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Everyone knows that the basics of wargame design are the 4Ms. Those stand for:

-Movement
-Missiles
-Melee
-Morale

I have spoken about the 4Ms and individual aspects of the 4Ms at various times. However, as a designer one of my big fascinations is how to effectively deal with Melee as one of the 4Ms. In many genres, Melee is the great "decider" and is the crucial mechanics for the period or genre. That weight of decision for the game should come from Melee.

Yet, despite the importance of it I have found Melee is often the anti-thesis of fun and instead simply bogs down into a game of Yahtzee where you roll and pray for a better dice roll. The core of good game play is decision making, and in many games once you get into Melee there are no decisions to make. As a player, you simply completing the mechanical process of the game to get a result, so you are not playing the game. The game is playing you.

If you are inclined, the rest of my thoughts are on the blog: http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2022/11/wargame-design-avoiding-melee-yahtzee.html

However, I am looking for how you avoid this problem in your game designs? What do you do, or what have you seen that has cleverly used mechanics to avoid that Yahtzee type feel for your RNGs? How have you seen games add "Choice" into melee?

It depends upon the nature of the melee combat. Are we talking formed, ranked troops, or a handful of dudes fighting effectively individual duels?

In my historical/fantasy game (link in sig below), melee combat is resolved between ranked units. Skirmishers that fight in melee, are automatically ranked. If we're dealing with individuals or monsters, the ranked units can do a thing called a "swarm" where they will move to surround the outnumbered foe. (You don't literally have to break up the unit, you can just see how many could make contact to save time).

Combat is simultaneous. (My first draft had a "priority" for weapon length, but it was very slow and arguably too detailed.)

Both sides roll to hit, and the target number varies based on the differing Melee Skills of the units. The hits are noted, and then both sides roll to save against the hits they took. Casualties are removed and now it is time to check morale.

To do this, we must see who "won" the fight. This is determined by tallying up the casualties each side has taken - whoever takes less wins! The margin of that difference is applied as a negative morale modifier. Typically the loser tests first, but it's the first round of the combat, the defender must test first. This is a nice, easy way to reflect the positive benefits of being the aggressor.

If the first side does not rout, the other side tests. If neither rout, the combat continues until one side is wiped out or flees.

It's quick, uses only a couple of die rolls, and tactics matter.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
By "tactics" I mean that as in real life, hitting a unit in the flank or rear acts as a force multiplier.

Mass also matters. If both sides are presenting a solid front, hammering a unit with two attackers at once might force a gap, allowing exploitation.

To put it another way, the system rewards players who are creative rather than simply advancing into the other player's forces and expecting dice rolls to win the game.

 Easy E wrote:
In many genres, Melee is the great "decider" and is the crucial mechanics for the period or genre. That weight of decision for the game should come from Melee.

This is the mistake here, your premise that melee is the decider misses the difference between decision trees and number of dice rolled. Melee is where the most dice are rolled and the most damage is done but movement is what decides the game. Melee is simply a resolution phase for the decisions made earlier in the game. Making melee work better should be about streamlining mechanics and making the resolution faster, not adding complexity and getting bogged down in irrelevant details.

Yet, despite the importance of it I have found Melee is often the anti-thesis of fun and instead simply bogs down into a game of Yahtzee where you roll and pray for a better dice roll. The core of good game play is decision making, and in many games once you get into Melee there are no decisions to make. As a player, you simply completing the mechanical process of the game to get a result, so you are not playing the game. The game is playing you.

But how is this different from shooting? It's not like shooting typically involves many decisions, you declare your target and roll dice to resolve how much damage is done.

Also, how much decision making is even appropriate in a typical wargame? Complex melee mechanics may be relevant in a game simulating a 1v1 duel but that's far from the scope of a typical wargame. On a real battlefield you don't choose whether to use your shield or not, you're in a shield wall with the rest of your unit and you hold it as ordered. You don't make decisions for individual soldiers to parry or not, that is represented by hits and misses on the dice as the entire unit fights. You don't worry about knocking an enemy prone because a prone enemy can be safely assume to die immediately after hitting the ground and becoming defenseless, with another soldier moving up to fill his gap in the line.

