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Mechanics that simulate 'to hit' are broadly similar for many wargames – generally a dice roll that needs to beat a set score. Similarly, movement is usually a number of inches or centimetres.

These simple mechanics are common, but the variety of psychology rules – covering morale, training and courage under fire or when opposing a frightening foe – is hugely varied; from dice rolls similar to the 'to hit' example above, to blast markers and many more.

I'd like to focus on 40k, as that's familiar to most gamers here. My questions are:

* How important a role would you like Psychology to play in 40k?
* What mechanics would you use to achieve this?

Please do feel free to bring in innovative ideas from other wargames, or your own ideas.

I don't know what you'd be able to do to add to 40k that wouldn't drastically change the system.

While I haven't played 40k in many editions, it always seemed to me that the game encouraged minimal 'friction'; that is, you pretty much can always do what you want to do with your guys. This is especially true now that a lot of 40k's gameplay takes place off the table with various abilities that need to be activated.

My best comparison in terms of scale would be Warlord's Order Dice systems (Bolt Action, Gates of Antares, Warlords of Erewhon) and TooFatLardies' Chain of Command.

Warlord's Order Dice systems use Pins for morale interactions. Units are given pin through a variety of circumstances: being shot at, being attacked in close combat, failing a Sprint check, being near an imposing models. These pins can degrade quality in some systems, and in all systems a unit routs if its Pins equal its Morale/Command value (so you can literally Pin a deathstar to death without needing to confront it head on). Pins can be reduced a little by successfully passing morale checks, or a lot by spending your entire turn rallying and doing nothing else.

Chain of Command uses Shock, which is accrued mostly when a unit is shot at or attacked in close combat. Like Pins, they degrade a unit's ability to act. TFL games usually focus on 'friction' while playing, so accruing shock points can be absolutely detrimental when you have limited actions you can take (do you order your Lieutenant to continue the attack, or spend your activations elsewhere to maybe relieve the pressure on your troops, at the risk of delaying the attack?).

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Oddly enough, it was the pinning/morale system from Gates of Antares that led to this train of thought. The fact that morale has a deleterious effect rather than a binary success/fail really appeals to me. There's something similar in Epic: Armageddon, where blast markers stop one stand/unit in a formation from shooting, and reduce the order roll.

I've not heard of Chain of Command's shock mechanic – how is that implemented? Is it a dice thing, or do you have a certain number of orders available?

The concept of 'friction' that you introduce nicely sums up what I think I'd like to see in 40k. Obviously it's frustrating as a commander that your troops don't do what you want; but if that can be balanced somehow, I think it would make for a more rewarding experience.

In terms of 40k, 9th edition is infamously deadly – it's very easy to shoot things off the board, and morale is largely redundant. Something like GoA or E:A might work nicely: reducing the chance of a unit to hit, or stopping members shooting entirely, would reduce the deadliness, and give some reason to move/rally instead of firing.

I very much like the action mechanic of 9th edition, and rallying seems a perfect addition here.

The use of the friction term is a good one.

There are allot of games for which the activation of every unit a player has is not a given. Sometimes this is as a result of a condition such as being pinned, scared, etc. Sometimes it's simple part of activation and based on a units general quality and the leadership it is subject to.

Most historical games take leadership and command and in game psychology into account somehow.

I'm generally not a fan of allot of psychology, but one of my favorite games Song of Blades and Heroes, does have an activation mechanic that takes info account a units quality and proximity to a leader and encourages the player to gamble based on that with their activation roll. It's absolutely brilliant and adds allot of important decision making to one of the simplest wargames ever written.

When it comes to sci fantasy games with lots units (40k, Grimdark Future) I prefer less friction and psychology, though the lack of it in Kings of War is something a friend of mine really dislikes.

 Apologist wrote:

I've not heard of Chain of Command's shock mechanic – how is that implemented? Is it a dice thing, or do you have a certain number of orders available?

Chain of Command uses Command Dice for unit activation. You usually get 4-6 of them (the average platoon gets 5, worse troops get 4, better troops get 6). You roll these dice at the beginning of your phase and give you certain actions:

1 - Deploy or activate a team (squads in Chain of Command are usually broken down into Fireteams, so a 10-man squad would be made up of a Junior Leader and 2 Fireteams)
2 - Deploy or activate a Squad
3 - Deploy or activate a Junior Leader (Leaders have Initiative points that let them activate fireteams or squads nearby)
4 - Deploy or activate a Senior Leader
5 - Add 1 to CoC dice tally (a special die that you can spend Full dice, that's six pips, to do stuff like interrupt the enemy's phase with a friendly unit, relocate a sniper, avoid taking a Force Morale Test, or end the turn)
6 - Also special, depending on how many 6s you roll. One 6 does nothing, but if you roll 2 you get to keep the initiative and roll again. But three sixes lets you go again and also ends the turn (which means ongoing effects like Smoke or Tactical Movement goes away).

