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Post by thegreyelf on Oct 27, 2011 13:43:51 GMT -6
I may be late to the party here, and forgive me if I am. Also, this is based on a reading, not a playtest.
So Delta and I have had our differences on here, which often come down to him not believing I value statistical analysis of OD&D enough, as it is the core upon which all games are built, and dice mimic probability that enables game design to work, and me feeling he values it far too much, to the detriment of the "art" of game design, the "gut feeling" that fixes the problems when your statistical breakdown doesn't work.
We've had one or two big blowups in the past that came down to not meeting in the middle of those extremes.
That being said, I was curious as to his experiment with mass combat that mimicked the probability of man to man D&D combat, and as such I picked up a copy of his Book of War from Lulu.
...I am duly impressed. This is a neat, sleek, easy system that feels a lot like Chainmail but without the arcane language and complicated rules breakdowns. Mechanically (from a functional, not statistical standpoint) it plays similar to its predecessor, with units rolling a handful of d6's and attempting to get target numbers based on the armor and classification of their opponents.
I haven't finished it yet, but what is perhaps the neatest is that he's managed to integrate heroes and fantasy creatures seamlessly into the overall mass combat system, without the need to break down to single combat and consult special fantasy combat tables as does Chainmail.
I am not certain about some of his assumptions regarding scale, distance, and time, but I'll need to double-check my other books before I address any of those. Regardless, within its own context, BoW appears to work, and work well.
I still think there's a bit of overemphasis on statistics (I could do without the various mentions of millions of computer simulations), but the game it self is really slick.
It's slick enough, in fact, that I may adopt it for my Age of Conan game, should the players ever wind up in mass combat.
In any case, kudos to Delta for a very nice product; I'd like to do a more thorough review at some point if I get the time, but I wanted to give a heads' up for anyone who is looking for a really nice miniatures game that fits well with D&D.
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Post by Morandir on Oct 27, 2011 15:10:24 GMT -6
From what I've seen on his blog, I agree; this looks like a great product. The basic mechanic that he explains there for attacks is one of those things that I can't believe I never thought of - it just makes perfect sense. I'll be adopting it for large combats in my future OD&D campaigns, and if I ever have any cash laying around (hah!) I'm going to pick this up - along with all those other great OSR products that I really want but can't afford.
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Post by geoffrey on Oct 27, 2011 18:00:58 GMT -6
I got this in PDF, and it does indeed look like a lot of fun. I'm eager to put some war in my future games!
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Post by thegreyelf on Nov 1, 2011 7:32:53 GMT -6
Yeah, double-checked; the only thing I disagree with is the 10 second melee round assumption, which is based off of Holmes and not accurate to OD&D. In OD&D book 3 it clarifies that combat is resolved as per Chainmail's Man-to-Man rules. In Chainmail's Man to Man rules it states that all previous rules in Chainmail stand, save those specifically modified in that section.
One of the rules not modified is that melee rounds are one minute in length (as they would later be in AD&D). The only aspect of Chainmail that's specifically altered using the "alternate" d20 based combat is the die mechanic/attack table. I think we must assume--especially since this was later carried over into AD&D, which was written by Gygax where Holmes was written by...Holmes--that the intent was for one-minute melee rounds.
However, this is a minor quibble and really not worth arguing about. I don't think it affects the way Book of War plays one bit; it's just a minor nitpick.
The only other bit about which I'm not crazy, though I kind of understand the rationale behind it, is that player characters are relegated to the same status as other, normal troops, until they hit at least tenth level. I do find myself wondering why "Hero" status is so high--why not 5th level, as per OD&D?
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Post by tavis on Nov 1, 2011 9:01:35 GMT -6
We used a pre-release draft of Book of War to play out some offstage events in my OD&D White Sandbox game, and found it awesome for giving you a sense of what forces in the campaign are capable of, which enemies would be well-matched against them, etc. We did find that even those "Hero" characters and monsters that are allowed to act as individuals under the system have a glass jaw - the Iron Dragon looked fearsome enough to tangle with a unit of fire giants, but was immediately pounded to snot when it engaged them in melee. I think that dropping into D&D resolution, like in the Titan boardgame where you convert the higher-level counters into individual figures on a battlelands hex, is the way to go for PCs and other important or individual creatures. Even if Delta's math is correct about the probabibilities of an armored adult dragon beating ten giants, it is more fun to play out three rounds of that fight and then return to the BoW scale to see what's happening elsewhere in that turn. It might be that seeing it laid out this way will activate a D&D player's instincts and persuade them to flee what looked like an easy victory in abstract, and if not the defeat will at least seem more convincing for having used the more detailed D&D rules. In this, Book of War is like Chainmail with its reliance on a separate Man-to-Man system, and I think the integration between scales is straightforward enough that this would work great. |
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Post by cooper on Nov 1, 2011 10:29:25 GMT -6
The rules of the man to man section of chainmail explicitely reference rounds and the mass combat section states that there are multiple rounds of combat during the 1 minute turn. So his 10 second rounds are not really off from the MtM rules at all.
