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dwarf74 posted:Oh, that's awesome. That kind of stuff has aged better than plot-heavy or railroad adventures though. People still talk about Griffin Mountain for RQ for good reason.
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Nov 28, 2022 16:53
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Cessna posted:I'm not saying they didn't. I played in a game of TOR 1e. And it does a very good job of emulating The Lord of the Rings.
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Nov 28, 2022 16:56
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I really dig TOR 2e's mechanics and would love to run a game. It's so LotR-y, I'd need to find fellow fans tho. I'm the kind of nerd who'd break out some of the aforementioned MERP setting poo poo for it.
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Nov 28, 2022 17:29
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Lemon-Lime posted:The One Ring 1e is one of the best games ever written when it comes to genre-/source-material-emulation. I'm curious. What changed mechanic-wise?
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Nov 28, 2022 17:36
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The New Yorker did a profile of Isaac Childres, the dude behind all the Gloomhavens. It's wild to see their style applied to this niche and nerdy hobby. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-board-game-auteur-makes-his-next-move
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Nov 28, 2022 18:03
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I haven't touched 2nd edition yet, but I'll chime in with the chorus of the first edition is great. The whole 'Making journeys interesting' thing is worth the price of admission alone.
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Nov 28, 2022 18:55
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dwarf74 posted:The New Yorker did a profile of Isaac Childres, the dude behind all the Gloomhavens. It's wild to see their style applied to this niche and nerdy hobby. The introduction and subsequent constant references to BGG rankings is certainly a choice. My reaction by the end of the article was that nobody has ever told this writer that the clever thing he thinks he's doing isn't.
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Nov 28, 2022 19:06
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My guess is they're not a board gamer but found a style hook for the article (#1!) and just kinda went wild with it. It didn't bother me but yeah it was definitely one decision they could have made. I expected that to culminate with a bit at the end re: FH review bombing by angry nerds because Isaac said black lives matter. But it never materialized.
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Nov 28, 2022 19:20
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dwarf74 posted:The New Yorker did a profile of Isaac Childres, the dude behind all the Gloomhavens. It's wild to see their style applied to this niche and nerdy hobby. quote:Childres’s business model was more Tesla than Parker Brothers: he listed the Gloomhaven project on Kickstarter, using preorders to gauge interest and bootstrap production. 
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Nov 29, 2022 00:35
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Yeah but at least they left in "Basically, I hate capitalism" lol
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Nov 29, 2022 00:41
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dwarf74 posted:Yeah but at least they left in "Basically, I hate capitalism" lol Oh I'm sure Isaac didn't have any say in that comparison, it really is the most peak "The New Yorker writer gets very excited about this strange new thing (not actually strange or new) they've never heard of" writing style.
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Nov 29, 2022 00:48
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The Bee posted:I'm curious. What changed mechanic-wise? The biggest omission between the 1st edition revised and 2nd edition core books is the stuff about increasing your standard of living and social standing in various communities. I can see why that would hit the cutting room floor and be left to a supplement, though there's enough of standard of living in the 2nd edition core book that it's kind of weird there's not more to it. Stuff that came later but really should be in the core if they're going to do it at all is the expanded combat stuff like roles and additional tasks. The combat is identical or nearly-identical, and it's not like the combat was super light to begin with, so it feels like something that will definitely happen but really should be in the core of a 2nd edition. The thing I've seen the most griping about is how basic task resolution works now, which I am personally totally fine with. They moved to (mostly) static target numbers, which is a good idea in my opinion, but it can be a bit too challenging for some people's taste. My biggest complaints are that there's just a huge amount of white space in the book, and a lot of the setting or ancillary system stuff like Patrons takes up more space than it needs to, and the stuff is filling the book with could remain but just be tightened up, allowing the game to include more of the expanded vitals from the previous edition like information about outside of Eriador and more player options. On top of making poor use of page space, the 2nd edition core is almost 100 pages shorter than the 1st edition revised core! Making better use of space could also have really helped with Journeys, which I feel need the most support for everyone to really get into. They really seem to have given a glance at refining how Heroic Cultures worked and were presented and then, just, trimmed how 1st edition did things instead of being bolder. Tightening