Shrapnel Games Blog

Bonus Feature! My post will feature an exclusive Director’s Commentary. Just like a DVD, only less shiny! Look for them to appear in brackets.

I just got back from running my D&D game. Our current campaign has been ongoing since ‘03, with a break here or there due to that dastardly foe called Real Life [Main attack responsibility, always hits unless you make your slacker save.]. At the moment the heroes [Chumps] are trapped on a hostile continent that is currently amassing a massive armada to invade their homelands, and since the folks back home won’t just roll out the welcome mat for the invaders you can expect plenty of mass-scale carnage to soon erupt. The question for me is will our heroes stand and fight with the troops or do they have other plans?

Knowing them they will want to stand and fight, which should lead to some interesting sessions. I’m already prepping some basic maps to use, along with unit counters. My campaign setting’s TO&E is pretty much already laid out, so it will be fairly easy to translate that into playing pieces. If I pull it off correctly [Meaning I actually have time and energy to put into this, as I must admit my last few sessions have been pretty much thought up the day of the game...] it should be a lot of fun, and best of all it will be a synergestic burst of wargaming and role playing. It should go together like peanut butter and chocolate, right?

Strangely though wargaming and role playing has never really caught on like you’d think it would, especially since RPGs sprung from wargaming. I’ve been gaming for most of my life, and grew up on a steady diet of various RPGs and countless numbers of wargames.

Looking back on the RPGs over the years there have been three well known military style RPGs: Behind Enemy Lines, Twilight: 2000, and Recon. When one considers the sheer number of other genre RPGs over the decades, three military RPGs represents a very poor showing. [You could also arguably include Weird War and Godlike, but these tend to veer into fantasy.] Of course it’s better than the number of wargames with RPG elements, of which I can’t think of any except for our own Lock ‘N Load which includes events and soldier perks. Some tactical games come close, but they end up feeling more like the combat portion of some RPG, rather than the whole.

None of the military style RPGs really proved to be popular. After all, because you’re dealing with the military you’ve already stripped away one aspect of RPGs that people like, that being freedom. If you’re Thunderthighs the Dwarf Berserker and you don’t want to charge the angry red dragon suffering from acid reflux you don’t. If you’re Private Smith and you’re ordered to heroically charge the machine gun nest, well, you’re expected to do it. [It's the same reason a RPG about being a cube dweller suffering under middle management wouldn't be a hit.]

So sure, from a content point of view it makes sense why there haven’t been many war RPGs over the years, but if you approach it from a rules standpoint it gets a little confusing. Both types of games require lots of stats, dice rolling, and the use of arcane rules [And usually he who knows the rules the most will triumph over those that don't...]. It looks like it should be a natural progression.

And what about traditional counter and hex wargames? Why can’t they mix up a little role playing into their games? As mentioned earlier Mark Walker did this to some degree with Lock ‘N Load, but for the majority of games there is no difference between counters during a linked campaign. There is no growth, no leveling.

All of this got me thinking [Yes, the pilot light does come on sometimes.] about how cool it would be to combine the two game types into one ubertype. For example, picture this: an Eastern Front armor game. Instead of rolling up the stats for a manical mage you roll up a tank (crew, current condition, etc). The others in your group also roll up tanks, and instead of forming a dungeon questing party you form a tank platoon.

The battlemaster, BM [Okay, BM may not be the way to go but Pinnacle's Weird War setting already uses the very cool Warmaster as their GM term.] describes the terrain and controls the enemy forces. Players would be able to react like a tank commander really would, instead of counting out movement points and computing odds ratios. Crew members would gain experience, “leveling” them up.

This type of game could work on a number of different levels. Players could command squads, naval ships, starships, or air squadrons. You don’t want to get down to the individual level (e.g. a soldier, or a pilot) because then you’re back to the problem any military themed RPG faces. What the goal would be is to allow gamers to play a traditional hex like game, but played from a RPG perspective.

To me this would be the best of both worlds. You get the tactical nuances of board wargaming, along with all the other fun aspects of it, but you get the freedom of RPGs. You’d still have a structured environment, but you can do much more than you could in a regular boardgame.

Now, I will admit there are some definite hurdles. One, you’d still need to map things out, and use counters, because everyone wouldn’t be able to keep everything straight in their mind’s eye. Two, and this is by far the bigger problem, to really make it fair you’d need to pit two teams against each other, as how could you really pull of ambushes when the BM knows what you’re plotting? Yet, if you include a second set that means finding enough people, not to mention quite a bit of dead time for one group as you deal with the other. If the second problem could be surmounted it could mean a lot of fun would be had by all.

Maybe the solution is that you couldn’t do it from a pure RPG style of play. Maybe you still have to keep things as a regular board wargame, but you add layers on top of that, such as individual crew statistics, and the BM interperting the dice rolls. But would this impart the same feel as if it was a pure RPG? And couldn’t this just lead to more complicated rules?

Obviously I haven’t arrived at an answer. Personally I think the potential is there for something great, I just don’t know what the path to enlightenment is. Ah well, seems like another game idea to file with all the other never finished game ideas…

-Scott

Now Playing: Battleship Chess, Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, The Battle for Middle Earth

Now Listening: In Flames - Soundtrack To Your Escape, Children of Bodom - Hate Crew Deathroll, Evergrey - Recreation Day