Released! Tread-Head: Armored Combat in WW2

[Pietia]

I could swear I've seen discussion like this one before...

I fail to see the fun of playing WWI troops vs a modern day Abrams tank... :wink:

That's quite good point. Game in which one side enjoys such superiority would be extremely boring. Even something like 20 years gap in technological advancement makes vehicle (not infantry) combat very one-sided (take Operation Desert Storm for example).

Ask the people who play Traveller

Try to run Traveller as a miniatures game, not as RPG. With two forces equipped with military-grade equipment from two completely different TLs. And make sure, that the game is enjoyable to both players (my bet - one will be bored, the other extremely frustrated). If it works (it won't) - switch to it

Battlefield Evolution could be made into a ruleset that could support cross-setting play. The convertion process would consist of two steps:
Step One: Throw away all the existing rules
Step Two: Write new ones

 

[Alexb83]

Battlefield Evolution could be made into a ruleset that could support cross-setting play. The convertion process would consist of two steps:
Step One: Throw away all the existing rules
Step Two: Write new ones

You make that sound like a bad thing? Honestly, when you have a game designer saying that the rudiments of the system are constraining him in the sense that he has to limit every gun in the game relative to some arbitrary maximum (this was the 'best gun', therefore everything else must be worse).
Maybe stripping it down and rebuilding the mechanic slightly wouldn't be a bad thing - the idea of 'better than' 1+ armour saves for example, if you stick to a d6 for armour - or moving to a d10 for armour saves and allowing a far broader scale for armour quality and /piercing effects.

The idea of doing WW1 vs. stoneage is a little extreme perhaps, but within the 20th century you /did/ see WW2 era tanks facing off technology 25+ years more advanced - in the same way that we have WW1 era battleships surviving into WW2 (admittedly with modernisation).
Fundamentally the WW2 infantryman at least at the onset of the war had very little to use that he didn't have in the trenches 21+ years earlier.

Really, we should have a game system that can cope with these crossovers - otherwise when you get to Korea, Vietnam and into the various Arab/Israeli conflicts (let alone the Gulf) you're going to be stumped, and will have the T34-85 and the Sherman statted up about 5 different times for 5 different games which ostensibly use the same core mechanic.

 

[DM]

Try to run Traveller as a miniatures game, not as RPG. With two forces equipped with military-grade equipment from two completely different TLs. And make sure, that the game is enjoyable to both players (my bet - one will be bored, the other extremely frustrated). If it works (it won't) - switch to it

It wasn't meant to be an entirely serious comment (although I suspect that if one was to see, say, a Roman legion against a contemporary force the result would be prtty much as Pieta suggested, and therefore quite realistic!).

I'm like many others here - I seriously doubt that you could make aworkable game that covered everything, and was still playable and fun for all concerned. I'm happy with common mechanics - I use DBA-style rules for a range of land based games up to the 1400s, Fire and Fury variants up until the late 1890s, but I don't pretend that my ECW troops could go up against my 1890s Sudanese in a single F&F variant.

Actually, I recall we DID run Traveller as a miniatures game (or rather Snapshot) when i was in my school days and it did work quite well......

 

[DM]

Game in which one side enjoys such superiority would be extremely boring.

reminds me of a Gulf War game I played in once

 

[DaWarbossMI]

Well, I've always been one to enjoy almost any type of throwdown. Since I tend to lose anyway :wink:, I can enjoy a solid game of cavemen on Abrams action...

The core mechanics of BEvo, however, are very solid for use in many genres. The only concern is the core close combat system; it would need some tweaking for more martial combat, but it could certainly be done.

When it comes to comparing weapons, the larger, more powerful modern weapons have no realistic historical match. Sure, a direct hit from a trebuchet would destroy the combat capabilities of an Abrams, but they load slowly and the aiming ain't exactly perfect, so you likely would have a hard time hitting the Abrams cruising at 50MPH... The Abrams could return fire at such a high rate and with such lethality that the treb would be smoking kindling very, VERY quickly.