up cultures could've saved a ton of space and allowed a much greater selection for players, which would in turn better set up the book for Wilderland stuff. Like, they got rid of the vaguely lifepath-y character generation in the core but still kept the fixed selection of stat spreads. So now you just have a moderately sized table of boring numbers that needlessly exclude a handful of choices that would be available through a simpler and easier to present point distribution system. (They reintroduced a lifepath system as a small supplement, which is nice, but it only covers the core book cultures and but the ones from the supplements despite their all being released very close together. Books are a lot of work and just because they came out roughly at the same time doesn't mean their development was simultaneous, but its an integration that I think really should get the extra effort of your going to do all that in the first place.) I don't quite agree with the criticism that Eriador is empty and boring, but the devs and authors seem to think it's a little bit true so it's kind of weird they refocused the core book there. Also, while I'm fine with the trimming of how Journeys work, particularly the terrain types, it kind of sucks that you're basically going to be lightly homebrewing how everything outside of Eriador works because there's no direct one-to-one equivalency between the 1st and 2nd edition maps. Not a tremendous burden, but something I think could've been easily avoided to the benefit of both veterans and new players. (I can certainly understand being cautious of overwhelming brand new players or making the world feel too small by filling it all out in quick, broad strokes, but I don't believe that's an inevitable problem if you handle things right. I'm taking both player options and the maps, here.) All-in-all I think there's more missed opportunities or gaps that feel very obvious to people familiar with the prior edition (or the legendarium itself) than anything that could be definitively considered a terrible blunder. It's still quite a good game and I would rather start with it and homebrew on top instead of sticking with the previous edition. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Nov 29, 2022 |
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Nov 29, 2022 01:12
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Dawgstar posted:Yeah, I think a lot of it comes from books like 'Tigers in the Mud' written by a Panzertrooper and of course he's not going to dwell on the, shall we say, great unpleasantness of his side. That book also probably is where we get the myth of the Tiger as a rolling unstoppable death machine. Wasn't that also part of the 'Clean Wehrmacht' stuff where they were trying to rehabilitate the SS as an 'elite unit' of the German Army and not the political stormtroopers of the Nazi Party as a way to pretend the members not executed for war crimes weren't culpable? Note that whole narrative washed over into a ton of wargaming and is still present in a lot of places.
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Nov 29, 2022 08:05
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http://www.avalanchepress.com/Black_SS_Pieces.php Dishonor Before Death: Those Black SS Pieces By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D. October 2020 quote:I hate Nazis. to Dr Benninghof's credit, as he writes here, the SS units in the games he has designed are weaker than regular Heer troops, but anyone with a familiarity with WW2 wargaming would know that alongside the SS having their own special counters comes with the SS also being regarded as "elite" troops, with higher attack values, XP values, morale values, and so on and that comes from wargaming being heavily influenced by Cold War-era histories of WW2, where we had people like von Manstein, von Mellenthin, Guderian, von Luck, Rudel and Balck writing exculpatory memoirs that cast the Russians as "Asiatic hordes" and German troops as valiantly-outnumbered, technologically superior, better trained, better lead veterans, with the SS being the elite of the elite, and so on. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 08:52 on Nov 29, 2022 |
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Nov 29, 2022 08:50
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Honestly, the basic assumption that when you're playing a hex and counter wargame that you need to get yourself hyped up to play one side or the other is kind of the flaw, to me in the argument. Playing, say, the Germans in an Ardennes wargame doesn't really require you to spend hours lovingly modeling and painting and reading the lore in Sepp Dietrich or Joachim Peiper(kudos to the guys who whacked him after the war). You play the position, the game as itself, as a game. Playing something like Last Blitzkrieg, you get to see the SS units, and there's definitely some decisions i might call questionable. For example, putting the panzer-battalions of the 12th SS as action rating 4 is somewhat strange to me for battalions where much of its crew went into battle having only taken one or two training shots. But it is pretty accurate that their infantry is on the level of the garbage tier FJ divisions(the german 'paratroopers' in december 1944 were mostly airfield service personnel dragooned into infantry and were the props for a crazy medal of honor moment for a US recon platoon). In Third Winter, a game about the Soviet offensive across Ukraine in 1943-44, the SS units are basically portrayed as fairly similar to their equivalents- they have the white text on black aesthetic on their counter but have fairly average ratings for panzer-divisions and infantry regiments in the German Army which makes sense. Generally speaking, I think the decently researched games do a pretty good job of individualizing units, even if i don't agree with all the decisions made.
