When jokes become state of the art design...

[gleichman]

For the longest time I used to make fun of simple game design with the
line "well, we could always just roll a d6 each with high roll winning
the combat..."

And for the longest time I avoided buying Game Workshop LotR figures
because of the expense despite my use of figures and despite my
campaign being set in Middle Earth. I finally broke down (nice figures,
cost too much- but nice figures) and spent some money. I also said
"what the heck?", and brought the rules too thinking it would make a
nice beer and pretzels game.

And what do I find as the melee combat rule? Each combatant rolls a d6
with the high score winning.

Sigh, this is the state of wargaming in 2006. Upon the heels of the
threads here about high level D&D, I'm beginning to wonder if there is
anyone designing games for the players of the triple digit IQ club
anymore.

That said there's actually more to it than high roll wins. Not a lot
more mind, but it may be enough to actually work in a weird way. If you
don't watch too close... maybe...

I'll find out after a few test games. And it was suppose to be beer and
pretzels. I could always pull out AoH for a serious game (it works
wonderful for anything less than 400 figures on the board and this game
is limited to 300 max under normal conditions).

Nice figures.

[Del Rio]

Post by gleichman
And what do I find as the melee combat rule? Each combatant rolls a d6
with the high score winning.

There's a wonderful section in the Synnibar RPG rules:

http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/reviews/rev_4762.html

Post by gleichman

"Fate [the GM] then makes a percentile die roll to determine
whether the empty ship will be safe or not. The first roll is
a 33. This indicates there is only a 33% chance of the boat
remaining safe. Fate then rolls again. The resulting roll of
40 indicates that their ship won't be there upon return. How
and when the ship is lost is up to Fate."

You roll to randomly generate the percentile probablility of
something occurring, and then you randomly roll percentile
again to see whether it happened. So, basically, every
occurrence is determined by coin flip.

Post by gleichman
Sigh, this is the state of wargaming in 2006. Upon the heels of the
threads here about high level D&D, I'm beginning to wonder if there is
anyone designing games for the players of the triple digit IQ club
anymore.

Actually, the state of wargaming in 2006 is that some companies
are taking old OOP tabletop wargames and making them electronic,
such they can be played over the net or by email. Which, while
it's not as good news as, say, that the state of the art was
actually advancing, it's at least good news in that we're
recovering some ground we thought we'd lost for good.

http://www.matrixgames.com/

[psychohist]

Nice figures.

In defense of the rules, I think they were more "here's something to do
with the figures if you want", rather than "here is a game with these
rules, and oh by the way these playing pieces".

The figures really make me wish I had more figure painting time. I
painted about a dozen about a year or two ago, but there are still at
least a dozen characters that still need painted figures. The only
critique I might have is that they are scaled closer to 35mm than 25mm
(some of the dwarves are 25mm or more), but that's not a major critique
given how figure scales vary.

And they are very nice figures.

[gleichman]

Post by psychohist
In defense of the rules, I think they were more "here's something to do
with the figures if you want", rather than "here is a game with these
rules, and oh by the way these playing pieces".

That's basically the end result, and frankly exactly my mindset when I put
my money down. But I'm not sure that's what GW intended.

I've seen this approach a lot over the years. I'm sure the mechanic struck
someone as elegant in concept and they went with it never actually looking
at the results of their work. And in normal play, it may still be a fun game
for people who never do look at what they are doing.

Normally I think bad mechanical design is due to the fact that many game
designers these days are writers or artists and rarely actual game
designers. Given what GW just produced however, I'm starting to think that
the hobby attracts designers who are just plain short a few neurons.

Post by psychohist
And they are very nice figures.

Yes they are.

There's no doubt that they benefited greatly from the movie designs, but
they are well made (although the Balrog needs serious gap filling) and look
wonderful. They are going to earn a small fortune from me over the new few
months.

[Rupert Boleyn]

Post by gleichman
Normally I think bad mechanical design is due to the fact that many game
designers these days are writers or artists and rarely actual game
designers. Given what GW just produced however, I'm starting to think that
the hobby attracts designers who are just plain short a few neurons.

GW has never been exactly shit hot when it comes to rule design. OTOH
they've always been very good at making figures and awesomely good at
selling stuff, quality or not.

