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 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Having different rules for different categories of terrain should be very easy. There can be multiple levels of cover with different levels of modifiers, combined with different levels of visibility, combined as well with different levels of movement modification, which can then apply to different units.

Barbed wire impedes infantry while not blocking LOS

Tank traps could block vehicles, provide cover for Infantry, and not block LOS

Forest can slow units down, impede LOS and provide cover

Buildings could block movement for everything but Infantry, provide heavy cover and block more LOS

Craters should slow units down, provide cover for or block LOS to units inside them but none for targets beyond them.

There should be a ton of variety available.

Look, I personally would enjoy that, but my regular opponents have trouble remembering that the shipping crates aren't ruins and then have trouble remembering what the shipping crate rules actually are (in 10th).

^Have IQs dropped since I was away?"

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Having different rules for different categories of terrain should be very easy. There can be multiple levels of cover with different levels of modifiers, combined with different levels of visibility, combined as well with different levels of movement modification, which can then apply to different units.

Barbed wire impedes infantry while not blocking LOS

Tank traps could block vehicles, provide cover for Infantry, and not block LOS

Forest can slow units down, impede LOS and provide cover

Buildings could block movement for everything but Infantry, provide heavy cover and block more LOS

Craters should slow units down, provide cover for or block LOS to units inside them but none for targets beyond them.

There should be a ton of variety available.

Look, I personally would enjoy that, but my regular opponents have trouble remembering that the shipping crates aren't ruins and then have trouble remembering what the shipping crate rules actually are (in 10th).

^Have IQs dropped since I was away?"

Well, there is a literacy crisis. (No. For real. There is. At least here in the states.)

There is also the fact that complexity compounds.

In a game of 40k you have the mental load of your and your opponents unit stats, unit special rules, weapon special rules, faction special rules, detachment special rules, core stratagems, detachment stratagems and how each of those things affect all the others.

Then you have stuff like probability calculations/estimates to gauge roughly how much firepower you need to commit to certain enemy targets, how much of a threat they pose to you, average charge distances accounting for bonuses or rerolls etc.

If you throw on top of all that bespoke terrain rules for every single different example of terrain that can exist, you are compounding even more because then you need to think of how your other rules interact with all of those rules. Each new rule is potentially having knock on effects to countless others, which then knock on to even more etc.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Having different rules for different categories of terrain should be very easy. There can be multiple levels of cover with different levels of modifiers, combined with different levels of visibility, combined as well with different levels of movement modification, which can then apply to different units.

Barbed wire impedes infantry while not blocking LOS

Tank traps could block vehicles, provide cover for Infantry, and not block LOS

Forest can slow units down, impede LOS and provide cover

Buildings could block movement for everything but Infantry, provide heavy cover and block more LOS

Craters should slow units down, provide cover for or block LOS to units inside them but none for targets beyond them.

There should be a ton of variety available.

Look, I personally would enjoy that, but my regular opponents have trouble remembering that the shipping crates aren't ruins and then have trouble remembering what the shipping crate rules actually are (in 10th).

^Have IQs dropped since I was away?"

Yes.
And the rules have been dumbed down to coddle these people.
Terrain being functionally the same no matter what it really is, solid 1st floors regardless of the actual model, lack of vehicle facings/fire arcs, etc etc etc.

Honestly, the above is pretty much exactly what I'm talking about. Fun stuff to brainstorm but how does it play on the table? Like ultimately the tank traps are just dense terrain that doesn't block sight lines. Forests having a movement penalty is good in theory but for what reason would a player choose to interact with them? What if I want the effect of buildings on my jungle board? Why must every city have a well funded national park system?

I say this to a degree in jest. There's definitely room for more types of terrain. Some of my favorite systems are built more on different terrain traits that you assign to whatever you build which works really well, but does often suffer from a lack of easy readability on unfamiliar tables. I've increasingly found simplicity to be a huge boon to immersive looking boards which is why I tend to lean that way.