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Nov 29, 2022 16:09
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Panzeh posted:Honestly, the basic assumption that when you're playing a hex and counter wargame that you need to get yourself hyped up to play one side or the other is kind of the flaw, to me in the argument. Playing, say, the Germans in an Ardennes wargame doesn't really require you to spend hours lovingly modeling and painting and reading the lore in Sepp Dietrich or Joachim Peiper(kudos to the guys who whacked him after the war). You play the position, the game as itself, as a game. I agree, and it's part of why that review of a new Stalingrad wargame I posted while back feels so... disingenuous, because it tries to make this argument that merely playing a side constitutes endorsement, and then projects some 2022-founded distaste for Russians onto the Soviet Union of 1942.
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Nov 29, 2022 16:16
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I think it's entirely fair that SS units be portrayed differently than Wehrmacht units. One thing that comes up over and over is the fact that they DID perform differently. Unfortunately this is yet another example of how wargames using "on paper" stats makes the German stuff better than it was in reality. Just like how games look at things like a tank's armor thickness and gun size while ignoring factors like cost or reliability makes a Tiger or Panther look unrealistically good, the same goes for SS. You can absolutely say that SS had better "morale" than their Wehrmacht counterparts. They were fanatics. But you also have to say that they just weren't as tactically skilled. They were used as berserkers - good for assaulting an enemy position, and also known for dying heroically in droves in the process. Account after account describes how they would make bold attacks, but suffer disproportionate casualties. That sort of thing - tactically handling troops - is what the player does in a wargame - so the only stat you see is "high morale" without an appropriate penalty. I guess you could make some sort of rule like "can't take cover" or "must assault even if they all die," but that makes for poor games.
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Nov 29, 2022 17:00
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The frosthaven box is likely heavy enough to kill a small child. Thankfully it will not automatically do so.
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Nov 29, 2022 17:51
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I love the idea of de-mystifying the SS, but hex and chit is a weird venue for that discussion. At the scale where you're playing that kind of game, the SS would have been operationally different enough to justify a different colored tile. Not better, but they would have had a separate chain of command and (IIRC) been less poorly equipped by virtue of their political connections. It's the kind of thing that you'd notice at the company level or above. The problem in gaming where individual SS men are presented as superhuman supersoldiers. That poo poo is straight from the propaganda reels.
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Nov 29, 2022 18:05
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moths posted:Not better, but they would have had a separate chain of command and (IIRC) been less poorly equipped by virtue of their political connections. Gonna make a mild nitpick here. The SS weren't better equipped until near the end of the war, specifically after the July 20 bomb plot to kill Hitler. In the early/mid years of the war they had a relatively high proportion of equipment that was looted from occupied territories (like Czech machineguns and small arms, or captured T-34s) or made by slave labor in their concentration camps (like their camouflage smocks). It wasn't until Hitler lost faith in the army, especially after some of them tried to kill him, that they started getting the good stuff. moths posted:The problem in gaming where individual SS men are presented as superhuman supersoldiers. That poo poo is straight from the propaganda reels. I'd like to see some sort of rule like: - Higher Morale - Must charge at any opportunity even if it means certain death I dunno, it's not perfect, but something like that. ("If you play SS you must play aggressively but ineptly," maybe?)
