ochoin | 12 Nov 2015 3:39 p.m. PST |
In the early days of wargaming it was a staple that every gamer wrote & used his own rules. In terms of hobbies & sports, that alone made wargaming unique. Today, the plethora of commercial rule sets have changed this. Having just "finished"* writing a SYW set, I am curious to know how many of us still follow the old tradition of writing & gaming with our own "home groan" rules? * like with creating wargaming armies: are you ever done tinkering?
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Cosmic Reset | 12 Nov 2015 3:58 p.m. PST |
The vast majority of my gaming is with homegrown rules, and no, I'm never done tinkering. |
Bill McHarg | 12 Nov 2015 4:00 p.m. PST |
My forays into this have been very disappointing. My brother tried it with a set of sailing ship rules. Apparently both fleets were completely destroyed in about 3 turns. So maybe that gift for rule writing doesn't always exist. :) Do you have a blog where you post your rules? While I don't write my own, I am more than happy to try other people's rules. |
MajorB | 12 Nov 2015 4:04 p.m. PST |
A number of the rule sets I use are home grown. |
John Armatys | 12 Nov 2015 5:04 p.m. PST |
Most of the games I play are with home grown rules. I prefer them, they are normally more simpler than commercial rules (although there seems to be a trend for simpler rule sets). Fans of DIY games might like to join Wargame Developments wargamedevelopments.org |
Timbo W | 12 Nov 2015 5:15 p.m. PST |
Often adapted rules, cherry picking the bits I like out of several sets and combining them, then maybe adding a few twists. |
Doug MSC | 12 Nov 2015 5:40 p.m. PST |
I have always wrote my own rules and tinker with them from time to time, but try to keep them pretty simple. All the guys that game with me use them and the new ones pick them up quickly. Loads of fun are had by everybody. From 8 to 16 players show up when I put on a game once a month. I have a number of dads and sons that play and the kids ages range from 14 to college. We have cops, school teachers, and a variety of players who come when they can make it. We game in 40mm, the games being Medieval, FIW, AWI and ACW. |
LaserGrenadier | 12 Nov 2015 5:41 p.m. PST |
I wrote my own rules for fantasy, FIW, ACW, FPW and science fiction; everything except WW2 and Modern. |
warwell | 12 Nov 2015 6:24 p.m. PST |
Often adapted rules, cherry picking the bits I like out of several sets and combining them, then maybe adding a few twists. I'm like Timbo W. Most of the rules I use are "home grown" although I ripped off mechanics from commercial sets. |
gamertom | 12 Nov 2015 7:03 p.m. PST |
I tend to modify rule sets I like to the degree they might as well be home grown. I have written a few completely home grown rules. |
Frederick | 12 Nov 2015 7:50 p.m. PST |
I wrote my own rules a long time ago and still write simple rules sets, usually for the kids |
TMPWargamerabbit | 13 Nov 2015 12:12 a.m. PST |
Home and local group Napoleonic (and FRW) written rules. Still in use with the gaming group since 1975. Examples of play posted to the Wargamerabbit blog. |
Shaun Travers | 13 Nov 2015 2:40 a.m. PST |
I seem to play some rules, tinker a bit and play them, tinker a lot and play them; and then write my own that may or may not have any passing resemblance to any of the previous tinkered rules. |
Martin Rapier | 13 Nov 2015 2:45 a.m. PST |
I still write my own rules, I regard it as an interesting intellectual challenge. Having developed a set which works, I will often lose interest and move on to something else. I usually have two or three sets of ww2 rules on the go at any one time. I sometimes inflict these on my unfortunate gaming pals. |
ochoin | 13 Nov 2015 3:44 a.m. PST |
I guess no one would bother to write rules unless they felt some dissatisfaction with published sets. However, I don't think that's the main motivation. Martin (above) refers to an intellectual challenge, which I think sums it up for me. Just as one has to read about a period before starting to create an army, one has to read -lots- in order to write rules. The challenge is to transform this research into gaming mechanisms which approximate historical combat. It's something I may well try again with another period. |
M C MonkeyDew | 13 Nov 2015 9:48 a.m. PST |
Always writing new things, revisiting old ones, and tinkering with the work of others. That's half the fun. Bob |
Bob the Temple Builder | 13 Nov 2015 9:54 a.m. PST |
Terrement, I am the membership secretary of Wargame Developments. I hope that either John Armatys or I can answer any questions that you might have. |
Bob the Temple Builder | 13 Nov 2015 11:53 a.m. PST |
Terrement, I have tried to send you an email, but if it hasn't arrived try the following … but without the gaps! wargamer 1950 @ gmail. com |
Who asked this joker | 13 Nov 2015 1:52 p.m. PST |
Most of the rules I play these days are my own concoctions. Some are based on other works and others are my very own. I generally like the simplicity of the old school games better than most modern games. |
