Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi, I was wondering if any of you knew a war-game/skirmish game where the element of chance took place before you decide your actions.

For example, in a GW game, you choose what you want to do.. and then chance decides if it happens.

What games have a system where chance happens first, and then you are left to make your decisions (that will always succeed) based on the random options you are left with?


Was talking to a friend of mine about the position of chance in games, and how to avoid players making detailed plans which are then unraveled by chance, by changing it so that you have to think quickly and adapt to a situation where chance dictates your options of play.. but not their chance of success.

Thanks!

I don't know of any games in the wargaming market that do this, but there are board games and digital board games that do this to a greater or lesser extent, using a hand of cards to pay for actions instead of rolling dice.

Fantasy Flight Games' Battlestar Galactica board game is one example.

I'm struggling to think of any examples where it happens but the idea is pretty neat.

I'd so it something along the lines of order tokens, with no idea which set of orders are going to activate (or which players) first. Though you could weight it such that there was a predictability to it to avoid total confusion, but every now and then fate crops up to mess with you. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

Like imagine a game of Epic, where First Fire didn't automatically go first. You make a roll akin to a BB kick off roll and random events can skew things. 'Heavy Fog: This round First Fire orders go after charges.' or 'Temporal Comm distortion- units on Advance orders are changed to charge orders this round' or other silliness.

It's worth noting the more random you make it, the less weight individual rolls will be able to have, lest the game turn into a complete joke. Randomness/low success rate are good when they are mitigated by the ability to time things, focus or correctly gauge commitment.

I strongly dislike this design concept, but it s not by itself a flawed concept.

It usually gets badly implemented.

From the top of my head Inquisitor had this system you selected the actions a character would do and then rolled to see how many the character would actually do, two hour wargames essentially use this concept and if memory serves well warmaster used this concept.

The problem with this concept is that it creates yet another layer of uncertainty, since the game system already has uncertainty in the results of the actions putting uncertainty in the actions themselves just adds another element of randomness that moves the system in the too random category.

I can assume that one could make the actions certain and then make the possibility of the actions uncertain, but I do not recall a published game that does that.

In Up Front the Squad Leader Card Game, which covers WW2 infantry squad level skirmish, (Avalon Hill, 1983) all the action is controlled by drawing and playing cards.

There is a certain amount of player control in that you can save and discard cards in your had, in order to put together useful melds.

The purpose of the system is to implement the uncertainty and fog of war of low level infantry combat, and it works very well.

Various tabletop wargame rulesets use a card deck to determine the order of activation of units., e.g I Ain't Been Shot, Mum!" WW2 company level west front (Too Fat Lardies, 2009).

Sam Mustafa's Grande Armee corps level Napoleonic Rules (Sam Mustafa Publishing, 2002) have random movement rates, turn length and game length. This randomly limits the player's ability to do stuff. Again, the objective is to subject the player to the kind of constraints and pressures that a real commander would labour under.

Most age of sail naval rules have some degree of variability in the wind direction and strength. This affects how you can sail and fight your ship.

 old_acorns wrote:
Hi, I was wondering if any of you knew a war-game/skirmish game where the element of chance took place before you decide your actions.

For example, in a GW game, you choose what you want to do.. and then chance decides if it happens.

What games have a system where chance happens first, and then you are left to make your decisions (that will always succeed) based on the random options you are left with?


Was talking to a friend of mine about the position of chance in games, and how to avoid players making detailed plans which are then unraveled by chance, by changing it so that you have to think quickly and adapt to a situation where chance dictates your options of play.. but not their chance of success.

Thanks!

I can't help you, because I don't know any.

But, as others have noted, such a game philosophy is better found in card based game systems. However, the few I know have a chance factor BEFORE and AFTER decisions are made. A don't know about a "purely before" one...

Oh, I forgot De Bellis Antiquitatis (Wargames Research Group, 1990.)

In this game, you roll a D6 at the start of your turn, and that is the number of units you can move.

A similar mechanism can be found in most of the Polemos rulebooks by Baccus 6mm.

I was thinking DBA but it does not prevent you from doing what you wanted, it randomly limits your actions, but after you get your action pool the actions are definite.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
I strongly dislike this design concept, but it s not by itself a flawed concept.

It usually gets badly implemented.
x

I can assume that one could make the actions certain and then make the possibility of the actions uncertain, but I do not recall a published game that does that.

Interseting - thanks for the response, I will check out some of those games..

The bottom is what I am interested in, as yes, I presumed that if both variables (actions and results) featured chance, the game would be to uncertain.. but having the results fixed so only the choice was random, is something I kind of want to try.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Cheers everyone - I will take a look at the games mentioned that I have not heard of before.

any more ideas, keep them coming

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
I was thinking DBA but it does not prevent you from doing what you wanted, it randomly limits your actions, but after you get your action pool the actions are definite.

Okay, another related example; in WRG Ancients, your troops often have to test for morale during the enemy turn, for example if taking sufficient casualties, and this can cause them to do things you had not intended, such as attacking or running away.

Like the two hour wargames system? sounds a valid choice.

Not familiar with Two Hour Games (I've heard of them but not read or played any) but this idea of morale effects in wargames is reasonably common and provides an extra layer of depth to command and tactics that can make games more interesting if in some ways more frustrating.

In my opinion you can play their games without having any player (only a tiny bit of exaggeration) once the first contact is made the system can go by itself, everything is governed by reaction charts.

Actually you can play the THW rules without player control running both sides as grunts using the enemy forces rules. The thing that give players greater control is stars, who can largely choose their reactions (and even limit damage/death) and order grunts around (who may or may not listen). It's also why it works as a single player or cooperative game.