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Nov 29, 2022 19:28
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I think a lot of this stuff might be best modeled by scoring / win condition stuff, even. Making the fascists' goal "win by optimal and rational means" rather than some combination of "please the lunatics in command" and "die 'gloriously' for the fatherland" isn't doing your historical simulation any favors.
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Nov 29, 2022 19:38
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I think a lot of this stuff might be best modeled by scoring / win condition stuff, even. Making the fascists' goal "win by optimal and rational means" rather than some combination of "please the lunatics in command" and "die 'gloriously' for the fatherland" isn't doing your historical simulation any favors. Sure, but a big part of the problem is that sort of lesson often doesn't sink in with gamers. They'll happily throw away every single piece on the board if it means winning the game. They don't think of anything outside of the specific scenario being played unless there's some other sort of "victory condition" built in. quote:"I won the battle! I took the objective!" This mindset affects (affected) both gamers and the real SS. You could make a "victory condition" like "must take the objective and have X of your units survive," but that would encourage a cautious play that the SS wasn't capable of. And that's the whole thing. The Nazi model is disproportionately rewarded in wargames because wargames reward the things the Nazis concentrated on - because (a) they're easily measured and (b) gamers want a "fair" game - while ignoring the stupidity that made them lose, take disproportionate losses, etc.
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Nov 29, 2022 19:50
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Hold up, somebody sued Zocchi because he wouldn't put Nazi imagery in his products?
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Nov 29, 2022 19:58
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I remember a goon sharing something here from a WWII miniatures game (maybe Bolt Action) where one of the local players gave the OPFOR the respect they deserved. He kept his Axis minis all jumbled together in a little box labeled FASCISTS. The minis had a cursory coat of hastily applied black spray paint. Deploying a unit would involve fishing through the box of fascists and pulling out a black shadow goblin. A defeated unit would get unceremoniously dumped back into the box of fascists. Contrast that to the same player's lovingly painted and detailed Allied miniatures.
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Nov 29, 2022 20:02
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canyoneer posted:I remember a goon sharing something here from a WWII miniatures game (maybe Bolt Action) where one of the local players gave the OPFOR the respect they deserved. He kept his Axis minis all jumbled together in a little box labeled FASCISTS. The minis had a cursory coat of hastily applied black spray paint. Deploying a unit would involve fishing through the box of fascists and pulling out a black shadow goblin. A defeated unit would get unceremoniously dumped back into the box of fascists. this is not a troll, i am genuinely seriously asking because i'm a bit fuzzy on military history at the best of times: were there any units/groups in the axis that aren't considered fascists? or is that a suitable label for any others beyond germany/japan/italy if you were playing some weird corner of the world scenario?
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Nov 29, 2022 20:09
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canyoneer posted:I remember a goon sharing something here from a WWII miniatures game (maybe Bolt Action) where one of the local players gave the OPFOR the respect they deserved. He kept his Axis minis all jumbled together in a little box labeled FASCISTS. The minis had a cursory coat of hastily applied black spray paint. Deploying a unit would involve fishing through the box of fascists and pulling out a black shadow goblin. A defeated unit would get unceremoniously dumped back into the box of fascists. That was me who posted that. The guy in question was Jack Radey, a great guy who owned "People's Wargames" back in the day.
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Nov 29, 2022 20:11
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grassy gnoll posted:Hold up, somebody sued Zocchi because he wouldn't put Nazi imagery in his products? I remember in Designers & Dragons he was very anti-Nazis at gaming conventions. Presumably a lawsuit came up from him getting a Nazi ejected from a con?
