VBAM 2e Review

Victory By Any Means, Second Edition, finally came out a bit over a week ago now.  It was originally scheduled for winter of 2009-2010.

There's some good news and some bad news.

The bad news is that it's close enough to 1e that I had trouble finding the places where the core rules definitely differed (admittedly, it's been a while since I looked at 1e).  The things that immediately jumped out at me were:

• The way Intel Points works has changed a fair bit.
• Trade fleets now operate in a single system, less work plotting paths and less potential exploitability of convoy escorts.
• Constructing ships now takes time and there are a limited number of construction slots on shipyards.  Civilian fleets are exempt from construction time and slots (they're just contractors).
• Colony fleets don't have to pick up census in order to establish a new colony (but get a bonus if they do).
• I think the Reinforcements Pool in space combat has changed but I'm not really sure?  This is also true of the system morale changes table.
• Leftover damage changed in space combat, in a way which produces more satisfactory outcomes but also requires a little more bookkeeping.

Those are about the only things in the core rules that I could point to and go "I would bet you money that this changed."  This was not a half-decade and a new major version number's worth of update.  It's entirely possible that I'm missing plenty of small numerical changes to things like tech investment thesholds or phases being slightly reordered or something, but overall it all looks pretty much the same.

(Also, the editing isn't great - there are some sections that are organized poorly, and the phrase "imperial thrown world" drives me mad)

The good news is that you can probably still use most of the Menagerie and the Moderator's Companion material from 1e in 2e.

The actual good news is that there are some new and improved optional rules (though the WMD rules seem to have gone missing), the new unit design system looks pretty good, and there's a lot more advice for moderators on setting starting conditions and generally making the game work.  The provided scenarios have been improved; starting force values are higher (meaning you can skip or reduce the boring buildup phase of the early game) and there are more victory conditions across the board.  The changes to Barbarians at the Gates are particularly well-done.  The new starmaps are really aesthetically pleasing, too.

At the end of the day, though, VBAM2 has failed to escape 1e's "World War II in spaaaace" nature.  Its economics are solidly Industrial Era, its navies are along battleships-and-carriers lines, and the whole game structure is of War for Vast Territorial Conquest (which van Creveld has argued in both Rise and Decline of the State and The Transformation of War to be obsolete in the Age of the Nuke).  Admittedly space changes that dynamic some, but if you're willing to allow ships with stealth and FTL (as these rules do), second-strike capability with nukes or grey goo bombs or whatever is possible and a MAD situation seems likely to follow logically.  Overall it feels rather like a Pacific Theatre island-hopping game with some colonization rules and "FUTURE" stamped in front of it in big red letters.  The 2e draft materials that I recall reading back when bore some promise in this regard - more custom tech, more interesting things like planet destroyers and Homeworld-style nomad fleets, stuff like that.  But as a consequence of sticking close to 1e, 2e has failed in this regard.

It's a pity, too, because computers are generally inadequate for science fiction and fantasy grand strategy games.  Computers handle historical games well because they're tightly scoped with limited possible deviation, but in a scifi/fantasy grand strategy game, breaking the rules is sort of the point.  If I can't build ringworlds and planetary disassemblers and industrial-scale cloning vats and targeted bioweapons...  why bother?  You could write all these things into the rules, but it'd be a bloated mess.  My understanding is that this is sort of what happened to the 2e I was hoping for.  At the end of the day, you have to have plenty of human discretion in the loop to run a game like that; codifying infinite diversity is self-defeating.  But the assumptions in VBAM's core rules, things like "population is a meaningful factor in determining production", make it kinda hard to use as a basis for exploring interesting universes.

In conclusion: It is difficult to compare the work to the author's intent, because that intent clearly changed substantially over the course of development.  Speaking personally, I will probably never play this game.  It is an upgrade from 1e, but not in any of the areas that were keeping us from playing 1e.  It'd be a fine computer game, but there're still too many rules and too much paperwork for any of the potential players I know to be interested in playing it manually, and once you automate it you lose the flexibility to do interesting things (which the system already doesn't support without some elbow grease).

Logistics

I've been thinking about grand strategy games recently, and it occurs to me that supply rules are a lot like encumbrance rules, in that they're a pain in the ass but also worthwhile because they convey the same concerns the character experiences up to the player.  A dungeoneer worries about how much weight he's carrying; a general worries about how to keep his men fed.  What's more, as Keegan's History of Warfare suggests, supply concerns dictated the largely-coastal structures of campaigns in the Hellenic era.  Without supply, you get all kinds of crazy long-term unsupported actions in the enemy rear (this is a problem I have observed in, say, the Civilization series of games).

But the difference between supply and encumbrance is that we're reached a reasonablish compromise between complexity and realism in our encumbrance rules, with encumbrance by stone or with Traveller's low-kilos threshold.  I don't know if supply is amenable to simplication...  but until I find a set of rules for it which are really light-weight, I expect that it will remain one of those much-begrudged rules which is ignored by the players whenever I forget about it.

(Been thinking about wargame campaigns again, since I'm back in Collegetown and one of my main wargaming opponents / buddies is still around)

A Return to Wargaming?

Jimdad suggested on the recent organizational resources post that it would make sense for me to do some test runs of all the tech before trying to run a full-blown campaign with it.  This is sensible, but one-shots are unsatisfying as a rule.  Unrelatedly, I've had VBAM and space wargaming on the brain recently for no apparent reason.  But they do suggest an alternative means for tech-testing, in that wargames are primarily one-off affairs (at least in our group) which work well with a small and irregular player pool.  Playing one-off wargame scenarios also leads nicely into campaigns, which might beget universe generation and lead to workable RPG settings.

