Inspiration Shift: Miniature Skirmish Wargames

Been a while so I'm forcing myself to write up what I've been thinking about, regardless of the state it ends up in.

Getting a bit slogged in detailing out the many factions in the Offbeat Megadungeon, I was easy prey for alternative inspiration, which came on swift and silent wing in the form of Chris McDowell's GRIMLITE/The Doomed miniature wargame ruleset. Which I learned of from some podcast interview (Mud & Blood I think), disconnected from the digital RPG socmed sprawl as I've been.

I've only ever been vaguely interested in miniature games; the material investment has always outweighed the draw. Usually I'm drawn more to crafting terrain, and I've been comfort-watching a lot of youtube vids of such.

But a very stripped-down, fast-playing, small-team ruleset seems really appealing, at least for just playing around with the game design. As Chris puts it, GRIMLITE is no-measuring, no stacking, no tracking. 

Searching around the space for similar games, the ones most interesting to me have been Five Leagues to the Borderlands, Chromehammer, and Emmy's The Dolorous Stroke (though it's pretty heavy on tracking).

There are a few concepts I want to explore that this kind of ruleset lends itself to.

• Verticality of the physical game space, even more than what I've seen of Necromunda. Makes the most sense in a Cyberpunk mileau. Difficult to set up and visualize for digital playtesting though.
• Crunchy position-manipulating tactics, ala Into the Breach and Fights in Tight Spaces. I saw this happening a little bit with 5 Leagues, but also seems to be good for Cyberpunk (think John Wick)
• Just making a bunch of fun abilities that alter a core ruleset.
• Some ideas around self-balancing point-buy systems.

Also the "narrative" (which seems to me more like "procedure- and roll table-heavy")  campaign structure of this style of game seems to fit with and lend itself really to the kind of solo play i've been getting into during the pandemic (5 leagues is specifically solo, and there's a solo campaign version of Chromehammer).

I've spun up a promising mashup of GRIMLITE and 5 Leagues that I've had fun with designing if nothing else. Keeping it in my pocket for now but might share in a later form. But here's an excerpt of the core melee exchange rules, primarily inspired by 5 Leagues. 

Note: Units have between 3 (basic) and 5 (Leaders) Combat Dice, but various traits and weapon tags alter this amount, often depending on certain conditions and whether you're attacking or defending in that exchange.

Melee Exchanges

• A Melee Attack initiates a series of up to three Exchanges

• The Initiator is Attacker in the first Exchange (Certain weapon tags may alter this)

• In each Exchange...

• Attacker and Defender secretly decide how many of their Combat Dice to commit for that Exchange, removed from their Total CD available for the rest of the Melee.

• • If you have a Readied Ally Unit in base contact with you AND/OR your Attacker, gain +1 CD when Defending

  • You may (or may need to) commit no CD, or have negative CD. In this case, your roll is treated as a 1

• Attacker and Defender roll their committed CD, select their highest die, and compare them. 

• If the Attacker has the higher die, they cause 1 Wound to the Defender

• On a 6, you may trigger certain effects from Traits/Tags

• If it is a tie, the Attacker chooses to either Backstep, Press, or Shove (ending the melee). 

• If the Defender has the higher die, they become the Attacker in the next Exchange. They may also choose to Dodge, or Disengage (ending the melee).

• On a 6, you may trigger certain effects from Traits/Tags

• After the final Exchange (the third, or if the Melee is ended early)

• The Defender Disengages

Maneuvers

• Shove: The Defender moves away from the Attacker by the Attacker's base width

• Press: As Shove, but the Attacker also moves up into Contact

• Dodge: Move up to 90 degrees around a base you're in contact with

• Disengage: Move your base width away from a base you're in contact with

• Backstep: As Disengage, but Unit that was in contact may choose to step back into contact with you.

Definitely crunchier than GRIMLITE, and even 5 Leagues, but these exchanges are kind of the core concept of a game like this, and from playtesting, they're tense and engaging enough to justify a bit of complexity for what I'm aiming for.

But then the miniature elephant in the room - I'm not going to get a bunch of physical minis. particularly since this is probably yet another passing fancy that I'll be dropping for the next thing in 2D6 weeks.

Tabletop Simulator would be good but it is sooo clunky  in some specific ways (and non-aesthetic, counter to one of the primary appeals of mini games in the first place). I wonder if there are other more suitable digital tools for this kind of thing.

