This weekend I hung out with some old friends playing D&D 4e and we had a great time. The DM didn't have time to flesh out a full adventure and we were happy just to toss around characters and play combats. All of us are Warhammer players so getting together for an evening of skirmishes, pizza and brew is always a good thing.
4e is particularly well suited for Skirmish Play. There are so many interesting character options which develop differently at certain levels so its very fun trying them out in different combos. We put PHB 1 vs PHB 2 characters through some paces and I was impressed by their vivid differences and balance.
It's not a competitive Skirmish though if you are fighting monsters. The 4e math for PC vs. Monster is PC's get hurt and win. PCs are usually only in trouble when worn down over a number of encounters. It's more "fuck around skirmish" where the group beats down on monsters. My guys are tactically strong, so I up the threat levels and total XP to keep everyone challenged along the ride.
Being a good DM takes time and effort, even if you are naturally skilled and/or practiced in the storytelling arts. However, setting up combat encounters is very easy.
At its most basic, you just have a wide open battlefield and two opposing sides. The DMG gives you the range of threats for the character's level and the range of XP you get to spend on the encounter. Then you just go through your MM and pick monsters you like who would be cool to toss against the players. If you have a shred of creativity, its simple to add terrain, terrain effects, interesting battlefield options and maybe even victory conditions.
All in all, not much different than setting up a game of Mordheim or Necromunda or any other small unit skirmish game. Except squares are easier to count than inches.
What I also liked was the time from prep to play. An experienced group with their own books/PDFs can crank out a character of any heroic level in 30 minutes. Sure, everyone could take 2 hours to finetune, but if you put people on the clock, 30 minutes from start to finish gets the job done.
Same for the DM. Any DM with the DMG and MM can crank out a basic encounter in 30 minutes. And with the joy of everyone having laptops and nearby printer, at the 30 minute mark, you can hit print and go.
Can I do the same thing in Classic D&D? Yes and no. We can easily crank out everything in 15 minutes, but combats are rarely as tactically interesting and not as intricate. OD&D combat is fast, brutal and often a comedy of errors and terror. I love it, but 4e does something equally fun, but quite different.
Does playing like this have an anime / video game / board game feel?
Absolutely! But I like anime, video games and board games.
Quote from: Spinachcat;3332714e is particularly well suited for Skirmish Play.
That was certainly the impression I got when I was digesting the rules. Unfortunately, that wasn't what I was hoping to find.
!i!
"It's a floor wax AND a dessert topping!!!"
I dunno about D&D but I've read that old Runequest was designed so that its combat rules could be used as a straight up wargame.
Quote from: Simlasa;333274"It's a floor wax AND a dessert topping!!!"
I dunno about D&D but I've read that old Runequest was designed so that its combat rules could be used as a straight up wargame.
Not RuneQuest, DragonQuest. (SPI) DQ had the combat system released as a tactical wargame.
GURPS, Likewise can be so used, and had the combat system released as a tactical wargame as well.
WFRP 1E can also be so used. No wargame sold separately, tho.
Twilight 2000 had a tactical wargame as well usign the vehicle combat rules. Traveller: The New Era had 2 (Brilliant Lances and Striker II). Both lines are also compatible with each other.
RTG's Mekton RPGs (Mekton, Mekton II, Mekton Zeta) are combined RPG and Mecha Combat Game. So also are Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles, at least the pre-SilCore versions.
Metagaming's The Fantasy Trip was released as two combat games (Wizard and Melee), plus an RPG addendum (In The Labyrinth). When SJ of SJG couldn't get it back from Metagaming, he "redeveloped" it into GURPS.
I'm certai there are others...
Quote from: Spinachcat;333271At its most basic, you just have a wide open battlefield and two opposing sides.
And there you have it, the last legacy issue which 4E didn't go far enough to ditch (in my opinion at least):
dungeons.
The D&D skirmish game always assumed you'd be moving your minis on a 30x40 squares open terrain battle field with some
minor terrain obstacles to generate possibilities for advantageous positioning. The translation of those mechanics (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/DDM_MinBatlRules.zip)to a game that assumes a group of minis travelling down corridoors that are 2 sqares (or, worse, 1 square) wide really falls flat, despite 4E designer's best intentions to the contrary (see for instance the "encounters now span multiple rooms now" design approach (http://blog.microlite20.net/2009/03/09/dungeon-evolution/)). It also really really really
really falls flat in some of WotC' published modules, such as H2 or P2, where the cartographer had not the slightest idea of the rules system he was drawing dungeon rooms for, and as a result stifles 90% of the mobility play of 4E characters.
Spinachcat, if you got any pics of which terrain you used (and be it some wobbly scrawlings on a Chessex mat), I'd be grateful to see them. I'd like to know how wide exactly your terrain was, what terrain effects you used, and whether it felt liberating to play 4E characters in that type of set-up compared to your usual experience.
Personally, if I had a large group of players wanting to do 4E skirmish-style, I'd set up a PvP game with two teams and PCs on each side. The existence of power cards has all but guaranteed that these games will flow smoothly, even when most players are unfamiliar with the precise mechanics of the class they picked.
Edit. I've hyperlinked a free download of the D&D skirmish game rules above - check them out, it's a great game!
Quote from: aramis;333308Not RuneQuest, DragonQuest. (SPI) DQ had the combat system released as a tactical wargame.
No, I meant RuneQuest.
