"DBF or Fantasy Changes for DBM" Topic

Hello y'all,

So I am no stranger to wargaming at all. However, I am quite the stranger to Ancients gaming and DBM as well. I enjoy both DBA and DBM (FOG is not for me) and I enjoy DBA and HOTT, but wish for larger battles with more detail. A Fantasy version of DBM is just what I need. However, I have noticed the issue that there really is no easy way to this.

DBF would be the obvious rout, however, my searches have turned up dry or with very expensive ways to acquire the rules. As a college student, with grad school around the corner, I am rather "cash poor". Is DBF available freely anywhere as many older, non reprinted, WRG publishes are? If not, is there a player designed modification on the greater web? If this does not exist either, would adding the HOTT fantasy elements to DBM with some other minor changes make a decent fantasy game? I don't mind tinkering with the rules if it comes to that. Any help would be appreciated as your experiences with DBM and any related products vastly outnumber my own experiences.

We used to play DBM rather than DBA for years because we preferred big battles, then we slowly evolved to playing DBA for time constraints and because we did not really like DBMM. We find DBA 3.0 great, and scratch our big battle itch by simply playing Big Battle DBA straight by the rules.

We have toyed with going into fantasy a bit, and after this experience, I would recommend playing HoTT big battle-style. I am not sure DBF really adds enough to make it worthwhile.

Back when DBM first came out, way before numbers and decimals were appended to it, I am pretty sure that there WAS a fantasy variant.
Phil Barker used to append fantasy rules and lists to his WRG Ancients rules back in the 80s.

While I do plan on taking that route while I find a DBM fantasy adaption, I still would like a fantasy adaption for DBM. I find that, for larger battles, DBA is fantastic. In fact, it is my preferred way to play DBA. However, I love the extra detail in DBM (never thought I would say those words) and hope to see that in a Fantasy set. For me, I am happily willing to switch between both sets as I see fit, but it is always nice to have both HOTT and DBM fantasy bases covered so I can switch around to either.

@Winston: I imagine you are correct so I assume its possible. In the process of writing my own rules for large scale modern warfare (More playtesting in a few hours in fact!), I have learned many things about rule design so I am not afraid to tinker with the core DBM rules. I always like to hear the experiences of the "Old Guard" in our wonderful community to ease any direction of DBM changes, or previously established changes.

Err, I wrote DBF:HERE THERE BE DRAGONS, it was a first attempt, it was okay, I wrote a version 2 whichadded many things in dbf as well as making dbm slightly more balanced with warband v blades, but with the constant changes and the final break up of the authors I dropped it.

What specifically did you want to game…? I still have my soft copies that I can print and post to you… Dave the evil Brown also did a good set that was very integrated with dbm (kinda the reason it was not printed), its still on the web if you look hard enough, my set is a supplement so works with almost any version, anyway let me know…

I have two copies for you and your opponent in pristine condition. Let me know if you want them.

Regards,
Robert

Another approach for "low" fantasy is to just use DBM with carefully altered lists. See Luke Ueda-Sarson's middle earth lists here:
link
We had a lot of fun with this.

rgds
rob

With the demise of Warhammer Fantasy Battles as a supported system, there is an opening for the DBx family to revise and republish HoTT to make it up to date with DBA 3.0. It won't happen, but it is a shame that it won't.

"With the demise of Warhammer Fantasy Battles as a supported system, there is an opening for the DBx family to revise and republish HoTT to make it up to date with DBA 3.0. It won't happen, but it is a shame that it won't."

It has already happened while on the DBA 3.0 development team I also worked on adding all the changes to HOTT.

The result is D3H2 (DBA 3.0 + HOTT 2.0). Just email me and I'll send a copy. You need DBA 3.0 to use D3H2.

Its a great game. The DBA 3.0 additions help HOTT even more than standard DBA.

I ran a High King style tournament using the system at both NashCon and Historicon this year (and I'll be back….)

TomT

Oh, I have your amendments, and want to try them out some more (and may this weekend, actually), but what I am talking about is publishing an actual volume to purchase. It would be great to have a DBF, so to speak, that people could buy , read, and play.

For various reasons the author feels he cannot "offically" up date HOTT. So my version is as close to offical as we are going to get. I've forwarded it to Phil Barker so he knows whats going on.

Judging from my emails a very active community has formed up around D3H2. I ran a version at H-con and intend to run a game at Dragon Con in September.

If everyone converts over than we will have a game that people can read and play (and can skip the buy part except for a copy of DBA 3.0).

TomT

Have you looked at 2.2+ yet?

wadbag.com/DBAGuidePlus

Seems to be a superior game and highly recommend it and may lend itself to your DBF project easier.

Please, no edition wars. My group thought 2.2+ was a fine version, but believe 3.0 is slightly better, and want to support it.

Thank you guys for all of your imput. I have more ways of approaching this than I thought. It seems using DBA at the core with HOTT elements may seem the best way to continue.

Thanks again!