Review and Contributions?

[Arnim]

Hello,

on first superficial sight of the ArtOfWar presentation I do like the project. I find some elements that we have discussed and tried out on local scale.

but from this 'project description' I find it difficult to add useful contributions.

I do personally like to analyse rule systems. My personal main issue - to set up a very clear philosophy what shall be simulated and what shall be left out; As many player I had several trials for own houserules and I was involved in some translation projects (e.g. basic impetus from italian to german).

Thus I wonder if it is possible to join the club of reviewers in such a pre betatest phase to contribute rather on the philosophy-to-gameMechanics side than on finetuning of values. I would definitely be interested in contributing to such a development.

Arnim
http://www.s.netic.de/arnim/dbmseiten/

[arnimlueck]

With a Game Design Philosophy published I remind myself of the golden rule that

• - it is easy to state what you want to design
  - but more important to state what you do not want to do

With this in mind I came up with some basic questions that might be worth answering in the published website to feed the curious readers:

• - What is the reason for selecting this timeframe? I hope it's not just the fact that DBM players have the miniatures already painted. Is it common behaviour of Generals effect and cohesion of armies? Is it common basic battlefield functions of the pre gunpowder period?
  
  - What sizes of battles does "The Art of War" represent? I guess that it simulates large scale battles of premier political importance. Or does it extend down to a clash of 100 versus 100 warriors? Surely no skirmishes of 10 versus 10, right?
  
  - What is the viewpoint of the simulation. I guess and hope that is is a strict "generals view" type of game which gives the players the feel of being both the master mind of the plan and all the acting generals with added eagles eye battlefield view as it is typical for tabletop type of games.
  
  - I like the idea of the cohesion ladder, very curious how it plays.
  
  - With a 'function based' simulation of troops on the field I would like to see a statement on combat results. Now a beautiful concept in DBx type of games was the approach to generate 'plausible' results of each combat. Leaving aside the question if this was always achieved, I like the concept very much to have a predefined spectrum of possible results between combattants. Could you write a word on this in the preview please. Also because some DBx combat results might now become results of cohesion tests (e.g. flee, move backwards ...).
  
  - I am positive on having differnig mechanisms for different aspects. From the preview page it is not clear if there is only one Quality measure or two aspects 'fighting quality' and 'drill'. I found a good description method to seprate these. I hope both aspects are treated distinctly.

No need to answer all of this quickly in a forum post. Better to work some answers in the Web Site step by step.

[IainMcNeil]

We will release more details soon. We're wary of saying too much before it's been tried and tested this end as some people will latch on to ideas that are not thought through and use them to berate us!

[arnimlueck]

Right so.

I just wanted to hint versus developing a good (and extensive) design philosophy. I personally think it adds much to the acceptance of rulesystems with newcomers. Especially when trying to show something like e.g. DBM to people coming from Confrontation or similar skirmish-type systems.

It is perfectly acceptable waiting for the next glimpses. It is like christmas: as long as you see it is actually coming - waiting is (fairly) easy