I'm sort of looking back at the Starmada Summer of 2011 as a model, but hopefully with a less flexi-fragile system (or a gentleman's agreement that if something is broken, you use it to win once and then can it).  I think Full Thrust in one of its several incarnations would probably serve us well, as it is a very simple core game with lots of optional things to experiment with (I for one would be curious to try Colonial Battlefleet's initiative system on top of FT's general mechanics; I'm just not a huge fan of pre-plotted movement).  Full Thrust is also old enough and well-enough vetted that its exploitable flaws are known (documented and discussed in the expansion books) and can hopefully be avoided.  It also has a nice-looking sample campaign in the back of the FT2E manual.

Other options:

• Starmada: Nova - we never really gave this one a fair shake, and the seeker rules are pretty neat.  On the minus side, forum reports that stacking up weapon traits is still pretty broken.
• Colonial Battlefleet - sort of hampered by lack of good shipyard spreadsheet.  I have one half-thrown together, but got bored.  Good stealth and initiative rules, and the Raider type from the expansion book looks like fun.  On the minus side, fairly heavy bookkeeping for shields.
• Battleshift - Fleet engagements with some cool tactical warp mechanics.  If I recall correctly, though, it needs a pretty big playing area, and I've seen roll20 lag out under less. 
• Space Hulk.  The problem with Space Hulk is that it's unusually stressful, because there is some serious "oh god oh god we're all going to die" going on continuously  (...  holy cow, this must be what it's like to play in my ACKS games.  No wonder they keep disintegrating!  On the other hand, if you play ACKS well, it's less of a problem than if you play Space Hulk well, because the DM is slightly less actively malicious than the 'stealer player).  Also the maps are deceptively expansive.
• BattleTech Lite - light to medium mechs from the earliest time period only, and perhaps no melee.  Could be fun as long as you keep the total number of armor / structure points low.
• Domains at War: Battles - Our experiences so far suggest that DaW:B is too heavy unless there's some significant investment in the outcome (ie, a PC realm at stake). On the other hand, two games between inexperienced players is not a whole lot to go by.  I've been meaning to write some scenarios for this - the system could definitely use one highlighting the fortification rules, and everybody loves Helm's Deep.
• Hell, a sample DaW:C campaign would be fun too, and if the battles were resolved using the Campaigns rules, it might work alright for one-off afternoon games (though I sort of expect a lot of overhead from the recon rules - TODO automate recon).  I could steal something from Crusader Kings and keep the magic-and-wyvern-cavalry level historically low for ease of use.
• Anything in the 15-25mm infantry sphere - I have my doubts about how well roll20 would handle these, and Vassal suffers from limited plugins.  Options include Stargrunt, Gruntz, WH40k, and many many others.
• Dirtside or other 6mm microarmor games - Again, I don't think this one would do well on roll20.  Also chit-based damage.

So if anybody from the old Starmada crew is reading this, hit me up via the usual channels if something here's interesting.

VBAM Scenarios - The Succession Wars

I was thinking about VBAM scenarios in the shower, and came across a promising variant of the MoO Scenario that I mentioned previously.

Consider a future-feudal empire, whose emperor holds power over the Noble Houses through his extensive spy network, the strength of his Praetorian Guard, and his sole possession of weapons of mass destruction.  The Houses pay him tribute in taxes and troop levies for the suppression of rebellions, though they are constrained by imperial law to build only certain technically-inferior ships for the purposes of policing their territories.  Though they politick and plot against each other, the ambitions of the Houses are largely checked by imperial power, and peace is had in human space.  A dynasty of five hundred years rolls on in this fashion, with technology largely stagnant, until suddenly and unexpectedly the emperor and his heirs are assassinated and their genetic backups destroyed in an act of exceptionally coordinated sabotage.  Elements of the Praetorian Guard are implicated, and they fragment as an organization, though the Houses pay dearly to acquire their soldiers and advanced equipment for their own militaries.  With the check of imperial power gone, minor feuds over traditionally-contested territories erupt into open warfare among the Houses, often justified with accusations of involvement in the death of the emperor, and long-forgotten weapons development programs and military academies reopen their doors across human space.  Each House also seeks to legitimize its own claim to the throne, by means fair or foul; through backing from the Praetorian remnants, through popular support from the citizenry, or through simple ability to take and hold the Throneworld against all comers.

In short - Game of Thrones meets Legend of the Five Rings meets elements of the BattleTech and Traveller universes.  In spaaaace.

Dreams of Orion

It's not very often that I dream of video games (well, at least not now that I run linux...  and have kicked my Dwarf Fortress habit...).  But every now and then, I'll still wake up with a fading memory of Master of Orion.  Armadas in the blackness over Tau Eridani, the crackle of the lightning field generators, the shockwaves of hulls shattered by antimatter warheads...  But there was more to it than that, the Clausewitzian decisive battle upon which the fates of empires hinged.  The spying, assassinations of enemy leaders, sabotage of enemy factories, the gathering of allies through careful diplomacy, sending wolf packs of missile frigates across the border on scouting and raiding missions while trying to tech up to the Next Big Weapon that would let you crack enemy shields or better drives for more strategic maneuverability, and the colonization of dozens of worlds for the purposes of building the great fleets mattered too.  Two hundred turns (and days of realtime) might be spent building up first, even reaching the enemy across the vast distances of space.  And then when the battle became imminent, you looked and went, "Have I done enough?  Is victory assured?  I cannot know the full power of the enemy until it is met, but if I should hold back now, gather more intel, do more research, and perform upgrades on my ships, will the enemy attack before I am as ready as I should hope?  No, now is the time, and I must strike.  May my little virtual alien citizens forgive me if I am wrong and they must pay the price and die by the billions."

