""Non-tournament" Rule sets" Topic

What characteristics are necessary for a good ruleset which is also a "non-tournament" ruleset, and what are some examples?

Historical accuracy. Enjoyable player decisions. Good scenarios.
Plenty of 'tournament' rulesets also satisfy those requirements. For instance, DBM, or Field of Glory, which are often thought of as 'tournament' sets designed for equal points play, also work really well for historical refights

Random events.
You can use 'Event Cards' or a 'Blunder roll' etc to make good, bad or just random things happen.

If you're gaming solely to win, these would be infuriating but if you're in it for fun, they provide amusement. And opportunities to show your skill in overcoming them.eg A British unit in the Mahdist Wars draws a "leaking water cart – rations cut in half. This unit can only move half distances". What stratagems will you need to use to mitigate this event?

I think you need to make sure they don't drive the game & are never game-winners on their own but this is up to personal taste.

When we were still using the dry-as-dust, tournament set of rules "Field of Glory", home grown 'Event Cards' kept us awake & interested.

An example is Test of Resolve.

No points values

Supported by lots of historical scenarios

Period specific and actual battle playtests used to shape the rules

I think perhaps the question is backwards? There are requirements for a good rules set, and there are additional requirements making a rules set suitable for tournament play.

Example: a good rules set is one the players can master and play without constant reference back to the rules--though they might need to consult a stat sheet somewhere--and which covers the vast majority of situations which arise on a tabletop. A good tournament rules set has to be able to cover virtually any situation: there's no presumption of common sense and good will.

Scenarios exist sometimes in a rules set by means of scenario generation rules, and sometimes outside. For a good rules set, armies stand a roughly equal chance of winning unless someone's actually put his thumb on the scales. For a good tournament set, each side's chances must be equal out to at least one decimal point, and scenarios must either be "miror image dual attack" boards, or be rigged so that both sides play both roles--however unlikely this might appear to a historical player, for instance.

And I'm going to have to pass on commercial examples. Too many years of "home grown" and "heavily modified."

A good tournament rules set has to be able to cover virtually any situation: there's no presumption of common sense and good will.

That's it right there, in my opinion. So my question actually could be: What are examples of good rule sets that presume common sense and good will?

I feel that the Warlord Games ie Hail Caesar-Black Powder are examples of that.

'Victory without Quarter' (ECW), where the author acknowledges the rules don't cover everything & players can amicably agree on any "grey" area.

What characteristics are necessary for a good ruleset which is also a "non-tournament" ruleset, and what are some examples?

Do you have a period in mind, as the answer can vary? Tournament rules normally have very specific requirements, such as 2-3 hour play duration, agreed and robust army lists, points system, well research scenarios, simple terrain setup, robust victory conductions, preferably multi-level wins or losses. Non-tournament rules typically lack most of these characteristics. For example BBB is a very good set of rules, but is not suitable for tournaments. On the other hand DBMM/DBA/ADLG is very good for tournaments.

Robert Pipenbrink has it start off with a decent set that is precise, greay areas even on a friendly game are not good, at best they waste time and if diffrent sides have diffrent opinions it gains nothing.

Personaly random events are best left out of ANY set of rules.

Points sytems and some distortion of the truth is needed for Modern torniment ngames as real dual arrack rules are rare in the real world and I am not sure even Phil Barkers changes for other scenarios were bomb proof.

I have seen games where terrin boards were proivided, not using terrain choseing, but that may be a requirement for a competion set just to unload the organisers.

To be honest In the dark past I playede both types using DBM so they are a good example.

Any rules need to be "fast Play" that is not having pages of "Chants" like some morale rules.

Competion games can at least be written for players who have had some practice at the rules. Rules aimned at beginners may not be dsuitable for more experienced players who need more tactical challenges.

I am still not sure what anyone here means by "tournament" or "non-tournament". Any rules can be used for tournament or non-tournament play. What makes a tournament run well is not rules, but (1) scenarios, and (2) meta-game structure. What makes a non-tournament game run well is fitting rules, scenarios, and meta-game structure to the players.

Scenarios exist sometimes in a rules set by means of scenario generation rules

Artwork (as opposed to technical illustrations of content) may exist in a book, but that doesn't make it part of the rules. Scenarios and rules are fundamentally different things, even if they are in the same book. The fact that a game can have separte rulebooks and scenario books that function without each other is an illustration of that.

Preferences, like the degree of realism you want are part of the fit between players and rules, scenarios, etc. For example, if you don't want random events, you get less realism. Is that okay for your players?

As far as ambiguity (incompleteness) goes, all rules have infinite ambiguity (unless you wrote a set that is inconsistent, in which case, it might not). Counterintiutively, the more rules you shove into a ruleset, the greater size of the infinite ambiguity. How this impacts the play of the game depends on the scenario. How this impacts the player experience depends on how thier interests align with things like the milieu, the victory space, the scenario, and possibly but hopefully not, the rules.

This leads to common sense and goodwill. From a different life, I teach a class where I point out that "Anything can be hacked." This includes your hack, and the hack of your hack, and so on to that pesky infinite limit. The question is not whether or not people can argue over the ambiguity of a ruleset, it's whether or not they will (common sense) and how (goodwill). And does that fit the timbre of the environment you want to create.

To me tournament rules are those that seem to be designed for tournament play, and the rules that you typically see played as tournaments at cons. The GW family of rules are tournament rules, as is Flames of War.

pfmodels is quite right about the short duration, and I should have thought of it.
I agree so-so with eto. I was actually thinking of DBA 3, where scenario generation is so baked into the rules that to play it any other way the first question to ask oneself is "starting at what point do I want to play the rules as written?" And surely "to play the rules as written" is the sine qua non of tournament play?
I also agree so-so with ushcha. No, "gray areas are never good." But eliminating gray areas comes at a price--in length of rules, in standardization of units and terrain--and, really, probably in abandoning free-form terrain for grids of some sort. Playing solo or with friends, squeezing out that last area of possible disagreement might come at too high a price. In tournament games, it might be worth paying: you don't play tournaments solo or with friends.

robert piepenbrink – you can never rule out some greay areas no set of rules can be perfect.
There is a happy medioum for both tournimant and non-tourniment rules. Too little and its all discussion even if amicable, that to me is a sever detractor from a game. For us we have got it about right, you can go a whole game with no issues, particularly if it's relatively simple in its definition. In situations where the interactions are complex then there is more opertunity to hit greay areas and we often do.

You are right that to make it easy we do styalise or formalise things.

So we don't have to learn new rules twice a week terrain is kept to a limited selection, woods have three main types with fixed attributes, open, dense and very dense. You coiuld have an infinite variation but again its personal choice. We don't want to have "This games wood definition" crib sheet for every game.

Any suggestions that I would make would be considered old school and slower play.

Most rules that I did between 1978-2000, were none tournament though many had point systems to allow tournament play.