Dear Thread
Over last weekend we held "THE WEEKEND" convention in Lancaster PA., at the Continental Hotel. A full report will be in our After-Acton-Report/.Keepsake booklet. However two games might be of interest here. These are games I designed, one for Ancient Games, and one for WWII naval where I wanted to employ certain rules and mechanical contrivences to ease play of the game and keep it moving. One to give flavor to the game and the other to make a complex subject simple. The results were interesting and so I post the report that I put on my Yahoo Group "Society of Daisy" here.
One other thing about "The Weekend" about 80% of the people who attend are game masters who put on big lavish games at conventions and they often use the Weekend to test their latest and greatest, so it's quite exciting at times and quite fertile of new ideas. Because of interest in various areas comes together in these I will be crossposting this to in several places.
PHARONICA VERONICA AND SCHLOCKEM AND GLOCKAMORRAH.
This is my first foray into ancients in over two decades and I am pleased to see it went over well. I will be changing the name to something better and that will be "Honey I Sacrificed the Kids!: Warfare in the age of C.B. DeMille"
This went rather well. it used Mike Hillsgrove's Ancient Egyptian and Early Assyrian Armies on a simple table which was heartily enlivened by the rather stunning and entirely imaginative "temple-Ziggurat's" provided by Tracy Johnson as props. The game went well and the high points were.
1. The use of throwing sticks instead of dice, which everyone thought was a lot of fun and everyone liked because it broke the probabilistic straight jacket most games have. These were sticks of half-round pine molding cut into 8 inch legths, the round side was painted black the flat side white and on the black side a red line was painted at the 4" mark. This serves in place of dice, and also is the movement guage. Infantry moves one stick, Charoiots and Cavalry two, and the red line specifies melee range (4")
2. The game was very simple and even two absolute newbies to War Games picked it up immediately.
3. The "Favor of the God's" was great fun and everyone loved it till they didn't get it and the other guy did. It was signified in the game by the person who won the initiative getting to hold an 18" long golden rod. This of course is the dream of every man on the face of the earth so how could it lose.
4. They loved the armies and it moved very well, fighting with two large 15mm armies and lots of chariots whizzing around the board. I do have to do some rebasing as they were on bases for Might of arms and were not easy to handle.
The only bad thing is the hits and sequence of action. I tried to use the old don Featherstone sequence with separate fire and melee phases and it didn't work well. It worked, but not well and the it was a bit confusing (It was confusing back with "War Games" when Don first tricked it out on us. So I'm thinking of doing something even simpler like---
1. Determine favor of the Gods, This Is in the game already and will be largely unchanged. This is done now with a deck of four small cards which is placed on your "God Altar" which used to be just a pile, but now will be on the packing case temples Tracy did. I will art them up really well to be the "Let it all Hang out Gardens" for the Schlockem and Glocomorrahdites and "Tut's Titty Bar" for the Gyptians. Here you chose one of the cards which has the name of a God on it and it shows the score you must roll for the Gods. The Three throwing sticks have black and white sides and however many white faces you throw up is the score. In praying to your God if you throw the God you have initiative AND Favor of the Gods. If you don't you just have the number of white sticks. if the enemy does not throw his God then you both only count the white faces you threw. if both throw their Gods, there is "war in heaven" and no one can get the initiative OR invoke any God that turn.
2. The person with initiative decides if he wishes to move first or second.
This part now is the improvement I will make under the old system which was the old "He who moves first fires second" etc. If one side has "the favor of the God's" (he's stroking the 18" golden rod) he may in addition to choosing when to move, may move a unit half move during the other side's movement, in ADDITION to his normal move.
Example, The Gypies have favor of the Gods. He decides to move first. He does. The Schlockemettes move their full move. The Gypies now may move their forces a half move again. If the Gypies decide to let the Schlockemettes move first, he may then move his full move PLUS a half move more.
3. The hitting was a bit cumbersome and will be simplified. Eliminating the separate fire phase will do this partly, but it will also straighten out the effect of "Favor of the Gods."
Some troops have fire values, some have melee values, some have both fire and melee. This will be shown on the stand (I have to rebase mike's stuff). To hit you must toss a number of WHITE FACES less than or equal to the combat power of your unit be it fire or melee. Units within 1/2 stick of the enemy can only toss on their melee value. if any. Units more than 1/2 stick away from the enemy can only toss on their fire value if any.
