Stress, Fear and Terror
Another topic that interests me is morale, stress and fear. Most wargames are all about 'kill em all' - morale rules added as an afterthought. Real combat, morale plays a bigger role. And that's fine - we don't want realism if it's boring. If every fight ended after only a few casualties our wargames would hardly be worth setting up!
However I have an ongoing interest in morale rules as I am interested in sci fi horror a la Alien meets the demon possession of the Denzel Washington movie Fallen - where morale plays a strong role.
I've been experimenting trying to codify 'fear' and stress levels. Here's one attempt:
1 Stress - You have Decent Control
This includes suppressive fire - bullets whistling nearby. A mini is stressed but still has a fair bit of agency. Training is still working. Perhaps a Willpower roll if you intend to push up into enemy fire/out of cover, but it is possible. Mild -1 debuffs generally, but maybe a mild boost to awareness? The bushes are shaking - do we push on into the raptor enclosure?
Roll to be allowed to choose what action to do.
2 Fear/Panic - You have Limited Control
This is fear of death, injury - isolation from seeing friends go down. Similar debuffs as 'stressed.' Nearby explosions, flamethrowers can trigger this - and friends being injured or panicking nearby. Maybe pass a Willpower roll to avoid falling back; also triggers some panic responses i.e. fire is spray-n-pray rather than carefully aimed. The T-rex has appeared - do you hold your ground waving the flare or chuck it away and leg it?
Roll to avoid a forced action?
3 Terror - Fight /Flee/ Freeze / Flop - You have No Control
This is where pure terror sets in. The T-rex has just bitten your friend in half - only yards away. The zombies have broken through the door and are munching on your room mate. This triggers an automatic response - perhaps randomized - where your mini will freeze in place, flee heedlessly, attack crazily or flop unconscious .
Roll randomly to get an automatic negative choice.
For horror games, I'm considering a final level - Insanity - triggered by sustained terror - maybe permanent for the rest of the game and could result in catatonic state or even being controlled by enemy players; attacking erstwhile friends in a paranoid frenzy. Their mind is broken.
Gaining/losing fear levels - a mini can jump straight to a higher level instantly; while losing levels is more gradual as it 'calms down.'
For example, a fear-inducing monster may trigger a Willpower test; a pass means the mini is merely stressed (degrading the impact to the level below) but a fail means the mini is fearful (the fear/panic level).
If next turn the mini is still confronted with the monster, he must roll again. However if the mini manages to retreat, he may attempt to remove a single level if he is not confronted with a stress/fear causing action or opponent his next activation.
Anyway, the above 3 levels is an example I've used to 'game-ify' some battlefield reactions. I'm not too knowledgable out the topic, apart from skimming some google articles like "The Worm Revisited" and "The Normal Battlefield Reaction" so I'd welcome cool game ideas (or even better articles to reference). Maybe some horror RPGs may prove useful for systems/inspiration?
In the Pipeline
I've got my 15mm out for a "Desert Sci Fi with Mages" - which I originally created as an example last post, but my son is interested in the idea so I'm going to flesh it out into proper rules. He liked the idea of "there are no good guys, everyone is led by a powerful Sith who can face down a mecha 1 on 1."
So naturally he has been pawing through my 15mm boxes making 'setups'...
*Yes, the rubbery brown thing in the back is a fake poop. Maybe it is a sandworm casting full of rare minerals or spice? 9 year olds and their toilet humour...
But what is this in my prep box? Is this 3D printed Battlefleet Gothic cruisers and escorts I see?
Don't expect to see them finished in a hurry - I'm always paralysed by magnetizing - I tend to procrastinate, then not have the right magnets, then double-guess myself with how to best mount them... Currently I'm thinking 'drill all the way through, put a magnet in the middle, and use a staple on the inside of the weapons pods.' But I'll need to stare at them a while first to gee myself up...
In other news I've been doing that DIY classic - building a homebrew generic sci fi skirmish (how original!) that I can use for my kids' Necrounda minis AND incorporate my own disused Infinity models. The interesting bit for me is how much you can simpify/strip it back while retaining a similar 'feel' (actually not hard with Infinity - which has sometimes literally a dozen minor variations on the same special rule!).
The RPG Library
I never play RPGs. There's too much talking and not enough cool toys and pew-pewing swooping cool minis about. That said, yesterday when looking through my sci fi rules I realise I've got a few:
Scum & Villainy, Blue Planet, Alien, Coriolis, Eclipse Phase, Mindjammer, Traveller, Mothership, Numenera, Rifts, StarswithoutNumber, Those Dark Places, Tales from the Loop. And those are just the ones downloaded on my new computer - quite a few did not come across (I'm pretty sure you can redownload from DriveThruRPG though).
I'm currently skimming through them for inspiration, especially for fear/morale and tech. So far the freebie Eclipse Phase has the most interesting ideas (mostly in the vein of Altered Carbon resleeving/cortical stacks). I don't think any wargame has leant into this very much. Heck, even hacking, drones and e-warfare isn't much of a thing.
