Wargames: Talking Cheese

I watched BattleTech YouTube videos, and I came across a few that started talking cheese. And I saw this in Car Wars, starfighter games, Starfleet Battles, and it is a phenomenon that is especially common in wargames where you can design units.

You can design units to cheese the game mechanics, that is, to take advantage of the rules.

And then, when you talk cheese, you try to make those exploits make sense in reality. Especially if the designs are not even militarily practical or make any sense. Let's take the heaviest weapon in the game, put it on the lightest vehicle or mech we can manage, give it a few token points of armor, and field dozens of them when a scenario calls for a balanced force.

Who needs 300 tons of battle mechs in a scenario when you could have 30 ten-ton armored cars with lasers? Just swarm the other side with tons of cheese, multiple attacks by the buckets full of dice, and then say, "If the rules let me do it, this is a viable tactic."

There would be no need for battle mechs in this universe if that was a viable tactic.

Everyone would be doing it.

BattleTech needs a little suspension of disbelief for the universe to work. Given what we know today? Find them with drones and hit the slow, lumbering behemoths with laser-guided artillery shells. Also, in our endgame BattleTech campaign, we did just that, gave up on mechs, and designed cheap ground vehicles one side could field and lose dozens of and watched the mechs get picked apart with massed fire and artillery.

Yes, they were vulnerable to motive hits, but with this many and this cheap, who cares?

You can hide an AFV in a destroyed house or in a group of trees, while a mech is hard to conceal - and it needs to keep moving to survive. And due to the number of units involved, we could use maneuver and send a force around and hit them from the rear while still keeping them engaged on the front flank. Tons of cheap artillery were deadly.

The games were also unfun and slogged to play.

But we "won."

On a side note, some wargames are designed around the cheese tactic of swarming a big unit, and they do it exceptionally well. Steve Jackson Games' Ogre is probably the best example. But this game is designed around this concept, and it is a blast to play that giant, lumbering, slowly disintegrating monster as it trundles towards its objective. It is also a blast to play the defenders and futilely try to stop the beast in its tracks, knowing you can't destroy the beast outright, but target its tracks and try to slow it down or stop it and leave it as a monument of death that could still kill you if you got near.

BattleTech is different.

Yes, you could take a pickup truck, mount one massive long-range rocket, and send it into battle in the real world. Irregular forces do that. But no professional army does. That does not fit into any modern army's order of battle or tactics unless it is an irregular force, and you don't see defense contractors selling them. BattleTech has this code of honor and chivalry, and it also assumes a more ordered and substantial structure to house forces and mercenary forces.

Most military forces field balanced units that can deal with various threats in war. You can undoubtedly cheese the other side if you have perfect knowledge. But these units are often operating in hostile territory, without great intelligence, and need to be able to deal with a variety of threats equally.

When setting up scenarios, I tend to stay away from cheese units and tactics and use the more BattleTech frame of mind and thinking. I want to be in the commander's shoes when making those deployment decisions. The games are typically more enjoyable, and I feel I am more playing in the real universe of mech warriors than I am on some tabletop, wondering how I can cheese the rules to win easily.

The Sword of Cepheus and Westlands

I just love these old-school 2d6 roleplaying games. They are endlessly hackable, simple, and blazingly fast. They get the job done without a whole lot of fuss. The swords-and-sorcery version is the very cool Sword of Cepheus game, while the sci-fi version is Cepheus Deluxe. Want to hack the rules and make your own version of the game? Well, they have SRDs in MS Word format too:

• https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/380839/The-Sword-of-Cepheus-Reference
• https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/371216/Cepheus-Deluxe-Reference

It feels like Linux, and with some excellent layout software and some incredible art, you too can make your own roleplaying game. All you need is a game concept and, section by section, you would go through the rules, make additions or edits, and then playtest.

Also, a similar game for 2d6 fantasy called Westlands is only a dollar and comes in PDF format. It is not as nicely laid out as Sword of Cepheus, but it is very similar and will work well. It does a few things differently, and this is good to keep in mind if you find Sword of Cepheus a bit too dark fantasy and not enough swords and sorcery.

Strange Magic

Sword of Cepheus uses a magic corruption system and categorizes magic in white, gray, and black flavors - with black giving corruption. They have a strange system where spells take 10 minutes to cast unless you pre-charge with one-shot or rechargeable foci items. It is a different type of casting system, and they give you an option to fast cast at a penalty, so the game does its own thing with magic and requires a bit of expense and pre-planning with the spells you want to cast.