So at any time you may or may not have have the resources to activate a team, squad, or multiple squads at a time.

Shock is the Morale mechanic. Like I said, you get Shock from being shot at, getting hit by artillery, etc. Usually it comes from shooing and is affected by cover. A unit in the open is likely to have its troops killed outright, but being in light or heavy cover means you get points of Shock instead of dead troops. Shock reduces your movement (already randomized by rolling d6 so even a couple points of shock on a team can keep them from moving) and fire rate, and can pin or break your sections.

You also have an overall Force Morale, which is semi-randomized at the start of a scenario (usually ends up from 7-11). You lose points of Force morale as Bad Things happen; your Leaders get hurt, your units get routed or outright wiped out, you lose Jump Off Points (deployment zones). Once you get down to get 4 or less, you start losing Command Dice and at 0 your platoon routs.

There's a really awesome set of rules and army lists to play the Horus Heresy with CoC rules, and it's a dream project of mine.

I really like Legion's suppression mechanics.

Apologist wrote:Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Oddly enough, it was the pinning/morale system from Gates of Antares that led to this train of thought.

The godfather of RT/40K FTW....

There's not nearly enuff friction to simulate real fighting in "current 40k" it's far more game than war at this point.

The 4Ms of wargaming are

Movement,
Melee
Missiles
Morale

Therefore, Morale should technically be of equal import as the other three. Often it is not.

Many players do not like it when their little toy soldiers do not do exactly as they tell them, and are not eager to do suicidal things.

... And Magic!

(something something romans something)

Morale is a factor that affects whether or not a model or unit is effective in combat. One could suggest that some of the random effects in 40k, and even the casualty system, are in fact due to morale effects that are just lumped in with other things to determine if a model/unit is successful in doing something. Failed a charge? Guys were too afraid to get stuck in properly.

I did like the old fear and terror rules being explicit though. Some things should be too scary to get close to.

I like accumulating effect like blast markers in Epic, where it represents a unit having more and more battle stress put on them and have their efficiency diminished or even eventually break. I like the deterministic mechanisms where you can pile up these effects even if you roll poorly with actual attacks.

I don't like high variance high impact dice rolls like Leadership tests in old Warhammers because they just out of the blue disadvantage one player often for no fault of his own other than RNG telling so. It just always leaves a bad taste in both the player punished by it and the player who benefits without earning it with good decisions

Song of blades and heroes has an interesting method. When you take a morale check, you essentially take three. Fail one and you withdraw by one move away. Fail two and it’s two moves away. Three and the unit leaves play as it routs.

Also these morale moves head your unit to the closest table edge. If you are close enough, even a single failure can run your troops off and out of the fight altogether.

If you are in melee and run, your opponent gets a free attack. If they have you surrounded so a failure makes you run through another unit, your unit dies.

And at the end of any moves due to morale, your guys regroup, having backed off enough to get their nerve back. And there’s nothing to track further. They are ready to fight some more.

Morale should definitely be a factor, and to be honest it’s always been something GW has struggled with.

In earlier editions you had lots of psychology related stats, which were quite quickly rolled into just Ld.

In WHFB, psychology was pretty much how you won the game, as Breaking a unit would often see it wiped out. But, over time more ways round it were introduced, with 8th introducing some irritating stuff, such as no modifiers for losing a combat provided you had more ranks.

In 40K? I genuinely don’t remember it being That Important. 2nd Ed still had Fear and Terror of course, but as I said I genuinely don’t recall them ever being especially problematic.

Yes later editions of 40K had stuff like pinning. But the mechanics behind that were typically a bit crap, as relatively few weapons could do it, and those that could still had to kill something first, then that unit had to fail a Pinning Test, unless you’d inflicted enough wounds for a Break Test.

So….how to Make Psychology Matter? I genuinely don’t know.

Heresy has some interesting concepts, such as Brutal weapons. Basically they make such a mess on a kill they impact the unit’s Ld test for breaking, Now I’m yet to play a game of that, and it’ll be some time before I do so I can’t say if that’s at all effective. But I at least like the concept.

That could be adopted in 40K in some manner. After all, these quite the difference in seeing a squad mate stabbed with a Bayonet, and shredded by a Carnifex, or blatted into pate by a Bloodthirster.

And whilst likely a minority opinion, I do like Battleshock, at least now AoS does it.

The big problem of morale is that half the factions in the setting are immune to morale according to their lore.

Most wargames have the advantage that they are about humans who have notoriously gakky morale while in 40k normal humans are only one faction.

Generally morale systems break down when a fearless faction is introduced. It always happens and its just incredibly hard to offset the advantage that brings. Even if its fair, it makes players acutely aware they don't like fear effects and drives their removal from the game as a whole.

 Tyran wrote:


Most wargames have the advantage that they are about humans who have notoriously gakky morale

Compared to who exactly?

 Easy E wrote:

 Tyran wrote:


Most wargames have the advantage that they are about humans who have notoriously gakky morale

Compared to who exactly?

Compared to the entire roster of demons, aliens and superhumans that makes most of 40k.

Oh, I see. Compared to 40K yeah.

In some other game systems/fiction, not so much. I can think of fiction where the basic Humans are the crazed murder machines!

Edit: I am thinking of a few Baen Books about humans soldiers being recruited to fight off an alien threat. March Up Country maybe?

I generally think that morale rules are a core part of any larger scale game. I like to see it represented differently in skirmish games, but that's because you just don't have mass psychology going on there with the small numbers.

That said, in 40K, as others have said, it doesn't really work because a vast proportion of the factions is practically immune to morale, which means that if it was something that actually mattered, it would cripple a few armies and not matter at all to the rest. I think that it could still work but then the fearless armies should be given some alternative to compensate for that.

40k is definitely an outlier in terms of morale compared to most historical systems. Not so much Fantasy and Sci Fi though where most folks (myself included) generally want full control over their miniatures.

Even Kings of War boils it's morale system into it's damage system. Though it does make more sense than 40k.

I completely understand the disdain some players have for units falling out of control of the player's will due to morale. At the same time, it's kinda funny that being removed from the table is really the ultimate expression of a player to lose control of a unit, since it will never, unless unit/model return rules exist, act on the table again thus never follow the will of the player.

Which in the context of 9th edition 40k and its lethality (both morale and in general) is kinda funny. Evidently, players are more comfortable with the ultimate loss of player agency with model/unit removal than the partial loss of control that most any other miniatures war game's morale system (including older 40k) has.

Me, I'd much rather have a morale system beyond kills more. I like the elegance Bolt Action where a unit basically just stops and hunkers down. Particularly when viewed through the lens of 40k. Being pinned doesn't always mean being afraid (though it can) or some other psychological effect. Being pinned could be that a unit is being forced to stay in cover unable to move or return fire being 'pinned' down by the enemy who has dialed into their location. Which potentially affects all factions, even the fearless ones, as leaving cover means annihilation, or at least expected annihilation.

And to be sure, in Bolt Action a pinned unit can be a detriment to a player's control well beyond just the loss of control of that unit. Because in Bolt Action units typically can shoot through friendly units. So by pinning a forward unit, an opponent can effectively neutralize many units should they be 'blocked' by said friendly unit that is now in the way and not moving. It's part of what makes Bolt Action fun for me. I have to consider what will happen if any unit gets pinned and how it affects the movement and offensive power of the rest of my force later in the game.

And me personally, I'd rather have a unit that I need to consider moving or shooting around with the chance to get back in the fight far more than an utterly removed unit that was deployed on the table only to be removed after my opponent's turn.

I think that is a different topic, most people want a reduction of lethality, but that would be accomplished by reduction to AP or damage or better cover systems.

Morale is simply too irrelevant to affect lethality, and making morale revelant enough to affect lethality is likely going to increase feel bad moments.

Moreover fearless horde factions are know to feed units to complete annihilation to buy time, waste ammo or simply distract their oponnent.

Tyranids are know to literally jam enemy guns and tracks with bodies, and Orks have cleared giant minefields just by walking over them with enough bodies. It is hard to make even basic psychological warfare work when an important lore point of certain factions is that they simply don't care and are unable to care about their individual lives.

the way Chain of Command does it is very good, ditto how Sharpe Practice does it (similar games from the same authors), does require you to start thinking of the game as a game of units not individuals though, but it works very well

stuff like a pin marker means reduced movement towards the enemy, but can always fall back to avoid what happens in Bolt Action where a pinned unit may as well not be in the game

the CoC/SP method makes characters important as they can rally it.

TBH I wish GW would either have a psych mechanism that does something or just get rid of it, the idea they have a system then let half the army factions have a way to ignore it is getting silly

Despite my previously mentioned preference for full control over my toy soldiers, I just wanted to throw out there that psychology affecting the action of units is a strong lean towards simulating a number of reactions that troops might have that are out of their commander's control.

For folks looking to explore the idea more thoroughly, I highly recommend checking out Two Hour Wargames "Reaction" system. They've used it in dozens of games over the years and there's a free set you download from their site.
https://twohourwargames.com/
It's not my personal cup of tea, and there are other approaches used by other game designers, but THW in particular deserves a read as they've really honed the reaction concept over the years. I think every wargamer should give it a read if only to see what the polar opposite of 40k might look like. It's also an excellent system for coop and solo gaming which I believe all their games have rules specifically for.

