I've been thinking a lot about table top gaming for a little while now - I think I mentioned that in a post a couple of months back?
I miss the tactile, physical nature of it. Seeing the models, moving formations of troops around, unleashing death upon my enemy from up close or far away, depending on what troops I have at my disposal.
Anyway, one of the thoughts I had recently was about setup and deployment, because I think this was a large reason behind the game becoming stale for me and my friends. By setup I'm referring to the terrain on the board and deployment is where the armies are first allowed to be positioned, obviously.
So, the classic table top game in our gaming group generally involved one side - usually the side with most firepower - setting up in a line of death, and the other - the side with better close combat - trying to deploy in such a way that they would take minimal damage before being able to engage the enemy. After years of this, we got bored of it and now it seems board games have taken over!
My thoughts started about how we always wanted to try and involve more story in our games, give them meaning. This was great in theory, but it really required a games master to be involved and the story HAS to mean something, otherwise it's just gloss over another round of tedious blood baths. Then my thoughts moved to how to make the actually game play fun, without a story to give it context.
What I would really like to try if/when I play some table top gaming is to make sure there are no defensible positions within any forces deployment zone. So when you set the board up you make it so each side can't see each other. In the middle of the table could be a village or a mountain or dense forest. Each army is then forced to move and find cover, find defensive positions and think how best to out-manoeuvre their opponent.
When putting terrain on the board, don't place things laterally, put hedgerows and walls at angles, so it covers from one direction, but not the other. Put a house right in the middle of an open area, so it doesn't turn into a killing field.
Basically, don't have the middle of the board as an open area the players fight across. Make the middle of the board an impassable obstacle the players have to fight around.
Playing attacker-defender sounds good in theory, but in my experience I can only see it working with a strong narrative. I'd like to try making the action dynamic and tricky by forcing the players to have to figure out where they need to go and how best to get there troops there without dying hideously.
-----------------------------------------
On another note, we never figured out how to make a good objective based game of 40k - it always ended up being a blood bath no matter how hard with tried. What I would like to try is having a steady flow of reinforcements. Try to make the game only end when the objectives are captured. It may result in some long games, but with a little thought I think they could be epic!
No comments:
Post a Comment