"Writing gamey WW2 rules, COH" Topic

I've been working on a number of projects in my various notebooks, every one of them coming back to the idea of RPGs and unit upgrades during campaigns or games.

I'd like to try to create something like the upcoming Company of Heroes board game has done. Porting one of my favorite strategy games on the tabletop (especially the Blitzkrieg mod and other well made mods). Why not just wait till the game launches? Because I want to add my own flavor to this type of genre.

So my idea is to run a table utilizing my 1/72 and 20mm WW2 collection, adding the idea of weapon and unit upgrades plus base building to the mix. Steal some armor facing stuff from ASL and other games for armor combat, while retaining the comic book feel of the game.

You get to buy "base upgrades" and build fortifications during your turn using basic unit abilities and engineers. Resource points need to be captured, like a factory or a fuel dump to get the production going. There could be stuff like "off-map" things going on with partisans or even in a sideboard, where the result of the conflict secures more resources for a side to work with.

The biggest thing I've been focusing on is the combat system. I've created an iteration of the Hero System rules, where damage dice are converted to kill dice, essentially dropping the need to calculate individual figure/squad damages. It might work fine, considering Hero is a D6 -based game at it's core. Cover is a passive modifier, where the hit percentage lowers as cover gets heavier. No cover save dice.

Units have combat values that are compared, as per the Hero rules, and a single roll determines hit vs. miss. Damage is rolled as kill dice like I mentioned earlier.

Unit progression is either by creating special units (with cool figures of course) during the game, or upgrading your units with new weapons that add to the firepower of an existing squad. Things like satchel charges to use against buildings and bunkers, flamethrowers for engineers, the basic stuff seen in CoH. Also, simple things like combat experience could just work as increased combat values, with hit percentages getting better and increased cover utilization/more kill dice per squad.

Also, the Big Men rule from IABSM and CoC should be included, since it's used in Company of Heroes to boost unit capabilities and possible upgrades during the game. Leader units would rally squads and allow for better units to be built.

Anyways, that's just stuff off the top of my head, based on what I've seen in the PC game and what I've written so far in my notebooks.

Read the novel "Band of Brothers". You'll find that what you propose above is a far cry from the historical reality.

Looks like an interesting idea. To port a video game to a board game to a table top game is quite inivative and I look forward to seeing how it goes.

The idea of resources is interesting as we wargamers often seem to have unlimited ammo. Heroes too are good, but Squad Leader showed that good leadership meant a great deal. So mayby Leaders rather than Heroes, but the idea is the same perhaps.

WW2 gaming is a broad church, yes Band of Brothers showed a reality, but that doesn't mean game based WW2 are any less valid I think. Keep up the good work.

Interesting. Much of the infrastructure you're looking for can be found in my Skirmish Action Rules. I added sections on creating characters and heroes to those roles for my Olde West Rules. If you'd like to chat further please email me or use the Contact Us tab on my website.

Good luck!

actionsrules.com

@MajorB: Yes I'm aware of the historical realities, I'm also aware that my quest for realism in rules lead me into a dead-end. I'm a fiction fan. Too Fat Lardies are my favorite rules company, and they are at least trying to come up with realistic systems. I've read a dozen or more books on real combat but I've never seen war up close, nor do I wish to.

@Lee494: All of your rules look like a good deal. I will look forward to buying one of your sets.

@Kropotkin303: I was thinking mainly about the interplay of different unit types (just like in real war, gasp!) when playing the PC game, and I justify special units with the fact that it's fun as heck to put a "SPECIAL SAS COMMANDO UNIT" on the table and expect them to kick everyones ass. The resources thing is the gamey part where you get more goodies for staying in the game longer.

The board-gamey parts that come with building stuff on the fly and upgrading your abilities is just the fact that it's fun as hell when you get to do that in games in general. Dopamine flows as achievements stack up. Growing in power is a common RPG genre thing, and it's been included in numerous action video games since it's so addictive.

This thing is on the drawing board, but with good skirmish rules, and a handful of playtests (probably solo) this will start forming into something useable to share for others.