I guess what I felt was, in some sense, the allure of the Old School - attachment to what you have earned by means of extensive labor and luck, the virtue of preparation, the cunning application of every form of leverage available to achieve victory, and ultimately exposing your beloved creation to a real risk of utter destruction.  And overall, I feel like the ACKS group has done a decent job of showing the joys of these elements in RPG play to a bunch of 3.5ers.  But...  there is one thing that is lacking in my ACKS game, and that is scope, scale, a sense of the epic, the shattering of continents and the building of civilizations.  Certainly, the domain rules help, but ultimately, should any one PC die or fail, they expose no more than a tiny corner of the world to peril, and the world as a whole goes on, uncaring and harsh as it ever was (for that is the nature of my world).

I think that sense of scale is what I miss about MoO.  And I'd like to bring that back into my tabletop games, along with the other virtues of the Old School I mentioned above (aside - I've been thinking about writing a series on Pillars of Old School Play as I perceive them.  Kind of an Old School Primer For The Recovering New School GM.  Not sure I'm qualified, but it's on the to-do list anyways).

To return to the point, I feel compelled to try to run Victory By Any Means.  This is not to say that ACKS must end (though I do perceive that the second generation of PCs, Carcophan, Garwyn, and Corinth, have largely achieved their immediate adventuring objectives), but that perhaps I should run it for the rest of the semester and then look at wrapping things up and running VBAM in the spring.

Naturally, there are logistical complications (as with any operation so complex as VBAM).  Previously I've had trouble getting people to seriously considering playing VBAM, heavy a system as it (it's kind of funny, that people will chew through a couple hundred pages for an RPG, but won't read 88 for VBAM's core.  I attribute this to the fact that most of an RPG book is options for players, while most of VBAM is solidly in the Rules department).  This is especially funny when you consider the fact that among games of VBAM's sort, tabletop galactic 4X games, it's considered "pretty lightweight actually."  In any case, I think I would have a better shot at making this work if I cut out a bunch of things to make the game easier to run and easier to play, honing in the focus on things which the players consider interesting (read: building spaceships and conquering things) and ignoring or streamlining other facets.  Things I could definitely see cutting out:

• Diplomacy.  If you have only player empires, it seems fairly viable to let PCs do as they will to each other (which should be fairly hilarious).  That's a good four pages of rules right there.  This way, you can end up with little brush wars without proper declarations of war, backstabbery, and other fun 'realistic' political things.
• Raiding.  This is a huge pain in the butt that involves rolling d%s for lots of systems.  I'd be OK with adding Raiders to the random event table, but having them be a constant threat to every empire will pull focus away from the player-vs-player struggles.  I'd much rather see PC-backed border and shipping raiders.
• Towing.  It's kind of a weird edge case and adds paragraphs for dubious amounts of utility.  Dunno.

What does this leave us with?  Income, construction, research, spying, supply, and space and ground combat.  Of these supply is the clear target, and fairly so, but I also think that there is a very good reason for keeping it in the game - without supply restrictions, it becomes relatively easy to blitzkrieg through enemy-held systems, circumventing well-fortified populated worlds and just making a mad dash to bombard or WMD the enemy homeworld.  Without supply, being cut off and surrounded in enemy territory is not nearly so problematic as it is in real life, because by surrounding, the enemy spreads himself thin, and given equality of forces the surrounded group should be able to punch its way out.  Supply helps counter these issues, because the surrounded unit will begin taking supply penalties and have its combat effectiveness reduced before it can break out.  Supply is enough of a pain that it could perhaps stand to be simplified, but cutting it out altogether I think would be a bad plan.

There are a few optional rules whose additions I think would enhance play.  Quick Colony Fleets, maybe Ballistics Packages, the Black Market (ideally as a place for empires to buy and sell old equipment anonymously), possibly Stealth / Concealed Movement from the core rules all seem workable and potentially beneficial.  I also know my players to be terrible gearheads and RPG players, so the prototyping, directed research, planetary facilities, and elite officers rules from the Companion also seem promising (also considering the option of permitting defeated governments to become Underworld Empires as Governments in Exile, but the jury's out on that one).  I'm loathe to set them loose on the Menagerie, but perhaps with a low point limit and a restriction on abilities affecting diplomacy (since those would be annulled).  Other than those, I guess I'm of the opinion that "If someone says 'I want to do X', and there's a rule for X in the Companion, maybe I'll make that rule available," but I don't want to bog things down initially with two dozen optional rules.

Then there are practical organizational considerations.  There are a couple of possible formats I see here:

• Full PvP, no CM empires, either free-for-all or initially allied in one of several configurations (two large alliances against each other, one alliance against several small unallied powers, or so forth).  This has the advantage of allowing an absolutely impartial moderator, but the disadvantage of secrecy like we saw in the Starmada campaign - sitting around with laptops typing furtively is not a terribly compelling face-to-face experience.  Paired alliances could help with this; then there is less secret communication, and you really just need two rooms for plotting out loud.
• The MoO approach - in MoO3 at least, you had a bunch of PC empires and one highly advanced, isolationist CM empire (the New Orions).  Whichever player can first conquer the CM homeworld and hold it for some period of time wins.  There's no risk of being steamrolled by the CM empire during buildup, because they're isolationist, but god help you if your first strike doesn't do the job.  This setup provides a clear victory condition, but also sets the players against each other.  They may ally initially, but those alliances will crumble in the endgame.
• The RPG approach - Small PC empires against a large, CM empire, effectively using the Barbarians at the Gate scenario from the book.  The major concern here is lack of CM neutrality, which works fine in RPGs but is...  a little trickier in wargames.  Also puts a lot of 'load' on the server for management purposes.  It would, however, do the most to promote PC cooperation and open tabletop play.

The MoO approach does seem promising...