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Nov 29, 2022 20:12
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Arivia posted:this is not a troll, i am genuinely seriously asking because i'm a bit fuzzy on military history at the best of times: were there any units/groups in the axis that aren't considered fascists? You could probably make a case for Finland. It's not 100% by any means, but that's as good as you're going to get if you want to play someone fighting against the USSR who isn't goose-stepping.
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Nov 29, 2022 20:13
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Cessna posted:You could probably make a case for Finland. Oh, no, I'm not playing any wargames. I was just wondering if there was a case where the OPFOR wouldn't make sense to be in the literal fascists box without it being some apologist bullshit (not to detract from the good idea of the box + minis themselves). Thank you for the answer.
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Nov 29, 2022 20:17
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Cessna posted:Gonna make a mild nitpick here. I agree (and tried to convey that idea with "less poorly equipped") but that is an important point and I wasn't considering anything but late war. Like a wargamer  Cessna posted:I dunno, it's not perfect, but something like that. ("If you play SS you must play aggressively but ineptly," maybe?) I really like mechanics that put you in the shoes of the participants, at least from a pure game perspective. So consider something like a partial Victory Point refund for surrendering Heer troops. If the Heer player destroyed a bridge but is losing the firefight, they can surrender and get some VP points back. This also denies the allies' points (for killing them,) and you possibly still win the scenario. But then you don't give the SS that option. You get two totally different outcomes but without accidently making the SS look cool. It's more in line with anecdotes where the SS were too indoctrinated / afraid to yield when they should. moths fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Nov 29, 2022 |
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Nov 29, 2022 20:25
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Cessna posted:Sure, but a big part of the problem is that sort of lesson often doesn't sink in with gamers. They'll happily throw away every single piece on the board if it means winning the game. They don't think of anything outside of the specific scenario being played unless there's some other sort of "victory condition" built in. Now you got me wondering about actually trying to design to get this feel. Actual no-poo poo realism is impossible and not-exactly desirable for most people, but you can at least pick what you're trying to simulate and try to make an analogue. Some kind of gameplay loop where instead of getting to decide what your troops/models/army barbies do directly, they instead havw some kind of in-built fake psychology AI about what they want to do in reaction to stimulus and the player is trying to shape that behavior and decide between available options. Troop types are differentiated by some of the usual stuff you'd expect out of a wargame (shock vs. ranged troops and how far they can move seem obvious to keep) but most importantly by what actions they can perform and with what likelihood. Obviously you'd have to give the player enough toggles and dials to still make a game with it (unless it's very quick, I'm assuming everyone wants to be able to still affect the game after initial set up.) WWII as a setting is kind of done to death, but it'd pair really nicely with maybe a Classical Antiquity setting. Really show off how things like war elephants could be very effective or a shitload of work for something negatively helpful. You could have a fun trade-off by simulating actual on-the-ground command presence so Alexander the Great style leading from an embedded position can positively influence nearby troops but directing the rest of the battle gets more tenuous and you risk pulling a Cyrus the Younger and losing by getting ganked. While maybe staying back lets you have more control of reserves (which suddenly are super important). It's an interesting idea and might be cool to explore. Obviously you'd tack on campaign play and a heavy use of scenarios too, but that's basically always necessary : "kill all the other dudes, no long term consequences" is kind of always gonna be the least interesting situation, tactically.
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Nov 29, 2022 20:31
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Xiahou Dun posted:WWII as a setting is kind of done to death, but it'd pair really nicely with maybe a Classical Antiquity setting. Really show off how things like war elephants could be very effective or a shitload of work for something negatively helpful. I'd love to play this.
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Nov 29, 2022 20:44
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Cessna posted:You could probably make a case for Finland. That's a tricky issue, because there absolutely were fascists in Finland, they just weren't running the show. They were politically a small minority who got about 8% of the vote and held 7% of the seats in the parliament and had one minister. However, the Greater Finland-ideology had support outside the fascist Patriotic Peoples Movement party, quite a bit among career officers. The right and the left did a whole bunch of political infighting behind the scenes during the Continuation war, with even the moderate-right leaning quite enthusiastically towards Germany, and the left going "While we gotta side with the Germans, let's not go crazy here guys". On the other hand, SS Division Wiking had like 1400 Finnish volunteers until 1941 and a small number of them tried to, and sometimes succeeded, keep fighting for Germany until 1945 (hi Lauri Törni, you treasonous piece of poo poo). But on the other hand, the Social Democrats and the trade unions were absolutely 100% vital for Finland not being crushed in 1939-40, and they were not into the whole Greater Finland poo poo, and there were almost mutinies in 1941 when Finnish troops were commanded to advance beyond the 1939-borders.
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Nov 29, 2022 20:52
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The Bee posted:I'm curious. What changed mechanic-wise? That Old Tree posted:
Just to round this off real quick (as it's not industry chat) - I broadly agree with all of that, but you forgot the the real problem: specialties are gone so you can no longer take pipe-smoking (and also distinctive features are no longer nearly as big a deal as before since they just make you inspired instead of granting an automatic success or advancement points). For my part, I'll just be sticking to 1e revised (especially as I own it and the adventurer's companion in print) instead - 2e isn't terrible (it's even pretty good!), it just feels like a sidegrade to and slight step down from the C7 edition. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Nov 29, 2022 |
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Nov 29, 2022 20:59
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All-in-all I think there's more missed opportunities or gaps that feel very obvious to people familiar with the prior edition (or the legendarium itself) than anything that could be definitively considered a terrible blunder.
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I had no idea Zocci was a fighter pilot; that's pretty cool. I also didn't know anything about a libel lawsuit; anyone have any info on that?
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Nov 29, 2022 21:14
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He wasn't; he was an enlisted air traffic controller, which is cool enough.
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Nov 29, 2022 21:20
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Xiahou Dun posted:Some kind of gameplay loop where instead of getting to decide what your troops/models/army barbies do directly, they instead havw some kind of in-built fake psychology AI about what they want to do in reaction to stimulus and the player is trying to shape that behavior and decide between available options. Troop types are differentiated by some of the usual stuff you'd expect out of a wargame (shock vs. ranged troops and how far they can move seem obvious to keep) but most importantly by what actions they can perform and with what likelihood. It's pretty dang fun. That part at least. ESR's melee combat is a dumpsterfire of tedious nitpicking.
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Nov 29, 2022 22:41
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EdsTeioh posted:I had no idea Zocci was a fighter pilot; that's pretty cool. I also didn't know anything about a libel lawsuit; anyone have any info on that? A fair bit of searching, but the story was told by TheDiceMustRoll earlier in this very thread. Zocchi took a financial metaphorical-bullet to get a Nazi kicked out of Gen Con.
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Nov 29, 2022 22:58
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Aw thanks!! Lou's a real nice guy and used to be a fixture at game cons down here in the South. Not sure if he really goes to them anymore, but he would always take time to talk to you at the ones he attended.
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Nov 29, 2022 23:51
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Slyphic posted:That's not uncommon in wargames. A mix of morale and 'command friction' systems. Et Sans Resultat, off the top of my head, does basically exactly this. Your commander issues orders to elements, which take those orders like a fuzzy AI and try to accomplish them, but certain actions like charging require a morale check that uses factors like the veterancy and condition of the models. It’s sounds like you’re still giving orders and the psychology is whether they follow those orders, which isn’t at all what I meant. I was talking more “”””realistic”””” battles where the player has control for initial set-up and command, but after that actual control of units becomes more restricted, e.g. some troops are out of command and fully subject to the AI with significantly less player control, possibly none. So in my toy example of a battle from Classical Antiquity maybe you can make limited choices (e.g. target priority but NOT charging vs staying put) unless you actually send a dude with a message from your commander to those troops.
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Nov 30, 2022 00:05
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