"What would you title your rules if they were published?" Topic

It occurred to me in a Napoleonic thread that a quote from the WRG 1685-1845 rules would make a great title for a set of rules – If Surprised Or Spanish.

I have a number of half-baked home-grown sets knocking around for other eras and this set me thinking.

At school I had to do Latin, and was particularly tickled at having to translate the sentence "Someone had to be chosen to make a speech to the plebs". That would be a great title for an Ancients set, as would Hastis iactis, Romani impetum fecerunt ("Having thrown their spears, the Romans made a charge").

My WW2 Eastern Front set would be called владимиру не понравился его отель because of this thread TMP link

What title would you give your house rules? Witty efforts only please.

Pike Blocks, Matchlocks and Lobster Pots – ECW and 30YW.

"Oh s---"

Wolfhag

Just Joustin'

The Only Ancients Rules You'll Ever Need

All our club rules (mostly by me) have names, but only a few were trying to be witty:

"Anger Be Thy Song" (Trojan War)
"Hurley-Burley" (fantasy/medieval)
"No Bad Regiments" (Napoleonic)
"Lion of Ostland" (Napoleonic, named in honor of Wally Simon who frequently used this nom-de-guerre)
"Her Majesty's Mechanical Marvels" (VSF)
"Big Gun Club" (WWI naval)

Napoleon's Panzers & Glory

Not rules as such, but I designed a complete English shire, "Rumplestiltskinshire" for our ECW campaign using WRG Rennaissance rules. Each settlement had recruits & supplies & some had arsenals & fortifications. A few had useful specialists such as an engineer or a mercenary officer for hire. Most of the places' sympathies weren't determined until contacted by a player's scout. During one session, a Royalist player who had but a squadron of horse & a troop of dragoons sought to ravage any hostile burg he found. This mini-campaign was intended to end with a climactic big battle to decide the shire's loyalty & this player had already lost half of his troops skirmishing with the yokels. The other Royalist players were not amused.
I also wrote some basic rules for ECW man to man skirmish for my gang before a published set was available, but I never settled on a name.

I try to use period quotes. For example, my FPW rules are "Marching to Disaster".

"All Out" a race game

Don't really have these rules ready for beta testing, but I certainly have the titles down pat.

"Elbows And ***holes: The Game of Precipitous Flight," and
"Horseshoes And Hand Grenades: The Game for Those Who Only Come Close to Victory."

TVAG

For a set of Thirty Years War rules I like "Morgan Kommt der Schwed", taken from the German children's' song "Bet Kinder Bet": YouTube link

Bet Kinder bet,
Morgen kommt der Schwed.
Morgen kommt der Oxenstern,
Dir wird die Kinder bete lern.
Bet Kinder bet.

Pray children pray,
Tomorrow come the Swedes.
Tomorrow come the Oxenstern,
He'll teach the children to pray.
Pray children pray.

An alternative version without the reference to Gustavus Adolphus' Chancellor Oxenstierna is:

Bet Kinder bet,
Morgen kommt der Schwed.
Der Schwed kommt mit dem Morgenstern,
Er frist die kleine Kinder gern.
Bet Kinder bet.

Pray children pray,
Tomorrow come the Swedes.
The Swedes come with the morning star,
They'll gladly eat the little children.
Pray children pray.

What may either be a second verse, or another song sung to the same tune, is:

Die Schweden sind gekommen,
Haben alles mitgenommen,
Haben Fenster eingeschlagen,
Haben Blei davon getragen,
Haben Kugeln daraus gegossen
Und die Bauern tot geschossen.

The Swedes have come
Have taken everything,
Have smashed the windows,
Have taken the lead from them,
Have from that cast bullets,
And shot dead the peasants.

For a set of ACW rules I'll go with "By Company into Line". From my re-enactor days this order meant being deployed from a marching column into line with action soon to follow.

Rock the Khalsa

Sikh wars.

