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Greetings Designers,

If you are familiar with the generic RPG rules system know as Fudge you may recall there was a diceless variety. In FUDGE you make up the relevant Stats for a character and then assign it a word value. Different words allow a higher "skill" and you can then compare the word against the difficulty of tasks and other players stats to determine if something was accomplished.

For example:

In the game, melee would be an opposed review between the characters Hit ability vs. their Dodge ability. The levels might be; Feeble, Poor, Solid, Good, and Great.

Bob tries to hit Bill so Bob and Bill must compare Bob's Hit to Bill's Dodge. Bob has a score of Good, but Bill has a score of Solid. Therefore, Bob will Hit.

In the diceless version, Bob will hit Bill every time unless other factors come into play that may raise of lower Bill's Dodge in the form of modifiers. I.e. Bill was behind cover increasing his Dodge to Good, or Bob is tired so his hit was reduced to Solid.

In this method, all interactions are diceless thereby creating a more deterministic model and removing chance.


Is this usable for Wargames?

The question then becomes, is such a model desirable for a wargame? Why or why not?
Is there a certain genre or style of wargame this would work best for? Why?
Are there existing, published Games that use this now? Are they fun?

That is deterministic combat, I am sure it can be used in wargames and probably has been used in the past, examples elude my mind at the moment though.

What you sacrifice is the "against all odds" possibilities that excite most players to one degree or another.

You can easily check how dull such deterministic aproach feels in any of the dice systems. Just ALWAYS remove probabilistic Expected Value of casaulties. It takes some precalculations, but you can just use mathhammer and generate a neat table for all results. If you also make each movement a constant value, then you quickly aproach a chesslike game without a checkerboard, with obvious "best decisions" throughout almost entire game and game resolution based mostly on movement phase, as this becomes the only meaningfull phase in the game.

IOW - you have to put nondeterministic resolution somewhere in the game. As for wargames: Wolsung has some neat approach, in which you can boost or counterboost any normal dice roll with cards from your hand , making each roll a mini "auction" somehow similiar to 2nd ed 40k psychic phase. But while this is interesting in a small skirmish, hero-centric game it is not suitable to large scale wargames…

Another great example of very subtle nondeterministic resolution is Neuroshima Hex (not to be confused with Neuroshima miniature skirmish game). At first glance this game is almost entirely non-random, you have only one source of randomness in it (unit tiles used in this game are randomly drawn throughout the game) and only one way to break deterministic resolution of any given board state - each player can start a "fight" with a special type of such drawn tile, so there is no way to predict when the actual resolution will hapen so long-term planning gets risky.

I explored this idea in this thread: Ditching the dice, a determinstic wargame? Too radical? Would you try it?

It is certainly possible, but weak players need a random element to have a chance of winning, the more random the game the more level the playing field is for weak players versus strong players. Weak players will not buy into a game they are destined to always lose; they will use the face saving excuse that the game is "boring" and skip town. If you go fully deterministic I think you will need a handicap system too to give weak players some hope. They won't altogether like that either as a handicap system spells out to the world just how a weak a player is. Another possible issue is how a handicap system would work exactly in a wargame as the most obvious way would be a points bonus to army composition but there will tend to be correlation between length of experience in a game, tactical skill and the numbers of game pieces a player will have, so weak players will tend to have smaller forces to choose from than stronger players yet a handicap system requires them to have larger forces than a strong player. Wargame game pieces being relatively expensive and time-consuming accentuates that issue.

@SolarCross: I really don't understand the notion, quite popular here on Dakka, that if you like random then you are a poor strategist who seeks excuses…

You seem to like Go and you seem to understand, that small size Go boards have deterministic winning or draw strategies (exactly like tic tac toe). You also understand, that probabilistic mechanics are perfecty suited to mastering them based on statistical analysis. Of course, you may be absolutely magnificent at calculating the best option for every move in a dice based system but still have bad luck and roll only '1' throughout entire game (it is perfectly possible, however highly unprobable). The main difference between mastering a deterministic game and a probabilistic one is that in deterministic you can catalogue in-game moves or strategies and many games become fencing like - for each optimal move there is equally optimal countermove and only the depth of forward planning matters. This of course can be perfectly enjoyable and I personally like strictly deterministic nature of Bridge. In a probabilistic game however, you can master quick calculation and decision making based on odds. Of course this cannot be done in snakes and ladders, but can be very much done in wargames, because there are many parameters which alter your odds. And since you have influence on shifting those odds, such game can also be mastered. But it can only be mastered to a degree of being "a generally better player winning statistically more games" and not an unbeatable perfect master because the game itself cannot be ultimately solved. And that also can be perfectly enjoyable.