Release Updates (also Iron Heroes)

From the list of releases I'm watching for:

Starmada Nova: Cricket publicly released a finalish-looking draft of the first 11 pages of rules of the new edition.  It's very similar to the early draft that I mentioned previously, but there are some interesting differences.  In particular, on page 5 under Sequence of Play, there's a note that if one player outnumbers the other by 2 to 1 or more, they move or fire with two ships for each one that the outnumbered side fires with.  OK, nothing new there.  What is new, however, is that if you get to activate two or more ships per activation, your opponent chooses one of the ships for you to activate.  That's a hell of a tactical wrinkle under alternating movement and with damage being resolved during firing rather than at end of turn.

There's also an interesting note about Partial VP on page 11; it's like the crippling rules we used during our campaign, but better - you need to take a ship down to 2/3 hull to get half its value, rather than 1/2 hull.  Also nice that it's just a standardized rule now, rather than something we hacked on.

Finally, we got a confirm from Cricket down-thread that fighters will have their own reactive movement phase.  Oh well; probably for the better.   The new enemy-forced activation rules would really mess with fighters by allowing them to force you to activate your fighters early during ship movement, which would be quite a waste.

Mongoose Traveller Campaign Guide: Released to pdf this last week, the Campaign Guide looks pretty interesting, actually.  It's about as long as the Core, but full of random tables and whatnot for GMs.  I'm tempted to pick up a copy and do a review.

5e: No official news via EnWorld in the last two weeks.  However, this last week Monte &co spent most of their blog space talking about "high-level play", and how it always breaks down in previous editions.  Arguably in 1e/2e it was least bad, but casters were king (but, they had earned it by positively sucking for the first, oh...  long time).  In 3e, it was way too complicated and combats took six hours, despite the fact that they were only two rounds of game time.  My understanding is that 4e core high-level / epic combats also take a long damn time because monsters have ridiculously high HP and AC (er, defenses).  So, I say to Monte and Company: Get thee to a playtest!  That's been the issue with both iterations of Wizards D&D (as opposed to TSR D&D before 3e) - high-level play was horribly under-playtested.

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be what they're focusing on; rather, they're looking at whether the play experience should change at high levels.  Me, I'd love to see kingdom building and ascension to deityhood as things on the high-level agenda.  "Epic dungeon crawls" make very little sense to me, and frankly seem somewhat dull.  Unfortunately, that seems to be what they're looking at; it's all about the artifacts and the plane-hopping.  While planar travel might not initially sound like code for dungeon-crawling, it pretty much is.  What is the Abyss but an infinite dungeon, full of an infinite number of high-level monsters with corresponding treasure, in addition to serious environmental trap-like threats?  It's the biggest dungeon ever.

And artifacts.  Argh.  So many artifacts these days are just big shiny swords with more bonuses than you could normally get.  3.x exemplars of this problem are the Hammer of Thunderbolts and the Saint's Mace.  While these are very nice weapons, they don't feel like Artifacts with a capital A.  Artifacts, to me, must bear an element of risk or sacrifice.  The Hand and the Eye of Vecna, the Sphere of Annihilation, and the Deck of Many Things all feel like artifacts.  Powerful evil intelligent weapons (Blackrazor / Stormbringer, for example, or our own instantiation of the trope, Mavrilith) definitely qualify, too.  The Orbs of Dragonkind also have the nice drawback that all dragons now hate you.  That's pretty acceptable, as far as drawbacks go.  But those shiny +6 keen goblinoid-bane throwing dwarven waraxes?  Not so much.

Trailblazer Monster Book:  Not a whole lot of progress on this front.  Still working on lycanthropes and layouts, I guess.  I found their gnoll art, though; it's pretty sweet.  The werehyena's good, too.

VBAM 2e: Still in editing.  They did post an update a while back with some draft supply, facilities, and loyalty rules, but I have not yet perused them.  Going to wait until they put out a combined playtest draft, I think.

ACKS:  Not actually something I'm waiting for a release on, but something I'm seriously tempted to pick up, especially given reasonable pdf prices.  Their mapping system has been getting some attention in the blogosphere of late (at Grognardling, with a series in responses at Untimately), and from Untimately's review (part 1 and part 2), it sounds a lot like "Traveller Meets 1e", with the 1e side favored in the mechanics.  I also got quite the Iron Heroes setting vibe off of the publisher's website:

Enter a world where empires totter on the brink of war, and terrible monsters tear at the fragile borderlands of men; where decaying cities teem with chaos and corruption, nubile maidens are sacrificed to chthonic cults and nobles live in decadent pleasure on the toil of slaves; where heroes, wizards, and rogues risk everything in pursuit of glory, fortune, and power. This is a world where adventurers can become conquerors – and conquerors can become kings.

 See, 5e devs, that's what high-level play should sound like.

If nothing else, I should probably pick up copy of ACKS to compare against Fields of Blood, which is what I'd probably use for high-level 'realmy' play presently.  Though now that I think about it, Iron Heroes + Fields of Blood would fix / ignore a lot of FoB's high-level caster problems...  hmm...

Some of the token mechanics would get weird in mass combat, but it would probably be OK.  If the Armiger, the Berserker, or the Weapon Master engage in mass combat, they come out with piles of tokens.  Heck, this would be the best time to play a Weapon Master; usually combats are too short for them to build up to their finale / combo moves.  The Archer would convert well, since it's just based on aiming time, and mass combat turns are long.  Executioners and Hunters would do the worst of the token classes, I think.  Hunters could do OK via Tactics / Lore feats to provide wide-areas bonuses to their units, but their class abilities are too small-scale.  Executioners could do the same unit support stuff via Lore, but they're really most useful for engaging single high-value targets like enemy generals and heroes.  Harriers just get the running-around bonuses all the damn time, and Men-At-Arms are as versatile as ever.  Thieves...  not so much for the battlefield, but the Social feats would make them master spies.  And Arcanist power is sufficiently limited and sufficiently dangerous to use that applying it is actually a question, rather than "Yeah, I'm a 9th-level wizard, I'll go stop the invading army single-handedly, be right back *teleport*."

