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 Overread wrote:
AA can allow a general advance across an area; it just doesn't allow an uncontested general advance.

Right, but if you do a "grand activation," you set yourself up for a bunch of similar activations, effectively recreating IGOUGO.

I have seen AA games turn into that.

Considering the scale of 40K in general you are well beyond uncontested movement, you are right in the killzone and battlezone where contesting should be a thing.

The problems with 40k are legion, and turn order is merely one of them.

That being said, there is a place for a low-effort high-visibility kind of wargame that GW used to produce. And as I've said, beer and pretzels games are quite popular - not everyone want 100 percent of their brain engaged.

In terms of mechanics, it's about knowing the desired play style and ensuring that the mechanics support this.

I'm too busy to do anything about it, but I'd really like to build some card-based wargames that involve minimal mechanics and focuses on player interplay rather than complexity. Keep the engagement primarily social. Someday, maybe I'll get the time.

I would say they matter only in as much as they generate the outcomes required for the game to feel like it should.

I would even say that mechanics that draw attention to themselves are bad. Mechanics shouldn't need to be visible if they're doing their job right.

If a mechanic is too visible then it becomes less about the game and more about the mechanic.

This can be more or less true depending on how abstract the game is. Yahtzee for example is completely abstract and the mechanic IS the game. Roll dice and get combos.

An rpg however, uses the mechanic as a structured method to represent something else entirely and so the mechanics shouldn't be the focus of playing the game.

 Hellebore wrote:
I would say they matter only in as much as they generate the outcomes required for the game to feel like it should.

I would even say that mechanics that draw attention to themselves are bad. Mechanics shouldn't need to be visible if they're doing their job right.

If a mechanic is too visible then it becomes less about the game and more about the mechanic.

I think this is generally correct. You want the mechanic to feel organic to what you are doing. My favorite mechanics are ones that accomplish several things at once while remaining simple. This is why I like card-driven (but not necessarily card-focused) games. If you draw off of a deck, you get some nice random variation, you get "fog of war," and you also get selective intelligence (as the player's hand grows, some kind of buildup is taking place).

And even things like the dummy button are useful because it's important means that the first thing you will do is check it, and in a military context, checklists are very much A Thing.

Conversely, the simplicity of the D&D system of rolling vs AC continually became more complex, and competing systems went even farther, requiring d100s to determine the exact results of critical hits, forcing comparisons between type of weapon and type of armor, speed factor, etc. At that point it was more about mastering the mechanic than having any kind of meaningful roleplaying experience.

Stuff needs to be fun too. A lot of people seem to forget that in favour of stuff that's clever and probably fun to think about, but less actual fun to apply.

Nomeny wrote:
Stuff needs to be fun too. A lot of people seem to forget that in favour of stuff that's clever and probably fun to think about, but less actual fun to apply.

Yes, and this is one of the reasons why I'm leaning into card-based systems. People love to look over a hand of cards and bluff each other. Or pretend that their five cards are all super-powerful. I'm not talking about a CCG, btw, but a system where cards function as logistics and rapidly deployable combat power.

There's also the fun of watching a rival player get his hand totally cleaned out, and everyone knowing that it's open season until the guy gets another draw.

Thirty years ago, I was one of those guys who wanted MOAR CHARTS and who conflated complexity with realism. But now I'm looking at leaner designs that cut to the chase. I want quick, easy mechanics that allow for the possibility of replay in the same session.

Cards are a popular trend lately thanks to Gloomhaven, Malifaux, and Kingdom Death.

I think when we start to consider fun we also have to consider the objective of the game itself.

Is the game designed to be fun, or are you building a complex faithful simulator where fun is incidental to accuracy and simulation detail.


Different games will aim for different objectives with their game system and a big part of game design is working out what you want and then building a set of mechanics around that objective.

Part of that is also player feedback once the game is live in the world. Esp if its a long term not a one-and-done single release.


I also think presentation comes into this too. A good mechanic presented poorly or in a complicated way can be un-fun or a bad mechanic in the game.

Cards are often popular as a tool because they let you have abilities in the game which can be quickly referenced and allow you a more complex status per-model whilst allowing easy tracking of the information.

 Overread wrote:
I think when we start to consider fun we also have to consider the objective of the game itself.

Is the game designed to be fun, or are you building a complex faithful simulator where fun is incidental to accuracy and simulation detail.


Different games will aim for different objectives with their game system and a big part of game design is working out what you want and then building a set of mechanics around that objective.

Part of that is also player feedback once the game is live in the world. Esp if its a long term not a one-and-done single release.


I also think presentation comes into this too. A good mechanic presented poorly or in a complicated way can be un-fun or a bad mechanic in the game.

Cards are often popular as a tool because they let you have abilities in the game which can be quickly referenced and allow you a more complex status per-model whilst allowing easy tracking of the information.