Similarly with options for falling back. Once you've engaged in melee with hundreds of soldiers on each side it's very difficult to break off without routing. The front ranks may want to retreat but they're pushed from behind by the rest of the unit and can't turn to retreat without exposing themselves to certain death from behind. At most you can have a possibility in the RNG resolution that combat is inconclusive and both sides step back a bit, waiting for a better opportunity to attack. But even in a skirmish-scale game turning to run is an act of desperation that leaves you defenseless and probably results in you getting run down and killed from behind.

Warmachine does some things well, to compensate for the "get stuck in and just watch dice being rolled" problem:
-you can move while engaged. If you move out of melee you suffer an attack of opportunity, but there's often plenty of reasons to change position within melee range, to snatch objectives, engage other targets, screen other models or move out of LOS etc. So it's not just being there until combat is resolved.

-many key models (warcasters, warjacks) use resource management of Focus points they get distributed by the player at the start of their turn. These may buy you additional attacks but also boost to hit or damage rolls (change a 2d6 roll into a 3d6 which changes probabilities of hitting the target number). The warcaster also uses Focus to cast spells and points not spent increase their armour and chances if survival. So for these models combat often is about deciding what to do with the allocated Focus - buy another attack or boost or maybe not boost but save to hit another target etc.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
In many genres, Melee is the great "decider" and is the crucial mechanics for the period or genre. That weight of decision for the game should come from Melee.

This is the mistake here, your premise that melee is the decider misses the difference between decision trees and number of dice rolled. Melee is where the most dice are rolled and the most damage is done but movement is what decides the game. Melee is simply a resolution phase for the decisions made earlier in the game. Making melee work better should be about streamlining mechanics and making the resolution faster, not adding complexity and getting bogged down in irrelevant details.

I do not disagree with your reasoning per se. However, it really depends on what the designer is trying to create with their goals.

Movement is critical and is one of the key 4Ms, but as a designer you choose which of the 4Ms you want to emphasis in your game. That is up to the designer. It sounds like you like to emphasize Movement for the games you are designing.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

Yet, despite the importance of it I have found Melee is often the anti-thesis of fun and instead simply bogs down into a game of Yahtzee where you roll and pray for a better dice roll. The core of good game play is decision making, and in many games once you get into Melee there are no decisions to make. As a player, you simply completing the mechanical process of the game to get a result, so you are not playing the game. The game is playing you.

Also, how much decision making is even appropriate in a typical wargame? Complex melee mechanics may be relevant in a game simulating a 1v1 duel but that's far from the scope of a typical wargame.

The question is not about the complexity of the mechanics, it is about emphasizing the decisions you want a player to make. For example in a airplane game, you may want the player to make choices about actually flying the plane, which would lend themselves to different mechanics and choices; then if you were only focusing on how to position the plane. Think about the difference between Blood Red Skies vs. Watch your 6. Both are low model count air skirmish games that are model vs model in nature during WWII, yet they have made very different decisions about what is "important" to emphasize in their game play.

If a game chooses to emphasize melee, then how does it do so without making it boring? This is important no matter the scale of the combat, but the mechanics and tools may look very different. The premise of the initial question assumes the designer wants to focus on Melee in their design as the 4M to emphasize.

 Easy E wrote:
The premise of the initial question assumes the designer wants to focus on Melee in their design as the 4M to emphasize.

I get that, but the premise is wrong. It's like trying to make a version of 40k where the Determine Victor step, where all you do is add up each player's total VP and compare totals, should be the focus of the game. Melee at the scale of a typical wargame can only ever be a resolution step for decisions which were made earlier, at least without getting into pointless rules bloat and layering on complicated dice resolution mechanics to give the illusion of depth and/or obsessing over tedious micromanagement of individual model positions to maximize your ability to exploit rules loopholes.

I think you may be getting confused between "where the most damage is done" and "where the most decisions are made". It is certainly true that in many games the most damage is done in melee and in some sense that makes it the focus of the game but it's still only a resolution step for decisions made in the movement phase. It is only the focus in that during the movement (and chain of commend/orders/etc) phase you will be making your movements to set up melee rather than to set up shooting.

For example in a airplane game, you may want the player to make choices about actually flying the plane, which would lend themselves to different mechanics and choices; then if you were only focusing on how to position the plane.

I'm not sure how this is possible? An air combat game at the single aircraft scale is by definition about flying the plane. How do you make a game that isn't about flying the plane, at least without making an airplane-themed CCG or whatever? Focusing on "positioning" while ignoring all of the flying mechanics that make aircraft different from other units is how you get Aeronautica Imperialis 2.0, a typical GW dice exchange and list optimization game with a superficial aesthetic of air combat layered on top of it.