It feels like a bit of slamming the brakes on caster power, and it may seem excessive to some, and a lot of bookkeeping, pre-casting, and preparation for spell casters. When I first read it, the system turned me off, and it felt like a huge hassle. Until I read Westlands and realized that game ignores foci and the 10-minute casting time and does things more like I am used to.

Oh, yeah, I can just mod the game and fix it. I swear I am reading too much of Pathfinder 2, and in this mode, if it is written in fun, I can't change it, or I will break the entire system. And yes, it took me reading a 95% similar game to realize that. This is your brain, and this is your brain after reading 600 pages of rules.

Use the Westlands casting style if you want to play this game with straight swords and sorcery with easy magic. If you tried to ignore corruption, that is up to you too. These magic systems are hackable, and you can turn options on and off like toggles in a video game.

And, in fact, you should.

Ugh, these games these days where if you change something, you break everything else.

2d6 Systems

These 2d6 systems are popcorn to me. My brother and I hacked together a Car Wars RPG out of the original Traveller, and that system held up for 20 years. It works incredibly well, and I am doing the same thing for Battletech. Seeing hackable 2d6 systems these days for new games is such a cool thing.

Ask yourself, how much game system do I need?

All I need is a quick 2d6 system with a few customization options for many things. The Cepheus engine adds traits to the mix, which are like feats for character improvement (and you get during generation). These could be the "pilot abilities" on those Battletech pilot cards or special abilities you create for your character and get GM approval to use in fantasy games. These traits add to the game's current level of character customization and make it more than the traditional "ability plus skills" we expect from conventional 2d6 systems.

You could bolt on a heritage system like they have in Pathfinder 2, where you can level up your racial abilities and pick different powers as you go, like an asimaar getting wings or a holy aura. A dwarf could buy ore sense or detect vibrations. You could add class packages that do the same things. Hey, mod the game, go ahead.

Where other games try to give you a complete package and experience out of the box, these 2d6 systems are Linux distributions inviting you to make the game your own.

Or, put another way, it gives you the tools to make your own game.

Mail Room: Book of Exalted Darkness 5E

 

What is it about 5E that makes these apocalyptic and evil settings so popular? I suppose the more family-friendly and mainstream Wizards make the game, the more players despise being treated like children and look for alternative settings with a little - or a whole lot - of darkness in them.

I have stayed away from a lot of 5E settings either because they were entirely too pedestrian, also-wannabe Realms settings, or not really unique or fun enough to stand on their own. In some settings, I have the books for previous games, and I don't need 5E books for them.

The Askis setting is interesting, a post "endgame quest" sort of world where evil has been defeated, and high-level heroes of good control everything and created a utopian society. The players are meant to be either good or evil here, and it sets up a fight to destroy utopia or preserve it.

The setting is based on 1920s technology and culture and is a sort of Metropolis version of deco/angel-punk that I find interesting. There are a lot of things in here I would probably leave out in my version of the setting, there are not-really-smurfs and good-aligned STDs that seem like behavioral control for guiding the players' evil actions, and gives me the feel of the Paranoia game to me. While I may use the setting and the characters, a lot of the specific history and subplots I may or may not use.

The notion of making the good guys who built the utopia "just as bad" as the evil side fighting against them in a unique one, but instead of using evil's methods I would make the good guys here a little more evil-free in how they maintain order - but maintain it just as brutally.

The book says "mature content" but there is no nudity or sex involved, most of it is just gore or mentions mature-themed concepts (mutation, gore, mutilation, drugs, and the like). The layout is chaotic and a bit confusing, and I find sections just run into each other without much reason.

But compared to a lot of the "perfect society" products coming out of Wizards and Paizo these days, giving a sandbox where you could play evil characters feels like a breath of fresh air. It takes a lot of guts to create a setting like this, and I appreciate the work that went into creating a sandbox where you could play evil characters and let off that steam.

It reminds me of a way in a Grand Theft Auto sandbox setting for 5E where the world of good is filled with hypocrites, vanity, self-absorbed, pious, consumerist, biased, wealthy, lazy, and ultimately hollow good people living fake lives and telling themselves they are better than the rest of the universe.

That concept is cool.

Some of the implementation details I feel need a little more polish, and some cleaning up to fit my idea of this sort of GTA meets D&D world of madness and violent self-parody.