Fun is also wildly subjective. Which is why the generally accepted ultimate goal of game design is engagement. Our first instinct of course is to say it should be fun, but under even the slightest scrutiny it starts to fall apart. Fun is next to impossible to define. And what is most fun for one is a miserable time for another. What about games that are meant to make you feel bad? (Papers Please)


Cards can be a very excellent interface element that lightens mental load while creating tangible components to interact with in your play space. I like to convert random tables into card decks so I am not flipping around in a book and reading tables to get results.

Cards can simulate pseudo-randomness, and there's also neat ways information can be locked together. The board game Ankh does some really neat things, for example, by giving each player a deck of seven cards containing actions that can be played during conflicts (including an action that enables a player to collect played cards back to their hand).

Nomeny wrote:
Cards can simulate pseudo-randomness, and there's also neat ways information can be locked together. The board game Ankh does some really neat things, for example, by giving each player a deck of seven cards containing actions that can be played during conflicts (including an action that enables a player to collect played cards back to their hand).

Kemet does a similar thing for combat. For those that don't know kemet is basically a egyptian themed fast paced version of risk with extra bit. But the game has no dice at all. When you get int a fight you have a deck of 8 cards each with varying mixes of 3 attributes. Strength (which gets added to the number of guys you got to win the fight), Blood drops (which kill enemy troops) and sheilds (which cancel blood drops against you). Each fight you pick 2 cards. 1 to discard and 1 to play and you don't get them back until you have used all your cards. This way your opponents only ever know which cards you actually used and never which cards have been discarded secretly i.e. they have no idea which cards you have left.

It removes RNG and means fights are entirely an exercise in player agency and decision making. Pretty great.

 Lance845 wrote:

Nomeny wrote:
Cards can simulate pseudo-randomness, and there's also neat ways information can be locked together. The board game Ankh does some really neat things, for example, by giving each player a deck of seven cards containing actions that can be played during conflicts (including an action that enables a player to collect played cards back to their hand).

Kemet does a similar thing for combat. For those that don't know kemet is basically a egyptian themed fast paced version of risk with extra bit. But the game has no dice at all. When you get int a fight you have a deck of 8 cards each with varying mixes of 3 attributes. Strength (which gets added to the number of guys you got to win the fight), Blood drops (which kill enemy troops) and sheilds (which cancel blood drops against you). Each fight you pick 2 cards. 1 to discard and 1 to play and you don't get them back until you have used all your cards. This way your opponents only ever know which cards you actually used and never which cards have been discarded secretly i.e. they have no idea which cards you have left.

It removes RNG and means fights are entirely an exercise in player agency and decision making. Pretty great.

Freebooter's Fate resolves combat (at least melee combat) with cards. Each player has a set of cards representing the either 5 or 6 hit locations (I haven't played in a while so I forget the specifics, but eg head, torso, leg etc). IIRC, striker picks 3 cards, victim picks 2, matching cards are discarded and damage done to the body parts on the remaining striker cards. Sure, you might want a head shot because it's the best outcome, but your opponent knows this, but you know that your opponent knows this, etc.....................

Cards can be good game aids, I make unit cards for my intro games because it's much more digestible for a new player than looking at condensed stat lines - you can put the rules text on them for all the special rules so people don't have to look elsewhere.

But they do add to clutter around the table. I think you want a bit of space off to the side to organise things.

As for using them in game, I always loved the old magic and psychic phases in Warhammer. I have to say I've generally stayed away from card based systems other than that - I like dice!

If you want to talk about fun, we have a thread for that.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/812780.page

Lance and I are closely aligned here. Fun is wildly subjective and a designer should not design "for fun" because no one has the same idea on what that is. Plus, they are often contradictory.

it comes back to the nature of the game.

poker is purely abstract and the mechanics of the cards themselves is the point. so is yahtzee.

Most of the games discussed on dakka are simulations/models of some kind. There are layers between the mechanics and the output of the game.

An analogy might be computer code. From binary up to the different languages right to the graphical output.

Yahtzee is like playing a game in binary, you're just generating numbers and hoping for better numbers than someone else (and while this is technically true of all number generating games, the focus and feeling changes).

But go up to something like halo, fallout etc, and although every decision being made still uses the binary, the output and point of the game is translated through multiple languages into a visual action. That separation changes the focus of the game from the literal numbers generated, to the visual elements represented by those numbers.

And while that's a somewhat arbitrary distinction, it's clear from the psychology of gaming it makes a MASSIVE difference.


You could, for example, play halo in binary, just having the numbers generated pop up, if you knew that a certain set of combinations meant you shot someone etc (like reading the matrix code).


For wargames etc, those additional layers of abstraction between the generated numbers and the miniature actions changes the focus away from the mechanic itself.


IMO you can see when a mechanic starts to override the game experience if people start referring to it directly, rather than its outcome.

The phrase 'fishing for 6s' suggests the focus of the game has shifted from the outcome to the mechanic, which imo isn't ideal in a wargame.