Hello, I had a wonderful time on Saturday at the Ground Zero Games Convention
on Saturday in Lancaster, PA. Games included several Full Thrust games
(including my Star Wars game), Dirtside II and StarGrunt (I ran another Star
Wars based SG game). The best event by far was the Burden of Command game
where there were two tactical level StarGrunt Scenarios that were related to
each other but on two different tables with a Command element in another room.
The Command element gained situational awareness based only on radio calls
from the leaders of the two teams, periodic photos from drones and satellite
(done by Digital Camera) or if they got on a VTOL and flew out to the scene,
thus losing inputs from higher echelons and special sources. The referees did
a great job in both playing the bad guys and facilitating the game. They
clearly had thought out the game and play tested it. Everyone had a great job.
There was a 4:1 ratio between players and referees. I don't know how many
confederates they used. I've always wanted to run a series of games where a
Full Thrust game covered fleet action with a follow on amphibious assault.
This would lead to a DirtSide II Battalion scale assault supported by Orbital
Bombardment. In turn this would lead to a StarGrunt game at the
Platoon/Company level in a city where a force is attempting to capture
the terminal objective. I think these can be done in serial. Doing it in
parallel with the Burden of Command split scene might be fun or just a
complete disaster.
The biggest heartburn I have is this: If the Full Thrust defense The only way
to remove that risk is to make the FT scenario so badly unbalanced that it is
a foregone conclusion from the beginning. Which makes it a boring scenario.
John
> I've always wanted to run a series of games...
I always thought that this would be an interesting thing to do. The outcome of
one game would affect the next, etc. My buddy Jerry and I have talked about
doing such a thing in the past.
The hard part will be how scenario A affects scenario B which in turn affects
C.
--
Damo
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Hello, I had a wonderful time on Saturday at the Ground Zero Games Convention
on = Saturday in Lancaster, PA. Games included several Full Thrust games
(inclu= ding my Star Wars game), Dirtside II and StarGrunt (I ran another Star
Wars= based SG game). The best event by far was the Burden of Command game
where there were two = tactical level StarGrunt Scenarios that were related to
each other but on t= wo different tables with a Command element in another
room. The Command el= ement gained situational awareness based only on radio
calls from the leade= rs of the two teams, periodic photos from drones and
satellite (done by Dig= ital Camera) or if they got on a VTOL and flew out to
the scene, thus losin= g inputs from higher echelons and special sources. The
referees did a great job in both playing the bad guys and facilitating= the
game. They clearly had thought out the game and play tested it. Ever= yone had
a great job. There was a 4:1 ratio between players and referees. = I don't
know how many confederates they used. I've always wanted to run a series of
games where a Full Thrust game cover= ed fleet action with a follow on
amphibious assault. This would lead to a = DirtSide II Battalion scale assault
supported by Orbital Bombardment. In t=
urn this would lead to a StarGrunt game at the Platoon/Company level in
a c= ity where a force is attempting to capture the terminal objective. I
think= these can be done in serial. Doing it in parallel with the Burden of
Comm= and split scene might be fun or just a complete disaster. Phil Pournelle
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<TITLE>Ground Zero Games Convention/Interesting game construct</TITLE>
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<P><FONT SIZE=3D2 FACE=3D"Arial">Hello,</FONT>
<BR> <FONT SIZE=3D2 FACE=3D"Arial=
">I had a wonderful time on Saturday at the Ground Zero Games Convention on=
Saturday in Lancaster, PA. Games included several Full Thrust games =
(including my Star Wars game), Dirtside II and StarGrunt (I ran another Sta=
r Wars based SG game).</FONT></P>
<P> <FONT SIZE=3D2 FACE=3D"Arial"=
> The best event by far was the Burden of Command game where there were
<P> <FONT SIZE=3D2 FACE=3D"Arial"=
> The referees did a great job in both playing the bad guys and
<P> <FONT SIZE=3D2 FACE=3D"Arial"=
> I've always wanted to run a series of games where a Full Thrust game
<P> <FONT SIZE=3D2 FACE=3D"Arial"=
> Phil Pournelle</FONT>
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On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 15:07:02 +0000, damosan@comcast.net
> <damosan@comcast.net> wrote:
The biggest heartburn I have is this: If the Full Thrust defense works out
well, then the invader will not have the assets to sucessfully fight the DSII
scenario. The only way to remove that risk is to make the FT scenario so badly
unbalanced that it is a foregone conclusion from the beginning. Which makes it
a boring scenario.
Instead of driving the DS2 forces directly from the FT scenario (ie you
get as many tanks / infantry as you can get past the defending
spaceships) just make the result of the FT game modify the DS2 game a
little bit - something along the lines of "attacking forces win major FT
victory - attacker gets 10% more forces in DS2 game; attackers win minor
victory - 5% more forces; FT draw - played as per scenario" etc. This
way the GM can keep the forces under reasonable control, but the players
still have a good reason to try to win each successive scenario.
Tony (uncloaking after some time)
> John Atkinson wrote:
> On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 15:07:02 +0000, damosan@comcast.net
Another, limited, example I thought of would be a FT battle where an
outcome could be a boarding action-FMA style. Perhaps a little more
manageable than say a massive planetary assault, which could be done, but it
would be a time and resource issue.
Say ships raid a specific thing, like a defense or research station. if they
get past the defenses they dispatch the FMA away team to board and recover
whatever they're going after. Meanwhile the FT guys are fighting a holding
action to buy time for the FMA guys to accomplish their mission and get back
to the ship.
The whole command system could be overlayed on top of this.
> The biggest heartburn I have is this: If the Full Thrust defense
I guess it depends on the back story somewhat. If the scenario is written such
that Invasion of Planet X occurs no matter what then your FT game can simply
be the "first wave in."
Sure...the defenders may b!tchslap the attacker...but wave N+1 makes it
through. Or perhaps it's wave N+2.
The end result is that the DS GM has a certain force org. chart for
his/her game. If the FT game went well for the attacker perhaps they
get a few Elite platoons added to the force chart?
If the defenders did well then perhaps they were able to slip in
additional off-world assets due to the spanking they gave to the
attackers?
Well I suppose there's the deeper philosophical issue of this
hobby-wide need for all wargames to be equally balanced when the whole
point of most battles is to arrive at a situation have an advantage over the
enemy before you start fighting or else you have failed in your job. It's a
matter of victory conditions.
This can easily be adressed in victory conditions. The enemy FT commander, say
the station defender, is rewarded by putting up enough of a defense (say he
has some other ships to help defend) that the window of game turns between the
time when his defenses have given out and when his reinforcements arrives
narrows to the point where it will be difficult for the attacker to get in and
out with the baording actioh safely. Likewise the attcker perfroming less than
steller now has to conduct a hurried boarding action, perhaps while fighting a
delaying action against the reinforcements, and the away team has to run risks
it normally would not have too in order to egt in and out in time.
And frankly if one wants to run this in a similar fashion of a command
simulator thing, then you can always remove the two teams against each other
aspect of the game, which leads to unrealistic levels of omnipotence as to
enemy wherabouts and what not, and place everyone on the same team, where the
GMs can then dole out uncomfortable situatinos as they see fit depending on
player actions.
Sidebar another interesting FT battle for GZZ-ECC 9 would be to
actually run a double blind FT game. There are certainly sufficient facilities
to do this at Lancaster what with at least two to three rooms being empty of
gaming. And eth technologies with notebooks imagery and comms exists to allow
te GMs to do this. You'd have the same starmap in each room with some grid
refernce system overlayed to ensure placing enemy sighting properly. Tehn you
could really add the factor of "shucks where are those guys" to the battle,
which is a level of drama very much lost in most wargames but normally the
overriding concern in most actual battles. It'd be nice to see that happen for
once.
Los
BTW my comments were not meant to disparage anyone's gaming preference, just
trying to figure out ways around the conundrum of doing a linked game that
could work in a con setting. Cheers...
Los
> Sidebar another interesting FT battle for GZZ-ECC 9 would be to
Concur except I'd rather see it done for a SG2 game (preferably in a
timeslot where I'm not GMing) -- FT omniscience is easy to PSB.
If it's a case of "if you win the FT battle you're facing Wave 1; if you lose,
call it Wave 2", then the situation *on the table* has not really been changed
by the FT battle. Instead you could have a tree where winning the FT battle
means you're trying to, say, secure a telecomms facility; losing means you're
fighting a rearguard action while your pathfinders extract back to orbit.
> If it's a case of "if you win the FT battle you're facing Wave 1; if
It hasn't affected the *battle* you will fight but it certainly has affected
the forces available for the fight...which in turn may affect the outcome of
game 2.
Having said that the Tree method is much cleaner by far.
> If it's a case of "if you win the FT battle you're facing Wave 1; if
> It hasn't affected the *battle* you will fight but it certainly has
If you make it affect the forces, then you have to alter the victory
conditions, which in turn calls for a lot of playtesting.
> Carlos Lourenco wrote:
IIRC, Aaron Neuman and Mike Ritchie did something like this a few ECCs back
(ECC IV, specifically), but without the overlaying command structure.
There was an FT/EFSB game being run next to an FMA game, where the FMA
game was the boarding action. I don't remember all the details. The two
scenarios were called Psi War 2264 (Bester's Gambit and Ivanova's Last Stand).
The scenario descriptions can be found here:
http://www.warpfish.com/gzgecc/gzgecc4/schedule.shtml
Mk
> If it's a case of "if you win the FT battle you're facing Wave 1; if
You could do it the other way around too.
A couple of years ago, TomB planned a large set of linked scenarios (not at
a con - this was for a group of about 6 or 7 of us getting together on
our own). The idea was that a Stargrunt II scenario would be played first,
followed by the FT battle.
The Stargrunt scenario was an attack on a defended position: the "planetary
defense network headquarters". Addressing Carlos' (very relevant) point, the
game was in no way balanced. The defenders had a reinforced platoon (appx 3
regular troop squads, a command squad, an attached PA squad, a
couple of size-1 combat walkers and a couple of light jeeps with MG).
The
attacking force was a mechanized company (with 8+ heavy APCs with fusion
cannon, something like 3 or 4 platoons of infantry, etc etc). Completely
"unbalanced", but the defenders' mission condition was only to delay the
assault on the HQ for as long as possible. TomB set it up so that the longer
the defenders held out and prevented the HQ from being overrun, the more
benefits their side in the FT battle would have (as the planetary defense HQ
was able to get their defenses organized, ships off the ground, etc etc). In
the end, the defenses held for a *lot* longer than anyone expected, though the
outcome was inevitable and they were finally overrun. I think maybe one of the
squads escaped, but it was a clear victory (for the defenders, based on their
mission conditions).
Unfortunately, it took so long to play that we never got around to the FT
game, but still, the idea was very interesting.
I've run numerous scenarios at demo games at cons around town set up with
UNbalanced games - that's one of the strengths of Stargrunt; the LACK of
a forced balance system. It does, however, require more effort on the part of
the GM (or the players collectively if no GM) to come up with scenarios that
are interesting and worth playing even though you might know ahead of time
that one force will "lose" in the wargamers' conventional sense. It is tough
sometimes to get players to see that they can "win" a battle though their
forces might be wiped out. As Carlos mentioned, the tendancy toward "game
balance" is pervasive through the industry, and players are used to thinking
in those terms.
> If you make it affect the forces, then you have to alter the victory
Alter the victory conditions? I don't see that applying to every scenario in
the book. I can see altering victory conditions for certain types of games.
