"Least favorite game mechanic?" Topic

A "game mechanic" being a process, procedure or action required to play the game.

My top five least favorite mechanics are:

Written orders.
Card-based activation/initiative
Complicated IF/THEN/ELSE/EXCEPT comparative combat resolutions.
Rolling to "succeed" with a charge.
Dice-based movement

And a sixth: Fiddly movement rules where distances measured in millimeters or minute fractions of an inch impact the results. "Oh, look, you're not actually touching. No attack for you!" Let's call it "Precision movement requirements."

Roll to hit.
Then roll to save.
Then roll to armor save.
Then roll for damage.

Add up a bunch of positive factors.
Subtract a bunch of negative factors.
Then roll dice.

IGO/UGO movement PARTICULARLY combined with firing/charging with the opponent idle.

Rules with card hands, battle boards, etc.

Hex/square based movement for miniatures.

The metric system in general.

Scale creep in measurement. (The company is excellent!)

IGO UGO Movement…

Well, I hate simultaneous movement! So, there! 😄

The whole idea of collecting cards that allow you to do basic tasks.
Like turning around to face someone in your rear.
Like firing at someone in front of you.
These do nothing but add comedy to the game. "Realism"? Not so much.

+1 John the OFM.

+2 for the OFM's last statement but I still prefer simultaneous movement as I consider it more realistic and less gamey.

Written Orders--too often ambiguous (or left blank and responsive.)
Collecting Cards, as the OFM and Shagnasty describe.
Unit Rosters, and the bigger the game the more I hate them.
Bounce Sticks/Burst Circles. As Parzival notes on movement, you can waste half an hour on "he's just in/he's just out!"
Chit Bidding. Bid on eBay, and don't waste my afternoon with an auction game.

Note that I have played and enjoyed games with several of these. I just feel they take away from the game.

A couple of observations:
1) Card draw activation works well for solo, and well enough with two players, but its appeal rapidly declines as the number of players increases. To REALLY hate card draw games, play with 10 or more players. I have.
2) The only alternative to Parzival's "fiddly movement" is hexes or some other sort of area movement. Any other system means sometimes you'll hit or miss by milimeters--or, in the United States, fractions of an inch.
3) Signing on for simultaneous movement is implicitly signing on for written orders. It's a valid choice, but it's also a package deal.

It's easy to hate game mechanics until you have to choose or invent a game. Then you have to make hard choices.

Parzival,

Agree with your first four but not the last one.

When an failing activation for a single unit ends the rest of your turn. I simply ignore that rule in games I run.

Note that I have played and enjoyed games with several of these. I just feel they take away from the game.

As I said above, those add to comedy, but are not "realistic".
Too many times, all those rules do is show off how clever the author is at coming up with something new or different.

I agree the failing a single activation ending your turn is pretty irksome but for whatever reason, I hate saving throws above all. You hit, you penetrated. Calculate the damage and move on.

No pre-measuring.
Written orders.

Regarding precision measuring — wherever you define the boundary, there is always a point where you are engaged or you are not engaged, whether it's 1mm from the opponent or 2"+1mm. Full contact requirement is completely unamibiguous.

Rolling to save

Written orders. Or reliance on order chits/markers.
Failing a basic "activation" role that allows units to remain motionless/ineffective for turn after turn potentially.
Too many calculations (modifiers) for things that could be baked into the game mechanics organically.

I really hate the Black Powder running or standing still movement for no apparent reason other than lucky dice.

Changing dice sizes up and down and up and down and then modifying the yet again. I like different sizes of dice in a game but they must not change sizes!

And more than 5 modifiers to a die roll. Can't do it in less than 5? Lazy designer can't focus on what's important.

roll to hit, save, wound. this can be figured into one roll

(Historical) "Super Troopers"- rules that create units that are always nigh on invincible, regardless of the tactical situation and loss/damage they take. Guardsmen, SS, paratroops and etc were still human and, if they couldn't be made to retreat, they could still be killed.

Related to the above- national characteristics, eg Quarrie's Napoleonic rules.

Combat and/or morale charts that have a page or more of insignificant modifiers to be applied.

Inconsistent dice size. Have D6 for morale, D8.75 for combat and D23,456 for activation, and/or add or subtract (one or two) dice for modifiers if you want to. But if morale checks require a D10 then leave it as D10, don't change it to Dn for different troop types, experience or some other reason.

Playing cards as a randomizer. I won't play a game using a deck of cards, I just do not like it.

The whole "Points" system that has wormed itself into historical games.

All the mechanisms in the Command & Colors games. Probably what OFM referred to earlier.

In Flames of War there are the specific nationality rules. We refer to the German Stormtrooper Rule as "The German Cheat Move". Then there are the nationality rules whose purpose is to handicap Russians. Etc. "Hens and chicks"? Please. It seems like Battlefront feels compelled to make Romanians behave unlike Hungarians.

Similar to that are the Empire Napoleonic "+2 for being French", and "+1 for being British".
Then there are the 8 or 9 morale classes in Empire. From Landwehr to Imperial Guard. "Oh! I rolled an 01 on D100! I got a hit!"

IGO/UGO – makes the game predictable and can often turn it into an exercise in basic probabilities.

Hit/Wound/Save rolls – make it one roll and keep the game moving.

Written orders – too ambiguous and open to gamesmanship.

Complicated sub game: Saga battle board, poker hand of action cards

Random activation without selecting: you wanted to push the center but you only have a flank card. You drew the squad 2 card, move it now

No balancing mechanism: either in armies or scenarios there needs to be some objective way to balance. "Napoleon had only Old Guard in this game"

Excessive Crunch: modifier lists, calculations, excessive sub phases

Deathmarch game length; 2 hours max

Roll to hit.
Then roll to save.
Then roll to armor save.
Then roll for damage.