Thanks BPmasher! I agree having the SAS "kick ass" makes a very fun game. I designed that into my rules so if you decide to try Skirmish Actions make your SAS Elite Combat Quality (CQ 2+) arm them with Tommy Guns (better than STENs) and use the extra Command/Activation Card optional rule and let them do ANY 2nd Action w/o a Qtest. Then watch them wade through the opposition! Enjoy! Lee

Say you were looking for Hollywood-esque and hence some heroic stuff with a lot of rule-bending special rules to add a bucket of flavour.

But you want to do it fairly simply.

You could do worse than look at the Feng Shui mechanics.
I say mechanics because you probably won't want to just use all the abilities straight out the book.

You have heroes and extras.
The extras are the red-shirt types that you know aren't going to last 2 minutes once the action starts.

Characters get schticks which are special rule bending abilities.

There are classes of character which get these out of different groups.

Combat is driven by phases – you have a track per character and group of extras.
I use pins in a piece of foamboard to track this.

And that's about it in essence.

You would invent your own rule-bending schticks which would probably be less powerful than feng shui's.

Maybe invent your own classes as well as the armour / infantry grouping.

Quick example.
A leader schtick could give action points to nearby extras.

Interesting. That would really make it an WW2 RPG -type deal more than anything.

Super commandos and fearsome SS troopers, almost like reading old comics.

Tank combat would need some work though.

I suppose you could have groups if schticks commandoes choose from and another bunch for ss.
The lists can overlap somewhat.

Shooting uses target values. You have a base ability, weapons add, schticks add. You roll 2d6 of different colours one adds, one subtracts. Any 6 gives another roll so you're never totally guaranteed. You'd have armour stats and penetration values. Graphs if you wanted.
You could then add more layers like roll for behind armour effect.

Feng Shui encourages making stuff up as you go. Thriws some people but i found it a liberating breath of fresh air. Especially after the reams of rules Guros we otherwise used.

I based a fantasy system for Harn on Feng Shui. I like the simplicity. Players like special abilities / schticks. And you could do xp for a rpg style campaign.

NUTS came out in 2005 and inspired many of the current rules out there. Here's a review of the latest edition; streamlined mechanics for faster games with same results.

link

I started thinking about the game progression thing. Maybe you would just unlock unit types as you take more ground or advance in victory points. Get xp from kills -> upgrade combat value/veterancy. Get x amount of victory points -> unlock a new doctrine. It would become a selective kitchen sink -game where you start off with basic infantry and engineers, then start adding paras and commandos and whatnot, just like in the PC game.

Some kind of victory point mechanic would be needed to know just when to add new doctrine to the game, and start piling on the advanced units.

Game type could be a factor as well. Start something as a scouting mission with one side hiding all their units, then as the hits the fan, you can use victory points from covered ground to start calling in the heavy artillery in form of tanks, paras and heavier weapons.

"Reinforcements" as they would be stuff in reserve off-map or something. They would have to come in from friendly board edges.

Fog of War is a big thing in the PC game also, so the use of blinds and hidden movement would be key to capture the tension of the battles. SL and ASL have question mark counters to cover up concealed units, which is a really fun mechanic in play, but a drag because the rules seem complicated to remember. A simplified version of this would be something like a concealment/ambush action that a squad can take when in sufficient cover. This also plays in with the fact that it was hard to spot hidden infantry units in Normandy, plus it enables infantry to battle armor more effectively as they close in for bazooka/schreck -range.

Hearing would play a part in locating enemy squads, so the RPG mechanic of perception tests would come in play also. Plotting movement on a paper map before contact, then suddenly you start making perception tests for the men in range to see whether they hear the enemy closing in. As the perception test is passed, you can check the margin of success to see what kind of enemy the squad anticipates, so the commander can start prepping different weapons to account for the type of threat approaching, for example.

A snippet of character and combat rules I'm writing.

So the base system is HERO at the moment. Normal damage = Soft damage (against infantry teams, heroes, etc.) in this game. Killing damage becomes Hard damage (against vehicles, armored targets, bunkers). Endurance becomes Stamina. STUN becomes Shock.