For me, the main advantage of probabilistic game design is exactly oposite to this constant bragging about how "dumb kids require excuses and a chance of winning" - if you are good at deterministic games it becomes VERY hard to find an equally skilled oponent outside of only the most popular games like Bridge, Chess or Go. Probabilistic games can generate interesting chalenges, that even playing with a "dumb kid" can become an interesting challenge when you lose some main assets mid game - probabilistic games have a "handicap system" "built in" in a form of bad luck from which you have to recover fast.

No game is fun if you cannot lose, either by design or lack of skilled enough partners.

And there is one other, huge difference between mastering deterministic and probabilistic games. With deterministic games you can train, learn your moves on paper, study winning mechanics and play once a year with an equall oponent and tell who is better. In probabilistic games however, you HAVE TO play a lot more, as entire games are subject to the same statistical principle as "40 spearmen hitting on 4+ will tend to produce 20 hits on average." And this is IMHO the main area in which wargames in general but 40K in particular have their flaw - they require so much time and recource investement to collect, prepare and play that gaining enough games under your belt for winning statistics to kick in can take years or even decades. And because such dedication is in no way publicly rewarded or acclaimed, they tend to frustrate players that derive their satisfaction only from skilfull winning or require public recognition of their skill...

nou wrote:
@SolarCross: I really don't understand the notion, quite popular here on Dakka, that if you like random then you are a poor strategist who seeks excuses…

You seem to like Go and you seem to understand, that small size Go boards have deterministic winning or draw strategies (exactly like tic tac toe). You also understand, that probabilistic mechanics are perfecty suited to mastering them based on statistical analysis. Of course, you may be absolutely magnificent at calculating the best option for every move in a dice based system but still have bad luck and roll only '1' throughout entire game (it is perfectly possible, however highly unprobable). The main difference between mastering a deterministic game and a probabilistic one is that in deterministic you can catalogue in-game moves or strategies and many games become fencing like - for each optimal move there is equally optimal countermove and only the depth of forward planning matters. This of course can be perfectly enjoyable and I personally like strictly deterministic nature of Bridge. In a probabilistic game however, you can master quick calculation and decision making based on odds. Of course this cannot be done in snakes and ladders, but can be very much done in wargames, because there are many parameters which alter your odds. And since you have influence on shifting those odds, such game can also be mastered. But it can only be mastered to a degree of being "a generally better player winning statistically more games" and not an unbeatable perfect master because the game itself cannot be ultimately solved. And that also can be perfectly enjoyable.

For me, the main advantage of probabilistic game design is exactly oposite to this constant bragging about how "dumb kids require excuses and a chance of winning" - if you are good at deterministic games it becomes VERY hard to find an equally skilled oponent outside of only the most popular games like Bridge, Chess or Go. Probabilistic games can generate interesting chalenges, that even playing with a "dumb kid" can become an interesting challenge when you lose some main assets mid game - probabilistic games have a "handicap system" "built in" in a form of bad luck from which you have to recover fast.

No game is fun if you cannot lose, either by design or lack of skilled enough partners.

And there is one other, huge difference between mastering deterministic and probabilistic games. With deterministic games you can train, learn your moves on paper, study winning mechanics and play once a year with an equall oponent and tell who is better. In probabilistic games however, you HAVE TO play a lot more, as entire games are subject to the same statistical principle as "40 spearmen hitting on 4+ will tend to produce 20 hits on average." And this is IMHO the main area in which wargames in general but 40K in particular have their flaw - they require so much time and recource investement to collect, prepare and play that gaining enough games under your belt for winning statistics to kick in can take years or even decades. And because such dedication is in no way publicly rewarded or acclaimed, they tend to frustrate players that derive their satisfaction only from skilfull winning or require public recognition of their skill...

Wargames are a bit of both generally, as I said in that thread. It stands that the more random a game is the less skill matters until you reach snakes 'n' ladders levels of randomness / skill irrelevance. The less random a game is the more skill matters until you reach Go / chess levels of determinism / skill relevance. Of course range of options are a factor also, tic tac toe or hyper small Go boards (which nobody plays, 9 x 9 is the smallest people play and even then that is usually beginners or people playing on a very short clock) have a exceedingly small range of options so although skill still matters supremely only a very low level of skill is needed to hit a ceiling where optimal moves produce draws. That does nothing to contradict that randomness dilutes the relevance of skill.

