately or you'll be changing the game quite fundamentally.

[…]

1. Short 'time to table'
I like games where you can decide to play and be playing in five minutes flat. Hordes of the Things/DBA, Saga, Song of Blades and Heroes, Battlesworn and the Rampant series all fall into this category. If you and an opponent want a game, you can stat up your army or warband in a minute or two and have the game on the table. That means many more games played.

I'd identify a protracted time to table as the main factor in my not playing some games I really love: Rogue Planet, Mayhem and Pulp Alley among them. None of those games are bad in that respect, really, but I'd play much more of all of them if statting things up were a bit quicker.

In that regard, I'd point out that online army builders can make a real difference. We've played lots of Kings of War over the past year because the army builders nudge it into having a short time to table. If Mayhem had the same, I'd play much more of it. Song of Blades and Heroes is an example of a game that might take longer than five minutes with pen and paper (though the extensive troop lists at the back of the book offset this), but the online warband builder means that it's almost instant.

Two other excellent points I oversaw yesterday: the „pick up time“ for a ruleset is what killed Warhammer and its offsprings for me. When I have a gaming night, it’s usually after a day’s work. The same is true for my opponent. So either having a large set of pregenerated profiles (Rampant series, SoBH) or an online tool (SoBH) helps to get to the table in acceptable time.

Mayhem is really really a system I’d like to try, but I cannot bring the Battlescribe app to accept the Mayhem files. I even contacted Mr Spivey and we could not find a solution. The app was apparently updated and doesn’t work with the old files anymore. And this brings me to another point: online armybuilders are great (especially if they are an easy to read excel sheet), any kind of app that is needed is just annoying.

And Hobgoblin’s point about the bases is really good. I just don’t want to rebase to play a new set of rules!