"General Quarters 3.3" Topic

A question regarding these rules. They are very good and give an exciting game. Im intrigued, though, what the reasoning is behind using D12s for the main gunnery dice. Its not a criticism. I was just wondering.

There was an explanation about the dice choice while GQ3 was being developed with discussion on the generalquarters yahoo group but they have all been nuked. I don't know if Mal Wright (Australia) is still active but he was the one of the playtesters.

12-sided dice provide for greater granularity of outcomes.

There is even the option to use D20s instead of the 12 sided dice, without changing the combat tables at all, by ignoring the 13 – 20 results – those are misses, gun or shell failures, etc..

The D20s are used in case you think the combat tables are too lethal, from a historical and turn length perspective, which I suspect they are, so players don't get bored or frustrated.

I would like to use GQ as my only set but it is hard to play large battles with it. Anyone come up with houserules to speed it along?

JPK

IMO, playing larger battles with GQ3 primarily comes down to three things:
1. For movement, enforce the "plot orders/formations for divisions" rule. Once ships are damaged and formations break up, "encourage" players to withdraw damaged ships and reform their formations rather than running around "willy-nilly".
2. Have play aids such as target/salvo markers for players to indicate which ships are firing at which enemy ships. This allows all players to immediately see which gunnery attacks either gain from the "unengaged" modifier, or incur the "multiple batteries" penalty modifier. Obviously have plenty of movement templates and copies of the charts.
3. Have players that are competent and trustworthy to figure their own shots simultaneously. The competent part goes back to #2, as there are modifiers that are easy to overlook.