 SolarCross wrote:

nou wrote:
@SolarCross: I really don't understand the notion, quite popular here on Dakka, that if you like random then you are a poor strategist who seeks excuses…

You seem to like Go and you seem to understand, that small size Go boards have deterministic winning or draw strategies (exactly like tic tac toe). You also understand, that probabilistic mechanics are perfecty suited to mastering them based on statistical analysis. Of course, you may be absolutely magnificent at calculating the best option for every move in a dice based system but still have bad luck and roll only '1' throughout entire game (it is perfectly possible, however highly unprobable). The main difference between mastering a deterministic game and a probabilistic one is that in deterministic you can catalogue in-game moves or strategies and many games become fencing like - for each optimal move there is equally optimal countermove and only the depth of forward planning matters. This of course can be perfectly enjoyable and I personally like strictly deterministic nature of Bridge. In a probabilistic game however, you can master quick calculation and decision making based on odds. Of course this cannot be done in snakes and ladders, but can be very much done in wargames, because there are many parameters which alter your odds. And since you have influence on shifting those odds, such game can also be mastered. But it can only be mastered to a degree of being "a generally better player winning statistically more games" and not an unbeatable perfect master because the game itself cannot be ultimately solved. And that also can be perfectly enjoyable.

For me, the main advantage of probabilistic game design is exactly oposite to this constant bragging about how "dumb kids require excuses and a chance of winning" - if you are good at deterministic games it becomes VERY hard to find an equally skilled oponent outside of only the most popular games like Bridge, Chess or Go. Probabilistic games can generate interesting chalenges, that even playing with a "dumb kid" can become an interesting challenge when you lose some main assets mid game - probabilistic games have a "handicap system" "built in" in a form of bad luck from which you have to recover fast.

No game is fun if you cannot lose, either by design or lack of skilled enough partners.

And there is one other, huge difference between mastering deterministic and probabilistic games. With deterministic games you can train, learn your moves on paper, study winning mechanics and play once a year with an equall oponent and tell who is better. In probabilistic games however, you HAVE TO play a lot more, as entire games are subject to the same statistical principle as "40 spearmen hitting on 4+ will tend to produce 20 hits on average." And this is IMHO the main area in which wargames in general but 40K in particular have their flaw - they require so much time and recource investement to collect, prepare and play that gaining enough games under your belt for winning statistics to kick in can take years or even decades. And because such dedication is in no way publicly rewarded or acclaimed, they tend to frustrate players that derive their satisfaction only from skilfull winning or require public recognition of their skill...

Wargames are a bit of both generally, as I said in that thread. It stands that the more random a game is the less skill matters until you reach snakes 'n' ladders levels of randomness / skill irrelevance. The less random a game is the more skill matters until you reach Go / chess levels of determinism / skill relevance. Of course range of options are a factor also, tic tac toe or hyper small Go boards (which nobody plays, 9 x 9 is the smallest people play and even then that is usually beginners or people playing on a very short clock) have a exceedingly small range of options so although skill still matters supremely only a very low level of skill is needed to hit a ceiling where optimal moves produce draws. That does nothing to contradict that randomness dilutes the relevance of skill.

You have understood only one part of my post, in which we are in agreement - that deterministic games REQUIRE skill to win. But you completely miss the point of my post - that you can clearly master Poker or Black Jack. Randomness of those games does not dilute skill - it is only a completely different skill to master.You can perfectly master a game of rock-paper-scissors-cat-mouse-axe-etc.. provided that distribution of results is not absolutely uniform and you have some means of shifting the odds. That is why casinos ban people who count their odds in Black Jack. That is why wargames can be mastered even if they involve any degree of dice rolling. Even 7th ed 40K can be mastered. It cannot however be solved (to some degree Eternal War missions are closest to being solvable in a list building stage, that is why netlisting is a thing).