Nice, a good start, but I feel it needs a little more focus and classic Rockstar style touch of parody and satire.

Kickstarter: Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/482738549/cepheus-deluxe-enhanced-edition

If you are like me and use this game as a toolkit engine for everything from Traveller-like games, a Battletech RPG, a Car Wars RPG, a Star Fleet RPG, and anything else under the stars where you want a simple lightweight 2d6 system to roleplay with, this is going to be huge.

The bestseller Cepheus Deluxe sci-fi tabletop role-playing game, reformatted in full color, enhanced layout, and new art.

I am not a big fan of the current art in the Cepheus Deluxe rules, some of it is not the best but it all has heart. Seeing it all in full color, with a better layout and art? Especially if the above is a teaser image?

I'm in.

Battletech: Solid History and Timeline

No aliens. No space magic. No stereotypical evil space empires. The eras are what they are, and they can't really be changed.

Life is hard, war sucks, the universe is a dirty and violent place and that can't be changed either.

Mercenaries take cash payment for death and war.

The front lines shift and change, and planets that were spared from war for a while are put under the gun. Other places lie in ruins, and civilization pulls itself from the rubble to rebuild. And often enough, the cycle starts again.

There is this rock-solid model to Battletech that draws me in. I am not going to have my expectations subverted and the investment I made in the game or franchise pulled out from under me and the game ruined because of one new story, product, or era. I can go back to the well-supported and existing eras and play there. Or say the new one never happened. I can go back to classic and play there, and say the Clan invasion never happens. I can play in the Clan era and say the future is open.

And there isn't much "silly stuff" in the setting that can change things, like aliens, psionics, or space magic. Advanced technology is about it, but that can be ignored like an unwanted era.

This contract with the players and fans is what I love about the setting, and it is replacing lots of other sci-fi franchises as my sci-fi genre of choice. Nothing is going to be changed for me by a billion-dollar company looking to extract more streaming service money from me and cause disgusting social media drama to drum up hype. Battletech is solid, well-established, stable, and fun. I don't need anyone telling me why I should be a fan, or making me feel I need to join a bandwagon, the game is great on its own.

The players are great too.

The complexity can be controlled. I can say "this box only" or pull in rules from the advanced rules books. I could run a role-playing campaign from the rules in the Beginner Box plus my ground-game RPG of choice and have fun like this was a game of Basic D&D with battle robots using simplified rules. At any level with many combinations of battle-set plus RPG rule-set, this is fun.

And the game is moddable, plays fast, and isn't a huge investment in learning rules, books, or space. The games do not take much time. To set up a game, grab figures and a map and go. I can plug in almost any roleplaying system to run the out-of-mech ground game, from GURPS to Aftermath to Cepheus Deluxe. Genesys or Cypher would work great. Savage Worlds if that makes you happy. Twilight:2000 with some modding. Or the official roleplaying game.

Right now, I like Cepheus Deluxe since in tech and feel it works very well, and the skills are 1-to-1 with the piloting and gunnery skills. The career paths also make interesting characters, and are compatible with a universe like this and add depth to it outside the mechs. Scouts, ambassadors, pilots, ground soldiers,  merchants, criminals, and all sorts of personalities fill in the places between mech battles very nicely. I may make a few career tables based on the ones given to be more mech dedicated and use the more mech-focused skills, but if I allow swaps for skills I feel work better the charts work well as-is.

The roleplaying system should be simple and stay out of the way of the main attraction, the Battletech rules, and the mech fights. The RPG rules ideally set up the reason "why" the next fight is happening, and give you the "inside the hex" view during missions where pilots need to get out of mechs and rescue a VIP in an installation before fleeing to safety and getting covered by a skirmish force.

Right now this game is competing with Starfinder as my sci-fi game of choice. In Starfinder you have this artificial "video game" style of powering up a starship between battles, and it feels a bit programmed and on rails. There, the bold and iconic characters are the stars of the show, like the Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

Battletech does a better wargame job than Starfinder's ship battles, by far. But the characters aren't really the stars of the show here, it is the mechs and the stories of battles you play on the board. As a wargamer at heart, I find more enjoyment in the razor-thin tactical battles of Battletech than I do the level-appropriate and programmed d20 starship battles of Starfinder. I feel if I lose mechs and pilots in Battletech, life can go on for the company, and it will hurt. In Starfinder, it is hard to lose your only ship and have the game continue.