 LunarSol wrote:
Honestly, the above is pretty much exactly what I'm talking about. Fun stuff to brainstorm but how does it play on the table? Like ultimately the tank traps are just dense terrain that doesn't block sight lines. Forests having a movement penalty is good in theory but for what reason would a player choose to interact with them? What if I want the effect of buildings on my jungle board? Why must every city have a well funded national park system?

I say this to a degree in jest. There's definitely room for more types of terrain. Some of my favorite systems are built more on different terrain traits that you assign to whatever you build which works really well, but does often suffer from a lack of easy readability on unfamiliar tables. I've increasingly found simplicity to be a huge boon to immersive looking boards which is why I tend to lean that way.

It's the kind of thing that works fine in a video game, because all of the crunch can just happen behind the scenes by a computer rather than in the players own brain. In a video game you could select a unit and hover the mouse over every terrain piece and have a floating tooltip that tells you exactly what effect that terrain will have on every single ability that unit has at a single glance. In 40K on a physical tabletop, that'll be multiple books flipped through, to multiple different pages, to cross reference between and maybe even checking an errata or FAQ.

If you want a real simulationist game, then the Campaign for North Africa exists. It has rules covering everything including the amount of evaporation of water and fuel from different containers dependent on weather conditions. No game of it has ever been recorded as having been played to completion, with the estimated time to complete one game being 1500 hours, and recommending ten players split into two teams.

It's not like the current/new rules have zero variety in any case. I can plunk down ruins, woods, big rocks, and hills on the same table and they'll all do different things. Hills block LOS but can be traversed and provide no cover, big rocks block LOS but are impassible, ruins and woods can be entered and provide both cover and LOS blocking but only ruins might have a second story. These are natural consequences of the shape of the terrain, stuff you can intuit from looking at it, rather than bespoke rules you need to look up in the book.

And then a table covered in multi-story urban ruins is going to play differently from a table that's all jungle which in turn is going to play differently from a table that's all canyon, rocks, and mesas. Having those kinds of options is going to mean more variety than when the choice was either lots of L-shaped walls or everything dies on turn 1.

Cover rules don't need to be complicated; the most streamlining they've done is in regards to how TLOS interacts with terrain, and good fething riddance to 'I can see a single outstretched hand through this 3mm crack in the wall, entire unit dies'.

 Wyldhunt wrote:


Agreed. If we *did* want some more variety in terrain rules, I feel like you could have some sort of environmental twist added to your games. Playing in a flooded area? Maybe units move a bit slower over open ground if they don't have the Fly keyword because they're slogging through knee-deep water. Jungle world? Maybe units with Torrent weapons can use an action to remove the Solid rule from terrain as they burn away all the vines covering up the windows.

I often compare terrain to map design in videogames. I think the discussion on terrain often stops at creating tools but falls short of designing maps. There's tons of neat interactions you can create but unless you place them in an intelligent manner, they often at best just get ignored or at worst, skew your game in really unfun ways. Do flying units need to be stronger? What happens if players or even armies don't have access to good torrent weapons?

I think, when you want really unique terrain you need to build a scenario around it. You need to be designing a level as a whole and not just terrain. Make multiple solutions and a first turn about armies using different means to reach the point of conflict. It may be something better suited to some of the coop modes over head to head. That's a longer winded version of what I was saying to begin with. It's easy to brainstorm rules to simulate something but designing something players are encouraged to interact with is a lot harder.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:


^Have IQs dropped since I was away?"

Well, there is a literacy crisis. (No. For real. There is. At least here in the states.)

I really don't want to be too elitist about this - players aren't that hopeless yet - but there is a grain of truth to the saying "imagine how dumb the average person is, half of them are dumber".

(Really the complexity issue is a bigger one at least for the moment. The literacy crisis is probably better addressed thoroughly in a thread elsewhere, but I don't envy teachers having to teach classes right now whose minds are stuck in their phones).

 LunarSol wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:


Agreed. If we *did* want some more variety in terrain rules, I feel like you could have some sort of environmental twist added to your games. Playing in a flooded area? Maybe units move a bit slower over open ground if they don't have the Fly keyword because they're slogging through knee-deep water. Jungle world? Maybe units with Torrent weapons can use an action to remove the Solid rule from terrain as they burn away all the vines covering up the windows.