(And I must ask you one question: how many times have you played 40K this year?)

nou wrote:


You have understood only one part of my post, in which we are in agreement - that deterministic games REQUIRE skill to win. But you completely miss the point of my post - that you can clearly master Poker or Black Jack. Randomness of those games does not dilute skill - it is only a completely different skill to master.You can perfectly master a game of rock-paper-scissors-cat-mouse-axe-etc.. provided that distribution of results is not absolutely uniform and you have some means of shifting the odds. That is why casinos ban people who count their odds in Black Jack. That is why wargames can be mastered even if they involve any degree of dice rolling. Even 7th ed 40K can be mastered. It cannot however be solved (to some degree Eternal War missions are closest to being solvable in a list building stage, that is why netlisting is a thing).

(And I must ask you one question: how many times have you played 40K this year?)

I get it, but what you aren't getting is that games with an element of chance only require skill because of the deterministic element that remains present. Where the player has choice there is skill. Wargames do involve some choice driven deterministic elements so there is some skill even with a random element.

Also RPS is not random because which is played is a matter of choice. A player may choose at random of course but that is not the same as having the dice "choose". jmurph clarified that in the same thread:

 jmurph wrote:
Actually, RPS is not random. It is a choice that may ultimately seem random, but the player still chooses. If you build the game so that certain units favor certain choices, etc. and different choices have different effects, then it is a limited information game, not random. Uncertain != random. That is to say, the players have complete control over all decisions, but may not be certain what the outcome will be since they do not know what the opponent's choice is.

Your question on how often I play 40k doesn't seem relevant but I'll answer anyway. I haven't played 40k at all this year. I was working on putting an army together with the intention of playing but then realised the model scale of the game is just wrong. I have read 7th rules and various codices fairly intensly, done of lot of list crafting, theoryhammer and whatnot, so I think I can have an opinion on the rules and it is this:

They are not so very terrible, there are some fairly serious balance issues but with so many options, factions (many updated haphazardly), unit types, upgrades, scenary, etc that is hardly surprising and probably inevitable because with such a huge range of options combinatorics will defeat any attempts to balance. It isn't suitable for tournament play but then again I don't think it was ever intended by its authors for that use. It is just a silly-fun excuse to display your painted minis to other hobbyists. It is a game for artists more than gamers, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is fairly dicey but there are still enough deterministic elements (mostly in army composition stage rather than play) for some skill to be somewhat relevant. If you don't take it seriously it could be fun. My problem with 40k is mainly with the model scale, 28mm is only suitable for squad vs squad, not company vs company. 6mm would be much more appropriate, but that wouldn't please the painters.

I asked you about this year mostly as my personal survey - I'm trying to find if there is a pattern between most recurring complaints about 40k and frequency of playing it. And I must say you do fit in this pattern.

And I think I do understand your point on "games with an element of chance only require skill because of the deterministic element that remains present" - that is basically what I said also. I replied only because I find your initial notion from this thread and the other to get rid of all randomness because randomness is good only for "weak players (that) need a random element to have a chance of winning, the more random the game the more level the playing field is for weak players versus strong players.". And I think I gave you enough examples, that probabilistic games more complex than snakes and ladders can in fact be mastered and your statement is not entirely and unconditionally true.

And I perfectly agree, that 40K was never suited or intended for tournament play (mostly because time vs statistics argument I made earlier). I can think of some ways that you could organize an improoved tournament measuring actual skill and knowledge of 40K, but I fear that nobody would play preorganized missions, like in Bridge tournaments (with prebuilt armies provided by TO). But I do think, that there is quite large room for skill in 40K itself, just not in tournament format.

And I think I have said all I wanted in this thread, so it's EOT for me. Cheers!

nou wrote:

And I think I do understand your point on "games with an element of chance only require skill because of the deterministic element that remains present" - that is basically what I said also. I replied only because I find your initial notion from this thread and the other to get rid of all randomness because randomness is good only for "weak players (that) need a random element to have a chance of winning, the more random the game the more level the playing field is for weak players versus strong players.". And I think I gave you enough examples, that probabilistic games more complex than snakes and ladders can in fact be mastered and your statement is not entirely and unconditionally true.

My implied advice to the OP was to not to get rid of randomness because most players are poor to mediocre (and also vain) so if you want a game to be a commercial success, it needs to have broad popular appeal and to do that you have to give weaker players the hope for sometimes winning and randomness does that. A handicap system would also do that for weaker players though it is does nothing to save face for weaker players that are also vain.

