"Morale Grades." Topic

So, for many years now I've been pondering an issue regarding morale grades in our games. It's not just for this period, but for others as well, though it tends to be a bit more stilted as we enter the late 19th century and forward in time.

Here is what I am thinking: There are actually three morale grades in every game:

1.) What YOU think your morale level is.

2.) What the ENEMY thinks your morale grade is.

3.) What your morale grade REALLY is.

This would only work, it seems to me, in games run by an umpire. Each side would have, for each unit, a morale grade, as well as the morale grade they believed their overall commander to be. The overall commander on each side would also have a morale grade, and a grade for each of his units. These grades represent the way the unit(s) perceive themselves, as well as how they view their commander. Their commander's grade is how he views himself, and how he also views his various units.

Each side also gets a list of the opposing units, with a morale grade for each, as well as for their commander(s).

Only the umpire knows the ACTUAL morale grade for each unit. It may or may not be the same as the unit's own grade. No one will know until it's time for those levels to come into play.

I'm thinking that this is certainly workable for skirmish gaming, and probably for large games like Impetus, Volley & Bayonet, etc where each base is a single unit.

It would require a little bit of paperwork, as well as an umpire, but it seems to me that it would better reflect the battlefield as both sides saw it, vice having the system(s) we are using now.

Comments?

Sounds far too complicated.

Is a little complicated, but we have used a version of this for our Punic Wars mercenaries – we determine morale randomly on their first round of combat (this can sometimes be unfortunate)

Alright, I'll play the wag then and say that it would be pretty cheeky to hear someone complain about this being complicated while also playing FoG or Tactica or anything by Phil Barker.

Not that anyone has so far. Just sayin…..

Aryiki and Antiquity (by us) give each side a D3 extra hits modifier as a minor random morale factor. It could be done without too much complication as a core mechanic.

I like the central tenet of the original post; that morale is as much in the eye of the beholder.

I don't think it requires a lot of record keeping. The original impression can be worked into a scenario briefing; Blue gets told thatb unit A have taken the field – renowned as the Immortatls and feared by all. red gets told that their Immortals have been involved in a recent court coup and lost their leadership cadre, as a result they are disitnctly disincentivised to fight at present. The key then would be to have a set of rules that allowed you to keep the factors for your forces a secret for as long as possible. here an umpire would be of great use, as he works out all of the factors and just tells the result after the dice gave been rolled; the Blue player need not ever hear the morale factor of Red's Immortals.

You could go one stage further. Blue are told that the feared Immortals are taking the field on the red Side. The red commander is infomred that the Immortals have been engaged in court intrigue and are not to be trusted. The Gamesmaster/umprire knows, however, that the commander of teh Immortals has been shamed by the intriguing and that he and his men will wipe out the shame by sacrificing themselves against the enemy. Thus Blue believes the morale and fighting capacity of the immortals is high. Red believes that they are uncommitted and untrustworthy. But, at the opportune moment the gamesmaster tells Red that his unit of Immortals are going impetuous against Blue, and will not respond to his commands.

No paperwork or complex rules, but a bit of thought and pre-planning in the scenario preparation.

I use this method: the morale "scale" is the percentage of likelihood that a certain troop type will be in possession of high, middling or low morale: this is not a secret to either you or your enemy. Then when the time comes to roll your first morale test, both you and your enemy discover what the morale "level" of your troops really is. Simple and instantaneous….

Computer moderated games, such as Carnage and Glory, are great for this. The strength of such rules is that you play the situation, not the rules, as you don't know the rules! Everyone is playing their perception of the troops, the opponents, and the situation at all times.

The more I read the more I like the idea of something like this. As an example from the early WW2 period, what morale/fire ratings would you be inclined to give the Searchlight Battalion at Calais, or the NZ Divisional Petrol Company on Crete? If you didn't know about their astonishing performance, you'd probably rate them pretty low.