Three blacks is a "0" and means no hit at all.
A hit reduces Combat values by 1. When all combat factors are gone, the unit is eliminated.
A hit made while you have the favor of the gods destroys the entire unit (Saul has Killed his thousands but David has killed his ten thousands and all that rot.)
During the game when any thing happens you don't like you can appeal to one of the remaining Gods to reverse the decision. If you roll that God by getting the proper number of sticks, not only is the decision reversed, it is applied against the person who threw it.
Thus assume the Schlockem and Glockamorrianians have favor of the Gods and their "Most terrible torturers of small animals" attack the Gyppied "Stooges of Buz Bastis" They roll a hit against the unit and therefore anhihilate it. The Gyps now decided to pray to Shlock and roll the three black faces sacred to him. Now the not only are the "Stooges of Buz Bastis" not wiped out, they wipe out "The Most Terrible of small animals." Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck.
Of course, since Shlockem and Glockamorrah are modeled on those infamous cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, I shall have to be ESPECIALLY creative in the names of the units. Hmmmm… Lo what horror doeth approach. This will be challenging, a new low for me.
In the other game "JANE'S FRIGHTENING SHIPS" things went not so well. Actually I was fairly certain that the mechanics would work well having filched them from an other gamer's system. This uses rivets glued on the ship cards in four colors -- red for fire, black for armor/flotation, Green for Disabling Damage, and Light blue for speed.
These pylons have washers strung on them of the same color to show how much power in each category they have. Eight sided die are used to determine hits. The faces are colored AND numbered. If you have three red washers on your ship you roll three dice. White faces are misses, colored faces are placed by the ship hit. The owner of the ship must then roll these and count THE NUMBERS on the face relative to his armor (ignoring the color). If he rolls less than or equal to the number of black washers on the black pylon that hit is ignored. If he rolls higher then one washer of that color is taken off. Thus the ability to dispense with ship cards. There are two additional washers, white for air strikes and gold for torpedoes. Once used a gold washer is removed.
Green washers are disabling damange. (fires, smashed electrical systems or damage control etc) and when gone the ship must be removed form play and head back to port).
This worked very well though I erred on the speed which often is double and triple the others. That's easy to fix.
The problem was the sequence. Now,, ideally I feel that the higher a ships speed the more ability it has to control the action. Fair enough, but I attempted to show this by having the slower ships move first, and the faster ones able to see what happened before making their move. Sounds good in one's mind, works terribly in the game. I also let the speed by one washer for every 4 knots of speed which meant you had a lot of ships with a movement of 7 and 8. But THAT speed really is a blend of actual speed and "sea-keeping" and the idea from War at Sea and Victory in the pacific. So I've decided to make it one washer for 8 knots instead. This still allows them to move fast, but it's manageable.
The sequence was the big cock-up and I decided to drop the whole thing and go back to a much simpler one.
As the game is a means of resolving table top actions from a STRATEGIC GAME, and that game is based for its managing mechanism on War at Sea and Victory in the Pacific, I've decided to make it that the person who controls the sea zone at the start of the battle has the initiative for the whole game. If the sea zone is NOT controlled by either power at the start of the game then the "Allied" player gets the initiative by reason of his having broken BOTH the German and Japanese codes. If you don't like that then if the sea-zone is not controlled at the start of the turn, then the person who has the largest number of the slowest ship DOES NOT have the initiative, and if there is still a tie, roll a die at the start of the game and high score has initiative and from then on sides alternate initiative.
That should take care of the problems. Movement will be a lot more regular and tamped down and the sequence will not be confusing.
The really good thing was that we fought two actions, each took only about an hour and a half, and we had a LOT of ships and EVERYONE was new to the rules.
By the way, you rolled three dice for each gold torpedo marker and three dice for each aircraft marker. We did not use aircraft in the game. Ranges are 8 squares for Capital ships, four for Cruisers, and two for Destroyers. As the games were night actions, max range for battleships was four squares.
I post this simply for in the ancient game showing that dice are not necessarily the essential thing everyone thinks they are, and the use of the throwing sticks yielded very unusual chance rolls.
The Modern Naval game was to have a game with battleships which did not require a rule book that would sink a battleship. The Ancient Rules are only 3 pages. The Modern one six, but three of them are for strategic matters. The reason for the washer and pylon system is that I HATE ship cards.
paints brigs for the British fleet.
