A Prodigal's return: FOG v DBMM...

[vexillia]

FOG AM jumped the shark at two points. A totally botched version 2 effort. Enormous energy expended, little change and a horrific roll-out. The second was a willful effort to make armies dull and or bad. Masses of lists are redundant or pointless, combined with some viciously bad scoring of troop designations that serve to reduce viable options.

Fully borne out by last year's Northern League attendance:



Full article & stats.

[MDH]

The biggest issue in commanders in FOG is they really represent something nebulous, but are personified and therefore you have great oddities. The duality was never really explained so you are right it looks odd.

Still its been a great system and enjoyable, but since the authors have not provided care-and-feeding I think it is not an "elephant in the room" but an elephant being interred into the British Museum sadly.

Obviously I can't speak for the FOG(AM) writers and the version 2 saga. I find it better in some respects than v1.0 personally and still use it , but there remain core design shortcomings that have been highlighted here, in my view at any rate. That said the bar has had to be set pretty low for ancient/medieval to please me .

All I can say is that from a FOG(N) perspective I have come in the last 12 months or so to enjoy my regular exchanges with fellow Napoleonic gamers where I think we have a shared enthusiasm and passion for the period. The moment it became interred would be sad speaking personally.

Our published rules, as a document rather than a game system, were/are far from perfect for all sorts of reasons I won't bore folk with, and can certainly be improved . But I am very wary of changing the system itself, tweak refine improve, -but stick to the vision . There is a quite a common sense of what it is we all want to achieve and get out of it.

Perhaps that is harder with a period as wide as FOG(AM) (and its many predecessors) and where there has been a history of trying to get a set that works for all? It may even be impossible. I have already opined on this thread, and elsewhere about the weaknesses of wide ranging rules so won't repeat myself . Warhammer tried to produce a core rules set with booklets modified for sub period, but the core game system had profound weaknesses as I saw it . I have been wrestling with the 18th century to come up with a design that can accommodate the core period of 1740-1790 in Europe but which could be modified ( even to the extent of standard unit sizes and deployment and game set up for the period before that and for small wars such as AWI, and the 7YW in North America. It is not easy.

Does FOG(AM) really deliver at all levels and in all sub eras and in all continents? Could it ever have ?

[hazelbark]

All I can say is that from a FOG(N) perspective I have come in the last 12 months or so to enjoy my regular exchanges with fellow Napoleonic gamers where I think we have a shared enthusiasm and passion for the period. The moment it became interred would be sad speaking personally.

I think FOG (N) is at a different part of the life cycle than FOG Ancients. I too really enjoy FOG (N) and still play it and enjoy it. Napoleonic's as a miniature gamers sub group is a different kettle of fish than Ancients.

I do think an important lesson from not just these rules but many, many other rules overlapping in these time periods is that author support is critical. Thankfully Mike you are still involved to support FOG (N). But just like slitherine's main operations which is software games need support so to do board games.