Old Contemptibles | 16 Nov 2015 11:25 a.m. PST |
Both our battalion/regimental AWI and battalion level Napoleonics are homegrown. I am in the process of writing a set of homegrown 2nd Boer War rules. My motive for these homegrown rules comes from not being able to find a set of commercially available rules that I like. It allows me and my local club to customize them to our taste. |
Russ Lockwood | 16 Nov 2015 12:09 p.m. PST |
challenge is to transform this research into gaming mechanisms which approximate historical combat. Precisely. Try rules as written a few times (always takes more than one playing to get the rules 'right'), and then, tweak to taste (or scrap). The rub is how much detail you're willing to tolerate, and thus, the differences of opinion. |
ochoin | 18 Nov 2015 12:57 p.m. PST |
I wonder what the reaction would be if you turned up at a local rugby or cricket club with a set of your own rules which you insisted on playing? We're on add lot, we wargamers. |
Mark Strachan | 20 Nov 2015 1:18 p.m. PST |
I have pretty much written my own rules since I started gaming in 1972 and doubtless will continue to do so so long as I am gaming. What I have learned is that over the years there has been very little new in wargames rules since von Reisswitz wrote Kriegspiel in 1824. All wargames rules, commercial or homegrown, have borrowed or expanded on the same themes of move, shoot, melee and morale since that time. All of them involve moving model soldiers on a table and rolling dice or drawing cards to determine combat outcomes. The real art of rules writing is organising those mechanisms to capture the flavour of the period. |
Old Contemptibles | 20 Nov 2015 4:38 p.m. PST |
If there were a published set of rules that checked off all my boxes then I would buy them. |
MajorB | 21 Nov 2015 3:20 p.m. PST |
All of them involve moving model soldiers on a table and rolling dice or drawing cards to determine combat outcomes. I know of several that don't. See back issues of "The Nugget": link |
etotheipi | 23 Nov 2015 5:04 a.m. PST |
I published my home grown rules and they have been static with no fiddling for a few decades. The intellectual challenge comes from designing scenarios, not rules. I wonder what the reaction would be if you turned up at a local rugby or cricket club with a set of your own rules which you insisted on playing? On the pitch, I was often accused of doing just that. :) |
Ottoathome | 23 Nov 2015 11:19 a.m. PST |
Write my own. Don't even look at commercially published rules any more. Waste of time. |
Weasel | 23 Nov 2015 11:26 a.m. PST |
You could say I do on occasion :-) But I buy and play as many other designs as I play my home. Like the variety. |
Ottoathome | 23 Nov 2015 1:31 p.m. PST |
The sticking point is that no one knows the rules. I remember once a game I played at a convention which was the new and popular "Skunk Powder" rules. The game allegedly had THREE experts on the other side. Immediately the thing broke down into a running discussion among the three experts as to how the rules ran. None of these were the GM. It became apparent that one of them was playing the game by "Napoleons Buttons", another by "Umpires, Ego's and Liars," and the third by "On to Guadalcamole." (the 18th century adaption of "(On to Hogslobber Hollow). The genuine rules of Skunk Powder had merged into a pastiche of every other rule system they knew and none of them were in fact an expert in anything. That's the problem, no one reads the rules any more and therefore they become unworkable and are quickly abandoned for a new 100/100 (over 100 pages and 100 dollars) set which becomes another part of the stew. Save your money, save your time, write your own. You'll probably come up with something much better. The people who design these things are no smarter or more clever than you are. |
etotheipi | 25 Nov 2015 6:53 a.m. PST |
I don't think smarter or cleverer is the correct concern. I believe that the vastly overwhelming majority of people are intellectually capable of doing what they decide to do. But that is the crux – they have to decide not just to do it, but to put the requisite effort into it. The type of work required to design and playtest a set of rules is not interesting to everyone. |
Who asked this joker | 17 May 2016 4:50 p.m. PST |
I believe that Otto hit the nail on the head. His (very) thinly veiled example above is the size of a small novel. It is written in a narrative style not unlike another old rules set called Little Wars. Unlike Like Little Wars, the text is much more dense, the page count is many times longer and the rules are much more complex. In case you were wondering, I could not get through them. That is the fair of rules these days. 1 large tomb followed by many smaller codices. So long as there are pretty pictures, it will sell. Our hobby is very time consuming. We have to paint the armies. Sometimes it is one (1!) person doing all the painting. We have to read the rules. We have to make the terrain. We have to setup the scenario. We have to playtest the thing. Then, if all goes well, we get to play the game for real! It is no wonder that games like DBA or Mighty Armies are popular these days. Low figure count. Small table size. Few rules to remember. Scenarios are often random or setup on the fly. I have come to the same conclusion as Otto. I write my own. Not because I think I am somehow better or more clever but because I can write very simple rules that suit me, my budget and my time constraints. |
Old Contemptibles | 18 May 2016 12:54 p.m. PST |
We took some online free AWI rules and then, with the Author's permission, heavily modified them into being our own set of house rules. Does that count? |
Great War Ace | 18 May 2016 4:11 p.m. PST |
I've never taken up commercially available rules. The most that I've ever played aside from my own stuff is a handful of test games here or there. I design my own games so that I can understand them! |
Wolfhag | 20 May 2016 9:18 a.m. PST |
At first I played commercially available rules and enjoyed them. Then the more I read and researched I found the games did not reflect what I wanted to get out of them either because the abstractions didn't have the right feel. etc. I tried revising and adding modifiers. That didn't really work as you didn't know exactly the designer left out or abstracted into the game. What turns me off about some of the popular games today is they seem to be based on a tricky abstracted dice mechanic that can be applied to any period of warfare. Example: A tank can hit on a 4+ or 5+ at long range. So can an Elf Bow, slingshot, pistol and rail gun. It does have the advantage of being universal and easy for pick up games for people with no knowledge of the rules or period. For me it misses on the real experience of the game and period and what makes the tactics and weapons different. I write my own spending more time on writing than playing but for me that's fine. Wolfhag |
Sgt Slag | 20 May 2016 2:28 p.m. PST |
I wrote a set of rules, self published them. Taught classes to both children and adults, through the local Community Education program, using my rules to introduce the students to wargaming. Had loads of fun doing it all, but as a commercial venture, it was a flop. I sold less than 200 copies, making very little profit in the process… Like I said, it was loads of fun, and I learned a great deal, but it was not profitable. To those who manage to successfully market their rule sets, I salute you! Cheers! |
Ghecko | 20 May 2016 5:20 p.m. PST |
Wrote my own – available for free at runtus.org for those who are interested. |
christot | 22 May 2016 11:41 p.m. PST |
Writing a set of WWII rules at the moment, more for my own amusement than anything else. I doubt I'll even ever get to play them, well, hopefully I will, but as an exercise its more about crystalizing my own ideas on the period into a cogent form and to see if that fits with what I read. I have no desire to come up with anything radical, most of my ideas are pinched from elsewhere. The fun is fitting it all together in a way that is still playable. I find writing the rules is pretty painless, its working out the editing and format to make them comprehendable which is the tricky part |
Last Hussar | 05 Jun 2016 5:54 p.m. PST |
If you've ever joined in a medieval game at a UK convention called "My Kingdom for a Horse" those are mine – I found out a guy at the club was using them for participation games. By found out I saw him at Newbury and said 'Hi… hold on these look familiar'! link (Please note- Rule Number One when Sunjester and I play is actually "Open a beer") These are based off a Dark Age set I wrote for a show in Dunstable 25 years ago, so my previous club could run a participation game (I re-enacted, and my thegn was chair of the club). I'm currently returning to a WW2 set I wrote ?8? years ago, but never finished after discovering TFL for TW&T + IABSM. The reason for writing them was to try a different way of resolving combat- Delayed Hit Resolution. You mark the target with the amount of Fire Points it received, but do not resolve them until it activates. the To Hit number depends on the action that the player declares upon activating. You'll see a pattern in my WW2 rules (see my High Level thread) in that it was to take the certainty out the game – you can't fire until you get a suppress, then close assault – it was a judgement call; "Ok that section has 5 FP (ie weight of fire) on it- think that's worth the risk". It also meant the owning player had a judgement call to make when activating- do you try and move a unit, meaning it was easy to hit, just fire, or do the safest thing and hunker down to let the fire pass? A pin or worse result means the unit doesn't act. |
RetroBoom | 09 Jun 2016 12:01 p.m. PST |
