Interesting points. One of my fav subjects !
I have a sneaky feeling that these days, there are sooooo many rulesets available, and so easy to get hold of that there is a slight tendancy for gamers to collect rulesets for the sake of it.
A lot of rules get read over once or twice, and never even played in anger. I know I am guilty of that myself, because I find the whole subject of rules really interesting. Its a big part of the hobby.
After playing with a set for long enough, some of those uber-simplified mechanisms that appear silly at first, actually start to make a lot more sense. An example would be PIPs in DBx … first time I saw that, I thought it was ridiculous. After actually playing it, the prejudices are replaced with appreciation. Its a useful mechanism after all.
As is cherry picking mechanisms from multiple rule sets and applying them on the tabletop on a per-game basis.
ie – lets do this scenario, using these XYZ rules, but use the command activation system like these other rules here.
Over time,my entire collection of rules becomes something of a 'combined arms force', that can be thrown together in various ways to meet any situation.
Over the years, it is interesting to see the combat engines and bookkeeping aspects simplified, and the command aspects made more important. That seems to be a universal trend. Gone are the days of tracking number of actual men killed on a per figure basis. (My first set of WRG ancients did it this way, and I think the Airfix Nap rules did something similar)
Having said all that, here is a quick and dirty list of things I like in a ruleset (these days anyway) :
- Aesthetics. The game board should resemble the drama of the period it is covering. This is a function of the basing, orbats and scales in use. It is important, and is probably the first section I read when I get a new set of rules. FOW for example cops a lot of flak because of this point alone.
- Control. The rules should remove some control from the player. Just enough to make it very satisfying when a plan does actually come together, and very frustrating when some idiot commander down the line ruins a good plan. The mechanics of choice that work for me here are :
– PIPs Simple but very effective.
– TFL style card activation of sub units. Tea break cards, gifted leader cards, big men, etc. Very cool way of handling a complex set of issues.
– Action / Reaction ala crossfire, with initiative swinging from one side to the other.
– Command radiuses and dicing to change orders. Works well in most contexts.
- Luck. You need random outcomes and a high level of uncertainty in a wargame, but its a fine balance – pre-thought out contingency plans and good generalship should beat good dice rolls.
- Bling. I like a game system to have a little bit of silly bling here and there. I dont like having game tables littered with tokens, but it is good to be able to have a couple of units here and there with a gold star carried on the base, and have the rules attach some sort of meaning to those rare tokens.
- Movement and ground scales. Small movement rates per turn – yuk ! It works better if units can move further per turn, but limit the ability to move in the control section of the rules. That setup seems to work better. PIPs, reactions and tea breaks handle all of this well.
- Variable figure scales. Unless you are gaming 1:1 skrimish operations, or linear period rules where troops fight in formations that cover fixed areas of ground … I like rule mechanisms that vary the figure scale for different reasons. "Triumph of the Will" by TFL for example, uses figures to represent the current morale state of a unit, rather than the actual number of fighting troops. That is one radically different approach. Generally, 1 prefer 1 base of troops to represent a 'projection of force' over an area of ground, rather than than try to model the number of real men / vehicles in a unit.
- 1 table on a QRF should be able to describe the entire combat engine, and all the stats for all the units on the board. Opposed dice rolls are good, since both players get involved in all actions. A single mechanism for all combat is good. Keep the combat engine as simple as possible.
- Diminishing level of detail. There is a trick when doing programming of 3D 'simulations' – in that as things get further away from your point of view, you drop the polygon count of the rendered item, and fade the colours down to grey. Likewise, if you are a Company commander, you want all the info you can get on the current state of each platoon as a whole, but for each squad under that, you only need to know if they are still fighting or not. I love the way KISS Rommel handles this – when a base of troops is a casualty, its not dead, it has disbursed into the woods and temporarily lost contact with the main formation. It goes in a reserves pile, and can be put back on the board later on the roll of a good dice. So this offers a random distribution of fatigue and attrition, and zero book keeping. Brilliant.
- Political Correctness … might be a requirement for tournament gaming or anything involving the general public, but I prefer a touch of dark humour in the privacy of my own gaming den. Some rules attempt to go over the top in the political correctness department, and that can detract from the game. A little bit of non-PC humour in the rules can go a long way. If you look at "If the Lord Spares Us" from TFL, you can have situations on the gaming table where the British show some stiff upper lip as they throw off an attack by a bunch of damned sodomites. It might only be a +1 here and a -1 there, but the use of non-PC language in the rules frames those die modifications in a tongue in cheek period context. I don't have a problem with that at all.
Gane vs Simulation ? It is neither. Miniatures, Scenery, Rulesets and Dice are merely tools to assist the gamer in transporting themselves to other times and other places. A wargame is like a really good movie – on crack. It should be a fully immersive virtual reality experience that has you on the edge of your seat the whole way.