When you consider personal arms, now we have a different story. Modern soldiers have weaponry designed to punch through any most personal armor (even full plate looses to a rifle round people), but modern armor does very VERY little against impact damage, or low velocity puncture damage (trust me on this, I'm a cop... my ballistic vest ain't gonna stop a determined knife thrust, never mind a bolt from a crossbow). Modern police armor is a step down from some of the military ballistic and flak armor, but even the miltary armor isn't going to help against a halberd. you'll have one soldier in two pieces...

I think it can be done. With the BEvo system, it comes in the way of new advanced rules and traits. You could, for instance, give a weapon a trait like crushing, in that it ignores armor saves. You could improve a weapon's piercing trait versus personal armor. Or you could simply play the silly and let the teeth of your Tyrannosaurus Rex pierce without restrictions. Lets say that the pounds per square inch of pressure coupled with the 6 inch teeth can do enough damage to most modern vehicles that the Rexie is effective. Even if he can't puncture the Abrams all that well, he can hit it with enough force to certainly bust off some tread and wheels and an Apatasaurus can knock an Abrams right over (picture the dino the size of a blue whale smacking a tank with its tail the size of a redwood).

The LARGEST component of any mixed era combat isn't (IMHO) stats, dice, rules, or scale... its suspension of disbelief. If you want to have fun playing it, you will

We've playtested the poo out of our upcoming Apocalypse-D (dinosaurs and cavemen in modern day) and we've had a blast doing it. I think it plays reasonably well. Its by no means a tournament style game, there's too much room for variation... but its a fun way to have a game, get kids into the hobby, or run a fun campaign....

Believe me when I say that a 2 inch diameter spear tossed by a well muscled caveman WILL take out a modern soldier. Flak vest or no, he's out of the fight. The cavemen are also a lot tougher than we are. Let's face it, even the toughest and hardest of people today are a lot softer than our ancestors. I like the way Michael Crighton portrayed it in Timeline (the book, not the movie)... people in the middle ages lived harder and the softies had been naturally selected out of the gene pool early. My asthmatic butt wouldn't have lasted a week back then (not too many albuterol inhalers floating around in 1500). Hell, I get a papercut at work and I gotta go home sick!!!

Just my two cents!

Good Gaming
Jay

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

Really, we should have a game system that can cope with these crossovers - otherwise when you get to Korea, Vietnam and into the various Arab/Israeli conflicts (let alone the Gulf) you're going to be stumped, and will have the T34-85 and the Sherman statted up about 5 different times for 5 different games which ostensibly use the same core mechanic.

same core mechanic, but different contexts and settings. I personally don't see a problem with that.

 

[Alexb83]

Well, I've always been one to enjoy almost any type of throwdown. Since I tend to lose anyway :wink:, I can enjoy a solid game of cavemen on Abrams action...

The core mechanics of BEvo, however, are very solid for use in many genres. The only concern is the core close combat system; it would need some tweaking for more martial combat, but it could certainly be done.

When it comes to comparing weapons, the larger, more powerful modern weapons have no realistic historical match. Sure, a direct hit from a trebuchet would destroy the combat capabilities of an Abrams, but they load slowly and the aiming ain't exactly perfect, so you likely would have a hard time hitting the Abrams cruising at 50MPH... The Abrams could return fire at such a high rate and with such lethality that the treb would be smoking kindling very, VERY quickly.

When you consider personal arms, now we have a different story. Modern soldiers have weaponry designed to punch through any most personal armor (even full plate looses to a rifle round people), but modern armor does very VERY little against impact damage, or low velocity puncture damage (trust me on this, I'm a cop... my ballistic vest ain't gonna stop a determined knife thrust, never mind a bolt from a crossbow). Modern police armor is a step down from some of the military ballistic and flak armor, but even the miltary armor isn't going to help against a halberd. you'll have one soldier in two pieces...