Google Slides actually worked really well for quick playtesting, at least for simple setups. Just copy the current slide and go from there for the next action/turn. Here's a half-baked playtest of my nascent rules. Which went pretty well so far - I like the tough-decision-making of the dice-commiting mechanic, and the dynamism of the forced movement baked into the melee procedure.

miniature cave terrain and simple-but-deep tactical combat thoughts

 I've been caught by a tangent (no - a good and natural evolution of my locus of interest) into thinking about better (than i've seen) miniature terrain to represent strange cave formations, ala Veins of the Earth (or, y'know, real caves).

although i've never used minis for any games, i've always had a side interest in terrain crafting; it seems like a lot of fun to produce some really usable stuff without a huge amount of effort, primarly with XPS foam, hot wire knife, and simple painting techniques. I don't have much experience with any of it in the last 15 years or so. 

I got sucked down a youtube hole of watching game crafting videos. But nothing really hit the notes i was looking for. 

I think we avoid realistic, strange cave shapes in RPGs because they are difficult to visualize. But physical terrain solves that problem. Except everyone still seems to be locked into a very strict concept of modularity, with standardized sizes and shapes.

This is the closest I've seen to what I'm picturing in terms of modularity, but its still way to "rigid" or rectilinear

 I thought it would be quite easy to make a versatile set of shapes that could help represent strange cave forms that I was picturing in my head.

then i realized that using sketchup actually mirrors a lot of the same simple techniques; rough lines cutting through shapes. so instead of going out to home depot to grab some XPS, i'm doing my usual thing and over-thinking/planning stuff that should be simple to just do, and started playing around in sketchup.  creating shapes that are easy to make, but  work really together to create more interesting, vertical, strange real-life cave shaped spaces.

still images are difficult to convey how well it works in 3d.

This one is obviously really "prefabbed" and not modular, but its interesting thinking what you can do with just a few layers stacked to represent a cramped corridor full of vertical challenges. and even though it's only piece, it could still work in any orientation, even sideways. 

ok but why

But if i were to actually create and use this stuff, it would involve a change in my headspace around gameplay style, and probably ruleset.

In my mind, using minis and physical terrain would need to be justified by soemthing engaging. Your not going to build out a complex 3d space just to move through it on the way to another point of interest.

Maybe rules that make the physical act of exploring strange cave spaces interesting enough to justify being the focus,  spending time on ((and holding the attention of players to) just getting yourself up a slippery flowstone outcropping. maybe even physical representation of rope. There's some spelunking challenge rule stuff in VOTE but it's kinda weird. I hold out hope for there being something worthwhile here, but moving on...

If combat is the justification for building out a space, in any good players in an OSR style game are going to make sure as heck that they don't get ambushed while in a weird position (and just throwing ambushes in for the sake of play is really outside of OSR style). Which again obviates the impetus for building out a space.

The obvious alternative is fun tactical combat as the focus - in other words, combat-as-sport, or a cinematic challenge style. I've dipped into this some with Knave Souls, (and a bunch of unshared thinking and designing of more complex combat rules hacks for various systems), but it got me thinking about simple, combat-focused RPG that still support OSR play. 

I don't follow or know much about skirmish games, and i expect this is probably pretty well accomplished by soemthing liek age of sigmar or whatever.  (of course 5E is right out, too much baggage.)

So I'm thinking: "What if halfway between BX (or Knave, etc) and 4E... or Into The Breach?"

crunchier, more dynamic, small-numbers combat at a relatively small and cramped scale.  Lots of shoving, attacks pushing and advancing, relevant facing and flanking, impact from verticality, monsters crawling around walls, etc.

But... no complex character builds.  the kind fo crazy abilities built into the rules of 4E would instead be things that arise situationally and are arbitrated on the spot, or maybe granted by magic items. niches arise from item loadouts and ability score differences. (I should look into ICRPG - I know it emphasizes power growth through items).

so combat may be a forgone conclusion, but the spirit of creative problem-solving is still there, just involving the physical, literally visualized spacial situation. pleyrs need to coordinate their tactics and come up with plans to beat a combat situation using the particulars of strange environments and their items creatively. 

That's the idea at least.

this implies a kind of brutal dark soulsy VOTE style setting; Long-lost cavers now adapted with  trogolodytic mutations trying to kill or be killed by weird forgotten entities in dark holes. I think Kingdom Death: Monster or whatever its called might be a bit like this, but has its own tightly integrated stuff that wouldn't be relevant to a more general rpg system.

Bonus:  here is one such a survivor before and after his adaptations and evolving loadout after spending months in the dark places where the pressure of the earth above you molds your very form