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PLAY_BALANCE
January 10, 2005
Once upon a time (1980 or so)
I went through a minor wargaming Ogre was a science fiction scenario
phase, mostly playing some based on Laumer's "Bolo" stories.
"Microgames": "Ogre", "GEV", Lots of different kinds of small
and "Melee". tanks ganging up on an enormous
automated tank, the "Ogre".
Melee was a
suprisingly A cool game, but they blew
interesting it on "play balance".
game, an
attempt at It was later expanded, The attacker would always win
modeling and tricked out with if they used a strategy of
medieval fantasy junk, to all GEVs (aka hovercrafts).
warfare. became the game
"Wizard", which I These had the unique
As far as never bothered with. capability of being able
wargames go to slide in to fire, and
it was No D&D for me, then retreat quickly
reasonably thank you. before a counter-attack
elegant. could occur.
This is to say that Their next game
playing it involved attempted to fix the
detailed study of the problem by weakening
rules: carefully the retreat phase of
reading through the the GEVs.
tables of different
weapons you could Oddly enough, they
assign to fighters; called it "GEV",
crunching the numbers though the GEVs were
about different no longer crucial.
tradeoffs of strength The design of
and dexterity; and so wargames has
on. it's own
tradeoffs:
I was playing elegance vs.
this game with realism;
an experienced realism vs. The phrase "wargame"
opponent, and play balance. suggests some attempt
he already had at capturing some
his strategies aspects of reality.
worked out.
The original wargames
Typically he would use very tended to be historical
moderate mixtures of strength simulations and were
and dexterity, with weapons used to learn something
from the middle of the chart, about strategy and
and just a little bit of tactics.
armor.
My first attempt at creating a
"character" was to max out the
strength and let dexterity go
to the minimum, max out the armor This was the only
(including a shield on his back) "character" that
and have him carry the heaviest I bothered to name:
possible ax. "Wimpy the Burdensome".
He didn't last very long.
A blow from his ax *might*
be devastating, but in effect
he wasn't able to hit anything.
Another bright idea I had:
I noticed that there was a
special rule attached to
the light bows: a high
dexterity, unarmored,
fighter could fire them
twice in a turn. I tried a
few rapid-firing bowmen, My opponent commented
but while they could hit that he'd tried this
things at a distance, they strategy once, and had
could do only light damage, the same trouble with it.
and never against a fighter
wearing any armor.
This was getting distressing:
it was all very logical, but
how dull if the only reasonable
thing to do was to imitate my
opponent's moderate strategies,
and let the luck of the dice
settle the outcome...
But then I started having some
interesting thoughts... there
were these heavy cross-bows
whose primary flaw was that they
were incredibly slow to re-load
(three turns!). However it only
took *one* turn to change weapons,
so why not send a fighter into
battle with two, one in his hands, My opponent was impressed:
and one on his back? Then you he hadn't seen that idea before.
could pack a heavy attack into
the opening of the game, and
perhaps settle it quickly.
This was useful, but
nothing amazing.
Reading back and forth through
the rule book, I noted another
interesting loophole -- or rather
"simulation hack": spear weapons
did double damage on a "charge
attack". So the *first* hit
with something like a halbred
was really devastating, though
afterwards it was much like any
other weapon.
These heavy halbreds required
a lot of strength, so the
dexterity hit could be a
problem. I thought of a way
to compensate slightly: wear
no armor.
We played a few games where I relied on
a lot of these unarmored warriors with
heavy halbreds. In the opening of the
game, I would have two gang up on one
opposing fighter: the second attack was
generally fatal, leaving the heavy
halbred men free to charge at yet another I supplemented them
target. with one double
heavy-crossbow guy.
This was looking to me like
an unbeatable strategy. If need be, three
Had they blown it and could gang up on one,
pulled another "Ogre"? to quickly reduce
the opposing forces.
Before we put the game
aside for the last time,
I asked him what he
would do if he knew in (We were students in
advance that I was physics and engineering:
going to hit him with it's amazing we found time
unarmored heavy halbreds. to play several sessions
of this game.)
He thought for a moment
and said he would try
the rapid-firing bowmen.
And indeed, those might
be effective against
unarmored opponents.
Which improved my opinion
of the game immensely:
different strategies could
be effective under different
circumstances.
How depressing if the only path to success
was to imitate the already successful.
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