Say a rearguard action where holding the enemy for one more turn is important.
But for certain classical military actions I don't see any point in altering
victory conditions. Very few engagements started with equal forces so I see no
reason to enforce that on the table either through force composition or
artificial victory conditions.
What's more important at a Con (especially at ECC)? Having equal forces or
fighting a good game?
> Adrian wrote:
[...]
> I've run numerous scenarios at demo games at cons around town set up
It
> is tough sometimes to get players to see that they can "win" a battle
A Dirtside game I've run now twice at ECC, Gramicci Pass, uses sealed orders
for each side. Each side has a set of 9 'sealed orders', complete with mission
objectives, forces available, support assets (or none), conditions for
with-
drawal, etc. In some cases the mission objectives are complimentary to the
two sides (e.g., find/retrieve the downed VTOL pilot/spy somewhere on
the board), but often times they are mutually exclusive (secondary objectives
tended to be something like "eliminate any opposition you come across", just
to give the players added reason for engagement, esp if their primary
objective was to, say, gather intel on a size class 4 or 5 vehicle and
skeedaddle with the info). This past year the attacking force's objective
was to recon the Pass and find out why an earlier-sent recon unit failed
to report back (presumed to be wiped out by an unknown hostile enemy force).
The defenders' primary objective was to keep hidden from the attackers 4 heavy
howitzer emplacements. As long as they kept those hidden from the attackers,
even if they were wiped out, they would have met their mission objective. The
attackers had no clue about looking for the arty emplacements, so wasn't
bothering with that. It wasn't their objective. The defenders, in the end,
decided they needed the assets of the artillery and revealed them by launching
arty strikes on the attackers. This cost them their primary objective, but
they felt they were going to lose it, anyhow (their defending force was a
little weaker than the attacking force). The attacking force never found any
remnants of the recon team (unbeknownst to the attacking force, the recon team
had gone in a different pass). so they were there just to duke it out with the
defenders.
In any event, each set of sealed orders gives each side comparable, but not
necessarily *balanced*, forces. Sometimes one side will be stronger than the
other. Their support assets may or may not help out, or whatever their
objective is may help out. I leave it up to the players to use their forces as
best as they can, given the tactical situation they have been presented with.
I'm still waiting for the defenders to draw sealed order #5. That will be fun
to play. *grin*
Mk
I think it's having a good game (obviously).
In our weight of command event for the Special forces snatch, the SF uits had
sufficent forces of quality and firepower to accomplish the mission, porvided
they went about their business in an orderly and proffesional manner and
followed the ROE, having a mission that didn't set up the SF guys for success
up front would not have been a Special Forces mission as they wouldn't have
been fool enough to undertake the mission unless they thought they could do it
without getting anyone of their own guys killed.
It almost seemed like things on the SF board were quiet, they went about their
mission, and none of the SF guys were klled or wounded (one was stunned),
though there were a few police casualties. The planning and comms they put
into the thing ahead of time, compared with the knowledge and skill of the
players and commander (Phil!), sprinkled with a little luck, allowed them to
accomplish their mission
in a business-like fashion which to an outsider might have seemed
boring or unbalanced. But with all the complexity and action that was going
on, I doubt anyone over there was bored, or thought the mission easy, and they
sure laid waste to a lot of enemies. And the lack of casualties on the SF side
was particularly satisfing.
Had they accomplished the mission but lost a few of their own killed, well I
suppose that might have been good for the UN politicians, but a disaster of
the SF unit involved. Victory conditions are all what one makes of them.
Los
Reminds me of the scene from Hamburger Hill after the squad's first contact.
Newbie: "Hey Sarge we did good today, flanking the enemy and taking them out
like that! Huh?"
Grizzled Vet Sgt: "The only thing that happened today was that we lost a
man..."
On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 19:33:56 +0000, damosan@comcast.net
> <damosan@comcast.net> wrote:
> Los wrote:
> It almost seemed like things on the SF board were quiet
Oh it was definitely tense. I had the snatch team and it was a little
nerve-wracking letting that first decoy car go by... "Is it the target?"
