The Flying Snowman

[shandy]

Recently, I have thought about why we accept a lot of abstractions on the wargames table but are bothered by others. This, of course, is a highly subjective issue and will be different for everyone. It could be called the 'flying snowman' effect:

http://wargamingraft.wordpress.com

So what's your Flying Snowman, and why?

[Doomhippie]

I guess it's line-of-sight rules. I remember playing Mordheim and one player putting his ratoger on a 25mm base so it could stand closer to a wall. That more or less opened my eyes to that problem. A model is of course only a representation of a person and while the model is all stiff a person, even a big one such as an oger is able to duck behind cover. As bases are generally too large to represent the ground an individual person actuall needs to stand on, the whole concept of who is behind what cover and to what extend is so often a question you would need a lawyer to solve.

[Vermis]

Like you, figure scale! I have a bunch of 28mm WSS minis in storage - when I got them I wondered what the two grenadiers on the end of a regiment were for, if they didn't have any in-game (BP) function. I was told those two represented about 200 real life grenadiers.

Yeah... no. I could tolerate it for the sake of playing a game, but it's still too abstract to the point of goofiness for me. And it makes the original question more relevant - if those are two hundred guys rather than two, why don't they have any effect in the game?

Part of the reason I passed on HOTT as my primary fantasy battle game of choice. 3-6 28mm guys on a base, representing a big, bustling, clanking unit? Archers shooting 2 inches? Hmm.
I wouldn't stick with 28mm for mass fantasy at all, if not for GW minis. Even with crappy games and crappy prices, they do make nice minis, well-designed for army-building. (And usually readily available from bored owners on ebay!) Still, with 6-15mm fantasy ramping up, I wonder if I'll make a complete switch in the future.

Also, the last game I played, about a month ago, was a huge ECW affair. Two opposing rows of 28mm minis, stretching almost the whole width of a 12' table, and reserves behind! Sitting at one end with my one little reg of covenanters and frame gun, it was pretty tedious much of the time. Afterwards, even the other players - 28mm, big-battle diehards to a man - agreed that it was far too large. I think they meant the numbers, but in my head I included the mini scale too. Could've been almost as much of a spectacle (in numbers if not sheer size), and a deal sleeker, at smaller scales.

Oh, and talking trees and magic rings make sense in context, and if they're explained either in simple terms or in the context of the story's cosmogony. But lava is lava - or at least, that lava wasn't explained as some kind of magic 'cold lava' that you could drown in before burning. (which would be pretty stupid and pointless anyway, even when ranked alongside talking trees and magic rings) It'd be like being instantly incinerated on contact with the cold, mundane mud of the Dead Marshes. (It's another place of mystical occurence, but it's still made out of mud)

[Conquistador]

Scale is a biggie, Vermis, but the biggest to me is the rules that don't reflect the realities of the era or the genre.

Let me give a few examples...

VSF is what?  As I stated on Two Hour Wargames forum:

"... My thoughts are very similar to previous posters   and definitely not steam-punk {SP} verging on [spit] Diesel-Punk {DP} please.     What I call DP sometimes is called ESF - see http://15mmvsf.bagofmice.com/ for some pages on both but grognards who debate lace on 6 mm figures would split hairs on that...   See the All Quiet on the Martian Front (AQotMF) comments for ESF.

SP and DP are hard for some people to differentiate from VSF   but IMHO I see SP as emphasizing the technology much more than the culture/people and DP as being SP evolved into WW1 and substituting relatively reliable and stable Diesel engines for the more "brittle" and slightly skewed (twisted genius) steam technology. A recent relatively decent form of SP gaming would be the IHMN rules which I recently acquired.

Much current VSF gaming involves rules that are sometimes clunky (V&S&F which has been criticized because they seem to have bolted on all the elements of the genre from all early authors without mechanisms that appear to be organic to the VSF worlds.) The http://wargamers.wikia.com/wiki/Victori ... ce_Fiction page also seems pretty spot on for VSF.

<snip>

Swords, Valor, muskets/rifles, and honor should lead technology in the game IMO. Much modern VSF game rules seems to reverse that..."

Napoleonics rules that play like Like WW2 (one long running campaign has a French Mortar unit in Spain that frequently (IMO) unduly disrupts enemy plans all by itself) is another crimp in my suspension of disbelief.  At battles where theer is no flank to turn by maneuver...

Unrealistic ranges (too short) and unrealistically accurate fire at long range when being suppressed by automatic fire in post-1900 games.

Tank battles where maneuver is not a factor but it all comes down to armor/penetration values (Both sides either sitting at long range and sniping away or tank battles where nothing hits until you are 6 inches away.)

Air battles where one or both sides are flaying at max afterburner speeds firing SARH missiles then swanning off as if the SARH was ARH for more so many turns you wonder how they make it back to base with gliding.

Submarines in most naval games period.

Games where it Takes hours to achieve what happens in seconds or even minutes!

I prefer game over simulation but it needs to feel like what it represents!

Gracias,

Glenn


EDIT:  OMG, forgot the biggest!  Fantasy games where (if you take out the magic and treat the "races" as nations) you can't have a decent historical age of whatever era (Medieval, dark ages, ancient Egypt,) the game is reflecting.