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"Fighting Sails - questions for Ryan Miller after first games" Topic


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Lt Col Pedant09 Jul 2015 1:32 p.m. PST

I suppose it's ironic that SPI's "Fighting Sail" was one of the best Age of Sail games there has been.

devsdoc09 Jul 2015 2:29 p.m. PST

I like folks that shout big, but hide who they are!
I'm glad that you think one game is better than an other. It's your right. My right is not to listen.
Be safe, for the last time.
Rory

dantheman09 Jul 2015 8:24 p.m. PST

Ryan GOOD JOB on the rules!!! Thanks!!!

If immersion is your goal, and want a game that draws in non naval buffs, then you hit your mark. It is not broken. I think you are overreacting to criticisms from those who are deep into naval history and gaming. Many don't like Black Powder, too gamey with all the die rolls. However, many do like it because it is simple and quick and gives enough flavor for the period. Your rule set addresses those people who like Black Powder.

I am the one who ran the Trafalgar game at NJCON with the two ships that prematurely sunk from ahistorical gunnery. No, I did not like it. However the fix is simple. Limit the max damage in a broadside. Just ignore two sentences in the QRS. Done. That is the only change I would make at this point for my next game. I fully intend to try them again, with a group of gamers that aren't heavily into naval.

With regards to tacking, modifying the rules is unnecessary given the intent of the game. Yes they are technically crude to those that know Age of Sail, and it was criticized in my game. However, the simplified wind rose and die roll system is digestible to non naval buffs. The general impact is the same, you don't want to be in irons. Adding rules for accuracy defeats the intent of this ruleset.

The morale system is fine. You just need to clarify the accounting as is.

I wargame every week and I have enough ships painted and rigged to do every naval action from the Seven Years War on. I own many of the current rule sets out there and played most of the others as well. I like many of them, but I am pulling teeth to get my friends to play. I run few naval games. This ruleset can draw them in. For those who want more accurate rules, and have friends that want to play them, then by all means use those rule sets. I just can't get anyone other than naval heads to play them.

The last thing I need is another detailed 'accurate' ruleset.

Dan

Volleyfire10 Jul 2015 2:31 a.m. PST

Personally I am a little surprised at the author's frank admissions in his last post coming so soon after publication, although they are welcome, especially his suggested alterations. However I think v2 would be a big improvement, and although I can see some of my friends who aren't 'naval heads' playing v1 even they would quibble over some of the results as not being realistic, so I think some alterations are in order if we are to continue playing these instead of using our, until now, current favourite Blood Bilge and Ironballs.

lincolnlog10 Jul 2015 6:06 a.m. PST

I don't think there are many people in the current gaming community playing simulation. I did when I was younger. But let's face, you can't find a group that wants to play simulations any more. And remember when Con game periods used to be 6-8 hours, well now the standard is 4 hours.

Also, let face it, new rules sell because people have different tastes and likes in gaming. Rory likes the tokens, I prefer light record keeping. That's one of my main dislikes of this game, excessive die rolling. Is it broke, no not if you love to roll dice! Light record keeping could have eliminated 90% of the die rolling.

I respect Ryan for writing the rules, and respect everyone who likes them and wants to play them. They simply aren't for me. I'll probably give Ares set a try when they eventually publish them. But there's a good chance I'll say they went too far on record keeping (to the heavy side). They love chits, as much as this group loves dice. But you can convert SoG to work without chits and not alter the rules by a single letter. You cannot eliminate dice rolling from this game without altering the game meta.

I had an expectation of quick play rules that would handle all rates of ships as individual units. Rory is correct that this game works best as a SoL combat game. The game I played, while it had 9 ships on the board, only 1 was an SoL. I'll be the first to admit we didn't stress the rules using an appropriate scenario. However, the game we played stretched the distaste for the excessive die rolling. Dice add luck and fog of war to a game. But I want a game to be won or lost based on the tactics employed, by both my opponent and myself and not by an over extended gamey, I have get lucky to roll initiative, I have to get a lucky roll to move, I have to get a lucky roll to shoot, I have to get a lucky roll to avoid damage, I have to get a lucky roll to repair damage, I have to get a lucky roll to see if I strike my colors, to board, to entangle, to disentangle, etc… The guys that played felt the game was very GW luck dependent.

One thing I mentioned prior: I have a competent captain, a competent crew (not maybe the best on the 7 seas but competent), based on the scale of the game, the variance in ship speed would be minimal enough the all this rolling for sailing points is a waste of time. An admiral or commodore of the time would have been able to gauge each ships basic capabilities in their squadron, and formation sailing was possible. Yes there was variance on station keeping, sure there was. Does that need to modeled in the game that the ground stale is probable 100-150 yards per inch. Remember ships of this period were slow anyway (max of the most quick and nimble around 14 knots under full sail and with the wind at the most favorable angle, larger ships were much slower).