I often compare terrain to map design in videogames. I think the discussion on terrain often stops at creating tools but falls short of designing maps. There's tons of neat interactions you can create but unless you place them in an intelligent manner, they often at best just get ignored or at worst, skew your game in really unfun ways. Do flying units need to be stronger? What happens if players or even armies don't have access to good torrent weapons?

I think, when you want really unique terrain you need to build a scenario around it. You need to be designing a level as a whole and not just terrain. Make multiple solutions and a first turn about armies using different means to reach the point of conflict. It may be something better suited to some of the coop modes over head to head. That's a longer winded version of what I was saying to begin with. It's easy to brainstorm rules to simulate something but designing something players are encouraged to interact with is a lot harder.

These are great points. I like the idea of fairly specific terrain with interesting, niche rules, but you're right that it probably makes more sense to make those part of a specific scenario so that everyone can interact with that terrain in a meaningful way rather than just being annoyed by some inconvenient quirk or simply avoiding the terrain with the debuff or whatever.

Eh, even in more analogue days, a lot of wargaming was taught via the oral tradition. A lot of people just learn better in practice than paper.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Honestly, the above is pretty much exactly what I'm talking about. Fun stuff to brainstorm but how does it play on the table? Like ultimately the tank traps are just dense terrain that doesn't block sight lines. Forests having a movement penalty is good in theory but for what reason would a player choose to interact with them? What if I want the effect of buildings on my jungle board? Why must every city have a well funded national park system?

I say this to a degree in jest. There's definitely room for more types of terrain. Some of my favorite systems are built more on different terrain traits that you assign to whatever you build which works really well, but does often suffer from a lack of easy readability on unfamiliar tables. I've increasingly found simplicity to be a huge boon to immersive looking boards which is why I tend to lean that way.

It's the kind of thing that works fine in a video game, because all of the crunch can just happen behind the scenes by a computer rather than in the players own brain. In a video game you could select a unit and hover the mouse over every terrain piece and have a floating tooltip that tells you exactly what effect that terrain will have on every single ability that unit has at a single glance. In 40K on a physical tabletop, that'll be multiple books flipped through, to multiple different pages, to cross reference between and maybe even checking an errata or FAQ.

If you want a real simulationist game, then the Campaign for North Africa exists. It has rules covering everything including the amount of evaporation of water and fuel from different containers dependent on weather conditions. No game of it has ever been recorded as having been played to completion, with the estimated time to complete one game being 1500 hours, and recommending ten players split into two teams.

Yeah... I remember my local scene back in 8th(?) edition started putting notecards on every piece of tournament terrain to spell out exactly what it did. Partly for clarity, but partly because it wasn't inherently clear and to save people from having to flip through their books to look up the terrain section too often.

I don't think I ever played a single game with the... exploding pipe rules (I forget the name.) And while I personally think things like craters can be cool (they create patches of charge/foot slogger deterrants that shooty units can use to kite more safely), difficult terrain is the sort of rule that you want to apply very selectively to avoid making it a slog to cross the table.

I refer to it as push and pull terrain. Terrain that draws players towards it and terrain that players avoid. I think one of the big challenges in terrain design is that its easy to see terrain as a challenge and therefore define it with negative modifiers. The problem is, unless you create some overwhelming advantage to doing so, players have little reason to overcome challenging terrain. It becomes effectively the same as impassible.

I think pull terrain is a significantly more useful type because it encourages players to move towards it. Obviously 11th has gone all in on that with it literally granting VP but bonuses like plunging fire and cover tend to do a much better job of facilitating player engagement.

The issue with push terrain is where do you put it and what reason do players have to interact with it. I often see a desire for offsetting bonuses, but the reality is that if I might suffer some damage to gain a defensive bonus there's a good chance I'm better off in the open. It can be good for forcing choke points and creating horizontal shortcuts, but you really have to have a strong goal in mind, particularly if it comes at the cost of LOS blocking terrain.