Ideas on a New Tactical Game System
It's been ten years since I designed my first tactical game
system and sometimes I fantasize about designing yet another. One that uses all
the designing tricks that I’ve learned, something that would give us all as
much pleasure without any nit-picky rule pain. So what *might* a new Mark H.
Walker tactical system look like? Here
are some things I would and wouldn't include.
- No
fractions. Period. No halve this, or round this. Whole numbers only. I
figure a game loses about 1/8th of its fan base per fraction. Seriously.
Rebecca Black. You know, that Friday song kid. - No levels. No second story buildings and no hills. We all gasp at the mere suggestion of a one-level game, but I promise that no one would miss it. Levels create paragraphs on paragraphs of needless rules, and in-game delays as we pour through said rules trying to ascertain if this machine gunner can see that squad. Delays better spent talking about Jay Cutler.
- No combat result tables and no firepower factors. Everything hits or defends on a four. Firepower is a function of dice, as is morale. Easy, peasie (is that a word?). I can't go into detail here. I have a copyright under review. Just kidding. Sort of. No honestly. I don’t.
- No hidden units. God how I hate hidden units. Hidden units are the gaming equivalent of Rebecca Black’s music.
- Lots of pulse lasers. I might not even include rules for them, but they’ll be on the cover art.
- Nothing
in
- A stress on simplification. If in doubt, leave it out. Make a game that people play.
- Lots of interesting people to meet. Any squad-level game I design will always have flexible rules that allow individuals to dominate the battlefield. Just like they do in real life.
- A closing paragraph that pleads with our politicians to bring our troops home. All of them. To stop wasting their lives in petty wars why we argue about the stupid economy. Just saying.
Anyway, those are my ideas. What do you folks think?
Be sure to check out NIGHT OF MAN, a science-fiction, card-driven, board and counter, tactical battle game, designed by Mark H. Walker and published by Flying Pig Games. It is on Kickstarter until December 31st. You can view the Kickstarter page and place a pledge right here.
Mark H. Walker served 23 years in the United States Navy, most of them as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal diver, he is the designer of the Lock 'n Load, World at War, and Nations at War series of games. He has quite a few new titles up his sleeve. Stay tuned. Sign up for his newsletter to get design insights, game updates, and stuff.
Be sure to check out NIGHT OF MAN, a science-fiction, card-driven, board and counter, tactical battle game, designed by Mark H. Walker and published by Flying Pig Games. It is on Kickstarter until December 31st. You can view the Kickstarter page and place a pledge right here.
Mark H. Walker served 23 years in the United States Navy, most of them as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal diver, he is the designer of the Lock 'n Load, World at War, and Nations at War series of games. He has quite a few new titles up his sleeve. Stay tuned. Sign up for his newsletter to get design insights, game updates, and stuff.
Comments
Can you say Rock, Paper, Scissors. 'Cuz... well... what you've postulated sure sounds a lot like a costumed and enhanced version of RPS.
Then again - one supposes - at the most fundamental level - life is a hell of a lot like RPS.
I can understand your point on hills. Often in tactical games you have hills that are also more or less fake. with 20 to 50 meters hex hills seems a bit less hilly IMHO (Lasy july I was on Hill 112 in Normandy and well it was a bit different from what you would have imagined before going. But in some case (Gemmano and Coriano ridge) they are steep, in scale, and scary.
Dices... well I do not like bucket of dices. CRT are much less hassle and allow you much more leeway.
Simplification: double edge sword, is also remove immersion and create cookie cutter games. I saw DBA/DBM, I vomited...
Well lot of what you say smells of WH40K awful game IMHO. Said that it is your game... you design, I decide if I want to buy it or not! This is the good point of free market, and this is why we have a vast array of games.
Arrigo
Rick, the problem with the far side of the moon is spacesuits. I don't think a game of folks in spacesuits would be that great. But it might be, who knows? I think I remember that computer game. Might even have it. I'll look (I play A LOT of games).
DOMs. Haven't read Simulating War, but I want to. Have heard great things about it. Great things.
Matt. Ha. I actually prefer Epic to 40K, but I LOVE buckets of dice. Love them. Hear that Arrigo?
Arrigo. You make good points. I guess sometimes I just get a little lazy. When all is said and done, you are probably a couple dozen IQ points more intelligent than I, and certainly better versed in military history. Sometimes to make a VERY accurate simulation just seems like it would take more time than I have.
I do not think I am as bright as you think, certainly no brighter than you!
the Bucket of dice mechanics is perfectly fine but sometime is abused. Have you ever throw 120 dice? Just for the sixes? Then having the defender saves? I recently played a little nice and nifty game from Vae Victis, Operation Bruno. The game is solitaire and quite well designed. The combat system as originally publishes was a BoD attempts with both sides (bwing a solo it is you rolling twice) rolling to hit and then to save. The first engagements were ok, but when the Vietminh started to mass forces it was a nightmare (for actually on average little effect). Thanks god they put an alternative combat system with just one competitive roll per combat. I have two main problems with BoD: sometimes people abuses of it (often due to poor playtesting), and because it is much more random and less predictable often creates absurdities and also make predicting combat results when you are calibrating factors a pain.
A nice compromise are fire point with a single roll. You add fire points then or you apply modifiers to the roll or to the sum and then look the result on a column. It removes a lot of calculations and mechanical process (rolling one die is easy, rolling 45 starts to become annoying...)
About accuracy, well i have found that sometime good simulations are not more complex than bad ones. It is not the quantity of details that make a simulation accurate but the kind of detail you portray. On average i think LnL is more accurate than ASL. And probably it could have made even easier with less tiered combat system for infantry. In this I think we can agree, having between two and three rolls per combat and then a table is not the easiest way to resolve combat, especially if you have a lot of discrete combats in a turn. It involves both players of course, but I do not see where it adds to accuracy or game balance.
DomS, notwithstanding the fact that (look around to check if Phil is spying on me...) I worked for Phil and next week I am giving a lecture to his students I think that in practice Phil tendency toward "simplicity" is sacrificing a lot of things for no gain. His games tend to be a mixed bag, from awfully poor (East Front 2 or his WW2 tactical game) to quite nice (Lost Battles), still to often he uses such a broad brush that his realism appears suspicious. Sometimes he also backtracks on simplicity creating one time rules that could be done in better ways. As I said simplification is a double edge sword, and I think Phil has sometime pushed it too far and what he gets back are boring, unrealistic, and not even simple games.
Let's face it I think Mark's Nations At War is probably more accurate than Phil's Fire and Maneuver. Certainly is more straight forward, and has better graphics.