This.

Simultaneous movement doesn't require written orders, only some sort of prespecified orders, like the cards in Wings of Glory. Or playing in a very uncompetitive manner, as expected in Argad.

In Flames of War there are the specific nationality rules. We refer to the German Stormtrooper Rule as "The German Cheat Move". Then there are the nationality rules whose purpose is to handicap Russians. Etc. "Hens and chicks"? Please. It seems like Battlefront feels compelled to make Romanians behave unlike Hungarians.

That's the problem with national characteristics, OFM. While there's good arguments for having them, in the rules I've seen/played they're applied in a way that unbalances the game (and ensures a particular army will nearly always win). There's lots of examples besides the ones you gave, such as Empire's C&C bias for the French, ensuring they nearly always have the initiative; or the magazine-fed, self-loading muskets seemingly issued to the SYW Prussian or SYW/Napoleonic British infantry, going by their firepower advantages in some rules.

Dal, I agree national characteristics are prone to abuse, but it's not inherent. Back in the '60's, CLS basically gave one plus to each major power--French and Prussian infantry got a +1 advantage in column charges, non-guard British in volley fire, non-guard Russian infantry were one point tougher in hanging in while taking casualties from fire, and Austrian infantry had a sort of maneuverable square in the "battalionmasse."

Each plus encouraged fielding the major powers over smaller countries, and encouraged those powers to stick to their historical strengths. But since every power had an advantage, they can't be said to have unbalanced the games, and even against minor powers, better tactics were more important than such edges.

Mind you, it takes serious willpower on the part of the game designer not to let it get out of hand, but without something along those lines, how do you reflect differences in training and doctrine? War isn't always about armor penetration, after all.

This has come up recently:

TMP link

And

TMP link

I can't remember reading or playing CLS, Robert, but I accept what you said and what you describe makes reasonable historical sense- which is unique in my experience.

"willpower on the part of the game designer not to let it get out of hand" seems to be the key- except someone put the key under a flowerpot and, with a couple of possible exceptions, nobody seems to be able to find it.

Personally I think it's also the writers' biases seeping in, eg Scotty Bowden's admiration for the French under Napoleon (not picking on Scotty- I still have Empire IV and bought most of his books, I just didn't like Empire much), or an SS fanboi's view of WWII. So the rules are skewed a bit so the result shall be "what would have happened historically"- luck, dice and other factors all being equal.

but without something along those lines, how do you reflect differences in training and doctrine?

Stop asking good questions, Robert, or you'll get a bad rep.

I agree, training, doctrine and experience are, IMHO, three of the four critical factors that determine how units and formation will perform (the fourth being leadership). By the same token, though, I think that often the significant differences get exaggerated, depending on the period, eg how would you like to take an Austrian force against a British one using Quarrie's rules? This may be a result of the inherent restrictions of using a dice-and-figure based model of combat, perhaps? But, if CLS got it reasonably right, why not other rules?

"Stop asking good questions, Robert, or you'll get a bad rep."

Thank you, Dal.

I suspect part of the problem is that later and higher-level games tried to replicate differences in staff size and structure, leading to the dreaded "leadership ratings" and "command radius" both of which I'd like to add to my list of "least favorites." They aren't a way of saying "French are different" but "French are better" and I think often try to portray what should be a strategic edge in a tabletop setting. This is a constant temptation, and seldom ends well.

Commercialism may also be a factor. No one prior to about "Empire" hoped to make money out of rules and the "fanboys"--anachronistic in context--were more or less equally distributed. So there was no financial incentive to puff up one power or faction over another. The objective was summarized as "unbalanced equality"--that equal points of French and British might behave differently, but stood a roughly equal chance on a tabletop.

The much more finicky points systems and fine detailing of a lot of modern rules--especially those dealing with WWII and later--may also be part of the problem. Classically, CLS had four types of artillery battery. How many different types of AT section/battery might you expect to find in a current WWII set?--or, for that matter, in some of the more finicky Napoleonics sets?

But it would be interesting to make the experiment. What would happen if you told a modern game designer "you are allowed no more than two rules/benefits per army to distinguish your combatants, and these apply to major powers only?"

Except then you'd have a single volume rules set, and no money to be made on army guides/codexes. See commercialism, above.

Hmph. Another "least favorite mechanism"--the multiple-digit or fractional-digit points system. To generate games without pre-printed scenarios, you need points systems. But the conversion from the old Charles S. Grant "Infantry and light cavalry Regiments 3 points, light infantry battalion and artillery battery 2 points and heavy cavalry regiment 4 points" to the modern ones used for 500 or 1,000 point games has a tendency to reduce the tabletop general to the tabletop Walmart shopper on a budget, searching frantically for any "underpointed" sub-unit. It's not a good look.

Any concept that requires more than a sentence to explain.

Writing orders.
Using ADCs to carry orders to the guy standing right next to you.
Not able to talk to your teammates standing all around you.
Combining morale with movement like in F&F.
Card driven rules.
Disruption points that you spend most of the game trying to get rid of.
Any point system used to buy things. How about no points at all, ever?
Having to roll to see what shots go in and then roll again to see what shots did damage. Just one roll please.
Rules that allow the unit in front of you to get picked up and placed on your flank, like magic.
I like national characteristics. Otherwise every nation is just the same.
Don't nullify national characteristics by adding a fake rule Then what's the point?
Using hex grids in miniature games. If you want to play a board game then go play a board game.
Unit or leader activation rules. I don't want to spend the entire game trying to activate something. I would like to play the game please.

Anything that is justified by calling it a "simulation". It usually isn't.