"Assigning characteristics based on tabletop performance" Topic

Last night was game 3 in our Not Gettysburg.

For the second game in a row Brigadier Cruz failed to advance and attack the Yankees as ordered. In the write up of the previous battle I assigned this to personality clash with General Trump, the brigade he was supposed to be supporting, and he had chosen to interpret his orders in a certain way, which while accurate, left Trump out to dry.

Yesterday he became lost in a wood. I say lost, Stationary would be a better description, again getting a third of the way to the enemy before stopping.

Anyway my opponent and I are increasingly taking the pi…Micky with each failed command roll – obviously Daddy bought his rank in Richmond, funded by the plantation, but it turns out that while the uniform impresses the ladies, actual battles are dangerous, with Yankees trying to shoot you! At one point I became so angry with YET another fail, I covered his (10mm figure) ears so he wouldn't hear the expletive filled rant.

Then I wondered: What if you started a campaign etc with just vanilla units/generals, and assigned traits/bonuses/penalties over the course of the games/campaign.

Examples from Black Powder, but you can adjust for any rules.

All generals start as Command 8. However, Cruz has made just 4, maybe 5, rolls out of 20. Its obvious that he is a poor general, so his Command would drop to 7.

A unit that constantly wins melees would be given the rule that makes them better in hand to hand.

Basically making units live up to their reputation gained at random: They are OBVIOUSLY meant to be x, so let us ensure it.

Obviously only for those who repeatedly defy the odds etc.

I was trying to roll 7 or less on 2d6 – 56% for 10 rolls, and 8 for the other 10, so well over 50/50!

I probably wouldn't formally track – just stuff that was noteworthy at the end of the evening.

My WSS Prussians, despite being near identical to the Austrian Allies, have gained a reputation for standing fast, while the Austrians are tardy and slow to come to battle, and often run. The Prussians always seem to get the run of the dice.

Since I know and have gamed with everyone in our area I always wanted to run a game/campaign with no command bonuses but assigning the commands to the players most like the historical generals. Just afraid it might cause some hard feelings in certain cases.

I have issues with the idea, because of the double dipping.

He's deemed cautious, so he gets a further penalty, that makes him more cautious. He ends up being so useless that he can't be used.

Have you compensated by upgrading some other guy who was deemed cautious but actually passed all his rolls. Otherwise you can end up with a campaign where no-one is normal.

Mark – the thing to remember is dice have no memory (I realise a number of otherwise rational wargamers TOTALLY believe in 'bad dice' etc!).

Take my example. Each game is a division a side ish, and we are doing a multicorp battle at regiment=unit level with BP. Over the course of the battle the dice for 'Cruz'will almost certainly even out. However he has already been established as a slow commander, so what we would be doing is making sure he stays as such. It would actually STOP wild personality swings – he doesn't get tobe rubbish between 10am and 5pm, then suddenly become average or better.

It is actually reverse engineering what we do when translating history to the table. "That unit did this, so we will give them an extra point of morale to simulate that." How do we know that actually what that unit did was roll REALLY good dice? What we do to simulate the history is we make it easier (or harder) for that unit to pass a test, so the historical reaction is more likely.

If the die rolls and stats were secret (ie umpire/computer ruled game), it would be easy to assume that Cruz is a poor general. I made 3 rolls of 8 or less on 2d6, over 11 attempts, then 2 at 7's over 10 rolls.

By lowering his command rating we will ensure consistency.

Likewise shooting in BP is 3 dice, hit on 4+. If over the course of 6 volleys I score significantly more than 9 hits, say 15, then that is a hint that that unit is REALLY good at shooting, so we make it a little easier for them (say reroll misses?) meaning I am more likely to recreate the 15 out of 18 (On average reroll misses gives 13-14 out of 18).

Dice have no memory – the next 18 shots are not affected by the previous really good ones, so I am not rewarding twice.

In a wargaming book by one of the Grand Old Men (either Donald Featherstone or Charles Grant), the author discussed this, and suggested using the traits "normal", "cautious", and "rash". I forget the exact details (and you'd need to adjust for your game system anyway) but the gist was roughly this:

Normal: as per rules, no adjustments.

Cautious: Slow to march and/or attack. March moves take 50% longer than normal. Attack manuevers have a similar penalty, but a slight chance of not be conducted at all (10-15%). [I'd presume that a general/admiral who has effectively disobeyed his C-in-C direct order would be cooking up some plausible excuse like, "My right flank was open. I had to stop III Corps and redeploy them to secure it."]

Rash: Will execute attack orders immediately, perhaps excessively (prematurely committing the reserves, for example). If ordered to defend or hold a position, may disobey and counter-attack on his own initiative (10-15%). Will always pursuing an retreating enemy. [Think of all the cavalry officers who chased the enemy cavalry off the field instead of swinging into the flank of the main line, thus ensuring their side's defeat. The Battle of Ipsus was one such.]

Perhaps the above will be of use to you.

You should indeed be wary of the self-reinforcing effect.

General starts at command rating 8. By sheer bad luck, he fails a number of command rolls. You downgrade him to 7. That makes him miss even more rolls the next game. So we downgrade him to 6. Etc. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the same thing.

The proper thing to do it would be to compare the number of failed or succesful roll against the average expected number. That will vary with lower characteristics.

Another way to implement is is in Chaosium's BRPsystem. A characteristic is expressed as a %score. You need to roll below the score on a D100 to pass the test. However, if at the end of an adventure, the relevant characteristic can be improved, you have to roll higher than the %score to get an improvement. Thus, the higher your % (and the better you are int hat skill), the less likely it is that skill will increase even further.