There is a real cost to a game of Battletech. Those index cards with the characters on them are on the line. The stakes for winning and losing are high. Making a choice to sacrifice a mech, and possibly a beloved pilot, to achieve an objective is going to really hurt. Is it the right choice?

That type of game isn't for everyone, but it grips me in a way an easy-heal, hard-to-die dungeon game does not. Even Starfinder feels weaker by comparison, like many d20 games evolved into this player entitlement mode to make things easy and keep you in the game and buying books at the expense of character loss or any risk. Yes, Starfinder has mechs, but they are not Battletech by any stretch of the imagination.

This is the real thing.

I am happier here. I don't feel like I am being pandered to, tossed a kitchen sink of pop culture and told to make it work, or playing a game that wants to be something else.

And the fights mean something.

Battletech: Beginner Box, part 2

It feels strange to think wargames like Battletech are more accessible than most tabletop roleplaying games. When you look at the page count of the main rulebooks, we have:

• Battletech Beginner Box - 12-page rulebook
• Battletech: a Game of Armored Combat - 56-page rulebook
• Battletech: Clan Invasion - 32-page rulebook

That is 100 pages total of rules for the core "mainstream support" version of the game, with all options (and a few record sheets). You go to tabletop dungeon games, and you are talking 400-600 pages for the player's manuals and over 1000 for the core books of the game. Like Pathfinder 1e (and 2e is getting there), some games are thousands of pages spread across many "collectors market" books.

Granted, the core rules of more tabletop RPGs are probably less than those 100 pages of Battletech core rules, but the bloat in dungeon games in both fluff and options is orders of magnitude larger than an average wargame. To get down below 100 pages for a set of dungeon rules, you need to play B/X, and I see why people do. If you like B/X, I feel Battletech is an excellent next step for tabletop gaming since it shares that "core simplicity" model while being endlessly expandable with imagination.

And Battletech is more of a tactical game than your typical dungeon game, except for something like Dungeon Fantasy or D&D 4E. Being more in that wargame mold, Dungeon Fantasy has a pretty low page count, an incredible accomplishment.

You can expand Battletech with esoteric rulebooks for the edge-case situations and battle styles, VTOL, spacecraft, and other "non-core" battles - but I don't see even all those options books taking more than a half-shelf of space. Still, the core rules of the 56-page core game and 32-page Clan expansion are the heart of the game since the beginner rules are a cut-down subset and not used for much more than learning, so those 12 pages really don't count once you start playing.

Most of the space taken by Battletech is figure storage.

And since the core rules do not have that dungeon game bloat, you can keep the entire game in your head with minimal reference. Another great thing about Battletech is determining the "challenge level" of battles is trivially easy. In contrast, in most of today's dungeon games, you get into complex formulas, CR levels, XP allotments, or rankings. Pick some pilots, set an overall tonnage limit, and start picking mechs.

And suppose I use a simple 2d6 system like Cepheus Deluxe as my RPG. In that case, I can have a whole wargame-plus-RPG experience with minimal rule memorization and page count and simple core skill mechanics compatible across both games. I don't need a mech system for Cepheus since I am here to play Battletech. Nor do I need characters that take up pages of record sheets; since Cepheus is a Traveller-like system, I can do a 3x5 index card for each pilot and generate a character in less than 5 to 10 minutes. If I want to get out of a mech, make some survival skills rolls, and fight an alien monster on foot, the system is there and works (and stays out of the way).

These two games are the peanut butter and chocolate of my collection. Simple. Taste good together. And always fun.

Low Fantasy?

I watched a video on "What is Low Fantasy" on Youtube, and it highlights an important point. To many, the "low fantasy" genre means something entirely different and is based on personal preference and expectations. Even to the people that make TV shows, games, and movies, the low fantasy genre varies wildly.

• Is it dark fantasy?
• Grimdark fantasy?
• Is it realistic and down to earth?
• Is it low magic?
• Is it gritty and edgy?
• Is it less escapist and fantastic?

When people come to roleplay low fantasy, they may get a lot of different interpretations of the genre. One person may think you are playing Game of Thrones with mature themes. Another may believe this is grimdark. Someone may come in and feel "more realism." Everyone could be right and wrong with the same or differing assumptions.

To understand what low fantasy means, you need to set a standard of "what it means to me." If you know what you like about the genre, you will be better able to communicate it to others, and everyone can get on the same page.