Over on the BRP Central forums there was a thread about using the BRP rules for a miniatures skirmish game and one of the original Runequest guys chimed in that from the get-go they'd wanted RQ to have that functionality because they were all wargamers as well.
It didn't appear as a separate game... but since RQ had all PCs/NPCs fighting under a common set of relatively simple rules, I can see how it would work well for skirmish.
One of our old Traveller GMs used the combat rules from Azhanti High Lightning IIRC.
Yawn, OD&D and AD&D can handle a hundred figures on a side. All you had to do was set a fixed points per hit die and treat it as a casualty removal rating.
d4: 1, d6: 2, d8:3, d10:4, and d12:5
If the damage roll beats the rating the target figure is removed. You didn't think that they gave fighters a hundred followers for background material did you?
Quote from: Windjammer;333338And there you have it, the last legacy issue which 4E didn't go far enough to ditch (in my opinion at least): dungeons.
Dungeons & Dragons ditching dungeons? :hmm:
What's wrong with this picture, I wonder.
Quote from: Simlasa;333274I dunno about D&D but I've read that old Runequest was designed so that its combat rules could be used as a straight up wargame.
While I'm sure there are exceptions, I'm willing to go out on a limb and suggest that just about any RPG produced prior to about 1989 could be adapted to skirmish minis. Some better than others, granted, but that's just the way things were done back then.
Now, back to 4e, I've been on the record as stating that I thought it was a skirmish minis game with roleplaying aspects tacked on, but that's a little unfair.
Warhammer Fantasy Battles and
WH40K are minis with RPG aspects tacked on -- 4e is more robust in its application of roleplaying elements. I find the proportions of its blend displeasing, though, but I have to confess that these are my own predilections getting in the way.
What I
do like about 4e's execution -- or what I
would enjoy, if I were looking for a new skirmish minis game -- is the capacity for levelling-up of "personality" figures. Yes, yes, I'm aware that
WHFB and
WH40K could do this, too, but not to the degree of detail that 4e does. In this regard, I can get a sense of Spinachcat's enthusiasm for the game.
!i!
Quote from: Ian Absentia;333390What I do like about 4e's execution -- or what I would enjoy, if I were looking for a new skirmish minis game -- is the capacity for levelling-up of "personality" figures. Yes, yes, I'm aware that WHFB and WH40K could do this, too, but not to the degree of detail that 4e does. In this regard, I can get a sense of Spinachcat's enthusiasm for the game.
But what would make 4e a better choice for that than any of the other RPGs that can run skirmish battles?
Quote from: Simlasa;333414But what would make 4e a better choice for that than any of the other RPGs that can run skirmish battles?
I good question -- I should have completed my thought. In a word: Long term campaign play. Right, four words. In essence, the ability to play the same personality figure over a protracted series of encounters, and have the satisfaction of your figure's abilities improve and expand over time. The difference I can see between 4e and any of the Warhammer minis games is one of granularity -- that 4e achieves a finer resolution in ability scores than do (most of) the Warhammer rules. Ultimately, this would be a matter of taste, I suppose.
You know, the funny thing about this discussion is that it approaches the old philosophical divide in RPGs: Am I playing a figure that interacts physically with an imaginary world, or am I playing a personality that interacts psychologically with the imaginary world? The truth, of course, is determined by the nature of the encounter with the imaginary world, but that, in turn, is driven by the tastes of the GM and players, with most games lying within a broad middle-ground between the two. The success or failure of any set of rules is in how well they accommodate any given group's tastes (and, I suppose, how much of the rules as written actually get used in play).
!i!
Quote from: Simlasa;333414But what would make 4e a better choice for that than any of the other RPGs that can run skirmish battles?
The quantity of players easily found and available to play? The quantity of resources easily found and available to add additional elements to the skirmish battles you want to play?
Quote from: Mistwell;333418The quantity of players easily found and available to play?
No, please. Let's not go down that road. You're only making the argument that the game is more readily playable, not that it's a better game for it. The same goes for the rest of your post. It's the McDonald's argument, and no one genuinely believes it.
To Simlasa's question, I wouldn't suggest that it's necessarily better than any other RPG with strong tactical elements of play. That said, to my eye, 4e's tactical elements were more robust and concrete than most. Using your example of
RuneQuest, with which I'm very familiar (in its 2nd and 3rd editions), 4e is more tied to the tactical map for movement and vicinity effects, while
RQ is free from a strict grid. Each has its advantages, and I've preferred
RQ because its more amenable to playing fast and loose while still retaining a wide variety of tactical options. As I suggested in my earlier post, this boils down to a matter of taste. These days, I generally don't like tactical combat in my roleplaying at all.
!i!
Just to throw another system into the skirmish game ring - Savage Worlds.
It's built for this sort of stuff and makes it perfectly clear from the get go. You can also role play like crazy with it. It has the advantage of being faster than 4e and being able to handle more combatants.
I prefer to skirmish with Savage Worlds or .45 Adventures, or any of its sibling games from Rattrap, Fantastic Worlds, Gloire, Broadsword Adventures.
D&D is a peculiar mix of abstract in concept and fiddly in detail (this is true in all editions) that I don't like as a pure skirmish game. It's fun for roleplaying, with just a character or two to concentrate on. But playing squads, without the roleplaying aspect, I like a game that feels like it has a more consistent level of abstraction.
My point being that D&D has always done skirmish games. It was fundamental to the original design. Only now it's just not nearly as good at large battles as it used to be.