I think it can be done. With the BEvo system, it comes in the way of new advanced rules and traits. You could, for instance, give a weapon a trait like crushing, in that it ignores armor saves. You could improve a weapon's piercing trait versus personal armor. Or you could simply play the silly and let the teeth of your Tyrannosaurus Rex pierce without restrictions. Lets say that the pounds per square inch of pressure coupled with the 6 inch teeth can do enough damage to most modern vehicles that the Rexie is effective. Even if he can't puncture the Abrams all that well, he can hit it with enough force to certainly bust off some tread and wheels and an Apatasaurus can knock an Abrams right over (picture the dino the size of a blue whale smacking a tank with its tail the size of a redwood).

The LARGEST component of any mixed era combat isn't (IMHO) stats, dice, rules, or scale... its suspension of disbelief. If you want to have fun playing it, you will

We've playtested the poo out of our upcoming Apocalypse-D (dinosaurs and cavemen in modern day) and we've had a blast doing it. I think it plays reasonably well. Its by no means a tournament style game, there's too much room for variation... but its a fun way to have a game, get kids into the hobby, or run a fun campaign....

Believe me when I say that a 2 inch diameter spear tossed by a well muscled caveman WILL take out a modern soldier. Flak vest or no, he's out of the fight. The cavemen are also a lot tougher than we are. Let's face it, even the toughest and hardest of people today are a lot softer than our ancestors. I like the way Michael Crighton portrayed it in Timeline (the book, not the movie)... people in the middle ages lived harder and the softies had been naturally selected out of the gene pool early. My asthmatic butt wouldn't have lasted a week back then (not too many albuterol inhalers floating around in 1500). Hell, I get a papercut at work and I gotta go home sick!!!

Just my two cents!

Good Gaming
Jay

This is the thing though - with a little more liberal and imaginative (also transparent and co-ordinated) use of the current system (for instance yes, a Trebuchet can crush a tank - but can it /hit/ a tank? You simply modify its to hit roll such that it can only practically hit static stone walls) you /can/ do it - and you can end up with any number of products which can be mixed and matched.

We've had good discussions based around the BF:Zulu possibilities - it happened in real life, it should be possible to shoehorn into the game. Spears and shields vs. Rifles and cannon.

Perhaps all the game needs is a little stretching to become more developer-friendly.
Personally I quite like the SST core mechanic - I liked SST. But I don't think was perfect before, or now.

The limitations of using a d6 system for tank armour are already showing by extention to the stats of AT guns.

 

[DM]

The limitations of using a d6 system for tank armour are already showing by extention to the stats of AT guns.

I agree, the use of a d6 was "unfortunate", IMHO. We faced the same issues in VAS; using a d6 based system leads to a necessary comprsssion of capabilities, wide banding etc. that makes ship stats somewhat "samey". The WW2 rules "Spearhead" are, IMHO, the same in this regard. Use of a d10 was suggested for VAS, but rejected.

 

[Alexb83]

The limitations of using a d6 system for tank armour are already showing by extention to the stats of AT guns.

I agree, the use of a d6 was "unfortunate", IMHO. We faced the same issues in VAS; using a d6 based system leads to a necessary comprsssion of capabilities, wide banding etc. that makes ship stats somewhat "samey". The WW2 rules "Spearhead" are, IMHO, the same in this regard. Use of a d10 was suggested for VAS, but rejected.

It strikes me as a bit of a non-issue for BF games - they already require D10s for so many guns - you may as well just use it for armour too.

 

[Pietia]

Believe me when I say that a 2 inch diameter spear tossed by a well muscled caveman WILL take out a modern soldier. Flak vest or no, he's out of the fight. The cavemen are also a lot tougher than we are. Let's face it, even the toughest and hardest of people today are a lot softer than our ancestors. I like the way Michael Crighton portrayed it in Timeline (the book, not the movie)... people in the middle ages lived harder and the softies had been naturally selected out of the gene pool early. My asthmatic butt wouldn't have lasted a week back then (not too many albuterol inhalers floating around in 1500). Hell, I get a papercut at work and I gotta go home sick!!!