In Johnny Reb there are four ratings, lower the better with a 2 rating as elite, 3 rating is average/veteran, 4 is green, and 5 is militia. As a varient, when the OB is prepared for the game ratings of A, B, C, D, E, F are assigned to each regiment. As an example A is probably going to be elite. It performs as elite for movement until the first morale check is required or it fires. At that time a single D6 is rolled. A 1-4 it is elite, 5 it is veteran, and 6 it is green. With a B, 1 is elite, 2-5 is veteran, 6 is green. The commander can never be sure until combat how the unit will behave. As an aside, I would just as soon my opponent not know what my morales is until combat. Just another option for your consideration.

What your morale grade is , is what you think it is. That means that there are two levels not three at the basic man to man skirmish level.
At higher troop ratios or if unit play is being done there are more factors, such as your commander's ability which will inlfuence whether a unit including a single casting will stand or flee.

You can see this as being represented by normal dice rolls in the course of the game. In DBA, if you roll a 1 in combat and lose the unit, their morale wasn't as high as you thought. Similarly in FOG, if you roll double 1 on a cohesion test. Having three values for morale is IMO unnecessary complication (and yes, that is from someone who plays FOG and has played DBM, both of which do not have unnecessary complication).

Wow, Tactica is complicated?

The more I game the simplier I want it to be. The original idea is far too complicated to be workable in my opinion. Frankly, the dice take care of the difference between my opinion and reality. My troops often under perform to my expectation. It's called rolling dice!

At least in modern times, there's only two morale grades: My esprit d'corps, and what you think my esprit d'corps is.

The closest approximation of random morale that I am willing to play has been the '8 million bayonets' or equivalent from Battlefront. IIRC, deploy the army, *then* roll troop quality/morale!

Tactica is definitely not complicated. The only vaguely complex part of it is the deployment. Remove that and it's a fairly simple game.

Piquet does this well. When I did play Piquet solo I used the "vacillating" morale result for all enemy. This means that the morale grade is not determined until it is actually required. Each troop type has a range of morale grades normally so its easy to accomplish. Piquet does the same thing with terrain as well. You don't know exactly what effects it will have until you are close to it. Can really mess with plans.

Oo, I like the unknown terrain idea. A hill is not just a hill, it can be impassable because of what's on it, hidden by the brush. The same would be true of that rather flat, broad gorse covered plain; once you start to move over it, the boggy bits become evident. But I could see this being overdone too: whereas in reality, any decent scouting ahead of the army's movement would warn the commander of what is coming. The "home court advantage" would of course award knowledge of the local terrain to the defenders, and probably deny the same to the invaders; unless, of course, the ground being fought upon is a well known battlefield from time immemorial. Then there is the previous march through the area: "I have marked that wood and kept it in my pocket", sort of thing….

The terrain idea is very nice. The way I played it was that the defender (if there was one) knew the terrain well which in itself could be a give away depending on deployment. When playing solo the basic type of terrain is obvious ie. woods but how thick etc is not. I write the options on a piece of paper (one per option), draw one randomly from a cup and place it under or in the terrain facedown. Makes for some interssting solo games as a wood that looked to protect a flank is actually only a sparse orchard.

Variable morale is a good idea at least for untried units. Trying to keep it secret from players could be a challenge though unless the umpire rolls all the dice and just passes on the outcomes.

Brainstorm:

Each unit has a hidden cup into which are put different multiple colored chips based on the best morale of the unit:

Elite: 6 red chips (great morale). 5 blue chips (average morale), 4 green chips (poor morale)

Veteran: 5 r, 6 b, 4 g

Trained: 4 r, 4 b, 5 g

Raw: 4r, 4b, 6g

The game begins by with each player secretly removing and examining one chip from each of their own units, then doing the same for each of their opponent's units. Next one chip is blindly removed from all of the units' cups, with neither player seeing the chip.

When a morale check is required, a chip is pulled from a unit's cup. This determines either the actual morale result, or modifies the roll in some way. If red, the chip is discarded. If blue or green, it is returned to the cup.

You will notice that this means at the start of the game, any given unit could have unexpectedly exceptional morale or unexpectedly poorer morale than their general status implies. At the same time, each player knows at least one aspect of what that state may be, but not all. And during the course of the game, as morale is checked, excellent morale will degrade.