Hmm, maybe a future project.
The problem with morale isn't that it's boring (or "realistic"), but far worse, that it's not fun. This is exacerbated in skirmish games where a single failed morale test can neuter 20%, 25% or more of one's forces and immediately result in a game loss. Yes, one should have planned around it, and, yes, it might be rare, but I guarantee that the one time it happens, the player will remember it. And this is further exacerbated by it typically occurring early on, when the player hasn't learned how to best prevent and mitigate, so the player forms a notion that the game is random, doesn't reward skilled generalship, and not fun. This is exactly why I didn't have morale in KOG Light.
ReplyDelete- GG
You hit on a key topic why "horror" wargames do not work very well. In order to be horror, things have to happen on the table that players do not like!
ReplyDelete- Losing control of your own units
- Enemies you can not hurt
- Models degrading instead of improving
- Loss of control of events
These are all elements that players of wargames do not generally like, and that creates a huge barrier for making a "fun" horror wargame.
One thing I have tried out, is instead of fear impacting just a single model, the "Fear Level" rises across the board and becomes a Doom Clock for the game. You have to complete your objectives before the Fear level raises too high and the game ends. The players own actions are what raises the Fear Level, so the players are forces to make choices about doing what needs to be done vs. moving the game closer to an end state. Works pretty good to raise tension and force decision-making.
The same applies to "Morale" rules. Therefore, they work best as a "End-of-Game" state rather than an in-game accumulation of friction.
This is why 40k Fearless / And They Shall Know No Fear are such powerful special rules that most players take for granted. It's stupid that GW has morale when every player does everything to ensure it doesn't.
Delete- GG
If it wasn't for the interest in a horror game, I'd certainly not be spending time with a thorny (or unfun!) topic!
DeleteI've used a doom clock for aerial combat (fuel, expending missiles, stress) so that's possible, although I was thinking individual skirmish where you have a single insane soldier rocking in a corner, or wandering off from the group to get picked off by an alien etc.
A lot of the things I've added aren't that 'fun' i.e. run out of ammo/guns jam, darkness restricts firing - but I still reckon it's not as masochistic as Blood Bowl...
-eM
Hola
ReplyDeleteLa moral es algo determinante, pero se ve influenciada por las películas por ejemplo, donde el protagonista no tiene miedo.
Fui soldado profesional y he estado en combate, y la moral es algo muy variable. Siempre que he sido objetivo de disparos he tenido miedo, y ese miedo a veces te hace ser menos efectivo (disparas sin apuntar, acciones sin pensar, no coordinarte con tu binomio...) o te hace realizar hazañas que no creías (cruzar entre líneas de fuego a por un compañero, atacar al máximo cuando crees todo perdido, etc).
También creo que las reglas de moral no pueden hacerse "de una sola forma", no afecta igual la moral a un grupo reducido que a uno grande; no es lo mismo saber que un compañero ha caído a 100 metros que a tu lado, es muy diferente.
Además, hay muchos factores que no se ven en los wargames que te afectan la moral más que un tiroteo (cuando pierdes la comunicación con un grupo, al entrar a reconocer un edificio, cuando hay elementos desconocidos, cuando el plan se cae...).
Podría contar mil anécdotas, pero en una ocasión nos dispararon desde un helicóptero y estaba tras un muro de hormigón y vi a muchos compañeros que se quedaron quietos como estatuas esperando su muerte, y que se salvaron por un sargento que se puso a gritar y dar golpes a los soldados para hacerlos reaccionar.
A mí me aterraban los morteros y la artillería. Cuando oyes un mortero o pieza de artillería, cuentas los segundos entre el sonido del disparo hasta oír la detonación para saber la distancia a la que se encuentra el mortero y saber su ubicación aproximada. Esos segundos son de las cosas que más miedo me causaron.
Siento el muro de texto. Un saludo desde España.
MM
Thanks for the examples! You show why doing morale in a wargame is difficult if not impossible to do well - too many variables.
Delete-eM
> "Heck, even hacking, drones and e-warfare isn't much of a thing. "
ReplyDeleteOne problem I see with hacking is that it often takes the form of magic, mechanically speaking I mean, we can call it "hacking an enemy drone" but it really is "possess" or "mind control".
Same with drones, what are they if bit familiars/companion animals (birds)?
I wonder if it's possible to devise "cyberpunky" (or "modern warfare") stuff that doesn't feel like magic.
Note that the converse is also true: I often feel "magic" is another name for "ranged combat", which is similarly disappointing.
Full of typos and autocorrect blunders, sorry. I hope you can still understand my comment.
DeleteIt's the effect, not what it's called (that's just flavour).
DeleteSo hacking can indeed seem like a (limited?) version of magic. But does it matter?
The fact it is hacking and not magic provides different rules and parameters - spell lists, conditions, as you were. A bit like psychic powers vs magic; the former suggests a specific spell list; i.e. you wouldn't expect necromancy but would expect telekinesis.