The "probablistic" games you mention have an element of choice and so an element of skill, that has nothing to do with complexity. A very complicated version of snakes 'n' ladders could be devised but if it was just as random as the original it would still be a skill irrelevant game, unless keeping track of complicated rules is a skill (lol). Complexity potentially increases the skill ceiling for deterministic elements only. A more complex version of tic tac toe, for example the game connect 4

, would increase the skill ceiling from trivial to slightly less trivial but that is only so because of its determinism.

nou wrote:
I asked you about this year mostly as my personal survey - I'm trying to find if there is a pattern between most recurring complaints about 40k and frequency of playing it. And I must say you do fit in this pattern.

And I think I do understand your point on "games with an element of chance only require skill because of the deterministic element that remains present" - that is basically what I said also. I replied only because I find your initial notion from this thread and the other to get rid of all randomness because randomness is good only for "weak players (that) need a random element to have a chance of winning, the more random the game the more level the playing field is for weak players versus strong players.". And I think I gave you enough examples, that probabilistic games more complex than snakes and ladders can in fact be mastered and your statement is not entirely and unconditionally true.

And I perfectly agree, that 40K was never suited or intended for tournament play (mostly because time vs statistics argument I made earlier). I can think of some ways that you could organize an improoved tournament measuring actual skill and knowledge of 40K, but I fear that nobody would play preorganized missions, like in Bridge tournaments (with prebuilt armies provided by TO). But I do think, that there is quite large room for skill in 40K itself, just not in tournament format.

And I think I have said all I wanted in this thread, so it's EOT for me. Cheers!

I would love to play in a 40k tournament with pre-built lists provided by the organizer.

That aside, I think it's perfectly possible to have non-random resolution in a wargame so long as you have resources available. Take Warhammer 40k, for example. Imagine if you purchased dice results as well as an army, and the game involved reaching into your pool of non-1 dice results and spending them as the game goes along. I think you can have a successful non-random game so long as the random element is replaced by an indefinite resource, and the amount of information involved is, like Chess and Go, beyond back-of-the-napkin computation.

Non random also works a lot better when the players have well balanced forces. See Chess.

In a wargame setting, I could see a game where each side gets, say, 4 infantry units, 2 cavalry, 2 shooters. Infantry beats shooters, but loses to cav. Cav beats infantry but looses to shooters. Now, you could make it more complex by saying that infantry beats cav if it hits the flank, same for shooters and infantry and cav against shooters, etc.

I question the point of it.

I can see in large wargames that rolling hundreds of dice to get combat results is very time-consuming and possibly tedious -- e.g. Warhammer -- though actually a lot of people like rolling and counting lots of dice. If you don't, however, you can play the game a lot more quickly by reducing or eliminating that random element. This could be an important time-saver in big games.

There are hybrid systems. In Stars 'n' Bars, for example, a regiment of 12 figures shooting with a percentage To Hit of 22 scores total hits of 22 * 12 = 265%, which plays out to two hits and a 64% chance of a third.

Non-random seems to work better in small games where there is a strong element of skill in setting up the situation in which you get an automatic hit. En Garde, for example, requires the players to write out strings of lunge/parry/rest and so on. The coincidence of one type of move with another is what determines the result. A better character is given advantages in several ways, such as having to insert fewer rests.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
En Garde, for example, requires the players to write out strings of lunge/parry/rest and so on. The coincidence of one type of move with another is what determines the result.

And we're back to a glorified game of Rock-Scissors-Paper, as I'd called out in the first thread...

Yes and no, rock paper scissors are random, but theoretically in a wargame the players can be given tools to deal with the situation in a non random fashion.

Personally I like random. I believe random when done properly ads elements that are important and good for a game. Random can make things a lot of fun.

When you remove random, you have chess. Chess can be fun sometimes but it isn't a game that I want to play all the time. For that matter there is a reason I don't play it regularly.

RPS is *not* random, and all you need to do is to play someone for several rounds to find that out. RPS is, at best, pseudo-random between strangers for the first few rounds, but after that, it rapidly moves to 1-sided deterministic. I would never use direct RPS resolution in any sort of wargame, because experience demonstrates that the close friends and family who would play the most would have hugely unfair skews between the players.

In comparison with Chess, at least the active player always wins. In a RPS player, the better player will nearly always win, regardless of who initiates combat.

Random might be bad, but it's among the least bad alternatives.

we have moved from rps resolution per combat to rps units to resolve combat.

