What all does a tabletop Wargame system absolutely require?

[Prak]

Preferably dueling type combat, rather than army v. army, but flexible enough to allow both.

Randomly had the desire to work something up so as to make my friends' and my random "I want to play this" whims easier to indulge.

I want to make something that's fairly barebones, setting and style wise so that it can cover everything from Mage(tA) duels, to Superheroes, to Elite Fantasy Warrior v. Horde of monsters, etc. and I don't think that'd be too problematic, or at least, I could bang some together that'd work and only require about half an hours work for anything special when we get a new whim, I just need to know what's absolutely necessary.

[Zinegata]

There are really no hard and fast rules on what a wargame should have.

In general though, most systems allow for a high degree of customization. Most tabletop minis games let players create their own armies, and battles are composed of several different scenarios or missions ranging from "Beat each other silly", "Take control of a pile of rocks", or more exotic stuff like "Keep the princess alive".

[Doom]

"Flexible enough to handle both dueling and army" is a real problem.

The kind of rules that make 1 on 1 fights interesting generally don't extend to the kind of rules that make 100 on 100 fights interesting.

Actually, can anyone recommend a game that makes 1 on 1 dueling really interesting?

There were some Flying Buffalo games that worked ok, but past that, my memory is a blank.

[spasheridan]

I like Savage Worlds for a flexible framework that handles RPG lite and can grow to a battle with maybe a couple dozen models on each side.

It isn't really going to give you 30 round duels between master swordsmen, but it can go from fantasy to cyberpunk, superhero's or spellcasters.

[Username17]

Wargames need movement rates. You have tokens on the map, you need to move them around. Everything else is optional.

-Username17

[Murtak]

Covering swachbuckler duels and trench warfare in the system is a tall order. But regardless of how your game looks like, you always want two things: Simple mechanics, but a complex game. You want novices to be able to understand the game easily, but you also want them to be outplayed by veterans - not by them memorizing the breakpoints of your mechanics or by pulling off weird and unique combos, but by being able to keep track of interlocking mechanics for everything on the board.

With what you want to cover that probably requires, at the very least, mechanics for:
- melee combat, with distinctions between strength and precision, offense and defense
- ranged combat, with distinions between strength and precision
- line of sight, cover
- terrain
- wounding, healing, fatigue
- units
- movement, speed
- morale
- objectives
- items, buffs, debuffs
- point costs, army composition

You probably need to account for much more, but this should be the bare minimum. And frankly, I'd be astounded if the same system can work well for both duels and mass combat. I think covering multiple genres might be doable though.

[TheFlatline]

I'm going to take it a step further than Frank. From a more abstract standpoint, a wargame must model some aspect of war particularly well. Everything else can be abstracted. Even movement rules are not sacrosanct.

D&D is actually a medium-light tactical wargame actually. It's on the light side of middle-weight depending on what ruleset you use. The absolute lightest end of wargaming I think might be the Command & Colors ruleset (which is awesome, but still about as light as you can get and still qualify as a wargame). At the other end is shit like Advanced Squad Leader (which is stupidly complicated and complex, but amazingly detailed for squad level combat) and World In Flames, which is an operational WW2 game covering the entire planet and actually takes longer to play than WW2 took to be fought.

So by that concept, the "good for a duel, good for an army" ruleset really doesn't exist. Period. Especially a light/barebones system.

Most wargame systems don't adapt to other genres very well either. C&C being the primary exception. For example, the Napoleonic era of warfare strategies are drastically different than, say, modern day wars, or even Agincourt hundreds of years ago. Everything changes drastically again when you introduce fireballs and the ability to bend reality.

Remember, chess is technically an abstract wargame. It focuses on tactics. Go can be technically seen as an abstract wargame too, one that focuses on strategy.

So really, if you're looking at something as versatile as you're talking about, you're looking at an incredibly abstract system. The more detailed you get, the faster it's going to turn into a quivering mass of issues.

What you *can* do is come up with a fairly generic conflict resolution system, but it's not going to be very plug & play. There's a reason why wargames are usually among the more expensive, longer developed games in the board game industry.

If you want a duel system, it's expensive, but I suggest Yomi, which is a card game that mimics games like Street Fighter fairly well. For armies, I suggest a Command & Colors game. Which game you get depends on what genre you'll be playing most in, but C&C:Ancients is probably your best bet.

[Prak]

Doom, For a system that does duels decently, the Firefly Games Action system, used for Monster Island, is ok. It's incredibly easy to minmax though, a person can put all their points into armour and a single attack, and will triumph over more generalized monsters in one or two hits.

And actually, thinking about it, it handles 1 v many games too... but it's been a long time since I used it, and I wasn't particularly critical of games then, so what do other people think of it, if anything? It would require a lot of work, and doesn't provide particularly complex games. But it might be a decent starting point.

[Prak]

Ok, so a new question towards actually starting to cobble this together:

How many ability scores is too many for a wargame type of thing? How many is enough. I suppose two ability stats might be enough, but that seems too simplistic, I was thinking maybe 3 or 4.

[Koumei]

Wargames need movement rates. You have tokens on the map, you need to move them around. Everything else is optional.

-Username17

That's true. There are even some really rare and obscure war games that use nothing but movement rules. I think one is called Chockers or something, and then there's Choose? Chass? Chase? Something like that.

Then again, Go doesn't have movement, only deployment, and that's basically a war game.

[Sashi]

That's true. There are even some really rare and obscure war games that use nothing but movement rules. I think one is called Chockers or something, and then there's Choose? Chass? Chase? Something like that.

