Quirkworthy

The game for the battle report I mentioned went a little strange. Well, rather more than a little strange. It was an excellent game and lots of fun, just not quite what we needed to showcase what we had in mind, so we’re going to have to fight another. Now you might think that’s no problem: just fighting another game. Ah well, batreps are different. This one took 3 people all day, and that’s not counting any writing. Not that we were being slow, just that you need to be very clear about what’s happening and pause frequently to ensure that whoever is taking notes is up to speed. Then you’ve got to take photos and draw maps to record what went on so you can recreate it in pretty versions for the final printed article.

My total work day yesterday started at 4am and finished about 10pm, so it was quite tiring. And now I’ve got to find another day to fit in what I would have done when we have to do the refight, so all told it was an interesting day, but not one I’d have chosen. It would have been better if we’d got the battle we needed, but then the dice cannot be cajoled. Which brings me to the point about fudging games for reports. When I was Editor of White Dwarf I was often asked whether we made bits up or changed things for battle reports, and the answer is no. I’ve seen other people try it, and it always seemed to end in tears, causing more problems and work than simply doing it again. When I was in charge my brief to whoever was fighting it was usually very simple: play an interesting game. have something to say when you write it up. If it was dull, then play another. It’s much easier to start from scratch and fight a new battle than to fiddle with the game and fudge loads of rolls. Luck comes and goes, and if you start making up dice results then the odds have a habit of messing you up when they try to balance themselves naturally.

Once in a blue moon we’d have to make changes when it came to writing them up and someone noticed that we’d made a mistake. If it had got too far down the line for a refight to be possible (usually because of time pressures) then you had no choice but to make the minimum changes you could to fix the error and work around it. Thankfully we knew the games so well that this hardly ever happened. The only time I remember specifically was when there was a mistake in the army build and someone had a character they shouldn’t have. As it happened, he’d been killed on turn 1, so all we did was remove all mention of him, and have that unit shoot someone else and miss. Not ideal, but could have been much worse. Apart from that it was just refights. As long as they’re done early enough you can just fight it again.

Which brings me back to this one. We’ll use the one we fought somewhere else, so the time isn’t wasted, it’s just inconvenient that we have to find the space to do our original plan again. And I’d written such a grand intro for it as well…

Writing a battle report at the moment, which is something I haven’t done in a while. Actually, I haven’t fought it yet, but I’m doing the “why I picked the army I did” bit for my intro. From experience, I’d say that these are best done before you fight it. It’s all too easy to reinvent the reasons you really chose things after the event. It’s not that I’m a stickler for honesty and that I must tell the truth (though that isn’t so far from my views anyway), but that you get more interesting topics to talk about like this. If I pick a unit for my army for reason A and then they turn out to do something completely different once I get them on the table, then I’ve got something interesting  and perhaps surprising to talk about.

I did play a game with these armies on saturday as a sort of warm up, and that helped me fine tune the army. However, that’s the only time I’ve ever played it. To be honest, that’s the only time this army has ever been played before. By anyone.

Cutting edge stuff, this game design lark. Almost like brain surgery 😉

I know that it’s hardly fashionable to talk at length on a topic on the net, but I can’t help myself. Blogs are OK, but they are quite a short space to cram in a whole rant, and they are also entirely transitory. Many of my (intended) rambles are valid for years. For example, my thoughts on points systems, charge rules, resource management and so on. Yes, you’re right, I do change my opinion over time, but not often, and not everything all at once. It’s not so much that I’m an old stick-in-the-mud, more that I’ve been designing games for over 35 years, so I don’t often see things that are entirely surprising or haven’t been done somewhere before. Still exiting when I do though. But I digress, which is very likely to happen again, and partly why the blog is too short.

To cope with this I’m going to work out how to put extra pages and stuff onto this site so that I can post things that won’t just fall off the bottom of the page. Some will be generic thoughts like the ones mentioned above, others specific, such as the first couple which will be related to Dwarf King’s Hold. All will be on my chosen topic: the design philosophy of board and tabletop games.

“What a pretentious twerp”, I hear you cry through the ether. Well, I’ve been called worse. Actually, I don’t think it is pretentious – I think it is central to a deeper understanding of games and gaming in general, and may be entirely relevant to your favourite game in particular. Design philosophy is behind every decision a game designer makes when he or she writes rules, whether they realise it or not. It is why the rules are as they are; not just for my games, but for every game.

And the name of this column/editorial/ramble/irritation (delete as applicable), in case you hadn’t guessed, is In the Detail.

Why am I posting when I haven’t told anyone about this site yet? Well, it’s a matter of discipline. How regularly can I keep posting stuff? No point in telling the world and then having nowt but tumbleweed to show. This site isn’t pretty, but I’m not doing so bad at posting regularly. Especially considering the ludicrous workload I currently have.

Once it’s prettied up and I’ve worked out adding pages then I’ll spread the word.