From: Thomas Barclay <Thomas.Barclay@s...>
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 12:38:57 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Running Interlinked Scenarios + Data Interchange Software
Derk, I hit some design-time snags and real life time commitments that prevented software completion. I have since had some epiphanies about some of them. I will work on it over the coming year. I also think I'd like to make a 'distributed map handler' that would allow two separate tables to run effectively double blind without requiring an 'actual' third table. But all this is contingent in free time, and I worked from 10:30 am until 2:30 am yesterday, as an example of my current schedule. Plus two and a bit hours of commuting.:( General on Interlinked Scenarios: What you are discussing was the very premise of CampCon, hosted by Mike Sarno in and around Towanda/Sayre PA every June. The first CampCon was at Mike's house, others have grown out into other facilities. Attendees from this have included I believe a Jon Davis, a Joel Frock, a David Raynes, my buddy James Hilchie from Kingston (not technically on this list... *grin*), Mike Sarno, Miek Hudak, and perhaps others (I don't recall if Adrian has made one of these yet). We usually go down, camp at Mike's back 40, and play a weekend full of games. The earliest one featured 3 interlinked scenarios. The landing (from a hyper jump in), the fight for the PDC (dirtside), and the battle for the starport (stargrunt). Each event's outcome factored in to the starting forces for the follow on ones. Also, players were given reinforcement chits they could spend in each game, and a chit was either pre-allocated (100% successful) or played during the game (66% successful). The units were scaled to the game - in SG, it might give you a VTOL or an APC full of troops, in DS2 a tank platoon, or an artillery platoon on call. Each scenario contributed to the overall story line. It was based on an ESU assault on the NAC colony of New Providence, which was inhabited by descendants of maritime anglophone settings like the Canadian Maritimes, the US North East maritime states, the Basques, etc. In the end, General Sarno summed up the results in a famous message to Comrade Hil Chi Minh, the ESU leader: "Get your ass back to Eurasia!". This con was a success. The next one I remember had a series of more loosely linked scenarios. These included four or five different combats which all accrued victory points towards the overall campaign. Here again the commanders had reinforcement chits they could play into the scenarios. The most memorable of these was a sea board for DS2, with small resort islands and a large island with the starport on it. Combatants were ships, GEV and Grav. An M-kill over water was generally a bad thing (get your life jackets on....!). Invading hotels and the tough infantry combat on the floating starport were very cool. This too went off well. As a cool prop, medals were given out for attending CampCon and for certain activities. I actually have one declaring me "Most Feared Enemy". In both cases, two GMs (Mike and I) coordinated scenario setup. That helps a lot. Doing these alone, you miss stuff. I tried a similar thing back here in Ottawa, and unfortunately, it didn't pan out so well. The invasion force was utterly shattered and slaughtered. That kind of ended things right there. Mind you, different players, only one GM, different structure. Just goes to show you can't be a winner every time and that players don't always want to be content with the pre-game assumptions you make. Some want a lot of tactical control of the lead-up to the battle, obviously having read Sun-Tzu. It also went to show that points aren't a great balancer. Scenario terrain, setup, etc. can make a huge difference. And seemingly small pertubrations made at the last minute can have disasterous balance. JP likes to call some of the swing 'high swing dice' - inherently unpredictable. At the same time, game design or setup decisions can really change things. So, I guess I'm getting at 'more eyes are a good thing'. Back to TWOC: (If I'd thought to call it Burden, that was an even better name!) To Phil Pournelle: 1) I'm sorry I didn't get more of a chance to speak with you after we've coordinated offline. 2) I'm sorry I missed you sending the interloper packing. 3) You made a very good comment about the forces having flashbangs and riot control agents. Stargrunt is short anything approaching good rules for such things (their rules for smoke are game-ish too... I don't find they match my real life experiences with battlefield obscurant deployments in variable weather conditions...). This is something we should address before next time we do something of this nature. You've hit upon something we didn't think of. I'm adding that to our lessons learned summary. Thank you for the input and for coordinating the Alpha Board. Your good words are also appreciated. For that matter, for everyone who said good things about TWOC, thanks. That's what makes our efforts worth the time and stress:) Tom B