Upon further reflection, though, IH characters have huge numbers of abilities geared towards small, discrete bonuses in skirmish combat which cease to be applicable or are otherwise too granular for mass combat.  Granting an extra flanking bonus to an ally via War Leader, for example.  The scale on that is just far too small to be useful in mass combat.  One tempting option, however, would be to provide a second scale of tokens.  Mass Combat $TYPE Tokens are earned as normal tokens of their type via more-or-less equivalent actions in mass combat.  They can then be spent to provide bonuses on that scale to units which the PCs are secunded to.  The berserker works his men into a frenzy, the archer directs the volleys of his bowmen with great precision, the armiger organizes a shield wall, and the hunter exhorts his troops to capitalize on fortuitous terrain.

Weapon Master and Executioner get kind of stuck here, though - sheer weapon skill is hard to provide to people, and martial units tend not to be particularly sneaky, nor deft at backstabbery.  It might be reasonable for certain types of units, or for units which are officially under the command of the WM / Exec; if you're a light scout unit and your commander is the Lord Assassin, you might pick up a few tricks.  Likewise, the 4th Northbridge Pikemen, having been drilled extensively under the harsh tutelage of the Pikemaster, might be able to pull off some impressive feats of pikesmanship (quiet, spellchecker).

Frankly, though, I'm not really sure I have a problem with Executioner, Berserker, and Weapon Master not being ideal line-unit commanders.  They seem more likely to be best for either cutting swathes through enemy units on their own (Berserker and WM), or seeking out and disabling or dueling enemy leaders (Exec and WM).  Armiger, Hunter, and Man-at-Arms all gain Tactics Mastery, and are frankly not as suited for one-on-one confrontation with strong enemy leaders as the more offensively-powerful classes, nor to cutting though massed troops unsupported like the Berserker.  Archer and Harrier are tricky; they make most sense as commanders of specialist units (archers and cavalry, respectively).  And Thieves...  saboteurs, infiltrators, and general-purpose commanders, I suppose.  They certainly have the skill points to put into Command, even if it isn't a group skill.  Honestly, the Thief shines in diplomacy, not on the battlefield.

One additional promising avenue of research here would be to convert the Fields of Blood prestige classes (where applicable) into mastery feat trees or class abilities.  Warlord's abilities fall under Tactics mastery (possibly merging Warlord and Warcrier into one mastery feat), Master Mason's under Siege Lore, Living Legion's under Power or Armor, and Hordemaster's look a lot like Berserker rage abilities.

Finally, if I were to attempt such a game, I think I would likely use Hong's Hack, which fixes a great many things in Iron Heroes (though not the armor problem, which is frankly less of a problem in mass combat.  Neat).

And so we see that I don't actually need any more books, as long as I can be still be inspired by the advertising copy.  Why am I writing a post about new and upcoming releases again?

Miscellanea 2: VBAM Race Updates, a Return to Traveller, and Space Hulk Meets Alien Swarm

It's another light, mixed post like the first miscellanea post back in September.

Got some good feedback on the proposed trope-based VBAM races from the VBAM yahoo group, so here are the updates on those:

Bugs: Swapping out Stalwart Defenders for Aggressive (all owned ground units gain +1 attack) and Hungry Hungry Hydralisks (when genociding enemy census, you gain 20% more EPs than normal).  This generates a much more offensively-scary, all-devouring species of bug, rather than the turtling-type bugs in the older version.

Bots: General consensus on the yahoo group is that Robotic is overpowered as a result of being able to build lots of census wherever they want.  Thus, probably swapping in Cybernetic (like robotic, but can't build census, lower population maintenance, and not collective-only government) and some other small bonus...  not sure what to do for that yet.  Possibly Efficient Industry (+10% construction capacity on all owned planets), something military, or a social trait like Closed Society.

Savages: Only suggestion on this one was to allow varying of the military traits to differentiate different savage empires.  Easily done on the fly.

Puppeteers: Agreed that these are probably nerfed, and suggested adding a small bonus to Sneaky like ability to modify scenario length up or down by 1.

Merchants: Not much here...  suggestion to add non-player empires for the Puppeteers and Merchants to spend their free diplomatic intel on, and for the Merchants to trade with, but that's not really a species trait change.

So that about covers the VBAM stuff...  unfortunately, the more I think about VBAM-Traveller integration, the more issues I run into, particularly with economic and planetary scales.  Traveller population, for example, grows exponentially, while VBAM population grows linearly, and then there's the ugly question of "How many megacredits is an EP worth?".  These issues, combined with trepidation on Matt's part with regards to reading all of VBAM's rules, suggest that maybe a straight Traveller game would be a better plan.  I've had a premise for such a campaign on the back burner for a while, so maybe that'll see play next semester (with prep and handout construction over winterbreak).

Finally, I was thinking about Space Hulk and Alien Swarm in the shower today.  Space Hulk is a classic Games Workshop game which pits a squad or two of marines with guns against terrifyingly fast aliens who are deadly in melee.  The game is heavily skewed in favor of the aliens, but this means that when the humans do win, there's usually a hell of a story to go along with it.  Alien Swarm, on the other hand, was a short-lived freebie game from Valve which pitted four human players of marines with guns against a swarm of mostly-weak melee aliens, with a few special / scarier genotypes around to mix things up (parasites.... urrrrgh...).  It was a significantly less lethal games than Space Hulk for the humans, but was a lot of fun.  The multiplayer community has mostly died off, though, which is sad, so I'm kind of curious if I can tweak Space Hulk / 40k to run something similar to Alien Swarm without getting bogged down in massive complexity like Deathwatch did.

VBAM Aliens Follow-Up

So instead of doing homework for the last couple days, I've been working on some balanced, trope-based races for Victory By Any Means.  Here's what I've got so far:

Bugs:

• Adaptable - Raises carrying capacity of all owned planets by 20%
• Fast Gestation - Check for population growth every 6 turns rather than 12
• Hive Mind - +20% construction capacity, but limited to Collective governments
• Incomprehensible Language - All treaties have a 50% chance of failure
• Subterranean - Increases dug-in bonus when defending, halves enemy bombardment points when bombarding owned planets
• Stalwart Defenders - Each owned planet generates militia units to defend it when invaded.

These guys are very good at filling planets with population and at holding on to worlds, but quite bad at diplomacy.  Tactically, they have no particular strengths or weaknesses.  Collective government is pretty strong (+intel defense, +construction capacity, immune to morale, -science, no elite officers), but in a game with elite officers, that penalty is actually a penalty.  Basically, they're all about the macro advantage afforded by high population.  I'm sad that I didn't find a way to work in the "nomnomnom" aspect of the trope - perhaps a special trait that increases EP yields from eating civilians and/or liquidating infrastructure is in order.  I'm also kind of considering building a trait that gives all this race's ships the Biological special ability from the CMC; not sure whether this should also increase maintenance costs of their units, but I don't know by how much.

Bots:

• Advanced Weaponry - +1 Anti-Ship and Anti-Fighter on naval vessels, +1 attack and defense on ground units, +5% military maintenance
• Environmental Tolerance - +2 carrying capacity on all owned worlds, 10% discount on infrastructure purchases
• Predictable - -1 penalty to surprise rolls in space combat
• Robotic - No natural population growth, can artificially build census, 1/3 maintenance on census, +20% construction capacity, Collective governments only, lower difficulty for stealing tech
• Superiority Complex - Until roll a 10 on 1d10, cannot conduct diplomacy with newly-met empire.  Roll each month; declarations of war and hostility unaffected.

Very similar on a holistic level to the bugs - definitely have a macro advantage for booming econ between being able to control population growth and the discount on infrastructure, but bad at diplomacy.  While the bugs have strong defense, the bots have strong offense, but suffer from high maintenance costs (both on military units and on their own populace), and since robotic census is pretty expensive, you're paying economically for your versatility.  I'm most worried about balance on these guys, but I think I hit the main themes of the trope well.

Savages:

• Combat Respect - Treaties with any given power have a 25% chance of failure until you've met their forces in battle
• Honorable - All bonuses and penalties to breaking treaties are doubled
• Maneuverable Ships - Increased control over scenario length
• Martial Prowess - All owned ground units gain +1 to attack, attrition, and d-factor
• Poor Spies - One point of intel per intel mission is 'lost' and generates no benefit 
• Professional Armies - Ground unit maintenance costs are reduced, and military elite officer XP costs receive a 10% discount
• Skilled Commanders - All owned naval units gain +10% command rating
• Warmonger - +20% bonus to declaring war, 15% chance to refuse any off of armistice

In stark contrast to the bugs and the bots, the noble savages have basically no macro advantages, but are very strong in combat, both in space and on the ground.  They're bad at spying, but OK for defense against spies, and suffer from some diplomatic restrictions.  They're mighty good at declaring war, though...  Also, while the bugs and the bots are restricted to Collective governments, the Savages can choose any flavor of government they like (Military Meritocracy, for example).  As far as the tropes go, I probably could cut out some of the naval bonuses, but they're rather nice.

Puppeteers:

• Corrupt - -5% GDP, easier for underworld empires to gain power in owned systems
• Cunning - +1 bonus to surprise rolls in space combat
• Elite Diplomats - 10 free intel points per turn which can only be used for diplomatic purposes, and elite diplomat XP costs gain a 30% discount
• Sabotage Experts - All sabotage missions gain 1 point of free intel
• Shapeshifters - -25% to failure rate of intel missions, but enemies gain a +15% bonus to break treaties
• Slow Gestation - Check for population growth every 18 months rather than every 12
• Sneaky - Reduce the length of pursuit scenarios by 1 turn, pursuer must use one fewer squadron, -10% to chance of being discovered if using stealthy movement

The puppeteers have some serious macro penalties, but gain excellent spies, excellent diplomacy (not only no restrictions like the previous three races suffer from, but bonus intel for diplomacy), and a few tricky tactical bonuses to space combat.  Not a race for a stand-up slugging match, but in a 5-person game, a little plausible deniability could go a long way.  I'm a bit concerned that they might be underpowered, but that's something only playtesting will tell.  I considered the Telepathic and Espionage Expert traits, but I'm not sure hidden forces will be a thing, since we're going to be playing face-to-face / board game style.  If playing by PBeM, substitute Espionage Experts for Sabotage Experts to taste.  There's also no 'dark X' side of the coin here, but I'm pretty OK with that.  Elsewise, hits the tropes fairly well.