There's also fog of war. With the non-40K "hex and chit" games, I found it odd that both sides had a satellite viewing system in 1776. Up Front is one of my favorite games (it's a card game, not played on a map) since it attempts to replicate the confusion of terrain on a battlefield.

Fog of war typically requires a third party, and computer games can do this. I guess you could argue that the uncertainty of dice can account for fog of war or other uncertainties.

I've been watching YT videos of Ukranian and Russian forces, and, yes, there's a lot missing from tabletop wargames that are in the actual field.

 ced1106 wrote:
There's also fog of war. With the non-40K "hex and chit" games, I found it odd that both sides had a satellite viewing system in 1776. Up Front is one of my favorite games (it's a card game, not played on a map) since it attempts to replicate the confusion of terrain on a battlefield.

Fog of war typically requires a third party, and computer games can do this. I guess you could argue that the uncertainty of dice can account for fog of war or other uncertainties.

I've been watching YT videos of Ukranian and Russian forces, and, yes, there's a lot missing from tabletop wargames that are in the actual field.

This is true, with most of the big-name games, but there are a number of games on the modern-historical front that are really drilling down in an attempt to replicate the modern battlefield.
Consider Ambush Alley which has a reaction system and a good set of rules to capture much of the asymmetrical nature of much modern warfare incorporating much of the experience of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Interestingly, their "Tomorrow's War" game involved things like drones and such that now look to be a standard part of warfare!

/thread

I would love psychology to have more of an effect in 40K - I remember when the statline included willpower, cool and intelligence as well as leadership, and for game effects there was fear, terror, frenzy, hatred....
(one of the reasons I've chosen chaos knights as my next faction is that they get to be scary and have some effect on morale)
....some of these things are rolled into special rules on datasheets now, kinda, but I'd like a return to a universal system.

I'd like to see a hybrid command-and-control/morale system and kind of treat.it as a 'command resouce'.

While I've seen individual aspects of things I've liked implemented in some games (infinity, wmh etc) I think there is enough scope there to build some very interesting systems.

Like infinity's 'order' system - everyone generates an order that goes into a common pool. You spend the orders to activate your doods and get them to do stuff. Fewer doods, fewer orders. 'Irregular' troops generate an order but it doesn't go into the pool.
Kill the commander, everyone becomes Irregular.

Warmachine. Your caster generates x points of focus which you 'spend' on spells, fueling your jacks' actions or extra/better attacks.

I like the notion of a 'hybrid' approach- your units generate orders (or can keep them if they're initiative is valued), but officers generate more and it goes into a 'command pool' whixh represents your 'opportunity to do things'. Orders are 'spent' on units to do things and the command pool resource is drained dependimg on how onerous the thing is. But the caveat is that in terms of attacks/damage, morale is the primary 'target'. It should be very difficult to physically 'kill' something (crits basically). And i hate tracking the 'power' of bullets. Shouldnt matter. Youre shot and youre down. And the more the morale is damaged, the more damaged/fractured/unuseable/smaller the command pool becomes. Until you get to a certain point where the force has to disengage.

I don't see how you are supposed to implement that with fearless units like poxwalkers, chaos mutants, vehicles and monsters in general or synapse Tyranids.

I believe was mentioned earlier, but the system used in Bolt Action and K47 is quite good. I'm not a fan of table clutter, but their pin dial integrates very well into the system and that it is a numerical status that can be acquired and removed. The number of pins affect the unit's effectiveness and it's possible to break the unit's morale and take them out of the fight even if they've not taken casualties.

It's a bit abstract compared to some of the more complex wargame systems, but it's worlds ahead of 40k in terms of morale being a changing status that is well integrated into most aspects of the game.

 Eilif wrote:
I believe was mentioned earlier, but the system used in Bolt Action and K47 is quite good. I'm not a fan of table clutter, but their pin dial integrates very well into the system and that it is a numerical status that can be acquired and removed. The number of pins affect the unit's effectiveness and it's possible to break the unit's morale and take them out of the fight even if they've not taken casualties.

It's a bit abstract compared to some of the more complex wargame systems, but it's worlds ahead of 40k in terms of morale being a changing status that is well integrated into most aspects of the game.

In Antares as well; the Ghar battlesuits are like mini-tanks and can be difficult to deal with without the proper weapons. But if you concentrate enough x-slings, micro-x launchers, and x-launchers (wrist-mounted grenade launchers, gun-mounted grenade launchers, and mortars, respectively), you can pin them out of existence.

And the pin markers are a fun way to add some visual flair to the battlefield if you're inclined against clutter. Some casualty models with a counter, or even a bit of flock and tufts, does look nicer.