Back to wargaming: in essence it is indeed the same discussion as national characteristics or different troops types getting bonuses because of "historical conduct". Was their above average performance due to luck, or due to some inherent property. If the first, no bonus should be awarded in the game. if the latter, a bonus is in place.

I probably wouldn't let it go outside the 7-9 base range. If there were a series of spectacular rolls, with lots of negative mods and he still pulled them off, the arguemnet could well be made "He must have absolutely top notch staff with him, make him a 10"

Narrow failures due to an adjustment wouldn't re-inforce, its just a way to assigh/stats, characteristics etc – give a reason for the dice rolls as it were, for the BatRep.

8 on 2d6 is approx 72% chance.

If a commander makes 45%, then you'd make him a 7 (52%)

I'd only reduce him further if he performs significantly less than 52% regularly.

So when he starts rolling in the 56-72% range as a 7 he doesn't make it, because we have established he doesn't!

Can't you just sack him ?

Or just assign him the defensive stretch of the battleline?

Then I wondered: What if you started a campaign etc with just vanilla units/generals, and assigned traits/bonuses/penalties over the course of the games/campaign.

While this looks like fun, I'm not sure what that might represent in a command situation. In the 'real world' no army starts out with:
1. Vanilla generals, where all start out 'equal.'
2. generals of unknown qualities…particularly when they have worked their way up to the position of a commander of divisions and corps.
3. Any and every commander would have a ball-park idea of what kind of subordinates he is commanding, even if he didn't choose them. He can be wrong in his assessment or stuck with idiots, but not for a large percentage of his command… certainly not where any real qualities are expressed randomly only once on the battlefield, even if they remain fairly consistant afterwards.

Just my 2 cents

True of the modern period, but through history we have leaders who get there through birth and patronage. Additionally there is the Peter Principle – he may have been a brilliant regimental/battalion commander, but in H&M when you get to Brigadier you are no longer worrying about one contiguous line, you have a lot more on your plate.

Also when we write a scenario we assume that certain units must be really good because of their performance – the Inniskillins stood at Waterloo despite huge casualties. How do we know that they didn't just keep rolling Double 6 on their morale throw?!

True of the modern period, but through history we have leaders who get there through birth and patronage. Additionally there is the Peter Principle – he may have been a brilliant regimental/battalion commander, but in H&M when you get to Brigadier you are no longer worrying about one contiguous line, you have a lot more on your plate.

Last Hussar:
That isn't the point. The point is that most any commander would know those things about his subordinates, however they got to their position. The subordinate who is a *complete* unknown on the battlefield would be very rare. Wellington was forced to take several ringers as subordinates, some demonstratably mad. Erskine comes to mind. However, Wellington knew the man's reputation and wasn't surprised by his performance…only aggrevated.

Also when we write a scenario we assume that certain units must be really good because of their performance – the Inniskillins stood at Waterloo despite huge casualties. How do we know that they didn't just keep rolling Double 6 on their morale throw?!

If you can't answer that question for your scenario, I wouldn't create it. You are the one establishing what those die rolls represent and it is your research that is being used. The question is whether the commanders BEFORE the battle knew the Inniskillins were good. Or was it a matter of 'having no idea' how they would perform? That is a historical research question that when answered, would be pretty easy to model, I would think. IF you can't answer it, then there is no answer to your question and nothing to model.

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We are learning about a general's performance the same way – by observation. No one knows how someone will fit into a job until they start doing it.

No one knows if a unit will be better or worse until they have seen the elephant. We may say 'This army is better than that one' because of training and tradition, but an individual unit's individuality you can't tell until they have had time to show it.

We are learning about a general's performance the same way –by observation. No one knows how someone will fit into a job until they start doing it.

Last Hussar:
That is true to a point. However, if someone has been a competent soldier for twenty years and is then suddenly your subordinate, is is reasonable to assume he is starting from square one, a complete unknown who could be anywhere on the competency spectrum? Is that how we are told it works? Obviously, anyone in a new job will have a 'shake-down cruise', part honeymoon, part experimentation. And just as obvious, some succeed and some fail… the "Peter Principle" you mentioned… however, that isn't the same thing as being a complete unknown. From my experience, if someone is promoted to a high set of responsibilities, one of the first questions is how many other promotions has the person had and how well did they do there? The expectations, for good reason, are much more solid for the person that has enjoyed several successful promotions to more responsibility compared to the person with their first promotion. The latter *might* be considered an unknown, but even then such considerations are based on the person's history [of observations] and not a complete mystery.

No one knows if a unit will be better or worse until they have seen the elephant. We may say 'This army is better than that one' because of training and tradition, but an individual unit's individuality you can't tell until they have had time to show it.

That's not what experienced soldiers say. It is true a unit's performance is never a certainty, regardless of the past performance or experience, but military men can and did 'ball-park' the quality of different-sized units, however new or unknown, by various factors with a significant degree of accuracy. It is a survival skill for a commander, if nothing else. It is very dangerous to go into battle with a complete unknown.

In other words, no one can know for absolute certainty how a new unit will perform in their first battle, but knowing how well they were prepared gave a fair amount of confidence… which was the whole point of training etc. Any model of this relationship between preparation, command capabilities and the lack of unit combat experience would narrow the band of possible/probable behaviors.

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About the quality of the officer. At the end of this thread I gave an account of an officer and men with NO experience and how that was viewed by the officer.

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