"Being For the Benefit of Mr. Keitel!" – WWII Staff Operations

"There's Something about Maryannu" – Age of Chariots

Rule 1: Any name need to be easy to remember and say. If the title is long then make sure the letters can be remembered, so DBMM works for example, even if the actual name of the rules are too long, hard to say and difficult remember correctly.

Rule 2: The other factor is the name needs to give you an accurate Description of what the rules cover. DBMM in that case, unless you know Latin, is far from perfect. The issue with this point is that you often end up with a name which breaks rules 1.

Rule 3: the name has to be sexy; Flames of War is an example of a good name. Once again this rule can often break the rules above.

The rule you decide to follow depends on the objective of the rules. If you want new players then the number one objective is having a sexy name Example: Napoleonic's amazing adventures. If its aimed at experienced gamers then Rule 2 is where you need to go. Historical Napoleonic Corps Scale Rules. When we apply rule 1 the first becomes NAA and the 2nd HNCSR.

As you can see its not easy.

Any name need to be easy to remember and say.

Those are separate concerns, and sometimes contradictory. I like to write bolt-on modular house rules for Rank & File, and name them in the same format (NOUN & NOUN), so that when announcing a game, I can string them all together into a long and absurdly conjunction-filled title, e.g.:
Rank & File and Rifle & Kepi and Order & Discipline

This has the advantage of being perfectly honest (it's just a list of rules) and forcing the reader to inquire (so I can start with "Glad you asked!"). Since I'm not trying to market anything, I can get away with the load of tongue-twisting snark.

I wrote a tome of bolt-on rules for Check Your 6. The name I gave it is about as subtle as a punch in the nose (Check Your 7), but each subsection is a module which can be played without the others and so has a separate one-word title:
Furball (rules to remove pre-plotting)
Flak (streamlined large-scale AA rules)
Jabo (advanced bombing rules)
Scatter (moving ground targets – ships, trains, vehicles, infantry going to ground, etc.)

- Ix

"I'm a millionaire and will never have to work again thanks to these awesome rules"
Right? 😀

I try to pick titles which tell others period and scale--"Stonewall Brigade" for small ACW, "Light Division" for tactical Napoleonics and so forth. The serious crash and burn was "Creighton Abrams' War" for battalion/brigade level WWII, since at least one reader only knew of Abrams from Vietnam.

ACW Rules – "Bluebellies & Butternuts"
AoS Rules – "Steer to Glory" (pre-dated "Sails of Glory")

I may re-name the AoS rules to "Nelson's Blood".

B

WW2 = "AMERICA ROARS.."

Russ Dunaway

ACW

They Couldn't Hit an Elephant

Way, way back in the very early 1990's I had two sets of ACW rules published in MWAN (Mid-West Wargamers Newsletter). The first one was based on Featherstone's late Napoleonic rules and which I called "Kepis & Campfires." The other was more conventional and was called "Minie Balls & Hardtack."

Rule 4: Have a list of alternate names ready, as chances are the title you want to use has already been taken by someone else. ;-)

Old Glory, I take it your rules only cover from 1942 on…

Generally my rules have boring names like 'Napoleonic fast play', but I did call one set for NW frontier skirmishing "Duck or Grouse".

For a dedicated Napoleonic ruleset with mechanisms that reward good rolls of the dice, maybe the quote often attributed to Napoleon, "Give me generals who are lucky"?

I'm pretty happy with my actual ruleset, "Bloody Big Battles!" (BBB), which is mildly witty, as well as obeying the three rules for titles given by Peter (pfmodel) above. Mind you, it tends to confuse non-Brits who only know "Bloody" as an adjective, not an intensifier. The number of folk who have misspoken it as "Big Bloody Battles" …

They Couldn't Hit an Elephant is an example of Rule #4 :-)
toofatlardies.co.uk/product/they-couldnt-hit-an-elephant/

Amun-Ra'mpant

Age of Chariots variation of Lion Rampant.