Merchants

• Efficient Operatives - Maintenance on Intel points if 1/12 rather than 1/10
• Expert Scientists - -5% to tech investment threshold
• Friendly - Other powers take -15% to break treaties with this power, -10% to declare war against
• Gifted Negotiators - 3 free intel points per turn for diplomacy only
• Logistics Experts - Supply range of 3 starlanes instead of 2
• Mercantile - +20% commerce income
• Open Society - All intel missions against this power are at -1 difficulty
• Unprofessional Armies - Ground unit maintenance increased by 1 per denominator

The merchants are kind of a happy middle ground.  They've got some economic stuff going for them in terms of EP generation, which serves similarly to the macro advantage of the bugs and the bots, but they also have small diplomatic bonuses and a choice of governments.  They have the strategic advantage of long supply lines, but suffer from weak defense against spies and from expensive ground units (justified as having to pay mercenaries).  Think the Italian states of the Renaissance period.  I'm concerned that, as with generalists in many games, the merchants will get stomped by specialists (namely everybody else).  It would be possible to specialize them further, but I'm not sure trade / civilian fleets / supply are a particularly strong thing to specialize in.  Also weird is that they kind of have two cross-purpose traits - Efficient Operatives makes it cheaper to hold on to lots of defensive intel, which is then rendered less effective by Open Society.  Not entirely happy with that; could swap Efficient Operatives for another 'spy' trait of the same price to put a particular spin on them.  Mission Specialist: Assassinate Officer significantly changes the way the race feels, for example, from a bunch of merchants to a race of mercenaries, while Insurgency Specialist puts a more social / cultural powerhouse spin on things (a bit more like modern Japan, perhaps).

So, that's what I've got.  In a five-player match, one of each species, I'm really not sure how things would roll out.  I think the puppeteers and bugs would get along great, as the 10 points of free diplomatic intel can be used to counter the language barrier, allowing treaties with no chance of failure.  This leaves the savages, the bots, and the merchants to kind of hack things out amongst themselves...  That could go quite poorly for the merchants, leading to possibly a "Poland between Germany and Russia in World War 2" situation, or to a small, staged engagement between the merchants and the savages in order to satisfy the savages' combat respect and allow an alliance with the machines...  Really depends on the players, there, and possibly on the order of contact between species.

VBAM, Aliens, and Traveller

So I've been reading lots of VBAM source, and came across some interesting options between the Campaign Moderator's Guide and the Menagerie.  First, from the Menagerie, custom alien races built on a point-buy system.  I really like the idea of differing alien races, but the issue is that as we saw in Starmada, when you let players customize all of their stuff, you end up with some players having very broken things and some with relatively weak things.  This is pretty OK in RPGs where all the players are working together, but much more problematic in more competitive / PvP games like VBAM.  Thus, I would like to design a set of kind of 'canonical' races which are 1) fairly balanced against each other and 2) ideally representative of standard tropes in science fiction, in the same way that humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, and half-orcs more-or-less represent standard tropes for fantasy demi-humans.  To this end, I've been trying to figure out what those standard tropes are.  Here's what I've got so far, along with examples (I have more examples on a whiteboard at home, but I'm out of town currently, so these lists are not complete):

• The Bugs - Just what it says on the tin.  They will eat you in the most painful way possible, often with lots of body horror.  Typically can't be communicated with, often have a hive mind.  Examples include the critters from Alien (and their descendants, the Tyranids and the Zerg), things from the Cthulhu mythos, the Vong from Star Wars, the Ithkul / Harvesters from Master of Orion, and the Shadows from B5.  The bugs from Starship Troopers and Ender's Game fall here to some degree, but not perfectly - they're not using people as a growth medium.  Infiltrators, along the lines of 40k's Genestealer cults or Duran from Starcraft, are not unheard of for the bugs, so their Intel probably shouldn't be terrible.  Oh, and they breed like maggots.  They often waste lots of bugpower just to run their enemies out of ammunition, though, so that might need to be modeled...
• The Scary Robots - Again, a straightforward name.  The Borg, the Drakk from Unreal, the machines from the Matrix, the Cybrids from Starsiege, and the Necrons of 40k all clearly land here.  Additionally, when we look at the psychological workings of these species, we tend to see relentless efficiency combined with a superiority complex.  When we look at it this way, we can also add a number of humanoid societies here, such as the Peacekeepers of Farscape and the Imperium in Star Wars.  Unlike the Bugs, in general people aren't useful to the 'bots in a biological sense - "Exterminate, annihilate, destroy" is the motto, or at best "Domesticate the inferior fleshy creatures", rather than "We will lay our eggs in your spleeeens".  The Scary Robots can often be communicated with, but most of the time they don't care what you have to say (meatbag).  Spying is something they often neglect, due both to their overconfidence and their issues communicating with lesser species.  Some 'religious zealot' cultures may also fall here.
• The Noble Savages - Warrior cultures, typically with some sense of honor.  Canonical examples include the Niven's Kzin (and their Aslan successors from Traveller), the TNG Klingons, the Luxans of Farscape, the Wookies from Star Wars, possibly the Skaarj of Unreal, and, to take things perhaps a little far, maybe even the Orks of 40k.  The distinguishing rule here is "If you challenge one of these guys to single combat, will they play fair?"  These aliens often lack respect for non-warrior cultures, which they see as soft and decadent, but can come to respect other powers who have proven themselves on the field of battle.  They tend to disdain spies and diplomats, but often breed quickly and are excellent individual combatants, though sometimes poor tacticians.
• The Puppeteers - Taking their name from Niven's Pierson's Puppeteers, these aliens manipulate other species, time, and space in order to get what they want.  They tend to be introspective, and may also be psychic.  In addition to Niven, the Eldar of 40k provide a good example.  Star Trek's Vulcans also fall here, as well as the Protoss, and the Delvians of Farscape.  One interesting note is that most puppeteer species seem to have a dark side; the Eldar have the Dark Eldar, the Vulcans have the Romulans, and the Protoss have the Dark Templar.  This suggests that the Jedi / Sith duality might also fit in here.  Puppeteers are generally fully open to communication from other species...  but they're likely to get the better end of the deal.  These guys probably also have excellent spies / good intel - it models the "Farseer" aspect nicely.  However, these species also tend to breed slowly, and may be susceptible to corrupting influences, as with the Eldar and the grasp of Slaanesh.
• The Unscrupulous Merchants - It's said that money makes the galaxy go 'round, and the Merchants are out to make sure it turns their way.  Example species include the Hutts, the Bothans, the Ferengi, the Hynerians from Farscape, and the Bentusi of Homeworld.  While these may seem initially similar to the Puppeteer species, the difference lies partially in the means by which they operate - no supernatural powers here, and while the Puppeteers are likely to have massive, century-long and galaxy-spanning plots backed by prophecies, the Merchants tend to think on much shorter scales and have more modest aims.  They're also very open to negotiation, and are probably decent at Intel; sometimes corporate sabotage is the right tool for the job.  Not particularly warlike or adept at the art of conquest, though very likely to cohabit space with other species.  'Pirate' species might fit here too, just by the cohabitation condition; I feel like Traveller's Vargr are likely here, though Homeworld's similarly-named Vaygr are probably  Savages.

