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Lately, I've been thinking about what a "clean sheet" morale-oriented tabletop wargame might be like, assuming that I had the resouces of a GW / CMoN / Hasbro at my disposal to develop a tabletop wargame from the ground up.

It looks *nothing* like the 28mm "heroic" wargaming that we've been playing all of these years. Where Warhammer-esque games have focused on "kills" (of whatever sort), that just isn't what should drive morale in game. That is, kills should NOT be the primary goal, nor the primary trigger - so shifting objectives to strategic and positional is a major improvement.

A morale-oriented tabletop wargame would have the primary objective to drive your enemy from the field, as in actual historical battles, riot control, modern insurgent warfare. It builds upon managing undisciplined conscripts forced to be there, guerillas trying to bleed & disrupt. distinct from fanatics fighting for the cause, and mercenaries trying to live another day.

The notions of strong time-motion synchornization might not apply, as the different troops would activate and react to commands very differently, so neither strict alternation nor Igo-Ugo are ideal candidates.

Yes, I agree.

For historical periods, you may want to look at old fashion linear warfare, especially the Duke of Marlborough. The whole point in his day was to out-maneuver your opponent so they knew fighting would be pointless.

This may seem like a game that might be a very different scale than a skirmish game.

Yeah, as above, it's not 28mm skirmish (1 figure per base) - a base of dozens, scores, hundreds or thousands seems more appropriate. But it won't have the "curb appeal" of the current GW stuff.

I like the idea of using 'morale' as an excuse to keep models on the tabletop. One of the things that irks me about 40k is that most of the game is played with a fraction of the armies chosen since much of the game is about clearing your opponent's material off the board. Letting units be pinned or fall back instead of taking casualties might be an idea that would dovetail with that "curb appeal" that GW games have.

I like the idea, morale is such a hugely important part of actual warfare that a lot of games tend to overlook.

As far as I recall, Kings of War doesn't really concern itself with taking individual casualties off of units, instead they take damage and the moste damage they take, the more likely the entire unit is to break and run. Might be worth looking at just for inspiration.

Probably the easiest setting to apply morale imo would be a setting of lineinfantry batteling it out.
Mostly due to the nature of the combat and the impact beeing relatively easy to emulate.
Relatively.

This sounds like a better basis for a card-driven game than a miniatures game.

Shatterlands is a indie-wargame where you can actually win games with only a few casualties. I was running a game where one side had more troops but they all had terrible morale. One charge from an opposing swordsmen (and watching one of their men get decapitated) send the rest of the force scurrying off the table by the end of turn 2. There's also an overall force morale that makes it difficult to keep your troops on the table after certain actions happen (deaths, injuries, panic tests).

Chain of Command from Too Fat Lardies has the same kind of force morale tracker which means you can win a scenario without causing a lot of injuries, as long as you're putting pressure on your opponent's force.

So maybe that kind of force morale tracker and how it's both influenced by your force and how it in turn influences your force could add a more satisfying dimension to morale in games?

WIth a morale focus, pinning (also digging) and fallback (also reposition) exist as mechanics to get a unit *back* in the fight after sitting out for some period of time. The question is to what extent this is player directed vs mechanically mandated.

But far too many games focus on removing enemy units. I get that, as it accelerates the game toward conclusion. Kings of War simply has higher aggregation, but is otherwise same-old.

Mechanically, sure it could be a card-based game; I like cards for command / activation at larger scales. Drawing a combat result card would probably be easier than remembering a table, if the card gave specific orders / result based on psychology state (e.g. fanatic, undisciplined, mercenary).

From what I recall of Stargrunt, it was a game that made morale important. Suppressive fire was the name of the game, taking away the enemy's ability to act meaningfully. Shooting often involved no casualties but you would pin down units and outmaneuver them (or get your power armor into melee, which was pretty devastating).

Hail of Fire has a mechanic where each side has a pool of points. Both sides lose points when units are destroyed. The attacker loses points after X number of turns for each objective not held. The same for the defender once the attacker starts controlling objectives. Once one side is down to line 30-40% of the original pool, it loses. I think there are still pins & suppression.

I like the pool idea because it gives the attacker the impetus to attack rather than hunkering down and hoping to get lucky with pot shots. This mechanism also gives the defender an opportunity to counter attack if not too beat up. To me, this also represents how the attacker usually has time pressures, whether it's reinforcements for the defense, keeping up with the rest of the army to not expose flanks, what have you.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Where Warhammer-esque games have focused on "kills" (of whatever sort), that just isn't what should drive morale in game. That is, kills should NOT be the primary goal, nor the primary trigger - so shifting objectives to strategic and positional is a major improvement.

The description kind of reminds me of skirmish game design, where it centered around identify objective, obtain/capture it, and then make it back to the LZ for extraction. The difference between it and other games was that models didn't get killed or die. Technology, Magic, Psionic developed to the degree that the warfare and weapons weren't fatal (at least combat versions), either remote controlled, magic or advanced nano-tech with healing capabilities. Units took wounds, which decreased their efficiency, unless repaired/medic and they could be incapacitated which took them out of combat for a round (unless awakened from another unit).