 Easy E wrote:
If a game chooses to emphasize melee, then how does it do so without making it boring?

The answer is by emphasizing tactical positioning.

That's why larger-scale "ranked" combats work better - because everyone knows getting a flank/rear charge can offset qualitative differences between the combatants.

What it looks like you are talking about are skirmish-level fighting, and that necessarily results in a certain level of abstraction.

While the old 2nd ed. 40k melee system was clunky, it did reflect the advantages of having a gang-up on a single figure.

Similarly, certain weapon choices were optimized against certain types of adversaries. The question becomes how do you balance these factors in a reasonably quick combat resolution mechanic. I've got a streamlined 40k system in my sig, but if you're starting from scratch, you have more options.

Ideally, you want a form or combination that produces decisive results without kludgy mechanics - the equivalent to a flank attack. The focus of the game would then turn to gaining that position, just as all linear warfare is about securing a dominant position (i.e. breaking the center, turning the flank, completing an envelopment).

So before getting deeper into the analysis, what is the total figure count you're looking at? Do formations matter?

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:


I'm not sure how this is possible? An air combat game at the single aircraft scale is by definition about flying the plane. How do you make a game that isn't about flying the plane, at least without making an airplane-themed CCG or whatever? Focusing on "positioning" while ignoring all of the flying mechanics that make aircraft different from other units is how you get Aeronautica Imperialis 2.0, a typical GW dice exchange and list optimization game with a superficial aesthetic of air combat layered on top of it.

Then you may want to look at the rules for Blood Red Skies from Warlord.

https://us.warlordgames.com/collections/rules-books/digital+blood-red-skies

The PDF starter rulebook is free.

 Easy E wrote:

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:


I'm not sure how this is possible? An air combat game at the single aircraft scale is by definition about flying the plane. How do you make a game that isn't about flying the plane, at least without making an airplane-themed CCG or whatever? Focusing on "positioning" while ignoring all of the flying mechanics that make aircraft different from other units is how you get Aeronautica Imperialis 2.0, a typical GW dice exchange and list optimization game with a superficial aesthetic of air combat layered on top of it.

Then you may want to look at the rules for Blood Red Skies from Warlord.

https://us.warlordgames.com/collections/rules-books/digital+blood-red-skies

The PDF starter rulebook is free.

I'm not sure why you think that game isn't about flying the plane? I'll grant that it doesn't have rules for leaning mixture at altitude or micromanaging whether the pilot can set the range on their gun sight correctly but this is a tabletop miniatures game, not a PC simulation for rivet counters. and I don't think any tabletop game gets into that level of detail. Blood Red Skies is still a game of managing the maneuvers of individual planes and the limitations of turning radius, minimum speed, etc. It's not like AI 2.0 where planes can effectively teleport wherever they want and bombers are the best air superiority fighters because they roll the most dice and have the most HP.

(That said, I don't think it's a good game. It over-simplifies too many things and diverges too far from reality, to the point that it becomes nonsensical and counter-intuitive if you know anything about real flying or air combat. But my dislike of it doesn't make it any less of a game about flying the plane.)

I disagree, I don't think the attack rolls, especially on a squad/unit scale need to represent individual dudes trying to swing, aim, hit their opponents. It may be abstracted on a different level altogether.

What you need is to offer other kinds of results than just inflicting casualties. It may be eroding enemy morale, making them give ground, inflict statuses on both enemies and friendlies etc. Make these results, so that the difficulty of achieveing them is balanced by thier potency - otherwise the choice will be obvious, but it should be circumstantial. Then give some control over the result they want to go for to players.

An example that I came up with is units having some pool of dice for their attack, maybe defence, details don't matter. These pools can be affected by positioning, stats, special rules etc, as usual. But the results rolled are not hits and misses. Their total is the attacking unit's abstracted Combat Score (a sum of it's impact on the enemy), and it can be divided by the controlling player between desired results. For example you need to pay 4 to inflict a single casualty, or 3 to reduce enemy morale by 1, or 2 to push the opposing unit 1" away etc. The player is responsible for distributing and allocating the unit's Combat Score so that it achieves it's objectives in the optimal way.

