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At BricksWest, Steve and I had some discussions about the game rules.
One thing Steve has been trying to come up with is a way to eliminate
plotting moves since this slows down the game the most. The problem I
would have with eliminating this is the fact that naval (and space)
games can easily become rather boring. The problem with them compared to
most miniatures games is that terrain has little effect, so the
complexity of the game can become too simple. I think the key here is to
have enough other stuff in the game to maintain interest. To this
extent, the role playing aspects of the campaign game I think make for a
better game.
Perhaps with move plotting eliminated, the game would run enough faster
than even with a shortish game session, one could get enough role
playing aspects in to keep the game interesting even though the naval
combat portion becomes somewhat simplistic.
Another key point to work on if plotting is eliminated is making it
harder to cross the T. In general, I suspect it should be extremely hard
to get more than one turns worth of crossing the T in a row. This could
be dealt with in two ways. One would be to require a line extended along
the target's centerline to intersect the attacking ship at between a 60
degree and 120 degree angle of it's centerline (i.e. no more than 30
degrees off of the presumed line of fire of a broadside). Perhaps it
should even be between 75 and 105 degrees (i.e. within 15 degrees). A
simpler way would just be to allow the fairly simple crossing the T
measurement currently used (like my method of requiring the line of fire
to enter within the angled part of the bow, and leave within the angled
portion of the stern) but disallow crossing the T shots on consecutive
turns by the same attacking ship on the same target ship.
Eliminating plotting will also get rid of accidental collisions, and
probably eliminate situations where your shot is blocked by another ship
in your fleet. These are minor things to lose and will mostly eliminate
frustration by less experienced players.
One thing which helped the diversity of the Saturday game at BricksWest
was that each hit on the opponents base scored 25 points. This allowed
an alternative target and meant that ships didn't just all wind up in a
mosh pit in the center of the ocean.
There is always a fine balance between having enough complexity to a
game to make it interesting and having so much complexity as to limit
interest in the game or make games take too long. A good way to improve
the Pirate Game is probably to look for ways in which complexity can be
included which can be handled concurrently. Plotting moves of course is
concurrent so that in some ways is good complexity. Battle rules
complexity can be handled concurrently by having multiple GMs. Role
playing complexity can also be handled by multiple GMs. The question
then comes down to does the plotting of moves add enough interest to
justify the time it takes.
One thought of a way to reduce the time to plot moves is to allow goal
oriented plots for certain things. A goal oriented plot would not be
allowed for attempting to get a crossing the T shot, but would be fine
for landing on an island, or closing with an enemy base, etc. Even just
closing with the enemy when the distances are great would be an OK goal
oriented plot.
One way to handle such plots would be to ask everyone to plot. Then ask
goal oriented plots to be announced. If no one raises any objections, a
GM or player then sets out markers to indicate a decent plot (basically
lay out a die at each turn point for those goals requiring multiple
turns). If an objection is raised, the player must re-write his orders
with a real plot. The GM may assign a point penalty if the goal oriented
plot was inappropriate and can overrule objections ("No, I'm not going
to force fred to use a goal oriented plot to land on that island which
he is 6" from and you are 24" from, he'll get there before you could
block him."). The first couple turns of plotting will then go real fast
(most plots will be of the form of: "Land on the closest island" or
"Close at maximum speed"). Goal oriented plots can even be used in some
opposition situations. For example, if a particular ship is being
chased, the chasing ship might just plot "Close at maximum speed
assuming the target ship flees on it's current heading" (which it is
likely to do). The target ships plot of course is simple, "24 inches at
current heading". If the target ship does something interesting, just
mark where it would have gone had it plotted maximum speed at current
heading and move the attacker appropriately (also note, the attacker
could also plot "Close on target ship assuming it turns to X heading and
flees at maximum speed" since there will be times when it is pretty
obvious what the target would do if it wanted to flee at maximum speed).
Another thing which needs work on the rules is grape shot. There were
only a couple of shots where grape shot made any sense. I think the
number of casualties has to be increased. I also wonder about the bonus
for the number of men on the target ship. That makes grape shot real
useful against large ships and probably never useful against small
ships. Perhaps the bonus should be figured by totaling the number of men
and dividing by the number of hull sections (not class, a wide ship
doesn't spread out the men that much more than a narrow ship). The
numbers still need to be adjusted so that grape shot rates to kill more
men than solid shot (in the second game, I counseled the youngest player
a couple times to just take a regular shot since it would almost
certainly kill just as many men as grape shot).
I also wonder at the idea of giving all men a cutlass and a musket. The
games only had one or two boardings since musket fire basically swept
the decks of all opposition. I'd be more inclined to assume everyone has
a cutlass and pistol, and skip muskets for simple games. My general
feeling about the genre is that muskets didn't see too much use on a
ship, except perhaps by marines on a regular navy ship. Of course this
will make for some boring turns as cannonless cutters attempt to close,
but perhaps that just means cannon should be a little harder to take
out.
Some rules interpretations that I appreciated were:
- I'm glad my interpretation of how broadside cannon were distributed is
correct (count each pair of cannon which face opposite sides as one
cannon, of each pair can only shoot once per turn).
- Plotting ship to ship small arms fire by measuring the closest
distance between the two ships certainly simplifies things. Ranges
should still have some effect when fighting breaks out aboard a ship,
but perhaps there is a way to simplify this. Things are a little tricky
when ships get real close. Perhaps in a non-role playing scenario,
boarding could be simplified with a simple chart to roll on which takes
into account the relative numbers of people on each ship (such a chart
should have some "surrender" options on it, since very rarely would a
crew really fight to the death).
Frank
Frank
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Pirate Game Rules Thoughts
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| (...) It seemed to me that getting the hang of plotting took a few turns for most people and then they could mostly do it in their sleep. When I've played, I typically had my next turn plotted long before the previous turn was resolved. Do the (...) (22 years ago, 2-Mar-02, to lugnet.gaming, lugnet.pirates)
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