It focused on crowd control, movement, pinning to cause either someone to flank or pull back. Pushing to incapacitate a unit to bypass them, but still having to watch their back. They could leave a unit to pin or harass the fallen unit when it awakened, or push forward (do you leave resources behind to watch or push forward and then risk getting flanked). Moral wasn't about risking death, fear or losing control but was about boosting Moral to give boosts/bonuses.

The hard part was getting players to change their method of thinking. A lot of times, players tend to charge, incapacitate, rush but then ultimately get defeated because they couldn't fight on two fronts, left themselves open to flanking. It could have been the test groups too as we didn't really set up or introduce how to accomplish the methods. We just explained the game, rules, let them try to develop their strategies which resulted in a lot of just charging in. After we explained things, giving examples better it did improve though. The feeling of the game was more like a video game, which they did enjoy but it seemed to play probably closer to a "sports game".

Conceeptually, I think force preservation needs to be scored a *LOT* higher than it typically does (ZERO), where VP are weighted on:

1st. Strategic objectives
2nd. Force Preservation
3rd. Enemy captured & casualties

It's possible that we might award ZERO points for destruction of enemy, as it's just a means toward the end (strategic objective) in the same sense that we don't award points for distance moved.

Explaining goals and scoring this way might reduce the headlong charges.

Maybe give players different options to address other players units, like not only attacking, but options like suppressing fire. I miss going to ground and pinning for 40k, and I feel like these could be fun if they're properly handled.

Battlefleet Gothic's victory point system encourages "morale", in that it's usually better to disengage with heavily-damaged ships rather than stay in the fight and be destroyed; no game-time rules needed at all.

I agree that casualties should not be any part of the victory conditions unless the mission objective is specifically to wipe out the enemy.

What about awarding points for pulling back wounded units?

EG, if you have a unit of 10 models, if the opponent kills 9, and you get the 1 guy off the table, you get 9 points and he gets 1. If the opponent kills them all, he gets 10 points. if he kills 1 and you pull them back, you get 1 point and he gets 9.

so fighting for as long as possible is rewarded, but get your men out of there!

(A unit could have 10 wounds, and remain effective until they are gone, so represent a unit of badly wounded guys when down to 1 wound, not a single, perfectly healthy guy).

As above, I'm suggesting to award ZERO points for kills, regardless of casualties inflicted.

If players want to win, they will have to win on Objectives worth 8 VPs.

If Objectives are tied, then it's a Draw, where force preservation might be worth 2-1 VPs (General alive, more than 50% of unbroken units over 50% starting strength).

Fibonacci scoring:
* 5 VPs for common primary
* 3 VPs for personal secondary
* 2 VPs for force preservation
* 1 VP for General alive

During my WHFB year moved from the same idea I designed a fantasy wargame with almost the same concepts, where Morale (and fighting) where resolved by the idea of "push" (btw: Morale and Wound where exactly the same stat - but the game was more on the scale of Epic, with a single miniature for any unit).

Basically, the idea was to use vector (an quantified and directional arrow) traversal to the battle line, that summarize the results of the combat.
Any combat round the losing side lose ground equivalent to the total Push (and if can't retrocede suffer more casualty).
If the total Push was bigger that Morale, the line break and the unit flee.

I even included a mechanics to partially recover the lost Morale.

Andy Chamber's Starship Troopers let players cancel a hit on their models by 'flinching' those models 2" backwards.

Nurglitch wrote:
Andy Chamber's Starship Troopers let players cancel a hit on their models by 'flinching' those models 2" backwards.

Black Ops does the same. You can choose to take the hits, or retreat away from the danger and avoid it.

If an idea is good, at least three other people have it before you.

If an idea is bad, three people have had it before you, but only 1 has tried it.

In this case Andy Chambers wrote Starship Troopers back in 2005, and Black Ops was published in 2015. It shouldn't be too hard to find a game that used it before either.

Agreed, just other examples for the OP to look at.

For a Morale based game, I was thinking about having the morale stat be the only stat that mattered. As Morale was reduced or improved, the units would improve at performing actions.

You "defeated" a unit by reducing its morale to 0. This could be done via conditions, actions, etc. However, this maybe too much like "hit points" or "Wounds" for the OP.

I think of many "Linear" warfare periods and often you could "win" a campaign by outmaneuvering your opponent and avoiding battle all together, and forcing them to withdraw from a position or maneuver away from an objective.

In this game I hope there would be the ability to spread rumours.

If a General moves out of line of sight from allies for example, then they should have to fight rumours of that generals death.

I enjoy stuff like the Battlegroup system's method of concealed morale. The entire army has 'X' morale points as dictated by your army build or the scenario. Each time you lose a unit or attempt to un-pin a handful of units you draw a token from a bag (concealed from your opponent), and when your number reaches the 'X' morale...your army breaks and you lose the game.

