Fate and Mass Battles

So, yesterday was the first real playtest of the Warfare mini-game in Wrath of the Autarch.  It went about how all the other mini-games went when I first played them: a mixed bag.  In this mission, the players mustered their (pretty crappy) troops to withstand an attack from a limited strength Autarch force.

I went for a more Diaspora-like model of platoon combat as my basis, rather than something like the abstract model that Legends of Anglerre has.  My desire was to fight out units moving around zones, rather than having whole armies roll against each other.  There are many ways to do it, but that level of detail fits better with the rest of the missions already in place.

The narrative phase went well - but no rules have changed there for quite some time.  There were some cool scenes involving leaders from Bavin's Hollow (the Stronghold the players have created) pleading with some local farmers to get out of the path of the oncoming Imperial army.  I compelled one of the players to play to her character's nature and contradict what the other heroes were trying to do.

The Warfare mini-game, though, was a little slow and involved.  I think the mustering the troops went fine (that was pretty easy), and I had drawn out the zone map ahead of time.  But, there were a few issues that I've thought about this evening, and hopefully can resolve before the next playtest of this mini-game.

• The map was too big.  I had too many zones on the map, it was about 8 X 6 (in zones).  Of course, zones aren't grids, but that's still roughly how it was shaped.  That was too many zones.  The units moved too slow, and there was too much down time before it really clashed.  You need more zones than Skirmish (which only has four or five or so), but that was too many.
• A few of the players felt like their heroes didn't have enough options.  In particular, they wanted their bad-ass fighter heroes to be able to do bad-ass fighty stuff.  As it stood now - leaders (commanders of units), could Create an Advantage (makes aspects), Overcome Obstacles (remove them - or get around various static obstacles), or redeploy units under their command.
• Looking back, we weren't creative enough in the creation of aspects.  For instance, it's feasible a warrior could create an aspect which would demoralize an opposing unit simply by wading in and attacking.
• The players were interested in having the ability to attack a leader of the opposing force.  I'm not against this - so I'll probably put it in the rules.
• Too much Create an Advantage can slow things down.  This is sort of a byproduct of the previous issue.  The other mini-games have more options for the characters.  Most of them have a choice of Attack/Create an Advantage/Overcome Obstacle.  Because attack was gone (at least as it pertains to leaders) - that made it drag.
• I'm not sold on rolling for movement.  In Diaspora, each platoon rolls for movement.  In Fate as well, during Conflicts.  For this mini-game, though, it didn't seem to matter much.  It seems like a roll means you can spend Fate points.  But it felt like a lot of rolling for not that much benefit.  I'm thinking of just saying a leader and commanded units can move some base amount - depending on the slowest unit they command.

Those were the main issues.  That battle of itself, which I thought was going to be *very* lopsided, was closer than I anticipated.  The heroes, although they just had poorly trained militia on their side, also had some pretty serious spell power (it's one of their main focuses), and that helped tremendously.

So, it was interesting to see in action, but I have some work to do to make it come together a little better.

Storygames and Metagaming

So, this semi-rant can safely be filed under pedantry.  I've read a few people recently mention they don't like RPGs with lots of metagame decisions, then they mention games like Fiasco.  I've seen this enough that it seems common, but it doesn't really jive with my understanding of the term.

A metagame decision, as I understand it, are the concerns outside the structure of the rules.  An example consisting of something like watching the clock during your D&D game, knowing that the GM has to wrap up the scenario soon, so it's a good idea to blow all your cool spells now.  Or taking it easy on whoever brought the beer that night.

However, talking about scene currency in Fiasco isn't a metagame decision, since it's part of the rules structure.  I guess a metagame decision might be avoiding certain types of scenes based on the comfort level of the players, or something to that effect.

Anyway, this falls back to probably a larger issue in that communication about RPGs is a messy thing.  I guess communication is itself messy, so it's not surprise we can't talk about RPGs very well.  But I think gamers have a variety of terms we love to use, but rarely agree on: crunchy, fluffy, gamist, story game, indie game, simulationist, metagame, simple, complex, railroad, sandbox, old school, new school, munchkin, power gamer, etc.  If nothing else, it provides for conversation.

WotA Playtest Packets

With summer con season approaching I've been thinking about coming up with some different playtest packets for WotA.  Since WotA is a kingdom building game, it's a little harder to come up with a way to showcase how it works, but I think trying to come up with a "use case" for each of the mini-games is a good way to go.

The mini-games are: Skirmish, Infiltration, Diplomacy, and Warfare.  The Infiltration and Diplomacy mini-games are probably where I'll focus first.  The Skirmish mini-game is basically the Fate Core conflict system, so it's not very unique, and Warfare is a little trickier to demo, since there's more overhead in terms of an area to lay out different counters for units and such.

I think it would be nice to come up with backstories for different Strongholds, focused on different sorts of activities.  That way, I can have playtests which are varied both mechanically, and thematically, showing off the different possibilities in the game.  It will also probably help me in design, since I can see how valid the various strategies are.  I would group a set of five pre-generated characters with a sheet for the stronghold, and one mission.

For diplomacy, probably a trade mission is the best way to go.  Maybe a trade mission to Lily Manor in year two or three, with the goal of getting assistance setting up various methods of tracking commerce and trade, with the hope of increasing soft power.  This could feature diplomatic maneuverings and highlight how the trade system works.  It's helpful to have a cultural theme for the Stronghold - maybe a sort of fantasy Renaissance Italy?

With Infiltration, I already have quite a few options fleshed out (courtesy of what my home group has been doing).  One that sounds good is a mission to help Burgan Vale (they're sort of the hippie mage faction), that are being attacked by the Autarch via a bizarre mana draining device.  This would fit a group that was going a more magic/stealth route.  I've wanted to base one Stronghold after a fantasy Asian (maybe Chinese?) theme, and maybe this would be a good fit.  This Stronghold would also probably be a mid-game society (year two or maybe three).

For Skirmish, I can probably just use the characters already in the book and one of the initial Conquest missions, probably to take Sightrock - which seems to be a de facto opening season move.  I'm also not really as interested in playing Skirmish during playtests, not because I don't like it, but because it already works fine, and I don't see it changing.

I'll probably punt on Warfare for now, but I think that would be suited to a late game Stronghold, with a strong military, attacking the Autarch.  But I'll have my hands full just creating characters and sample Strongholds for the Infiltration and Skirmish cases, so I doubt I'll get to Warfare, but ideally, I would like to have one strong playtest ready for all four types of mini-games.