Also, initiative in games like this can really throw the game to a lucky die roller. Alternating movement and shooting (if you really just have simultaneous fire which I believe is best) gives even the initiative loser an opportunity to apply tactical reasoning in setting a priority of action. You can in this game as written the side that shoots first is going to have over tactical advantage.

Ryan, appreciate you listening, and having a thick skin. This game is not to my personal liking. You did sell me a copy and I don't regret purchasing them (and the price point on this game is excellent). I don't want a simulation but I also don't want a game that is this heavily luck based. I want to play and opponent, not my dice. Light record keeping is preferable to me over tons of dice rolling, simply because it saves time. Light record keeping also allows for greater variance in units provided without adding special attributes or skills. Carry on and keep up the good work, no publisher is going to please everyone, every work will have its fans and detractors. They are both right and both wrong from their points of view.

Bob

devsdoc10 Jul 2015 4:26 p.m. PST

Bob,
Off the top of my head, I can not think of a set of rules that use models that does not use Logs in one form or another.
I liked the idea of no paper-work game. I'm going to use them again this Thursday. I think we are going to have a think about what Ryan said above.
I will go on and back to other rules. Some will be gamey some not! I also must think about what you say and your point about just luck.
I too think Ryan is brave to say what he said. I will say the idea of paper-free rules for big games is a fun thing.
Sorry Ryan, for small (numbers) games I would not use your
rules.
Be safe
Rory

Blutarski11 Jul 2015 5:18 a.m. PST

Warning – Blutarski rant.

It seems to me that the concept of maximum simplicity and ease of play has come to dominate the wargame rule design process and that the pursuit thereof has driven historical accuracy to what is now comic book levels. This is very troubling to me. If the definition of wargaming is to approximate (in other words: "simulate") the experience of warfare on a tabletop, it follows that SOME reasonable degree of historical accuracy must be represented in the rules. Why do we paint up all those lovely military miniatures if the game we play with them bears zero relationship to what those models historically represent?

This is not an indictment of ease of play as a design concept. Everyone is familiar with those famous wargame excursions into the extremities of simulation ("Drang nach Osten", "Tractics", etc), in which the ultimately fruitless pursuit of maximum historical accuracy created game mechanics so complicated and burdensome as to make the game effectively unplayable. But I submit that an equally unpalatable situation exists at the opposite end of the spectrum, where any pretense toward historical accuracy is sacrificed upon the altar of ease of play. The game of Checkers is played with impressively simple rules and absolutely zero record-keeping. Great game. But Checkers is not wargaming.

Rant over. Normal broadcasting will now be resumed.

B

Personal logo War Artisan Sponsoring Member of TMP11 Jul 2015 9:51 a.m. PST

Agreed, Blutarski; you are not the only one who finds this trend disturbing. Assuming one is designing a game in a historical setting, a design goal of "ease of play" is not a license to depart from the history. A simple, historical game will portray fewer aspects of the history than a complicated one, but thats no excuse for those aspects to be portrayed inaccurately.

One the other hand, if your goal is to design a simple, quickly playable game but its mechanics do not conform very closely to the historical record, why put it in a historical setting when an infinite number of fictional or fantasy settings are possible? (Man o' War and Dreadfleet come immediately to mind.)

To his credit, Ryan Miller never claimed to be writing a historical simulation (it was the advertising copywriters at Osprey who gave it that gloss – his own description of the game makes it sound more like an "anti-simulation") but aimed at "immersion" in a game where the players could put out some pretty ships, roll some dice and "have a blast". In this, he was successful (although it clearly would have benefited from some serious playtesting – I blame Osprey for this, also, since that's an issue for which his editor should have taken responsibility).

The historical "fluff" he included, which, in fact, constitutes more than half of the book, was very nice. Many historical game designers (including myself) could take a lesson from how this was done, adding, as it did, an attractive veneer of historical flavor. However, it indicated a sort of cognitive dissonance, layered, as it was, over a system in which the ships and commanders behave in very unhistorical ways.

Jeff

devsdoc13 Jul 2015 5:05 a.m. PST

I can see both points and understand them too!
Sometime I just want to show-off lots of my ships at once, and play a simple game.
Be safe
Rory

Dobber13 Jul 2015 8:11 a.m. PST

Mr Miller + all,
I have played 2 games of fighting sail now, and I'll say that my opinion on them has swung from a solid "meh" to "we really like these!" our first game was a 300 point game played "straight from the book" half the issue was it was the first play, the other half was, although they had equal points, it seemed to me that my side had a preponderance of frigates, while the other side was amply supplied with third rate and bigger. Admittedly I arrived to the game late (damn you work!) and when I got there my orders pretty much amounted to "take that squadron of 6th rates and fight off that first rate!" my other issue was the rather generous seeming rake arcs. when closing with afore mentioned, spanish 1st rate, I was closing in a position where in most rules I would not be an eligible target, but I was subjected to a bow rake from a 1st rate. poor frigate…