Would SAGA qualify for the OP with the dice giving you limited options for your actions?

 old_acorns wrote:
Hi, I was wondering if any of you knew a war-game/skirmish game where the element of chance took place before you decide your actions.

For example, in a GW game, you choose what you want to do.. and then chance decides if it happens.

This is an unreliable command mechanic, right?

This is not so uncommon at Army level games where you're moving divisions, but it's relatively rare at the individual model skirmish level. In fact, the lack of high level communications is kind of integral to modeling how a lot of historical units would work out of earshot.

It's also modeled in a "half-go" games that use an Igo-Ugo structure, but each player only activates half their units. One may assume that the other half didn't receive / understand orders, or is suffering morale / suppression of some sort.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
In my opinion you can play their games without having any player (only a tiny bit of exaggeration) once the first contact is made the system can go by itself, everything is governed by reaction charts.

That's not really a game.

It's a wind-up simulation, which is fine and clever, but non-interactive. I would not recommend this sort of thing today.

I did not recommend them when they first introduced the system and I still hold my ground on that.

GW does this with some of the "pregame" rolls - Warlord traits and Psychic powers.

I haven't seen its use in other TT Wargames, but I've seen it used in Dead of Winter. At the start of the turn, you roll your dice and then assign the results to actions you perform during the move. I could see the same possibly being applied to the tabletop side - for say shooting, movement, actions available or the like, but it takes a lot of the drama and risk out of actions in most cases.

 Stormonu wrote:
GW does this with some of the "pregame" rolls - Warlord traits and Psychic powers.

I haven't seen its use in other TT Wargames, but I've seen it used in Dead of Winter. At the start of the turn, you roll your dice and then assign the results to actions you perform during the move. I could see the same possibly being applied to the tabletop side - for say shooting, movement, actions available or the like, but it takes a lot of the drama and risk out of actions in most cases.

Its an interesting point about removing drama and risk.

I certainly think a war-game where the outcome was always certain, but options were left to chance, would be hard to adapt to for many gamer who are used to drama coming due to an uncertainty of result.

For me, I guess It would change the feeling to one that is somewhat closer to a chess-like game. Where you weigh up your options, but your options always succeed. There is no, roll a 4+ for your pawn to kill the other pawn. Yet a game of chess still has drama + risk, as most of us meer mortals cannot see far enough ahead, or calculate enough variables to fully realise the scope of the situation.. giving individual choices the illusion of risk/drama.

Unlike chess though, adding an eliment of chance before the action is taken, would be there to provide uncertainty, a bit of drama, and a chance for lesser players to 'get lucky' and beat more experienced players.

 old_acorns wrote:
Unlike chess though, adding an eliment of chance before the action is taken, would be there to provide uncertainty, a bit of drama, and a chance for lesser players to 'get lucky' and beat more experienced players.

That is precisely the point of adding significant random elements to a game, to give n00bs a chance against pros. Otherwise it's an automatic ass-kicking every time. .

There are other reasons too. One is to add random elements to the game because real battle is somewhat random.

For instance, in age of sail naval battles, the wind is variable, the captains can't predict or control it, and the direction and strength has a huge impact on tactical abilities.

That's an extreme examle, but even in land battles, weather can have a serious effect. At Towton (1461, Wars of the Roses) a major reason for the Lancastrian defeat was that the Yorkists had the wind and snow behind them, which prevented the Lancastrian archers from having full effect and prevented them from seeing their shots were falling short.

In WW1, there were incidents involving gas attacks being blow the wrong way.

The other point about such random effects is that commanders and players need to be able to deal with them. This is where an experienced player can have an advantage even if the dice start to go against him.

Sure, however, this Weather effects aren't something that appears in TTWG skirmish battles, aside to slow everything down.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The other point about such random effects is that commanders and players need to be able to deal with them. This is where an experienced player can have an advantage even if the dice start to go against him.

Yes, definitely this. The claim that random elements are there just to help beginner players is way off base. If that’s all they were for then a simple handicap would do the trick. And randomness doesn’t even do a very good job of evening up the playing field, because a lot of the skill in a game comes from being able to determine probabilities and then use that to determine if the possible gains are worth the possible costs.

I think random elements are in games because there is fun in that process, in trying to determine if something is worth the risk, and then rolling the dice. And there’s also a lot of fun in scrambling, trying to recover your plan after some unexpected bad results, or trying to take advantage of unexpectedly good results.

Someone once asked what we thought about rolling the to hit dice and then assigning the dice to weapons/units etc.

My response was that my plasmaguns would always hit and I'd always make my saves and my bolters/lasguns could take the rest of the dice.

The enemy would also do that so it would even out. Games probably would just take a lot longer to finish.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Games probably would just take a lot longer to finish.

Actually, it would be faster, because the "good" weapons would always survive to the end.

This is essentially similar to how 3E-5E worked when players removed their own casualties, and it is a far better game design.

I see what you mean.

If a squad has six rifles and a machine-gun, it rolls say 8 attack dice and you allocate the best two to the machine gun, scoring maybe four hits. The defending squad rolls four defence dice and allocates the best one to his MG, saving it for his chance to fire back.

Etc. Etc.

Naturally there may be other factors involved depending on the overall design. A game in which you have a squad with a firepower factor and you don't remove individual members, would have to work differently. Maybe you would have step changes of attack/defence factor, like with infantry units in OGRE (Metagaming, 1977) which have three levels of strength and can get depleted or destroyed in one hit.

Yeah, if it's blocks vs individual models, then things get very different.

I am of a mind that infantry at the 25mm and smaller scales are a block with wounds and that a single degraded step is enough between functional and destroyed.