It's pretty realistic but that often angers gamers who hate that real battlefield conditions are often chaotic, hectic and nothing goes according to plan. In the Battlegroup system the tokens range from no impact, occasionally a small bonus in the form of a special event, all the way from 1-5 morale points. It's a very simple but elegant system and one I prefer immensely over almost all of the other games I've played on the scale (15-20mm WW2).

Battlegroup also makes it hard to kill enemy units, unless you're stupid. Shooting at an enemy unit in cover is difficult...but if you walk a unit into a field in front of a machine gun, you're fethed. While the draws are random, it's a nice reflection of the chaos on the battlefield. You might draw every single '5' morale token in the bag and your barely scratched force may withdraw and you lose the game after they pin a handful of your units, etc. That's completely realistic. There are an endless number of instances where historically units/armies withdrew because they misjudged the amount of resistance they were facing or had bad info. In other instances an attack ended in disaster because the side didn't have enough communication or information to realize how bad of a situation they were in so they plowed on...and paid the price.

The main thing about making a morale based game (as really, most games "should" be) is that you need to shift the objectives of the game to actual objectives....instead of "kill all their stuff". That may, occasionally, be the real objective, but if you're not taking models off the table, keeping their heads down is just as good if you need to secure a position, spike some artillery pieces, retrieve wounded comrades, destroy aircraft on an airfield, storm a bridgehead, demolish a bridge or bunker complex, make it to an escape point, recover materiel, steal a technical component, etc.

In modern "pop culture" wargaming (ala Warhammer), it's all about killing swathes of models and just chasing random point locations around on a table...that's not much of a wargame. There are other ways to win wargames. Heck, most battles in history were won or lost with rather small margins of casualties compared to the forces involved. It's not all "to the last man" heroic stands. Those are the exception not the rule. It's often a matter of encountering resistance and quickly determining what your chances are to overcome it, and then acting accordingly (which, 60% of the time would mean...falling back and calling in artillery or trying again tomorrow)

So, in short...if you're planning on a more realistic, morale/command/control based game - you need to make sure the wargame's goal isn't "kill all their models" all the time.

I also like Battlegroup's system. You have to pull a chit to "unpin" units as well. Therefore, even if you pin enough enemy units, you can still break them as they are forced to draw chits to get units moving again.

I'd imagine quite a few people would be put off by such a 'realistic' way of ending the game such as when they pull the wrong tokens from a bag. I mean, other people will be very satisfied with the realism, but it seems to go against most design rules of thumb about empowering players (could be said about most wargames though).

If you're a tournament player, or a mathhammer style individual it might - because you're really just wanting to play Chess with man dollies.

The Battlegroup system is set up to make an early break pretty rare (with '5' morale tokens being about 1/10 of the number of '1's and '2's, etc.). It "can" happen, but someone playing Battlegroup is playing for that exact reason. Because of the system, the unknown, the realism...not the mathematical manipulation of dice to produce a perfect outcome. The player agency is there....because you need to actually use tactics to avoid being put in the position to pick tokens. While it's not a simulation (no wargame is), it's a damn sight closer than pop culture styled games. If you have a basic understanding of small unit tactics, you will have an advantage over someone who doesn't. So it rewards a different kind of player skill level. Not math, but actual tactics (admittedly you could probably dig and convert most small unit tactics into a form of geometry of sorts.).

I'd argue that perhaps 90% of the general wargaming population isn't playing 40K-styled games or tournament systems, but rather historical or "for fun" games, regardless of genre.

The designer of a game will know what their goal is. My Old West game for instance has a disclaimer: it is not for competitive play or tournaments. If you go into the game with that attitude, you won't enjoy it.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
It's possible that we might award ZERO points for destruction of enemy, as it's just a means toward the end (strategic objective) in the same sense that we don't award points for distance moved.

Going to have to disagree with this. Moving and killing may both be part of achieving tactical goals, but only one of them is relevant on a strategic scale. You can't say you won the battle because your units moved back and forth and accumulated a lot of movement distance, but you sure can claim victory if you killed the enemy a bunch. For example, in a WWII game killing should be the only objective that matters. The allies have obscene advantages in manpower and industrial capacity and all that matters is effectively using those advantages to ensure that the enemy is continuing to die. Tactical objectives don't matter because you can always send in the next wave, and as long as you have a sufficient kill to death ratio victory is inevitable. Mutual annihilation 40k-style is a decisive victory, not a mere side effect of claiming other objectives.

It's an interesting idea in general though, but it does put some serious constraints on the fluff elements you can use. In the modern era (or modern-style scifi) you're pretty much limited to small scale infantry-only skirmishes as once the big guns come in units aren't going to live long enough for morale to matter. A medieval/fantasy-style game would probably work better for this kind of thing, as long as you don't repeat GW's mistakes of having wizards nuking whole blocks of infantry with every spell.

Sometimes I think people would benefit from trying to simulate non-battles, like sports or races. Gives some perspective. The Tales & Games "The Hare & The Tortoise" is a great racing game with a morale component (Hare is lazy, Wolf scares others, Sheep is a coward, and Fox is sneaky, Tortoise is reliable).