Ok... ancient weapons... Yes, a pointy stick, knife, spear, arrow or bolt kills as well as a bullet does. You have to consider a few things, however:
1) The range of these weapons - modern assault rifle has an effective range of roughly 400 meters. You may make an accurate shot with MODERN bow or crossbow at 60-70 meters, if you're very good. Javelins, thrown spears, darts etc have much lower ranges - 10 meters at most - they were thrown by ancient/medieval/whatever soldiers, not modern professional athletes using state of the art training techniques and professional "these are not steroids" diet supplements
2) We may be softer than our ancestors (or to be specific, you decadent westerners may be ) due to our less demanding lifestyles, but definitely not weaker. For starters - we're healthier (asthma - ok, you'd be dead in the past, but w/o it you'd have several serious health problems due to malnourishment, lack of personal hygene, parasites...), better fed, stronger, BIGGER. A typical 14th century armor from our local War Museum would fit me perfectly... some 18 years ago. Now I'm only 180cm tall and weigh 110kg (I've done some weight lifting in the past, so that's not 110kg from MacDonald's diet) - compared to some 20 year olds, I'm "average size", from the point of view of our ancestors I'm a giant.

You make that sound like a bad thing? Honestly, when you have a game designer saying that the rudiments of the system are constraining him in the sense that he has to limit every gun in the game relative to some arbitrary maximum (this was the 'best gun', therefore everything else must be worse).
Maybe stripping it down and rebuilding the mechanic slightly wouldn't be a bad thing - the idea of 'better than' 1+ armour saves for example, if you stick to a d6 for armour - or moving to a d10 for armour saves and allowing a far broader scale for armour quality and /piercing effects.

Far broader scale for armor will not solve the problem. Maybe you'll be able to fit WWII and modern vehicles on the same armor save scale - not with D10, rather with D20 or even something bigger - ok. In fact you can do that even now - only there would be a few profiles for WWII tanks: very heavy tank (KT, IS-3, Super Pershing), heavy tank (Panther, IS-2), everything else . This will of course result in having extremely high stats for modern vehicles - not a very good thing from a point of view of a person trying to run "normal" modern game. Now - what happens when somebody wants to write a futuristic setting for the game? Do you rate a Bolo Mark XXX as having -1000000+ armor save?
You have to remember also, that armor is not everything here - the game would also have to represent the typical engagement ranges, time scale etc. in a uniform fashion. Try to do that with infantry: engagement ranges between 50 paces for medieval archers - not counting "rain of arrows" and perhaps kilometers for some futuristic infantry types in Power Armor Of Wankiness +10. Time scale that would handle both the earliest firearms, modern automatic weapons and some ray guns of the future... That's simply impossible - at least if the rules are supposed to be simple and playable.
Of course you can go the "suspension of disbelief" way, throwing all the historical accuracy to the wind - but that doesn't require any rule changes. Attack the Abrams tank with Panthers w/o any changes in stats - perhaps the Alien Space Bats that made them meet on the same battlefield upgraded the Panther a bit. Use archers with the same effective engagement range as modern riflemen - maybe Legolas himself trained them.

 

[Agis]

You make that sound like a bad thing? Honestly, when you have a game designer saying that the rudiments of the system are constraining him in the sense that he has to limit every gun in the game relative to some arbitrary maximum (this was the 'best gun', therefore everything else must be worse).

Who is constrained? I am quite happy with the system as it is.
It is flexible enough to represent all the units of WW II.
So call me happy! 8)
The only thing that I am not totally happy with is the fact that the Logo License is freezing certain aspects of the game in carbonite.
I understand the reason behind it - establish a common ground, not deviating the LL products to far from each other - but it is sometimes limiting.
However - Only the "you go I go" turn sequence is something that immediately comes to my mind. I am very curious how Matt will resolve this in Spec Ops... :wink: