"Ever set an impossible scenario?" Topic

Have you ever set an impossible scenario? One that challenged the players over an evening?

I don't understand the question. Do you mean assign victory conditions that can't be achieved?

What would be the point? Am I missing something?

I've played a few and run a few where players (often on both sides) complained it was impossible to win. Just not intentionally so.

I've even won one that was supposed to be impossible. Turned out not to be….

Like a Kobayashi Maru type of thing? I have run plenty of games where "winning" was more like surviving past a certain point, or inflicting x amount of damage before being overrun.

I've played a few where the objectives are just too far away from the attackers and they are not able to reach them within a evening. It's nothing intentional, just a miscalculation on how many turns there would be.

where the objectives are just too far away from the attackers

Yeah, I've run several games like that. Bummed me out as much as it did the players.

Jim

We've played games where it was a last stand and the goal was to last as long as possible.

I must have a mean streak.

link

I would set up the initial engagement- as my first evenings game.

Thinking of setting up a Boer war encounter….you know the one. Players play the British…you don't need to paint up Boer figures 😜

I have been given suspicious scenario objectives, but these are often just poorly thought through games.

I have played in and setup both, games that turned out to be impossible. Not on purpose, just by mistake. Miscalculation of the strength of the forces involved or the distance to travel verse the time needed to get there, etc.

I have on the other hand played several games of the Two Hour Wargame variety where the PEFs turned out to be impossible to overcome with the forces at hand. Like that time in Hell Hath No Fury when my platoon of five Shermans stumbled into what amounted to an entire company worth of Panthers. Or when my DEA cops kicked in the door on a drug bust and there were twenty four heavily armed thugs on ready to just shred the four of them.

Yeah, regretfully I have and I must say that I was guilty as charged. It was one of the first scenarios I tried to set up and I made a mess of it. Simply put: I didn't calculate how long would take the units involved to reach from point A to point B, which made impossible for the attacking side to accomplish its victory conditions in the time alloted to do it. Not my best moment.

It rather depends what the OP means by impossible. I am sure we have all designed scenarios where by accident it is literally impossible to win as the objectives are too far away etc.

Otoh I've designed and played plenty of games where everybody dies, the trick is ensuring they have fun along the way.

By accident I have designed bad scenatios that ended up as no fun for anybody. Fortunately for all concerned they are few and far between. Some scenarios would be immpossible if you gave them to inexperienced players but where would the fun be in that.

There was a wonderful, impossible, scenario in (I think)Miniature Wargames many years ago. An early submarine, basically a barrel, was to attack shipping in an harbour, using a hand-operated drill to bore holes below the waterline. The stated aim was to destroy the warships and ignore the merchant vessels. The merchant vessels were made of wood and could be penetrated with the drill, however the warships were copper clad and the drill would not penetrate them ! Based on a true story, I understand.

I've played in a few of them, ironically always setup by the same guy and guess whose side was impossible to win. I very politely tried to call these scenarios to his attention but he was offended that somebody figured it out.

I've never purposely setup impossible scenarios. I've made some hard ones and players have made some overly hard on themselves, but nothing you couldn't win.

This post about the beginning of a role playing campaign set in the Warhammer 40K universe is very instructive (and entertaining): link

A referee-designed impossible scenario is workable; a player-designed impossible scenario generally feels as though the guy who designed it has emotional problems and has to win a regardless of skill. A referee-designed impossible scenario that's presented as such up front comes across as stupid if it's impossible on it's own terms: you have to cross the board, but it's not physically possible. On the other hand, if it's presented as "You've been given an impossible task, but the objective is to see how well you can do," that can work. As Martin and others have said, there are also "impossible" scenarios where everybody dies, but the victory conditions are clearly presented in terms of how long you can hold out or how many attackers you can kill. Those can work just fine.

The fiendish, but possibly enjoyable, scenario is presented as achievable, but turns out to be impossible. Here, the psychology of the presentation is important and it works if you have players who enjoy a a role-playing aspect to the games (give the players a "character" each, the characters use the players' names, etc.). The number of turns in the game matters a lot here because the players need time to adapt to the changing circumstances and realize how scr*** ed they are. In a 5 or 6 turn game, there may not be enough psychological "phases" for the players to re-orient themselves and get into the spirit (or dispiritedness) of the thing.

The prototypical setup has a major counter-attack force entering from a flank on turn 4 or 5, while the players start out waging a delaying action against a much-superior attacker. On turn 4 the referee rolls dice and tells the players that the counter-attack is delayed by a turn. The next turn, more dice, another turn of delay. Then more dice and two turns of delay … It's important that the system allows pressure to build and the situation to become more and more desperate without the defenders automatically snapping like a dry twig. If the attackers' objective is to exit the board, not really worrying about wiping out the defenders, the system needs to allow a single defending unit to fire at multiple advancing attackers, so that the attackers can't just swamp on sector and push everyone through. It also needs to make zipping across open terrain in view of unsuppressed defenders very, very dangerous. The defenders should gradually realize that the counter-attack is never coming, that they are sc*** ed, and that they need to make up their own victory conditions!

Another obvious scenario has the players on the attack when more and more reinforcements show up for the defenders, climaxing in a major counter-attack, by which time it should be obvious that the original mission is simply impossible and the attackers need to pull back and hunker down! Oh, by the way, HQ lets you know that you can't just retreat off the map because the enemy will overrun critical rear-area assets, causing this sector to collapse completely. Ooops.

It's OK to have little curveballs in every scenario, but keep them small. If every game has a huge twist, they stop being interesting and the players get so paranoid that they can't get through a scenario because they're playing so cautiously! :)

No. What's the point?

if it's presented as "You've been given an impossible task, but the objective is to see how well you can do,"

I would not call that an impossible scenario. The victory conditions for the game are to achieve as much as possible. The victory condition in the milieu is the impossible part. But I see those as different things.

So, with that as context – yes and no. I have never intentionally set one up, but I have found some to be nearly so (not actually impossible, but waaaaaaaaay too one-sided) during analysis or playtesting.

So my intent was not to set up and impossible scenario, and it was corrected before anyone who didn't know it was a playtest played it.

I have played a few historical WWII engagements where one side is expected to get an overwhelming victory. No one playing was surprised by the scenario. The challenge was for one side to try to do better and the other to live up to the historical result. They were educational and enjoyable battles.

1. Played in a soccer game that the previous player quit. He had a lesser team, was down a goal and down 2 players at the half, with two other players on yellow cards. (Pretty bad die rolling led to that.)

I took over and scored a goal right away to tie, but then my keeper made 6 or 7 incredible saves (needed to roll a 6 on at least 3 of them) and I managed one break away resulting in a goal. So I won 2-1.

2. I designed a scenario which ended up being impossible for one side. It was a large game, where I seriously playtested each section and managed to achieve a good balance in each sector. I thought that the scenario would work fantastic – that is until a bunch of wargamers got ahold of it. The attackers ended up out maneuvering the slower defenders to such an extent that one sector was fighting 3 attackers vs 1 defender as the rest of the defenders were too slow to be able to assist the threatened flank. The attackers managed to roll up the defences one player at a time.

etotheipi:
"I would not call that an impossible scenario. The victory conditions for the game are to achieve as much as possible. The victory condition in the milieu is the impossible part. But I see those as different things."

Sort of my point--the OP didn't define "impossible scenario."

I try to design scenarios with victory conditions that allow both sides an equal chance of winning the game. Winning the battle is a different question.

I have accidentally misjudged the space vs movement thing a time or two. In one event we ran out of playing time before the armies had moved to contact.