As I said, the most difficult thing is to assign correct price and value to these choices, so that these choices are not obvious. Is it better to inflict a few casualties early on, or to push the enemy from the objective, so that they can't score it this turn? Should I spend my entire CS on the long game of eroding their morale, or do I want the short-term gain of inflicting a status that will make thier next turn's attacks ineffective?

Yeah, it's just one idea that had for a prospective solo adventure game of mine (where you can choose to use set totals of your attack roll pool, possibly sacrificing some successful hits, to trigger special abilities) kind of carried over to squad based gameplay.

Thanks Cyel, that makes sense to me. In many respects, hits and misses are secondary to the question "Why does this matter?" during the game play.

So, what are some games that you have played that have made melee really interesting part of the game play, and how did they avoid Melee Yahtzee?

It's not a war game, but it is based on a skirmish game if I remember correctly. GURPS.

If we just assume both players have 16 skill in their chosen weapon, and have Combat Reflexes, their parries are at a 12.

If Player A wants to hit Player B, he can just roll to hit, rolling a 10, and succeeding. Player B rolls to parry, succeeds, and parries.

However, Player B wants to disarm Player A, so he rolls to disarm. He rolls to hit, hits, and player A doesn't parry. Now they have a competition, 16 vs 16 on 3d6, and let's just say that Player B succeeds. Player A is now disarmed, and can only rely on his dodge.

Player A uses his action to grab his weapon, and Player B attacks the currently unready Player A, so Player A retreat Dodges, getting a +3 to his dodge, rolling at an 11, and passes. Player B steps to remain within reach. Player A now decides to use a deceptive attack, taking a -6 to his skill, in order to reduce Player B's active defenses by half the penalty he took, -3 in this case. It's now a 10 to hit, which is a 50% chance, and he succeeds, and Player B's best defenses are on a 9, which is like a 40%~ chance, and fails. He takes some injury, reduced by armor, but let's just say he takes 4 total injury.

Now, after taking the injury, Player B is at a -4 for his skill to hit, -2 for his parry, and -1 to his dodge. This is the maximum shock penalty by default. He knows he will have a hard time getting past Player A's defenses, so he does an All Out Defense (Dodge), losing his turn's attack, but dodging at a +2. He is able to move his half move with this action, so he moves backwards 2 hexes.

Player A now cannot attack without penalty or using an all out attack, so he steps one hex, and evaluates. This happens for 3 turns, until Player B is now at no shock penalty, and steps closer by one hex, and makes a Rapid Strike attack, taking a -6 to his skill, but getting the chance to hit twice. Let's say both hit, and Player A now has to defend against two attacks. His first Parry is a success, and his Dodge fails, taking 4 injury again, let's say. But, his Shock penalties aren't ass impactful, as three turns of Evaluate gives a +3 to hit, so he's hitting on a 15. He decides to go all out and make an All Out Attack (Double), both hitting on 15, but he gives up his active defense. Both hit, Player B succeeds both defenses, and responds with his own All Out Attack (Determined), giving a +4 to hit, with a Telegraphed Attack, giving him another +4 to hit, but his opponent a +2 to their defense. However, Player A can't defend. Player B goes for Player A's skull, giving a -7 to hit, but x4 injury, hits on a 17, and kills Player A.

GURPS is probably my favorite RPG due to how intense and fun melee can be. I didn't even cover half the options. Feinting, techniques, attacking limbs, grappling. It's really fun.

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:


GURPS is probably my favorite RPG due to how intense and fun melee can be. I didn't even cover half the options. Feinting, techniques, attacking limbs, grappling. It's really fun.

Yeah, I own several GURPS books. Like D&D and other RPGs, you can get into very detailed combats.

But is that effective for a larger skirmish? Assuming one just uses standard NPC stats (and avoids the lengthy character creation process), there's a relatively low upper limit for the model count.

Again, the scope of the system is critical. How many models are on the tabletop?

Cyel wrote:
As I said, the most difficult thing is to assign correct price and value to these choices, so that these choices are not obvious. Is it better to inflict a few casualties early on, or to push the enemy from the objective, so that they can't score it this turn? Should I spend my entire CS on the long game of eroding their morale, or do I want the short-term gain of inflicting a status that will make thier next turn's attacks ineffective?

That may work for an abstract dice math game but how does it work in the context of a wargame? What does spending CS to erode morale without inflicting casualties represent? Wouldn't it be the opposite, that being in melee with a unit that is failing to hurt you improves your morale and encourages you to keep fighting?

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:


That may work for an abstract dice math game but how does it work in the context of a wargame? What does spending CS to erode morale without inflicting casualties represent? Wouldn't it be the opposite, that being in melee with a unit that is failing to hurt you improves your morale and encourages you to keep fighting?

But it's a game not a real battlefield. You're always going to make abstractions for the sake of better gameplay. You already have plenty of them, like an army standing perfectly still when the other army is moving. You just don't notice them because you got used to them. I bet the basis for your acceptance or rejection of an abstraction in a game is more habit and tradition than analysis what is better for gameplay or more realistic.

I also said not to concentrate on details of this off the top of my head idea. If the idea is sound and the mathematical model behind interactions and dependencies is tested and it works, slapping on an in-game explanation is a secondary concern. Don't like "morale"? Call it "fatigue" or "combat stress". Really, naming it is the easy part. I said it's a detail, to be ignored, especially on an early stage.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:


GURPS is probably my favorite RPG due to how intense and fun melee can be. I didn't even cover half the options. Feinting, techniques, attacking limbs, grappling. It's really fun.

Yeah, I own several GURPS books. Like D&D and other RPGs, you can get into very detailed combats.

But is that effective for a larger skirmish? Assuming one just uses standard NPC stats (and avoids the lengthy character creation process), there's a relatively low upper limit for the model count.

Again, the scope of the system is critical. How many models are on the tabletop?

You're right, and GURPS even has mass combat rules that are extremely abstract. But assuming mook rules are in place, and you still want to use most of the mechanics, I'd say the upper limit is probably like 20 models fighting before it gets dreadfully slow. And then making each character for a skirmish would be painful, even using templates. But, bringing it up, it may help some people find what they're looking for in melee.

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:


You're right, and GURPS even has mass combat rules that are extremely abstract. But assuming mook rules are in place, and you still want to use most of the mechanics, I'd say the upper limit is probably like 20 models fighting before it gets dreadfully slow. And then making each character for a skirmish would be painful, even using templates. But, bringing it up, it may help some people find what they're looking for in melee.

I agree.

Getting back to the original question, what lesson is the wargame attempting to teach? What is it looking to reward?

Some wargames teach army composition, or rules manipulation. Others are about maximizing odds. If you want to avoid those metagaming pitfalls, than the essence of your combat system should be based on understandable principles that have some relation with reality.

I'm assuming we're still focused on squad-level+ fighting, and an important lesson there is that numbers count. If you have ten and they have one, that one's got a problem.

Weapons also matter. One dude with a poleaxe might actually have the edge over ten guys with pocket knives.

A classic way to remedy this is to make encumbrance and/or training key determinants. Put simply, cavalrymen are better at melee combat than artillerists or the signal corps. Thus, if you can bring your hussars within sabre range of the gun crews, you're going to win.

The problem one runs into with 40k is the focus on melee and desire that lots of troops be good at it. Scope of the fighting is also important, because as we've said, with 20 figures fighting things are different than if there are 80.

The tradeoff in 2nd was that firepower > melee but melee was more decisive. You could spend the whole game blasting away at troops in power armor in heavy cover without much luck. If you wanted to really solve that problem, you sent guys in after them to sort things out. This is why melee combat is so bloody because when you are 3 feet away, it's hard to miss and someone's not walking away from this fight.

Cyel wrote:
But it's a game not a real battlefield. You're always going to make abstractions for the sake of better gameplay. You already have plenty of them, like an army standing perfectly still when the other army is moving. You just don't notice them because you got used to them. I bet the basis for your acceptance or rejection of an abstraction in a game is more habit and tradition than analysis what is better for gameplay or more realistic.

There's a difference between abstractions that need to be made to accommodate the realities of playing a game with physical pieces on a table and human players that need to execute discrete actions in sequence instead of operating an entire army simultaneously vs. abstractions that add arbitrary rules for the sake of game balance. Having combat resolution that includes morale penalties instead of killing isn't a necessary abstraction to make the game function, it's the designer saying "we need to buff melee units" and having no better idea for doing it.

I also said not to concentrate on details of this off the top of my head idea. If the idea is sound and the mathematical model behind interactions and dependencies is tested and it works, slapping on an in-game explanation is a secondary concern. Don't like "morale"? Call it "fatigue" or "combat stress". Really, naming it is the easy part. I said it's a detail, to be ignored, especially on an early stage.

"Figure out the math first and then tack on whatever fluff you want later" is how you make bad games. And in this case it doesn't matter what you call the penalty, there's still no plausible fluff explanation for why a unit can choose to "attack" in melee and inflict no damage but somehow impose morale/fatigue/whatever penalties. Deliberately failing to hurt someone with a sword isn't demoralizing.

Gue'vesa Emissary 807887 11462449 wrote:

"Figure out the math first and then tack on whatever fluff you want later" is how you make bad games.

Wow, that's... don't know what to say. How's life under your rock? Do you play many different types and genres of games or just one stagnant niche and extrapolate? I guess a lot of extremely successful and popular designers would like to compare their achievements with yours, to learn how to finally stop making bad games ;D

There are real time tabletop games about commanding in a conflict - X-Com and Captain Sonar come to mind. Maybe there are no such wargames because wargame designers are too conservative to think outside the box and the genre is waiting for a young, creative designer who will not care about coventions and will solve, just like that, problems that the old guard have always considered unsolvable by definition (I'm not such designer, don't ask me! ).

Back on topic, and answering Easy's question - very good melee mechanisms I have played with are centered around cards, not dice (dice may be there too, but not really in a way that solves your problem. Basically the decisions come from choosing what attacks to perform this time from a hand of cards. It works really well and can be very strategic, especially if these cards also play other roles (for example in Gloomhaven they also determine initiative and are a Hit Point pool). These mechanics come from games, where you control very few figures: 5-3 or often just one (Gloomhaven, Super Fantasy Brawl, Skytear). Don't know if they translate well to squad combat.

I have another mention for SW:Armada, a game where I really appreciate how smart the rules are (and really wish it could take place in a different, fresher setting ). There the attacker rolls some dice (just one roll/combat) but the person making the decisions is the defender, choosing what to use from a range of defensive measures which are limited and sometimes also require additional choices (like transfering shield energy from other directions). Once again, maybe having the defender as the decision maker is the answer here? Instead of leaving such things to dice, let the player decide if they want to stay in the fight and suffer more casualties or give ground or choose some other options with differing consequences?

Cyel wrote:

Gue'vesa Emissary 807887 11462449 wrote:

"Figure out the math first and then tack on whatever fluff you want later" is how you make bad games.

Wow, that's... don't know what to say. How's life under your rock? Do you play many different types and genres of games or just one stagnant niche and extrapolate? I guess a lot of extremely successful and popular designers would like to compare their achievements with yours, to see how to finally make a good game ;D

There are real time tabletop games about commanding in a conflict - X-Com and Captain Sonar come to mind. Maybe there are no such wargames because wargame designers are too conservative to think outside the box and the genre is waiting for a young, creative designer who will not care about coventions and will solve, just like that, problems that the old guard have always considered unsolvable by definition (I'm not such designer, don't ask me! ).

What does any of that have to do with what I said? You've said a lot of words but nothing of substance, only vague and meaningless complaints about "stagnant" genres.

And no, there aren't real time tabletop games. It's by definition impossible to do a real time tabletop game because human players on a physical board aren't capable of manipulating a dozen pieces simultaneously and resolving all of their actions. You can only do real time games as video games, where the software runs everything in parallel even when the player is not actively issuing commands.

Don't know if they translate well to squad combat.

They don't. Choosing specific attacks to perform is way too much detail for a typical wargame, it doesn't fit the scope of commanding entire forces and it doesn't scale well.

I have another mention for SW:Armada, a game where I really appreciate how smart the rules are (and really wish it could take place in a different, fresher setting ). There the attacker rolls some dice (just one roll/combat) but the person making the decisions is the defender, choosing what to use from a range of defensive measures which are limited and sometimes also require additional choices (like transfering shield energy from other directions). Once again, maybe having the defender as the decision maker is the answer here?

Armada is a good game with some interesting mechanics but I don't see how it's adding any additional depth? Resolving attacks is still just a resolution of decisions that are largely made in the movement phase (in this case the prior turn's movement phase) and/or command phase, and there's no significant difference in depth between the attacker making choices to modify the dice math vs. the defender making choices to modify the dice math. Either way you're still just doing dice math to determine an outcome. And in Armada the attacker absolutely gets to modify the dice math too, not just the defender.

Instead of leaving such things to dice, let the player decide if they want to stay in the fight and suffer more casualties or give ground or choose some other options with differing consequences?

That still doesn't make sense outside of abstract dice mechanics. In a real fight you don't get to see how hard you've been hit and then decide whether to actually take the hits or say "nah, I think I'll back away from that one". By the time swords are swinging and spears are stabbing it's far too late. The decision to fall back vs. stand and fight is one made in the movement phase, which goes back to my original point that melee combat is merely the resolution of decisions made in the movement and/or command phases.

As I said, cherry-picking abstractions. You accept that a wargame doesn't care if the soldiers are hungry or that a division can suffer any % of casualties instead of just having two sides of a token to flip between, but something else is unacceptable because you haven't got time to get used to and accept it as a common convention. Movement can't be random (even though so many random things can happen when moving such masses of oeople and vehicles) but morale must be random? Why? Because things have always been like that in our village. Can't be of any more help to you, until you're ready to move at least a bit out of your comfort zone

Cyel wrote:
As I said, cherry-picking abstractions. You accept that a wargame doesn't care if the soldiers are hungry or that a division can suffer any % of casualties instead of just having two sides of a token to flip between, but something else is unacceptable because you haven't got time to get used to and accept it as a common convention. Can't be of any more help to you, until you're ready to move at least a bit out of your comfort zone

Having binary intact/destroyed states is a necessary abstraction for games at a certain scale. It is not ideal but the game becomes completely unplayable if you don't abstract away some of the detail. And in games that aren't played at a scale where that level of abstraction is necessary such a mechanic would be hated by most players, likely to the point that many of them won't play the game at all.

Having the assumption that soldiers are always well-fed is an assumption that may be desirable for scope reasons but not one that violates reality. Plenty of fights have happened between two well-fed armies and there is nothing inherently unrealistic about that scenario.

Having the defender in melee see how much damage they're facing and decide "nah, I think I'll back away and negate that" is not a necessary approximation, nor is it a realistic scenario. It's just a bad and counter-intuitive mechanic that you're trying to impose because it fits the dice math you've already decided you want to have.

Movement can't be random (even though so many random things can happen when moving such masses of oeople and vehicles) but morale must be random? Why?

Do not make straw man arguments. I did not defend or object to random movement (which is a question that depends on game scale), nor did I ever say that morale must be random.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:


Having binary intact/destroyed states is a necessary abstraction for games at a certain scale. It is not ideal but the game becomes completely unplayable if you don't abstract away some of the detail. And in games that aren't played at a scale where that level of abstraction is necessary such a mechanic would be hated by most players, likely to the point that many of them won't play the game at all.

But that is exactly what I'm trying to say: you want better gameplay - you need to accept abstractions. Having something else rather than just passively watching dice being chucked around and wondering why you even play a game where you have no say in outcomes is bad, boring gameplay. You know why so many people who play other games "won't play the game [like a standard wargame] at all" and it is a miniscule niche of the gaming market? I know from comments on board gaming forums - they hate so much randomness and lack of agency. So:

"that level of abstraction is necessary such a mechanic would be hated by most players, likely to the point that many of them won't play the game at all."

definitely can be applied to too many things being solved by boring dice outside of player decisions and input and as a result putting more strategically inclined players off.


I am not a fan of your dogmatic stance of "It can't be done so I would like you to stop trying". It's not how progress is made.

Cyel wrote:
But that is exactly what I'm trying to say: you want better gameplay - you need to accept abstractions.

I will again point out the difference between a necessary abstraction and adding on anti-fluff elements just to make the dice math more complicated. Your proposed "take morale loss instead of casualties" mechanic isn't a necessary abstraction to cope with the realities of executing discrete gameplay steps on a physical board, it's an entirely option add-on you've decided to include to meet some arbitrary level of complexity you're trying to achieve.

Having something else rather than just passively watching dice being chucked around and wondering why you even play a game where you have no say in outcomes is bad, boring gameplay.

Why do you keep making straw man arguments? Nobody here is advocating a game where you have no say in outcomes. The fact that melee and shooting are largely the resolution of decisions made in the movement and command phases does not mean that you had no say in the outcome.

I am not a fan of your dogmatic stance of "It can't be done so I would like you to stop trying". It's not how progress is made.

Progress is also not made by trying to reinvent the wheel. Making up a set of dice mechanics and then tacking on a flimsy layer of theme is a known way of producing bad games and no further exploration of the bad process is necessary. Wargame design starts from the fluff and then asks how best to simulate it, that's how you get intuitive and elegant games where a player can make decisions based on their understanding of the real-world scenario the game represents and have them align with the mechanics.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:
Making up a set of [dice] mechanics and then tacking on a flimsy layer of theme is a known way of producing bad games and no further exploration of the bad process is necessary.

No, it isn't. Check the BGG top games. Maybe the general theme of the game is chosen at the same time as mechanics, but their specifics are always abstracted to serve better gameplay, not the other way around. I'm really wondering how many different genres of games you play...

The upside-down approach that you prefer results in games like GW games, with overblown, inelegant rules, consisting mostly of tedious exceptions and exploitable loopholes ("because we just MUST realistically simulate what happens when a goblin runs a sprint with a 2m wooden board, user experience be damned!") drowned in so much randomness that you can't even realise what the designers were trying to accomplish.

I am convinced that for the majority of players nowadays, the game about passively watching rolling and rerolling dice is about as unplayable as other things you mention as unplayable in your post.

I guess Max Planck wasn't right only about science, but also gaming...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/badcrow/armored-coretm-rts-a-real-time-strategy-board-game

Cyel wrote:
The upside-down approach that you prefer results in games like GW games, with overblown, inelegant rules, consisting mostly of tedious exceptions and exploitable loopholes ("because we just MUST realistically simulate what happens when a goblin runs a sprint with a 2m wooden board, user experience be damned!") drowned in so much randomness that you can't even realise what the designers were trying to accomplish.

Um, no, that is not true at all. Modern 40k (I don't play AoS) is the textbook example of mechanics-driven design. Just to give one obvious and hated example: stratagems are a fundamentally stupid concept from a fluff point of view but GW wanted to add on the pseudo-CCG element and so they piled on the bloat no matter how many times it creates situations that go directly against the fluff. And virtually all of 40k's gameplay revolves around optimizing your dice math, with almost zero thought given to what the "real" units would be doing on the battlefield.

I am convinced that for the majority of players nowadays, the game about passively watching rolling and rerolling dice is about as unplayable as other things you mention as unplayable in your post.

Once again, please stop making straw man arguments. The fact that decisions are made and committed to in the movement and command phases does not mean you are passively watching the game.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/badcrow/armored-coretm-rts-a-real-time-strategy-board-game

They can call the game whatever they want but that doesn't make it a real-time game. In a real-time game you have everything happening simultaneously, this is literally impossible to do in a tabletop game. No amount of fancy game titles will allow you to simultaneously move 20+ units on the battlefield, to shoot with 20+ units simultaneously as their targets are moving, to move continuously rather than in discrete steps, etc. The limitations of having to manually execute game mechanics on a physical board inherently mean that the moves must be done in sequence and as discrete steps, at which point you are no longer playing a real-time game.

Could a mod, please, move the general design philisophy off-top to a separate thread?

I apologise, Easy, for derailing your thread :(

Cyel wrote:
Could a mod, please, move the general design philisophy off-top to a separate thread?

I apologise, Easy, for derailing your thread :(

It's on-topic because OP's entire premise is to sacrifice realism, scaling, and/or intuitive gameplay for the sake of arbitrarily adding more rules complexity to a specific resolution mechanic. From a good game design philosophy that premise should be rejected from the beginning.

Since cards came up, I will say that I think they are an unjustly overlooked mechanic.

One way to stir up interest in a skirmish melee system would be to use card draws that could be played to influence the outcome of the combat. This could create an interesting "fog of war" aspect as to whether charging a giving unit was wise or not.

Alternatively, having some potent melee cards might make an otherwise suicidal charge useful.

The key element, however, is making everything plausible rather than random. Dropping a sick card play so that Imperial militia rout genestealers is a bit much.

I love the idea of cards to influence melee combat. Maybe have some sort of combination of standard actions with special maneuvers or counters that can be played in addition to the action. It could have a cool feel of the players being more involved in the melee combat, instead of just throwing dice back and forth.

This would probably only work with lower model skirmish style games, but could have some neat interactions. Especially if the model had unique cards that they could play based on their class or skills.