Nullify, possess, AoE degrade, perhaps some sort of neural feedback (actual wound), perhaps an abstract (avatar) level of play, make invisible to sensors/spoof with fake images; AI assisted weapons/command assistance etc. Robots could ignore morale, be immune to fire, but vulnerable to emps in a way more fragile meatbags are not; perhaps less agile...
So yeah, hacking can functionally replicate magic, but if it comes with defined parameters it's ok with me. After all, magic can replicate anything really - it's 'magic' - e.g. Spelljammer spaceships. As long as there is a logical system. For example, I hate Harry Potter magic as there seems to be no consistent logic.
-eM
Hola
DeleteNo voy a hablar del hackeo porque no lo suelo ver en los juegos a los que juego.
Creo que la magia es mucho más que "combate a distancia" y depende del creador del juego. Puede ser "combate a distancia" con un efecto añadido (hielo que te congela, etc) pero también invocar, crear cosas de la nada, volar...
No sabría decirle efectos cyberpunk que no parezcan hechizos, no estoy familiarizado.
Pienso que es mejor buscar qué efecto se busca en el juego y luego darle sabor diciendo qué es, no creo que importe si se resuelve como una bola de fuego o un lanzallamas, creo que es pensar el efecto en el juego y adaptarse al trasfondo.
Un saludo desde España.
MM
Personally, I hate hacking as commonly done in movies.
DeleteIt's something that happens offline for access or control at a strategic level, essentially network infiltration, information exfiltration, and control degradation/subversion.
In a wargame, the effect might be to modify deployment, reserves and/or off-board support. Assuming that those are even things in the game.
- GG
"Pienso que es mejor buscar qué efecto se busca en el juego y luego darle sabor diciendo qué es, no creo que importe si se resuelve como una bola de fuego o un lanzallamas, creo que es pensar el efecto en el juego y adaptarse al trasfondo."
DeleteYeah - it's about the EFFECT in game. The rest is just "trappings" or window dressing. Flavour text.
Savage Worlds taught me this - you can have a single rule for many spells/effects - a energy bolt/lightening bolt/fireball may share rules as long as the effect (mage shoots stuff to blast folk) is the same.
It's the opposite of say Infinity where they have 4-5+ versions of the same rule i.e. Stealth, Advanced Deployment, etc.
-eM
"it's about the EFFECT in game"
DeleteIf we're talking about in-game effects, it's perfectly reasonable to treat a 40k "kill" as a Necromunda "out of action". The only difference is that in 40k, we don't roll dice to determine WHY or HOW the "kill" should be interpreted. While it's convenient to assume that they're all dead from a "Kill Points" standpoint, it's probably more "realistic" to roll d6s to assess both physical and mental damage/fitness.
That is, a "kill" can be understood to be just as much due to psychology / morale as incapacitating injury. Regardless of the mechanism and reasons, the EFFECT in game is that the model no longer responds to orders or continues to fight.
- GG
"....If we're talking about in-game effects, it's perfectly reasonable to treat a 40k "kill" as a Necromunda "out of action"...
Delete....Regardless of the mechanism and reasons, the EFFECT in game is that the model no longer responds to orders or continues to fight."
-Yep, this is exactly what I mean. A lot of special rules and in-game actions and effects can be condensed together when you you see the end effect is the same or similar.
Spidey Sense and Motion Tracker may have the same 'effect' - anticipating actions/attacks from out of LoS. They are the same rule, just with different trapping/flavour text if you feel you need it.
It also applies to mechanics: if you realise that you roll 4+ on d6 to hit, 4+ on d6 to wound = 25% wound chance; so you could equally throw 10+ on a single d12 and have the same end effect = 25% chance of a wound.
I often use d10 for homebrew rules so I can easily convert/borrow mechanics that work elsewhere and easily eyeball the % - however lately I've been thinking a single d12 might be better - as it converts more directly from common d6-based games and can encompass 2 sequential d6 rolls.
-eM
Hm, my problem is with games that have both types of things, say a fantasy game (D&D based maybe) where there are archers and wizards that can hurl fireballs. It's essentially the same thing in the same game (using different resources, one arrow bolts, the other "mana" or whatnot) which feels off to me. Maybe if there are hacker powerarmor and telekinesis but NOT magic (mind control, rock skin buff, etc) I can ignore the fact they are mostly the same.
Delete"Maybe if there are hacker powerarmor and telekinesis but NOT magic (mind control, rock skin buff, etc) I can ignore the fact they are mostly the same."
DeleteI experimented with this a year to so ago and treated hacking as 'selective magic'; a limited/distinct range of spells aka effects; what made it interesting (to me) was kinda a paper-scissors-rock
Meatbag humans = immune to i-war/emp; otherwise fragile
Mechs = vulnerable to i-war/emp; physically tough/brave
Cyborgs = midway between both
-eM