RPS has some virtue for simulating limited information situations, in a wargame I would use it for high level orders at turn start and indeed army composition in almost any wargame is effectively RPS (at least without list-tailoring ) It isn't very suitable for combat resolutions because that isn't a limited information situation; combatants can see what their opponent is trying to do and can react accordingly (especially true of close combat). I think a smart way to handle close combat and perhaps combat generally in a player choice driven deterministic way, would be for sequential plays from a limited array of options to which the opponent can make reactive choice to counter. I lunge, you parry, I kick, you counter swipe. Someone is on the offensive in a round and that someone takes the initiative and plays first, then in full knowledge of that play the opponent makes a counter move. The sum of those plays on the characteristics of the combatants determines the combat result. I haven't played Magic the Gathering, or even seen it played, but I guess that is more or less how that game works, no? I think it might be adaptable to a wargame.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
En Garde, for example, requires the players to write out strings of lunge/parry/rest and so on. The coincidence of one type of move with another is what determines the result.

And we're back to a glorified game of Rock-Scissors-Paper, as I'd called out in the first thread...

Just because you think a glorified game of Rock-Scissors-Paper is bad doesn't mean that it is.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
En Garde, for example, requires the players to write out strings of lunge/parry/rest and so on. The coincidence of one type of move with another is what determines the result.

And we're back to a glorified game of Rock-Scissors-Paper, as I'd called out in the first thread...

Just because you think a glorified game of Rock-Scissors-Paper is bad doesn't mean that it is.

Please note that I didn't put a "bad" value judgement on that mechanic - you did.
____

 SolarCross wrote:
RPS has some virtue for simulating limited information situations, in a wargame I would use it for high level orders at turn start and indeed army composition in almost any wargame is effectively RPS (at least without list-tailoring ) It isn't very suitable for combat resolutions because that isn't a limited information situation; combatants can see what their opponent is trying to do and can react accordingly (especially true of close combat).

I think a smart way to handle close combat and perhaps combat generally in a player choice driven deterministic way, would be for sequential plays from a limited array of options to which the opponent can make reactive choice to counter. I lunge, you parry, I kick, you counter swipe. Someone is on the offensive in a round and that someone takes the initiative and plays first, then in full knowledge of that play the opponent makes a counter move. The sum of those plays on the characteristics of the combatants determines the combat result.

I haven't played Magic the Gathering, or even seen it played, but I guess that is more or less how that game works, no?

RPS isn't suitable for combat situations because it purports to be a random d3, but isn't due to the history of patterns that develop simply due to the human nature of patterns being a human thing. That is why sequential games of RPS approach determinism favoring whichever player is better at patterning on the fly.

That's not a bad mechanic, although it sounds table-driven.

No. Magic doesn't work that way. Magic says you have a monster with 2 stats: Attack / HP. When monsters attack, they do attack damage vs HP on a directed basis. If (combined) Attack > HP, target dies. Example, I have a couple of 2/2 monsters against your 3/3 monster. If I attack, you can block one of them with the 3/3, killing it (3 attack > 2 HP, 2 attack < 3 HP), but the other gets through. If you attack, I can block with both, trading one for your 3/3 (2+2 > 3).

 SolarCross wrote:

I think a smart way to handle close combat and perhaps combat generally in a player choice driven deterministic way, would be for sequential plays from a limited array of options to which the opponent can make reactive choice to counter. I lunge, you parry, I kick, you counter swipe. Someone is on the offensive in a round and that someone takes the initiative and plays first, then in full knowledge of that play the opponent makes a counter move. The sum of those plays on the characteristics of the combatants determines the combat result.

JohnHwangDD wrote:That's not a bad mechanic, although it sounds table-driven.

I'm still fuzzy on how it might be implemented, tables do seem like an obvious way although I don't like tables generally or anything that must be referenced rather than remembered. Tables would close off the range of possibilities too. Maybe a better way might be for the plays to affect the combatants stats and then use the modified stats for resolution instead of a table look up. So my swordsmen approach your spearmen, they choose to charge with shields raised (charge distance is reduced, but I get a free parry on impact), your spearmen can counter play by choosing to counter charge, brace for impact or shuffle back, if they had shields as well as spears they could also choose to make a shieldwall. You choose to brace for impact, your spears have a longer reach than my swords so they get a first strike but I charged with shields raised so use the free parry to negate that. Now we are in close combat, as the one who charged I make the next play... I can choose to press in, pull back, or hold, I choose to press in because my shields allow me to negate your first strikes and because pressing in moves the optimal weapon reach to my advantage, you counter play by shuffling back which causes you to lose your first strike which I would parry anyway in exchange for negating the reach reduction I had from pressing in...

