"DBM 2.0 v DBM 3……" Topic

Just wondered , l enjoy playing DBM and other DBX rules, and lots of other Ancient / Medieval rules. however on a review of many peoples posts the argument seems to be that the great DBM party ended with the advent of DBM v 3 , comments like everyone stopped playing ancients, my DBM armies are gathering dust since DBM 3.0. As a casual player of DBM ( disclaimer – I've only played in serious competition DBA and DBMM ).
So can any one explain to me how DBM 3.0 destroyed the dream that was DBM 2.0 ?
Just to say , the question is why DBM 3.0 spoilt the DBM revolution, advocate different rules if you want but l probably play them already or they are on my shelve, feel free to state DBMM is better, it might be and l play it , but it is unnecessary complicated in my humble opinion many other rules set achieved the impossibly complicated already, my favourite Ww2 set is advance Squad leader , do l play it often …..no.

Just wondered , l enjoy playing DBM and other DBX rules, and lots of other Ancient / Medieval rules. however on a review of many peoples posts the argument seems to be that the great DBM party ended with the advent of DBM v 3 , comments like everyone stopped playing ancients, my DBM armies are gathering dust since DBM 3.0. As a casual player of DBM ( disclaimer – I've only played in serious competition DBA and DBMM ).
So can any one explain to me how DBM 3.0 destroyed the dream that was DBM 2.0 ?
Just to say , the question is why DBM 3.0 spoilt the DBM revolution, advocate different rules if you want but l probably play them already or they are on my shelve, feel free to state DBMM is better, it might be and l play it , but it is unnecessary complicated in my humble opinion many other rules set achieved the impossibly complicated already, my favourite Ww2 set is advance Squad leader , do l play it often …..no.

Just wondered , l enjoy playing DBM and other DBX rules, and lots of other Ancient / Medieval rules. however on a review of many peoples posts the argument seems to be that the great DBM party ended with the advent of DBM v 3 , comments like everyone stopped playing ancients, my DBM armies are gathering dust since DBM 3.0. As a casual player of DBM ( disclaimer – I've only played in serious competition DBA and DBMM ).
So can any one explain to me how DBM 3.0 destroyed the dream that was DBM 2.0 ?
Just to say , the question is why DBM 3.0 spoilt the DBM revolution, advocate different rules if you want but l probably play them already or they are on my shelve, feel free to state DBMM is better, it might be and l play it , but it is unnecessary complicated in my humble opinion many other rules set achieved the impossibly complicated already, my favourite Ww2 set is advance Squad leader , do l play it often …..no.

Hi,

It wasn't DBM v3 that "destroyed the dream". Instead it was Phil Barker writing DBMM.

Phil had been using the "my bound/your bound" combat outcomes in DBR and though they they solved a number of problems he saw in DBM, plus he has been writing Horse, Foot and Guns for a while (plus a few smaller projects), and he had a swag of new mechanisms that he wanted to use. Richard Bodley Scott disagreed.

Richard went on to participate in the Field of Glory sets of rules, while Phil ended up producing DBMM v1.

DBMM v1 was half cooked (to put it politely), and was not popular at all with those playing DBM. What with FOG being released, with Richard as an author, many DBM players moved to FOG (and many have since moved on to other sets).

DBMM was rewritten to v2, and updated to v2.1 in 2016. It's not had an update since then.

A rump of DBM players continued (at least in the UK), and have a fan-based update published on the web to download. I have no idea what version it's up to.

Opinions about how complicated rule sets are, or should be, are of course subjective. DBA v3 is consider too simple or too complicated by a wide range of people. If you want something that is more complicated than DBA, but simpler than DBM/DBMM, then WRG are working on a new Fantasy set, that sits in the middle. Ignoring the fantasy elements, it should give a good medieval game in the ADLG, DBMM200 size with something between 30 to 60 elements a side. No idea how far along, or when or how it might be released.

Cheers,
JohnG

John's summary looks right for the last days of Dbm/m dominance.

I think you can add that a number of players (including me) had just got a bit tired of the system having played so many games over the years.

That would not have been a problem, and after a break we would have returned, but MM and Fog arrived at that time to disburse interest and player numbers.

DBMM fragmented the hobby, there is no doubt about that, but there is still a reasonably active, but static, DBMM and DBA community. I think after a while you can get sick of playing the same type of games, the DBMM army lists do help but I think variable scenarios may be a better way to give a set of rules extra legs. I use a card based system to give me unique scenarios (url below) but I find DBMM, DBA and even DBM, which was my main rules, are really designed as competition rules and a variable scenario as described in the video below don't seem to work. You need rules designed to reproduce historical battles to make variable scenarios work.
youtu.be/IEegvbSr8bQ

Dianne Duane once observed that a great work of art requires two people--a great artist, and a man standing by with a mallet to smack him with it once the great work of art is done, so the great artist can't keep messing with it.

I like Phil, and my armies are sometimes geared to work with his rules, but when I look at his total body of work I think his partner with the mallet has gone AWOL.

Hi Guys

Thanks for the replies not sure how l managed to post the subject three times.
I'm returning to DBM after a long break , not from ancients but from not playing, I'd forgotten how refreshing it was to play., l have only one main bug bear with the rules and that is the fact that l can't double rank my Vikings and Saxon blades as the second rank will die if the first rank does and without contributing any added combat effect against most enemy's .
This means having to field them in a series of ranks which doesn't seem like or not to field many of them….works ok in DBA 3.0 and DBMM but not in DBM.

By not playing l meant not playing DBM

I like Phil, and my armies are sometimes geared to work with his rules, but when I look at his total body of work I think his partner with the mallet has gone AWOL.

I suspect you are correct. If only DBM simply continued to evolve instead of the clean break to DBMM. It did give other rules a chance i suppose, which may be considered as good. But that means learning more rules, which i would like to avoid.

I'd echo the comments above that many of us who had played and very much enjoyed DBM through the various iterations simply ran out of steam around the tail end of 3.0, and so started looking for other things.

There's was – and is – nothing inherently bad, or even "worse than 2.1" about 3.0, it was more a matter of timing in that the process of increment refreshment and rebalancing that kept us all engaged through 1.0 to 3.0 just kinda ran out of road after what, 13 years of all playing what was fundamentally the same game with the same code mechanics.

If FoG and MM hadn't come along at that time I think there's a strong argument to be made that DBM would still have fallen off something of a cliff in popularity anyway simply because of the "played out" feelings of many players at that time.

The fact that in hindsight the early iterations of both FoG and MM turned out to be pretty flawed – although both are much improved now – adds even more weight that it was timing not anything 3.0ish, as the community just wanted something new and different.

God knows what else we would have been playing instead though if they'd not come along !!

I agree that DBMM is very complicated and it took my goup a long time to learn and even now we have rule situations in our games which we hadn't understood. which has caused some consternation. It is a good game and I enjoy playing it. In DBA there are some big battle rules where you create an army of three commands. I like the simplicity of this game.

However I am starting to tire of the micro measurement involved in these games. I'm looking forward to Peter Pigs Conquerors and Kings rules being published. These are going to be played on a grid. The author has said he wants us to be good generals not good measurers.

I've never been too bothered by measuring. I You just have a stick or a tape. I measured from my first ever proper wargame and I'm none the worse for it.

I get that ancient soldiers didn't have a theodolite to check measurements and everything is a compromise, but if the effective range of a weapon or the game movement rate of a troop type was x, what's wrong with measuring x? If we do it in grid squares, we know even more precisely whether or not we're in range.

Grids are popular with some players but a) they feel unrealistic to me,and b) you've just delegated the measuring to someone else.

Cheers,
John

As one of the "rump" DBM players I have a web site at jglwargames.com which includes the latest (minor) rule changes. We have about ten competitions per year in southern England and South Wales, with around 40 active players.

Lost Battles uses a grid and it works, but it does remove some of the bling of figure gaming when you see a grid. On the other hand the grids are normally 30 cm squares so its not too bad. IO like the rules and they give you a good game, but its very much a history battle type of rules.

I agree with others that say DBM was already dipping due to shear volume of play in "established wargames nations". This is masked by the continued upswing in DBM players in other places, ongoing recruitment everywhere and an associated internationalisation of competitions due to people travelling.

There is a narrative that v3 killed off dbm as a historical simulation in favour of play balance (by de-fanging S troops) but this was very much driven by Phil's resistance to changing points values rather than the rules. Without the balance the competitions would have atrophied and thus a huge source of players. There are also many clarifications and quality of life improvements in v3. Ultimately v3 is probably one of the most played sets of wargames rules ever and a great achievement. I think John GL's 3.4 is the best choice for DBM now.