Quote from: Elliot Wilen;459810Also, I happened across a whole bunch of copies of Warmaster, a GW miniatures game that seems to be a little more "serious simulation" than WarHammer; in fact it was the basis for genuinely historical versions.

There are also the historical versions of Warhammer... like Warhammer Ancients... based on earlier versions of the fantasy game. Last I heard GW has decided to shut them down though.
The 3rd edition of the fantasy game is pretty neat, much more open... it was before everything GW started focusing on 'tournaments'.

The "Battle Rules" topic may be misleading, as CRKrueger seems really to be looking for

(a) 1:1 rules with some individuality but less than typical in BRP
(b) "skirmish level" (maybe 5:1 man:figure?) rules with units as the focus

Warmaster goes for a pretty high level of abstraction, with typically three stands per regiment and a focus on the general's command capabilities. It's somewhere between DBA and DBM, perhaps. The GW miniatures for it were in 10mm scale, small figures for big battles.

For the first rules, the 1:1 level, I would think that just trimming off however many bells and whistles one finds not worthwhile should do it. Drop hit locations and so on, and you're down to something just a couple more steps than Original D&D:
(1) attack roll
(2) parry roll
(3) damage roll
(4) subtract armor
(5) subtract damage from hit points

OD&D would be just 1, 3 and 5.

You could combine 1 and 2 with a table. E.g., A 65% vs. P 45% = 36% (actually 35.75%) chance of a hit. Call 2/6 (33.33%) close enough, and if you have bunches of guys with the same stats, then you're tossing a handful of cubes per bunch.

Critical and fumble chances can be applied only in certain cases, perhaps, or you could make up a table to roll from 0 to X of either based on Y total hits or misses (as applicable).

If this has been mentioned and I forgot, I'm sorry:
freewargamesrules
has links to many, many rules sets.

Yes, BattleLust is pretty much as Phillip describes for 1:1--"trimming" Harnmaster down; the same can be done for BRP/RQ.

Another game I came across today is Battlesystem Skirmish. Dunno if it has much connection to the original Battlesystem, which was another large-scale system. This one is 1:1, based on D&D at the time, but apparently simplified to the point that you could more easily play a fight with a dozen or dozens of figures on a side.

At this scale one question is whether you just want it simple enough to be manageable, or if you also want to add stuff like morale (which I think may be missing in most d% games, unlike D&D) and C3. E.g. if you wished you could roll to see whether an NPC did one of the following:

1. Follow exactly the command issued (or move at the player's will, if no prewritten orders are used).

2. Attack nearest enemy.

3. Stand ground.

Etc. With modifiers based on some kind of awareness rating, proximity to an "leader" figure, and so forth.

A bit like SPI's old Sniper/Patrol game.

Speaking of board wargames, there's also Cry Havoc and its successors.

Ooh yeah, Cry Havoc was nifty, I seem to recall.

Quote from: Phillip;459875Ooh yeah, Cry Havoc was nifty, I seem to recall.

I had Cry Havoc, back in the day, and had fun with it.  I didn't know there were successors, though.  Off to Google...

Quite a few. Boardgamegeek is a good place to start if google doesn't already direct you there. I'm pretty sure there are some good fan pages.

Off the top of my head, there's a siege game, a Viking game, a Crusades game with the Krak de Chevaliers and some kind of strategic campaign, a samurai game, and a fantasy game.

Verifying the above, I found one site: http://www.cryhavocfan.org/eng/suite/concepts.htm

Note that some later games altered the rules (for the better IMO), and some may only be available in French.

There was even a Wild West game in the same vein called Thunderin' Guns; not sure if it uses exactly the same system.

Thanks for the suggestions and links all.  I'm going to work on trimming down MRQII, maybe using the resistance table to get percentage attack and damage rolls, then convert to d20 so you could roll a handful at once.

Also gonna pick up Battlelust to see how they cut down Harnmaster for ideas/things to steal.

I grabbed Havoc, just doing a quick overview, it seems like a good wargame.

Cry Havoc? It's cool.

Its getting a bit old school (and definitely long out of print) but War Law was the original RM2 mass combat rules (which is percentile\d100).

I remember it being pretty simple and quick to use. That could just be the hazy memory of youth though.

Quote from: Benoist;460552Cry Havoc? It's cool.

I meant Havoc: Tactical Miniatures Warfare that Philotomy suggested, but I also got the Cry Havoc rules from that link Elliot posted.  Definitely going to play the Outremer and Croisades campaigns.

Quote from: tellius;460555Its getting a bit old school (and definitely long out of print) but War Law was the original RM2 mass combat rules (which is percentile\d100).
I remember it being pretty simple and quick to use. That could just be the hazy memory of youth though.

Man, I totally forgot about War Law, thanks for that one.