Or something like that... it is only the germ of an idea at present, I should flesh it out a bit more before talking about it.. lol

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
En Garde, for example, requires the players to write out strings of lunge/parry/rest and so on. The coincidence of one type of move with another is what determines the result.

And we're back to a glorified game of Rock-Scissors-Paper, as I'd called out in the first thread...

Just because you think a glorified game of Rock-Scissors-Paper is bad doesn't mean that it is.

Please note that I didn't put a "bad" value judgement on that mechanic - you did.
____

...

You put "glorified". It isn't hard to read something into that.

If you didn't have anything to post against En Garde why bother posting anything? You certainly didn't post a positive comment.

Okay, so how about a RCP mechanic where you have Rock (1), Rock (2) and so on. Rock beats Scissors, and Rock (2) beats Rock (1). Now each unit gets a small deck of cards with Rock, Scissors, and Paper in various proportions. Then throw in an initiative mechanic whereby players spend cards from units' decks to act first with the action going to the player with highest card.

Speaking for myself, it just doesn't sound very interesting, intuitive or "realistic" (in terms of simulating combat.)

It's starting to sound like a card game, which is fine of itself but if I wanted to play a card game I would play a card game.

To amplify, I think that the outcome of combat in war games should be mostly affected by tactical situations, such as outnumbering or flanking, and so on.

The idea of playing decks of Rock 1 , Rock 2 or whatever cards for each unit seems to be a mechanic that does not relate to tactical situations and introduces a new layer of game-playing on top of the war game player's correct role of moving his units into tactically advantageous positions.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
En Garde, for example, requires the players to write out strings of lunge/parry/rest and so on. The coincidence of one type of move with another is what determines the result.

And we're back to a glorified game of Rock-Scissors-Paper, as I'd called out in the first thread...

Just because you think a glorified game of Rock-Scissors-Paper is bad doesn't mean that it is.

Please note that I didn't put a "bad" value judgement on that mechanic - you did.
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You put "glorified". It isn't hard to read something into that.

If you didn't have anything to post against En Garde why bother posting anything? You certainly didn't post a positive comment.

I boiled your paragraphs down to a single sentence that provides better clarity as to what the underlying mechanic appears to be.

It isn't like paper-scissors-stone, for a number of reasons.

If you want to play a game that uses paper-scissors-stone, Panzer Pranks uses it for combat resolution.

Now you're just showing that you don't understand En Garde nor RPS.

Blind selections of a limited number of choices that return an intersected result?

That is RPS in a nutshell.

There are many historic wargames that are non random. Usually, these games are best played at the squad/unit level.

A very basic implementation is with attack values and HP. For instance, if you have a unit of infantry, that has an attack value of 2 and 3 HP. If it fights against a unit that has 1attack, 2HP, the 1st unit destroys the 2nd, but suffers 1 dmg (reducing it to 2attack, 2hp). A stronger unit will always destroy a weaker one, but won't be able to stomp all the opponent's army.
You can add some depth by giving infantry a bonus of X attacks against cavalry for instance (but cavalry get a bonus when charging artillery), or with a type of weapon against another type, or giving things like spears a bonus on the first round of combat (so this unit becomes good a destroying small enemy unit, but is much less efficient against an heavily armored one), etc. Combine it with different movement speeds for different units, add some shooting, and you have a nice tactical game that has no random aspect.
There are other systems too, but I haven't played any games like that since I was a kid, so I can't really remember all the details.

It would however be much harder to implement such a system for 40K for instance, since a squad is not represented by a single base. Existing rulesets could however be adapted to skirmish sized 40K without too much effort.

fresus wrote:
A stronger unit will always destroy a weaker one, but won't be able to stomp all the opponent's army.

Combine it with different movement speeds for different units, add some shooting, and you have a nice tactical game that has no random aspect.

I am still on the opinion though with no random aspect, the game becomes predicable and not fun. If a weaker unit can never beat a stronger or overcome that, then there is no real reason to have weaker one. It also makes targets predicable based on unit strengths. It also is unrealistic because in combat, although some units have more advantages than others, one being weaker doesn't mean it doesn't win.

If the mechanic is somehow modified where 2 weaker units could defeat a stronger unit in some method, that might work. I don't see that working as much in a wargame though. For a abstracted wargame in card format (not miniatures) it would be better suited for something along those lines.