Soft damage is calculated so that light cover gets kills on 5s and 6s. Heavy cover gives kills on 6s. The rest of the dice are added together to come up with Shock damage on the squad.

Let's roll an example team. A german rifle team of five men (figures) with a Combat Value of 5 (2 rank veterancy) and Defense Value of 5 (again, veterancy). They're armed with Kar98ks so that's 2 Soft damage dice per figure.

They have a Shock score of 20 (average healthy men, calculated from average BODY and CONSTITUTION of 10). Recovery is 4 per turn (to reduce Shock over time and regain Stamina). They can take 3 actions per turn. Stamina is 20.

Let's drop Stamina use for the purposes of this example (each attack and movement action in combat takes stamina).

The German team runs into an American leader plus scout team doing recon in their patrol area. They roll a basic perception test of 11- (13 or less) on 3d6. A roll of 7 means success. The rifle team spots the scout team.

Combat starts with a card draw (playing cards). It comes up black, so the Germans go first. The team opens fire with their rifles, targeting both the leader and the scout team. The American scout team is partly obscured by trees and brush (light cover, about 25%), so the Combat Value penalty is -2. The modified Combat Value of 3 (5-2=3) is added to 11, and the scout teams Defense Value of 4 is reduced from the end result. The player rolls three dice against 10- (10 or less), coming up with 10. Just the required roll to hit the squad, but the leader is missed since his Defense Value is 6. The scout team has 2 men, and the damage rolled is 10 (!) dice against them. Doesn't look good for the US team. The roll of two sixes means two men killed, and the rest of the dice add up to 18 Shock. The scout team falls down dead, and the US leader character is left to fend for himself against the rifle team.

Which of the many current sets of rules out there did Nuts inspire?

Seems to be a very convoluted combat results system. What results are you seeking that could not be achieved with a simpler system?

I want to differentiate between Leader/Hero characters and regular squads in my game, so I utilize the base mechanics of the Hero System rules to allow me to add powers to squads and leader types. This and also the fact that I can use the resulting rules to run any genre and type of game I want with whatever minis I want to use. This has been my project for a couple of years, on and off.

The combat system is a result of tweaking a traditional phase/turn mechanic and d6 -based damage rolls into a faster miniatures friendly version, but keeping the STUN damage mechanic to indicate pinning of squads to increase a bit of realism to the combat instead of a binary result of dead vs. alive.

The granularity of the base Hero rules was a challenge to translate into team/squad warfare, whereas a single man combat system was already in place in the rules, but with much increased complexity and "rivet counting" (including counting ammo, stamina use, tracking STUN damage, tracking initiative etc.).

To make this work at squad level, I wanted to keep the powers and awesomeness that comes with an old school system, but make the combat faster (aka figure removal on damage rolls) so the end result is somewhat of a frankenrules result of old concepts married with a more workable mechanic familiar to many war gamers.

Thankfully, the base mechanics all work with d6s and that eases the designing of these rules remarkably. For instance, many Hero source-books list damage by caliber in the rules. The lists are comprehensive, and basically all small arms damage fall into the 1-3D6 dice range, so I just took those damage by caliber values and translated them into my combat system, where each d6 has a chance to kill a single figure. A rifle does 2d6 on average in Hero, so I just multiply the damage dice by the number of figures in a team or a squad. Abstract this by the fact that you pump x number of rounds from a rifle during a variable time frame in combat towards the enemy, and you get my reasoning for giving each d6 a chance to kill.

Tweaking automatic weapons damage was a different kind of challenge, but I came up with acceptable results, and stole some concepts from ASL (another old school favorite) to make the game more interesting.

I'm working on tank combat currently, and again the STUN/Shock damage is a key part of making it work seemingly realistically, where a penetrating hit will cause the crew to be shocked, but not necessarily destroy the vehicle. This is all pulled from my readings of tank combat history and playing other games where a hit does not always mean a burning tank husk.