The above is all off the top of my head, and may be too involved for actual play. But it is a potential system for the OP's concept which would not require an umpire.

I think the majority of the time the commanders accurately knew the morale of their troops at any given time. Whether the enemy knew it is another question.

I like the idea of a random scenario generator with victory conditions and varied and flexible OB's, but still balanced. For instance let the player build his brigades, so he starts with 4 commanders and 12 regiments. So, he can make a 5 regiment brigade, a 2, a 2 and a 3 reg. brigade or say make them all 3 regiments. Let him organize them as he sees fit after random morale and weapons generation. That way you don't know exactly what your opponent has or not and what they are capable of.

It's a great idea. The best implementation I saw was in some Larry Brom's rules' spin-off done by some gaming club – they'd check for the actual morale of the unit the first time it was required to be tested. Simple thing – roll the dice and check the table for that particular unit (better units had better chance to get better morale, but in the end it was all about the die roll). From that moment on the unit had to keep its morale grade.

No record keeping.

I thought it was a brilliant idea.

The original idea for these morale ratings came from a game back in the 80's. It was a set of rules for horse racing amongst the officers of a British army in the Pennisular Campaign. The rules/game was published in either Wargames Illustrated or the other Wargames mag that was popular then. (NOT The Courier, though).

Anyway, the officers each had a rating for their horse, based upon their own belief as to how good it was. There was then another rating given to everyone else about how good that horse was. Finally, the umpire had the REAL rating for each horse, which was only revealed as the game progressed.

To my mind, the same system could easily work for wargame units, with each player having the rating of their own unit(s), and rating for how they believed their opponent's morale was, and then the actual number known only to the umpire until it was time to roll for morale.

Thus, the only number that actually matters, roll-wise, is the one the umpire reveals when it's time to make a specific roll. Until then, each side may have a fair idea about HOW their own and the enemy's forces rate, but won't know for certain until the time comes to test that.

V/R

This is not so much complication as "paperwork". So long as that entertains the umpire, it is OK – and if things are hidden, it may only entertain the umpire since neither player knows how close things came, what miracles were wrought, what anguish of the soul occurred as a key leader pondered treachery, only to pull back at the last due to some minor event that passed otherwise unnoted by the players.

It also depends a great deal on the other rules used, for this will be a disappointment if the effects of this mechanism are swamped by normal randomness or modifiers to performance in the game itself.

It makes sense for horse-racing, when the player is actually 'betting' on the outcome (ie, the player is not the jockey, the player is the owner).

I don't think the triple standard makes much sense for a game where the player is at a close command level to the troops. If you have the player in charge of 200 battalions and the battalions have variable morale, that might be appropriate. If the player is only in charge of 15 battalions, he'd know their real ratings.

A simple random morale grade determined at the first time you need to know it works very well, though you might need a marker on the table to remind the player who has what morale.

Another thought. Morale is one thing, fighting spirit another, and willingness to take risks a third. All apart from equipment and proficiency,

An unexpected deficiency in any of these soft factors at the wrong time could be serious. For certain types of armies, some of these might be more easily known than others. Drilling troops tends to move the risk threshold through discipline.There are many irregular warriors in the world who are brave and tough, but also see no sense in taking foolish risks. Though they talk tough, don't trust them in a crunch.

Yup.

While 'soft, lazy Americans' seem to amaze people with their utter disregard for their own life.

There was this great blog post by a Frenchman serving in Afghanistan with the 'band of brothers', and he commented about the American's casual disregard of incoming fire, and their immediate, instinctive reactions to it (training).

Their discipline to stand watch all night while wearing half or more of their body weight in gear.

And the 3 minutes from boxers and shower shoes to out the door in full kit, when someone is in trouble. And it was real easy to know when the Americans showed up as the responding force. No pause while they figured out what was happening. The vehicles haven't stopped moving yet and the Americans are already out of them, assaulting through an ambush. When in danger or in doubt, attack.