So those are the five archetypes I've identified so far, in addition to vanilla Humans; I've got a couple square feet of mappings of species to categories back home, but this is all I have for now.  So the next step is to develop a mapping from these classifications to VBAM Menagerie traits, and to balance them (update here).


The second topic of interest is the Elite Officer rules in the Moderator's Companion.  These feel like something which could be integrated with an RPG (say...  Traveller) to great effect, which led me to the idea of running a combined VBAM and Traveller game in the same universe at the same game-time.  Probably the best way to run this would be to have one set of players, each of which runs both an empire on a galactic scale and a single character in the crew of a small, Travelling ship.  This creates some really interesting metagame issues, but frees the CM (moi) from having to come up with an over-arching plot, since galactic events will likely be decided by the agendas of the various player-run empires.  Further, since a turn of VBAM is nominally a month of game-time, and the standard unit of time in Traveller is a week, this gives about four Traveller operations per VBAM operation, which would keep the game Traveller-centric, but allow things to unfold on a galactic scale.  Having the second, longer-term game in place also frees up the Traveller characters to do long-term things that they normally wouldn't consider, like spending lots of time training, doing research, or in jail.  On the flip side, given rules for translating Traveller and VBAM Elite Officer statistics, it would become possible for Traveller characters to influence events on a galactic scale as well.  So it'd be a very, very interesting way to run a game, and quite possibly worth the little bit of extra paperwork that it would generate.

Belated OSRIC Playtest Report

So, I ran OSRIC about a week and a half ago now.  It went...  interestingly.  We had 6 players, all from a mostly 3.x background as far as D&D goes, with one having played AD&D at some point, one with Baldur's Gate experience, and one with Nethack experience.  Character generation took a looong time - about two hours.  The issue there was primarily a focus on all the effects of every choice made; "what makes a fighter different from a ranger?", "Can I assign my scores in a way that will let me play a gnome illusionist?", and "What do all of these table entries for ability scores mean?"  We ended up with a half-orc cleric, a human ranger, a half-orc assassin / fighter multiclass, an elf assassin, an elf fighter, and a half-elf MU, I believe.  In retrospect, I really see where the "roll-in-order" rules would've been really practical - such a rule would have greatly narrowed the decision space for the players (by a factor of at least 6 factorial, plus limitations due to racial and class ability score requirements).  Gear went pretty swiftly, thanks in large part to BtBG's adventuring kits, which left the PCs to choose weapons, armor, and hirelings (and chalk.  Lots of chalk).

Having gathered their many porters, the PCs set out for the Deephalls north of Ironbridge.  They arrived, and tracked a party of berserkers who had been out hunting into the dungeon.  The berserkers engaged them, but were slain to a man.  The two assassins scouted ahead, finding first bats, then a pair of rust monsters.  Having never deployed rust monsters before (but having rolled them on the inhabitants table), the looks of sheer horror on the faces of the players were...  pretty priceless, actually.  They managed to block off that part of the dungeon, and turned their exploration in other directions, where they found giant spiders and beetles.  Highlights of this part: the half-orc assassin was poisoned, then told that poison was save-or-die.  He made his save, and his response was "Oh!  That was exciting!"  There's just something about mortal peril that makes life a little sweeter when it continues...  They found their first real treasure webbed up by the spiders, in a trapped stone chest containing a mix of gold and copper pieces.  The assassins went scouting again, with the (still-injured) half-orc failing at his Hide in Shadows and being gored by a pair of giant fire beetles, putting him at -7, but not before he assassinated one of them.  The rest of the party came to his aid, however, and he survived, but had to be carried out of the dungeon.  They found their second treasure in a pile of beetle dung, consisting of a mixture of electrum and silver pieces, but that was where we ended the session - the half-orc's going to be out of action for a week or so, and the rest of the party considered pushing forward without him, but decided against it.  This decision was complicated by the elf fighter, who had rolled lower ability scores than the rest of the party and is out to get them due to envy.

So, mechanically, the game went pretty OK, mostly...  it was very assassin-and-fighter focused, with the cleric and the MU doing very little.  That this changes at higher levels was no consolation to the caster players, who were greatly disappointed with the system.  The assassin players both seemed up to play again, as did the ranger.  The elf fighter was initially offput by his low scores and remained as a 'rearguard' for most of the combats, but later mentioned that he was interested in playing again, if only for the party conflict RP angle.  He also mentioned hirelings as greatly appealing.  So, I'm calling it a reasonable success; 66% of participants responded positively.  As a result, I'm keeping the dungeon around and will restock the parts they cleared out.  I should probably also design level 2 at some point, but they seem unlikely to find a way down any time soon.

Unfortunately, I've become distracted by Victory by Any Means.  It looks like to scratch my Master of Orion and Fields of Blood itches, if I can find time and players...  Maybe I'll get to test it out over winterbreak.