Gygax, in strategic review #15 addresses this directly when he opted not to follow CM for 0d&d's combat round on grounds of lethality.
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Post by thegreyelf on Nov 1, 2011 19:11:10 GMT -6
The rules of the man to man section of chainmail explicitely reference rounds and the mass combat section states that there are multiple rounds of combat during the 1 minute turn. So his 10 second rounds are not really off from the MtM rules at all. Gygax, in strategic review #15 addresses this directly when he opted not to follow CM for 0d&d's combat round on grounds of lethality. Well, this just proves that there is indeed disagreement on the issue--may be best to move such a discussion to a different thread in one of the OD&D boards rather than sully up this one, which should focus on discussion of Delta's book specifically. Upon further thought I never should've even brought it up here, as it's really not germane to how BoW plays out whether you use 10 second, 1 minute or 10 minute rounds, so long as your units in mass combat are consistent scale-wise with your units in normal man combat. |
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Post by kesher on Nov 1, 2011 20:27:01 GMT -6
I just bought the pdf, based on this thread, and though I've only glanced at it so far, I'm excited! This looks really, really playable!
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Post by cooper on Nov 1, 2011 20:44:44 GMT -6
The rules of the man to man section of chainmail explicitely reference rounds and the mass combat section states that there are multiple rounds of combat during the 1 minute turn. So his 10 second rounds are not really off from the MtM rules at all. Gygax, in strategic review #15 addresses this directly when he opted not to follow CM for 0d&d's combat round on grounds of lethality. Well, this just proves that there is indeed disagreement on the issue--may be best to move such a discussion to a different thread in one of the OD&D boards rather than sully up this one, which should focus on discussion of Delta's book specifically. Upon further thought I never should've even brought it up here, as it's really not germane to how BoW plays out whether you use 10 second, 1 minute or 10 minute rounds, so long as your units in mass combat are consistent scale-wise with your units in normal man combat. I encourage you to look at some of the new threads in the chainmail section. It's really not debatable that during the 1 minute chainmail turn there are multiple rounds of combat. Here: odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=chainmail&action=display&thread=5567And here: odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=chainmail&action=display&thread=6422&page=1 |
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Post by thegreyelf on Nov 2, 2011 20:12:36 GMT -6
Nope, no debate going on in those threads at all...*rolls eyes*
As I said, I will discuss this issue no further in this thread--it belongs up on the Chainmail boards and I'm sorry I brought it up, as it has no bearing at all on how Book of War plays.
I will ask one thing, though:
Do you mean Dragon #15? Because there were only 7 issues of Strategic Review--I own them all and could find no mention of this in any of them...
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Post by cooper on Nov 2, 2011 20:32:00 GMT -6
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jasmith
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
Posts: 316
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Post by jasmith on Nov 3, 2011 6:48:55 GMT -6
I just bought the pdf, based on this thread, and though I've only glanced at it so far, I'm excited! This looks really, really playable! Agreed. It looks very playable. As mentioned elsewhere, I'd definitely drop into the D&D resolution system when dealing with PC's of any level. Delta includes this option in Book of War. I never have like the idea of "Sorry, bob. Unit 43 was just pulped by those Ogres. Your Fighting-Man was part of Unit 43, right? |
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Post by thegreyelf on Nov 5, 2011 1:41:48 GMT -6
I just bought the pdf, based on this thread, and though I've only glanced at it so far, I'm excited! This looks really, really playable! Agreed. It looks very playable. As mentioned elsewhere, I'd definitely drop into the D&D resolution system when dealing with PC's of any level. Delta includes this option in Book of War. I never have like the idea of "Sorry, bob. Unit 43 was just pulped by those Ogres. Your Fighting-Man was part of Unit 43, right? Agreed, 100%. I will say that even though I'm a fan of Chainmail combat in OD&D as opposed to d20-based combat, these rules look cleaner than Chainmail for mass combat resolution. |
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