"Well, probably not." "*Probably* not?!" Then the real deal drove past,
tried to run the police checkpoint / blockade at the riverfront, and out
came the snatch team, roaring up in their SUV. Thankfully a sniper took out
the driver, and the team opted for close combat to avoid accidentally killing
the target. It was dicey (pardon the pun) considering the occupants were well
armed, but we pulled it off with no casualties.
Then they nearly got run over by an APC blazing across the bridge to escape
the mayhem on the other side of town.
Definitely a fun game.
> came the snatch team, roaring up in their SUV. Thankfully a sniper
Err, the driver in the target vehicle that is... not our *own* driver of
course...
> Carlos Lourenco wrote:
> Sidebar another interesting FT battle for GZZ-ECC 9 would be to
It's a good idea, but we're going to try and get into the main ballroom on the
second floor of the hotel for next year. I've spoken with Lisa and she'll
begin the paperwork. Therefore, we'll probably not have the same room we were
in this year.
Another way to approach it would be to set up a notebook LAN and an FTJava
server to run the event. FTJava has the ability
to run Fog-of-War with limited sensor range and intelligence.
Some great ideas flowing through here today! I am holding them for next year.
As for your question Damo, if you do player on player you want to either have
balanced force or a good initial brief so that both players truly understand
the victory conditions. It is too easy have a bad game face to face at a con
and wind up ruining someones time.
IMHO
Magic
> --- damosan@comcast.net wrote:
> Adrian wrote:
> You could do it the other way around too.
Funnily enough.... GW made some excellent 1/300 mobile Planetary Defence
systems.
Beam-3 http://home2.inet.tele.dk/json/pics/armageddon.gif
SMR-ER http://home2.inet.tele.dk/json/pics/golgotha.gif
FC/Sensors http://home2.inet.tele.dk/json/pics/mars.gif
Then there's the Gojira Hakaisha http://www.tin-soldier.com/gojra2.gif
Which I think makes a good PD
Add a mobile HQ
http://ironwindmetals.com/catalog/images/fig_pics/20-743.jpg
> On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 02:14:51PM -0500, Adrian wrote:
> I've run numerous scenarios at demo games at cons around town set up
It
> is tough sometimes to get players to see that they can "win" a battle
I've said it before and I'll say it again - a "balanced fight" is one of
the most unlikely scenarios to happen in real life. Most commanders won't
attack unless they have (or think they have) force superiority...
R
Roger,
Exactly what Los and a number of others are saying. The "Balanced fight" is an
interesting phenomena of wargamers but has no basis in real life. Victory
conditions that are realistic and based on the forces can help to fix this.
Magic
> --- Roger Burton West <roger@firedrake.org> wrote:
> I've said it before and I'll say it again - a
That's where you edit the scenario...
If the FT defense goes well... theoretically the invaders shouldn't have
anything to land... However, anything that does land would have to have a MO
change... a.) the mission objective changes from whatever it was to simply
establishing a beachhead for a secondary invasion fleet. b.) Guerilla warfare
until a secondary invasion fleet can arrive.
> --- John Atkinson <johnmatkinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> The biggest heartburn I have is this: If the Full Thrust defense
Remember, even light is shaped by the darkness that surrounds it, and the true
crafters are seldom ever seen. Welcome to the shadows kid.
Doo keep in mind the fact that the guys were saying we'd be in the main
ballroom next year... our current facility is supposed to be demolished (SG2
LARP? Come on guys.. how about a little 1:1 scale action...?)
Although one could find out about the availability of getting those paper
screen folding walls...
> --- Carlos Lourenco <loscon@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sidebar another interesting FT battle for GZZ-ECC 9 would be to
Remember, even light is shaped by the darkness that surrounds it, and the true
crafters are seldom ever seen. Welcome to the shadows kid.