"Fast and Bloody - My Wargame" Topic

I felt inspired so I made myself this wargame: PDF link

Obviously inspired in part by Fast and Dirty. My goal was to make a ruleset that could fit on one page, front and back, minimize dice rolling, allow both "skirmisher" and "ranked" units to be interesting and handle units of mixed weapon types.

I have not read a great many games – please tell me which one I'm ripping off.

I am not a maths person, sadly. Thus, those of you who are will probably see some horrific, glaring flaws. Please tell me what they are; the best changes are often recommended to the designer by someone who sees it with completely different eyes.

I am aware there are ambiguities with how units can move into each other; can they engage at angles, etc. As of this time it's a no, I just didn't add it in. Also, Psychology bonuses has omitted the "below half original strength" penalty of -2.

Note that all numbers are sort of fudged in. My original intent was that any given + has a – it can make up for, or a given + has a counter-plus that allows the attacker/defender to cancel out the other advantage. The intent was that in many cases a slight bonus was to be given to the defender to represent the ease of defense. Also considering giving penalties to defense for moving and or charging units.

I think it's come out ok for about 30 minutes worth of typing. Feel free to check it out and offer your more experienced opinions. Just remember I'm trying to keep it at 1 page for the actual functional rules, and unit profiles are supposed to take up very little space on some 3x5" index card.

Thanks!

M.

There are some concepts here that sound good--I like the "roll even to continue activating units" once your opponent is done.

I do wnder about only being able to use your defense roll against one attacking unit. Does this mean other units caqn't attack or that their attacks automatically cause damage? Depending upon how this is done, could give big advantage to particular unit size. There's also how to go from ranked to unranked and vice versa.

Rob

I do wnder about only being able to use your defense roll against one attacking unit. Does this mean other units caqn't attack or that their attacks automatically cause damage?

Maybe the answer is that where there is more than one attacking unit, the defending unit can defend against all attacking units but with a negative modifier, replicating the confusion in defending against two or more units.

Minimize dice rolling, what's the fun of that? Actually if you are happy with it, then that's what counts, right?

If you like simple minimal set of rules try FUBAR

link

I never met a diceless game that I liked. Of course, I can't roll dice worth a darn either.

Its not diceless :p

That said, what's in the PDF is extremely crude and there's stuff I'll fix. FREX for some reason I ignored that 1 man or 12 still rolls a d10. Much work to do…after the figs are done.

M.

There's a reason that every decent big battle ancients game has a lot more than two pages of rules. You can have a pretty decent skirmish game with minimal rules, but not a big battle game. There are so many thing missing it's hardly worth mentioning any, but here's a few anyway :
- generals
- definition of flank charge
- changing formation