Advocate, oh how funny. Of course not.
My rules would be 1939 – present-- based on who has sit on the top of the heap and funded everything since 1939.

Russ Dunaway

Ma première règle napoléonienne s'appelait :
« Les Aigles Impériales » (L.A.I.)
Aigle est au féminin en héraldique (la science des blasons)

Ma deuxième règle s'appelle :
« Silex & Baïonnette » (S&B)
Parce qu'elle couvre la période 1700-1825 (environ) qui vit la domination du fusil à silex et baïonnette à douille sur les champs de bataille

Stop blowing up my tanks you uncultured barbarian!(armored warfare WW2 to present)

Stop shooting my elephant! He doesn't like it. (ACW rules)

When monsters cry (dungeoncrawl rules)

Never bring a chainsword to a laser fight (sci fi skirmish)

"Lock, Stock, & Barrel."

Curses, foiled again!

Many years ago Down East Wargamers modified "Fast Rules" to create "Halfast (or Half-assed) Rules".

Rules for WW2 ETO 1939-45:
"Two Prongs Don't Make A Reich"

Campaign Rules for the Japanese Occupation of Manchuria and the Sino-Japanese war 1931-45:
"Saki Saki Longtime"

Rules for Wargaming the Musket Wars 1807-37:
"Pā Kai!"
(Non-New Zealanders probably won't get it…)

Not to mention the essential booklet:
"Dicing With Geoff: A Guide to Wargaming in the Age of Chaucer"

I only have French Russian and Austrians so 'Clash of Eagles' is the name i'e given my Empire III & V house rules.

Rule 4: Have a list of alternate names ready, as chances are the title you want to use has already been taken by someone else.

This is a valid point. In my case I just use a different language, in my case German. If that does not work put "new" in front of the name, or once again, in my case "Neu".

Other options are mega in front of the name. Mega Flames of War for example.

Or, once of my friends called his cold war rules "long rod penetrator", which i understand is the name of a apfsds round in the UK. I kind of liked that name.

"Kill, Kill, Kill, With Cold Blue Steel", or "KKKWCBS" for short.

My take on Fire Fight: Modern Skirmish Rules for the late '80s with added stats for M-16A2 and M855/M856 ammo plus the M60E3.

Proposed Rules for Macross fleet battles:

"I Used to Work at Macrossnalds, I'm a Pilot Now"

"IUTWAMIAPN"

I have published a number of free rules and they have predictably dull names:

Rifle and Kepi (19th century)
Mexicanski 36 (SCW)
Drumfire (WW1 Corps level trench assaults)
Marlborough Light (Marlburian)
WW1 in Three Turns (does what it says on the tin)
Paths of Glory (WW1)
Sinai 67 (does what it says on the tin)
Panzergruppe (WW2 operational warfare)
RKKA Brigade Commander (WW2 Grand Tactical)
Ten Rounds Rapid (WW1 battalion level)
Square Wars (Star Wars tactical combat)
One Hour WW1 Naval Combat (an adaptation of OHW to dreadnoughts) – you can't get more literal than that
etc etc

My never published but sometimes played AiW rules were 'Sons of Abraham'.

Great names Martin Rapier! I want to play Paths of Glory! I love the movie so much.

I would call my WW2 rules "A Work in Progress."

Pre modern era
They all run away eventually

"Doubles Tennis on the Western Front"

"Talia iacte iam!"

Throw the dice already!

"What was I thinking when I signed up for this?"

Not very catchy though.

Modified "Necromunda" rules:

"Verdunda" for WWI; "Vietnamunda" for SE Asia; and "Streets of Lamunda" for Old West skirmishes.

i am surprised no one has done this yet, but if i ever were to publish rules, i would just love the title "Hussar" – like how the RTS pc game is titled Cossacks

or "Murat"

" Les Bleus et Les Blancs"