A Starting Point

If we go to the Low Fantasy Gaming book on page 4, there are a few clues:

• Dangerous & Gritty
• Resource Management
• Note in this game, encumbrance and weight allowance are ignored or up to GM ruling.
• Persistent Injury & Death are Common
• Quasi-Realistic World
• Magic and Fantastic Monsters are Rare
• Treacherous Magic
• Adventurers Seek Fortune and Glory
• Fewer fantastic heritages

Yes, that encumbrance note raises an eyebrow for me, and this is an odd game since I am so used to detailed weight tracking being a part of more realistic genres. You also have to realize this game is coming from a 5E perspective, so we want the essence of low fantasy without bogging down players in too much realism. For the 5E player, this is your best entry point into the genre.

But what is low fantasy? I am thinking for TV producers; it is the simple calculus of a low VFX budget for creatures and magic while spending a fortune on costumes, horses, sets, extras, and location shooting. Once they have the budget for those fantasy trope things, they can shoot character drama all day and spice it up with mature content and violence. Because of TV, this is the low fantasy genre for most people.

Drama & Roleplaying

But one factor which plays into the genre that is important to highlight is the character drama. You are talking about some detailed NPCs, histories, backstories, plots, and possible political goings-on in the region for players to get involved with. To make up for the rarity of the fantastic, you will be leveraging role-playing, relationships, rank & status, and social interaction heavily. If you ever felt your interesting roleplay was overshadowed by the overuse of magic and the circus of the fantastic, the low fantasy genre may be a place you can shine.

I do like this about the low fantasy genre. You get a lot of character-driven plots and conflicts, but these are more work for the referee. In high fantasy, it is so easy to throw a few monsters at the town and get going fast, which hits that accessibility mark, but that does get a bit old quick. Some players may not want to get involved in land disputes that turn into violence, feeling the seedy nature of such things is unheroic. Then again, you can define clear good and evil sides in these things, so if your players are more squeamish about shades of gray conflicts, you can easily paint one side as the tyrant duke and the other as the noble yet kindhearted family of the land.

Fitting In

And I say circus of the fantastic because the current fad in games is to throw every shape under the sun as a character option and make them all the same. I could roleplay as a sentient, walking, talking, reclining chair in newer games, and everything would work the same.

I would rather have players developing backstories and histories instead of shortcutting and saying, "I am the tiefling, and therefore, not trusted," or "I am the dragon guy, fierce and powerful." Yes, having the unique shapes makes it easier and more accessible for people to find themselves in a game, but I have also seen it lazily go with a stereotype (or its opposite) too many times.

With the low fantasy genre, it is better to fit in somewhere and are similar to the culture and background. It can be a widely diverse culture, but the players should ideally be a part of it instead of all of them being a group of outsiders (even outsiders to each other). A good idea is to be part of an existing faction, get involved in the action from there, and have that initial trust and relationships to get you started with the game's intrigue.

Dungeon Fantasy

Part of me wants to put Dungeon Fantasy in the low fantasy genre, but it can easily do low or high fantasy since it is a toolkit system. The combat fits the genre here, and it can get brutal, realistic, and deadly quick. The resource management is excellent and fits.

By default, I feel this is a high fantasy system as presented because magic is not treacherous or rare, though a few of the Warehouse 23 supplements or Horror could be added to this and a corruption and divine favor systems added to the game. Magic could be made rare easily. This can be in the low fantasy genre with some tweaks but need a little experience with the system, and you need a few more books to pick and choose from.

Start Simple, Branch Out

If I were introducing the genre, I would probably stick to the more 5E-like system; and if they wanted heaps of realism and options, slowly introduce them to more details systems like Dungeon Fantasy. Zweihander or Warhammer FRP are also good options for the genre, and also a little less detailed but still of flavor and darkness.

Low Fantasy Gaming has the option to move the entire game up to a more middle-ground fantasy option, which only Dungeon Fantasy can do well. You could ignore corruption and divine favor effects and have a more gritty but still OSR-like system for those who dislike dark fantasy elements. It is a good option for a group that finds out they don't find the darker parts to their liking but don't want to change games or the setting.

The exploit system alone makes Low Fantasy Gaming compare to Savage Worlds, and that is something I would definitely stay for. That stunting and tight resource management of luck and health really sing to me in this game, along with the "you make it up" class feature every third level. Those could be more high fantasy, like the D&D 4E warlock teleport or some of the signature 4E class abilities coming back into the game.