+5

[TheFlatline]

Ok, so a new question towards actually starting to cobble this together:

How many ability scores is too many for a wargame type of thing? How many is enough. I suppose two ability stats might be enough, but that seems too simplistic, I was thinking maybe 3 or 4.

How many units are you tracking at once? If you're tracking 200 units, 1 or 2 scores is probably enough.

1 or 2 units? You might want half a dozen stats.

Off the top of my head, you'll need movement, some kind of strength, possibly defense/health. That's the bare minimum.

C&C has... health, movement, and how many dice you roll at what range. That's it.

[Zinegata]

Ok, so a new question towards actually starting to cobble this together:

How many ability scores is too many for a wargame type of thing? How many is enough. I suppose two ability stats might be enough, but that seems too simplistic, I was thinking maybe 3 or 4.

It varies, but the more units have on the battlefield, the fewer stats you should have.

For instance... Proud Monster is a game with several thousand units. So each unit in that game only has 3 stats: Attack, Defense, and Movement. In addition, there's a unit type (i.e. Armor, Infantry, Mechanized) which affects movement rates across different terrain.

By contrast, 40K averages about 50 guys on a battlefield, and there are considerably more stats - Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill, Strength, Toughness, Wounds, Leadership, etc.

2 or 3 stats is really few if you're going duelling, but for a massive monster game involving thousands, 2 or 3 stats is your only choice .

[TheFlatline]

Ok, so a new question towards actually starting to cobble this together:

How many ability scores is too many for a wargame type of thing? How many is enough. I suppose two ability stats might be enough, but that seems too simplistic, I was thinking maybe 3 or 4.

It varies, but the more units have on the battlefield, the fewer stats you should have.

For instance... Proud Monster is a game with several thousand units. So each unit in that game only has 3 stats: Attack, Defense, and Movement. In addition, there's a unit type (i.e. Armor, Infantry, Mechanized) which affects movement rates across different terrain.

By contrast, 40K averages about 50 guys on a battlefield, and there are considerably more stats - Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill, Strength, Toughness, Wounds, Leadership, etc.

2 or 3 stats is really few if you're going duelling, but for a massive monster game involving thousands, 2 or 3 stats is your only choice .

Also, the more stats you have, the closer to perfect battlefield command you're probably going to approach. Which is a significant issue to address. *Are* you going to have perfect command, where you can issue any order, at any time, to any unit, and it will *always* carry that order out (think 40k to an extent). Or are you going to have fog of war and imperfect command structure?

In large-scale combat I'd probably also include morale rules as well. Traditional army-scale conflict usually was won and lost not by casualties inflicted but by morale breaking.

[Prak]

Well, I was think more three main abilities (Force/Agility/Toughness; Meat/Nerves/Armour; Str/Dex/Con; w/e) and then a handful of derived values for HP(Str+Con), Move (maybe)(Str+Dex), Strike bonus (could just be straight Dex), Defense bonus(Dex+Con).

So I guess I'm looking at 6 or seven stats, then some kind of powers, as appropriate.

So, would this work for dueling? For Armies? I'd really like to be able to work Arthur v. Morigan, Arthur v. Goblin Horde, and D Day all fairly equally well.

[Zinegata]

Wargames typically don't have derived stats anymore. They just have final values.

I'm a bit leery about having one system simulate a duel and D-Day though. The scale is rather... different.

[Prak]

Ah, I'm not a big wargamer, so I don't know what's common. I've only really ever played Horror Clix (no character creation) and Monster Island (has derived values, not so much a wargame as just making monsters and having them beat the shit out of each other).

And, ok, maybe D Day was a bad example. I'm thinking like... 20 v 20 at most? Hell, even that's a lot. But I definitely want one person to be able to run a horde of goblins or zombies, or the national guard against someone else's Arthur/Alice/Godzilla. But when it's "Multitude v. Multitude," then... hell...

Ok, here are the scenarios I can really think of:
One on One: Heroes/Villains, Samurai, Dueling Mages
One v Many: Hero vrs Mooks, Pack/Army vrs. Monster
Squad v Squad: Terrorists v Counterterrorists, Survivors v Zombies
Squad v Many: The Basterds break into a Nazi camp

lets see... a reasonable horde of goblins would be, like, 20 figs. Right? A reasonable zombie horde would probably be 20 figs, with some kind of spawning mechanic (as some die, some more come, with a max for scenario, or a non-kill 'em all goal), Squad on Squad is probably two groups of, what, ten people at most?

So... lets say the system caps out at like 25 units. Sure, the national guard has like, at least a hundred guys fighting Godzilla, but they're in squads and manning heavy machinery and shit, so you're actually fielding like, 24 units. The Basterds is a group of, like, seven guys, maybe less, so they're only facing about 18 nazi guards at a given time.

So how does that change things? Easier to make it handle duels and armies with the same system?

[Zinegata]

In Warhammer 40K, most units are organized into units. For "horde" armies like the Imperial Guard, the size of a unit can hit as many as 40+ guys. For elite troops like Space Marines, they'd have 10 man squads.

Only heroes and leaders get to fight all by their lonesome, but human-sized leaders and heroes can still choose to join up with a bigger squad and provide various leadership bonuses to that unit.

It's not the most elegant way of handling things, but it does at least let you (theoretically) field "equal" armies even though one army has only 25 guys organized into 3 units, while the other has 100 organized into 3 units.

You may want to look up Tide of Iron for more possible ideas on customizing squads and larger units.

My main worry is that - like in 40K - heroes tend to become fairly irrelevant in a field with a lot of figures. Sure, a Daemonlord is really powerful and can smash any human unit fighting one on one, but if it's shot at by 50 guardsmen then at least some of their hits are gonna start hurting.

Squad vs individual combats are really hard to balance and require a fair bit of math.