"Converting 25 mm rules to 15 mm" Topic

So I am moving to 15 (and 6) mm gaming for "skirmishy"/warbands battles and RPG Lite gaming.

I was wondering if others:

1) Just keep movement/range measurements the same (the "does it really matter" school of thought

2) Change inches to centimeters?

3) Other

Also, for those who already have played in 15 mm for years, were there any other game factors/aspects that surprised you when gaming?

"Not funny" answers about figure size and vision need not post, please.

Most rules are "figure size agnostic". So in general, keep all the movement and ranges the same.

The only time you might want to go from ins to cms or maybe cut all distances by half is if you want to play the same game on a smaller playing area.

Other. I look at the rules in a case by case light. If the ranges are extreme, I will half distances. But if the ranges seem "short" in 28mm, I will leave them.

And if they are written in inches I leave them inches. Metric, I leave metric….

Dave

I also usually keep everything pretty much the same.

Look at the ratio of the ground scale to figure size. Look at you table size. Everyone has their own sense of what works for them. Trust your judgement, and if perchance your judgement proves to be wrong after you've played a couple of game, then adjust accordingly.

I believe the technical term is heuristics (fancy two-bit word for best guess).

We've run Boer Wars games using 15mm figures but keeping the same movement and firing distances for the 25/28mm version of "The Sword and the Flame." Gave a much better perspective of the battlefield.

link
link

We had a large table (6' x 8') so could do that. If you have a smaller table then either convert inches to cms or downsize the distances by 40% to 50%.

Jim

Rules should not be size agnostic, only maybe skirmish rules.
Unit frontage is intimately linked to period tactics (even today!).
For example in black powder period, most batailons have the frontage of the average efficient range of volley fire, 100-150 m.

If you cheat too much on it you will find yourself using totally silly tactics not to talk about any problems with historical scenarios.

Nowadays you can easily modify the QRS of any game to suit your ground scale.

As colcampbell said, many games mostly done in 28, actually have unrealistic ranges due to table space, and work better with 15mm.

Depends what you mean by size agnostic. If you still use 4 bases of the same size for a battalion and are just putting more figures in it, it should not matter at all.I agree, an average battalion frontage should define range of your firepower.

I half the distances and it works just fine.

With 25mm figures, you have things like musket ranges being a small multiple of a man's height. Bows with a 6" range? That's just odd seeming.
It's not so odd if you retain the ranges with smaller figures.

I have long thought that unless there is a need for smaller table size, that rules writers missed the boat by not retaining all ranges etc for large figures when going to smaller figures.
Try Flames of War with micro armor but retaining all measurements. The visuals are very much better.
Try The Sword and the Flame with 15mm figures and all measurements from 25mm.
Some of the anomalies fade away.

I always keep the ranges the same, since they're usually compressed to begin with.

That and I am lazy :-)

As far as ground scale, that's usually an entire mess. Some rules are good about, some are awful (tanks that are 40 meters long, to scale f.x.)

What makes rhe scale of the game is not the size of the figures, but their footprint / unit frontage which defines the surface scale of the game.

The minis beeing way too high compared to the surface scale is irrelevant or only so when it becomes silly, such as having a vehicule length as say half a firing increment if you see what I mean.
Then the visual correction, suspension of disbelief necessary for miniature games becomes harder if the minis are too big comparing with the distances and the 3D environment.
For example having a line of 12 28 mm ww1 minis and a long range for rifles of say 40 cm. killing if in a skirmish.

The story about tanks 40m long, is mostly irrelevant as they should have intervals part of it could be in the mini footprint. It is especially true of rules where one tank=4/5.

To answer the initial question:

Only change if you have a pb of space for skirmish. The scales are already most likely totally off because of table space.

Then in some games it might change the game balance as you can cram mire in the same space; you have to make tests.

This stuff always gives me a headache. Unless your married to your current rules, I would look for rules designed from the get-go for 15mm.

25 to 15 I just keep it in inches.
15 to 6mm it depends. some rule sets keeping the inches actually has the figure scale match up with ground scale but sometimes you want to keep the base size and use more figs – since you are doing skirmish that is probably not a consideration though.

I usually don't change/convert anything.

In theory, stuff like blast templates can be a concern, since they can potentially affect more figures.

Realistically though, it usually works just fine.

I'm sure all of us have done the 6mm "read the distance as cm instead" thing to play on a tiny table :)

Use the rules as is.

To me the ranges end up looking much, much better. A 12" range in 28mm "looks" like 20 yards no matter what the ground scale is. And there's the whole problem of buildings. I once had a game where you could not shoot across a walled compound (it was an 18" compound, my gun had a 16" range).

Even area effect weapons don't usually matter if figures are singly based. They still need to be within command distance, support, etc. And if both sides are on smaller bases, both sides suffer to the same degree.

Frankly, any time I see "designed for xx scale" I just chuckle.

Further note: measuring centimeters can get fiddly when you;re dealing with small numbers….

Yeah, moving troops 3 cm is not fun.

Basic rule: Don't bother changing ranges for the 25/28mm to 15mm shift, play the game as written.

This gets your model scale closer to groundscale, and really helps with the appearance of the game.

Some games you can even push all the way down to 6mm minis without changing the rules-as-written. Battlegroup XYZ (WW2) rules are like this, though it can get difficult to see which model is carrying what weapon.

Other games don't even bother with giving ranged weapons any range limits. If you can see the target, you can hit it (Relic Knights expressly states this). Games like that need lots of hard cover to break LOS.

Or like Crossfire where you have no measurements period :-) (other than "the width of one base" for stuff that's right in your face.