Last Hussar, my home-brew is using the exact same technique! I first encountered it years ago in Phil Yates' Red Poppy White Feather, and dismissed it as un-cinematic, but in revisiting those rules recently I thought it was rather brilliant and have been trying to implement them into Hail of Fire. I think its a really interesting approach. |
Elenderil | 17 Jun 2016 5:33 a.m. PST |
Like others here I have used some rules straight as written, others with house amendments and written my own from scratch. Writing from scratch teaches a lot about a period, mainly how much you don't know, or how wrong the stuff you did know actually is! I don't write for profit but for the enjoyment of applying my understanding of a period (after doing the research)to creating a set of rules that work (or don't. It sometimes ends with me giving up as a rule concept I have in mind simply won't work in a nice straight forward way in other cases I end up with something that I really like. Until I try I don't know which one I will end up with. As Terrement said earlier "A mans gotta know his limitations" and there are some periods or types of warfare where I find I'm in way over my head. Naval is one of those where I can't come up with a satisfactory set of mechanisms. I'm currently playing around with WW1 dogfight rules but the formula used to determine things like roll rate and snap turn rate v sustained roll rate are turning my brains to mush even with excel spreadsheets to help. As a result I will probably use dumbed down mechanics borrowed (stolen!!!) from other sets to avoid the headaches. But the attempt has taught me a lot about why one aircraft behaved in a different way to another. |
Henry Martini | 17 Jun 2016 5:55 p.m. PST |
I've only attempted rules writing once, and only because the subject matter was ludically virgin and unique, and it was the only way rules for it were going to happen . It required a LOT of reading from a broad range of literary sources to identify the key tactical features that would inform the core mechanics of the rules, but it was a subject I'd read widely on anyway purely out of interest. The extent and intensity of the research, plus play testing and rewriting, required to do a set of rules that can make any claim to historical faithfulness full justice should deter all but the keenest enthusiast. That's why I'm happy to use commercial rule sets for periods outside my particular field of expertise. |
bobm1959 | 30 Jun 2016 5:50 a.m. PST |
I've always written rule sets. I've generally been happy to use commercial sets too. I've had a variety of reasons for producing my own; to add more "fun" into a game or to speed up play so the game ends in a single session being the commonest drivers. The ideas pulled together in my own sets have often originated in those produced commercially although not necessarily for the period I use them. However if I'm playing a commercial set I like to play them "straight" rather than tweak them. Not really sure why beyond a curiosity about exactly what type of game the designer had in mind. I find the compulsive tweakers often start this process before they're close to finding any of the nuances of the game and therefore never really understand it. They often move quickly on to the next set….and start the same process over again. |
scottjames | 30 Jun 2016 7:40 a.m. PST |
I see many of you have been wargaming much longer than I have, and most likely outside of the GW bubble. It looks like in the earlier days, or in the historical scene, or both, it's more common to tweak and write your own rules. I started wargaming with Warhammer in the 90s. We played the rules straight, as teenagers with no historical influence and no Featherstone etc. to learn from, we all throught the rules were written by divine beings or something (not really, we were just young). And not tweaking the rules even if we thought they were nonsense carried on for years after. Silly really, looking back. Some of my friends still play GW, and only GW, and still don't touch the rules. I'm just getting into historical myself and reading up on the origins of the hobby in general and I'm really looking forward to trying out my own rules and modifications – especially in solo play, something I've never considered until now but have been enjoying recently. bobm1959 – I agree with you when you say it can take a long time to learn the nuances of the game. It's unfair to assume it's not well thought out and hasn't been worked hard on, or that you get it completely enough to do better so soon. I am learning Regimental Fire and Fury right now and I must say, the rules do seem really well thought out because each time I think I "know" them and understand why they're designed a certain way, I find some other nuance or evidence of very careful thought and planning. I wouldn't want to tweak them for a long time to come.. Yes. You've all enjoyed your freedom more than me so far. I'm sometimes sad I didn't get into wargaming in a more "open" way, but then if it wasn't for Warhammer back when I was a spotty teenager, I might never have got into it at all so it's swings and roundabouts I suppose! |