So with this in mind, I set about playing my second test game. I tightened up the rake arcs a little, and as i was explaining the turn sequence to the players, we came to the conclusion that fire should be simultaneous. so thats what we did and we played a 500(+) point game with 6x 5th rates per side, with the brits having a 1st, 4x 3rds, and a 4th, while the spaniards had Santissmia Trinidad and 5x 3rd rates. 1.5 hours later we had 3 completely new players and one who had played once before who had completed a very enjoyable game.

so our thoughts were simo fire phase, (one of the players thinks an initiative order shooting phase would be too harsh) tighten up the rake arcs (I wanted a perfect "T" but we ended up on agreeing on "a line drawn between the receivers masts to the shooters mainmast, in an arc between the other 2 masts, no rakes at long range" and I like the In irons rules that Ryan proposed, I'm going to try them.

I'm looking for a good campaign game to run (map based preferably) with these as the tactical rules. see some good progress in a campaign in a evening.

we thought the morale rules work well in a campaign setting, but if we wanted an epic brawl fest up the morale to 20%

the other thing that the rules did rather well was show just how useful 3rd rates are. they just work well.

lincolnlog13 Jul 2015 9:50 a.m. PST

I agree with the observation that war gaming has been excessively dumbed down. I also agree that easy to play doesn't have to equate to historically/technically inaccurate. Our hobby is always trying to attract young fresh players. Young people today have the attention span of an insect (and yes, I realize that this is a gross generalization).

The difficulty is how to strike the balance between historical/technical accuracy and playability. For instance, Harpoon 1st through third editions, very playable. Harpoon 4th edition, while maybe the most historically and technically accurate to date, not so much. The previous editions may have slightly sacrificed a small amount of technical accuracy, but the game was several orders more playable.

A good game that uses simple mechanics yet seems to model the era it portrays is Bolt Action. Yes there is luck in the order the activation dice are drawn, but there is the tactic of prioritizing activations for the greatest tactical advantage. This activation system works much better than most IGOUGO systems.

Looking at a game likes Sails of Glory, that poorly handles more that a few ships simultaneously, what could have been done to make the game feel like a sailing ship game without bogging it down? First plotting turns in advance is just counter intuitive IMHO. Get rid of reloading, in a fleet game make the time factor great enough that every ship can fire every turn. Gunnery should not reduce to 0 or near 0, I actually like Ryan's system better, or reduce gunnery by thirds. Get rid of the chits, gaaaa, I hate em. Paper record keeping is more stable.

lincolnlog13 Jul 2015 9:55 a.m. PST

Simultaneous fire is the way to go, I also think there should be initiative based alternating movement.

That still won't help all the dicing but those two things would help a lot. Interesting that very few are playing RAW.

Dobber13 Jul 2015 4:40 p.m. PST

lincolnlog,
we still used the initiative based movement. our group has no issue with all the dicing, we are definitely fans of rolling lots of dice, but can go with any mechanic if the game is good.

for what we are looking for, a game that plays in a hour or two with at least 10 ships a side, we feel that counters are more suitable than paper book keeping

Mr Miller,
I hope no offense is taken at modifying your baby. after saturday's game, there were many outbursts of "I really like this game!"

Ryan Miller14 Jul 2015 12:12 p.m. PST

No worries here – it's not my game anymore, it's yours! I'm just happy you're having fun with it :)

Ryan Miller14 Jul 2015 12:29 p.m. PST

As for the discussion of accessibility vs. historicity, I think it's a very interesting topic. I don't want to hijack this thread though, so if one of you guys started a new thread on it I would be happy to offer my own opinions on the subject.

devsdoc14 Jul 2015 1:30 p.m. PST

Ryan,
Start one yourself
Be safe
Rory

freewargamesrules16 Jul 2015 8:27 a.m. PST

A good game that uses simple mechanics yet seems to model the era it portrays is Bolt Action.

This is a very flawed argument. Bolt Action may use simple mechanics but it does not protray WW2 at all. It's a sci fi game with WW2 figures. WW2 tactics don't work in BA. The author admitted later he never researched WW2 tactics or weapon ranges.

As for Fighting Sail I find it a fun game that allows me to push ships around the table, have a bit of fun with no bad record keeping like some other AoS games I have tried and binned.

Lt Col Pedant16 Jul 2015 11:59 a.m. PST

@ freewargame:

Are you implying that Fighting Sail plays like a Sc-Fi game: e.g Battleship (of the Line) taken out by a 3rd Rate (star cruiser)?

devsdoc16 Jul 2015 12:28 p.m. PST

Did I hear something Buzzzzzing??????
Be safe
Rory

Lt Col Pedant26 Jul 2015 5:01 a.m. PST

You don't say, Doc?

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