[gleichman]

Post by Rupert Boleyn
GW has never been exactly shit hot when it comes to rule design. OTOH
they've always been very good at making figures and awesomely good at
selling stuff, quality or not.

True enough, after all these are the guys who think that the far future will
produce guns with a effective range such that it may not even be able to
give you a single shot as a critter moves from max range to close combat...

Beer and Pretzels. Lots of beer it think...

Man, I hate beer.

[Rupert Boleyn]

Post by gleichman
True enough, after all these are the guys who think that the far future will
produce guns with a effective range such that it may not even be able to
give you a single shot as a critter moves from max range to close combat...

Heh. I remember asking if I could arm my guys with M16s once. The other
players didn't get the joke.

Post by gleichman
Beer and Pretzels. Lots of beer it think...

We found the old GW game Bloodbowl was pretty god as a beer 'n' pretzels
game, if you only used the basic rules (otherwise the tems got too hard to
keep balanced). Of course, back then in NZ pretzels weren't easy to find,
so mostly we just went with the beer.

[gleichman]

Post by Rupert Boleyn
Heh. I remember asking if I could arm my guys with M16s once. The other
players didn't get the joke.

I did some number crunching once and determined that it's very likely
than an inch in 40K is around 2 yards. So while a M16A2 might only have
a Strength of 2, it would have a range of something like 200" which is
far beyond even their Artillery.

We've been playing it of late when we don't have the full rpg group.
It's fun in it's own way, but we quickly determined that it's a game
that while bad tactics will lose- good tactics will only go far enough
to let the dice decide the final outcome.

A fun game on the side. But I can't imagine why anyone would take it
seriously.

[John Morrow]

Post by gleichman
We've been playing it of late when we don't have the full rpg group.
It's fun in it's own way, but we quickly determined that it's a game
that while bad tactics will lose- good tactics will only go far enough
to let the dice decide the final outcome.
A fun game on the side. But I can't imagine why anyone would take it
seriously.

A lot of mainstream games (including plenty of old fashioned card games)
have a strong luck component that often does more to determine the outcome
than skill. I think it serves the purpose of allowing beginners and
casual players to win against more serious and experienced opponents
rather than having to find like-skilled opponents or endure many losses to
get better. That's why you'll find more casual Rummy, Monopoly, and even
Backgammon players than casual Chess or Scrabble players. I think that
people who take the GW games seriously take them seriously like the people
who play Monopoly or Backgammon take it seriously. And, yes, I know there
is some skill involved in playing both Monopoly and Backgammon but good
rolls can still take the game away from a more skilled opponent.

John Morrow

[gleichman]

Post by John Morrow
A lot of mainstream games (including plenty of old fashioned card games)
have a strong luck component that often does more to determine the outcome
than skill. I think it serves the purpose of allowing beginners and
casual players to win against more serious and experienced opponents
rather than having to find like-skilled opponents or endure many losses to
get better.

I think you make an excellent point. I imagine that there's a similar
drive in rpg design as well.

[John Morrow]

Post by gleichman
I think you make an excellent point. I imagine that there's a similar
drive in rpg design as well.

Yes. And I can understand how it can drive players nuts who want skill to
matter much more than luck, precisely because it lets a novice with poor
play choices defeat an opponent who is much more experienced and makes
good choices. It's like adjusting the rules of baseball so that a Little
League team can defeat a Major League team based on luck.

John Morrow

[Blackheart]

Post by gleichman
Sigh, this is the state of wargaming in 2006. Upon the heels of the
threads here about high level D&D, I'm beginning to wonder if there is
anyone designing games for the players of the triple digit IQ club
anymore.

not really. at least not from GW. GW thinks they're competing with
things like Xbox and Playstation. I'm sure they're not alone in that
thought.

[Ken Arromdee]

Saturday Night Live (I believe, in the first episode) parodied the dual-blade
razor with an ad offering a 3-blade razor. "The Triple-Trac... because you'll
believe anything".

Current state of the art, of course, is around 5 blades or so.

[Del Rio]

Post by Ken Arromdee
Saturday Night Live (I believe, in the first episode) parodied the dual-blade
razor with an ad offering a 3-blade razor. "The Triple-Trac...
because you'll
believe anything".
Current state of the art, of course, is around 5 blades or so.

Read this. Just trust me. ;-)

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930

Note the article preceded the announcement of the 5-bladed
Gillette razor by more than a year.