Slitherine

rbodleyscott wrote: This being the case, I think the authors eventually came to the conclusion that there was no need for FRAGMENTED troops that fail a CMT when charged to make an immediate rout move - it should be at the end of the phase.

I've had a bit of a concern about terminology and abbreviations for some time, and now that even RBS has used "CMT" = complex move test when he means "CT" = cohesion test, I'll comment.

1. Easy to confuse CMT and CT. I suggest dropping the "complex" and just calling it a Manouevre Test, or changing "complex" to "Difficult" or "Tricky". Also "Morale" is much easier to say than "Cohesion", although it unfortunately starts with M. Maybe a CMT should become a Drill Test and CT become a Morale Test.

2. Easy to confuse "Disordered" with "Disrupted". I suggest changing "Disrupted" to "Shaken".

3. Page 56 defines standard 3-letter abbreviations for the cohesion states (4 letters for disrupted due to the confusion potential) but these abbreviations are never used anywhere else. I suggest either using them universally, or not bothering with them.

4. Troop types and attributes we have "Heavy" foot, "Heavy" weapon and "Heavily" armoured. "Un-drilled" and "Un-protected". Once we start abbreviating in our army lists we'll also have A = Average, or A = Armoured. Ideally I'd like to see terminology with less scope for confusion and unambiguous 2-letter abbreviations. Types of foot could potentially become CF, LF and OF (or SF) for Close Order Foot, Loose Order Foot and Open Order Foot (Or Skirmish Order Foot), which would avoid the theoretical possibility of "Light Foot, Heavily Armoured, Heavy Weapon".

5. Impact foot - jars with me a bit because "Impact" is also the name of the phase. I can't think of a good alternative - "Shock troops" already has a special meaning. "Storm troops" would be good except my legionary skilled swordsmen impact foot would become "SS Storm troops". "Assault foot" perhaps?

6. Forest and woodlands. "Forest" historically has a special meaning in at least the medieval part of our period, which is not "Dense woodland". Those of us from the DBM community are already used to calling such a terrain feature "Woods", which is the English word for that kind of feature. I suggest "Woods" for the feature, "Forest" for the territory type.

Obviously these are not major game issues, but if playtesters and authors are not already too wedded to existing terms, then the sooner they are tidied up the better.

I've always thought that avoiding acronyms, and getting some "real world" terms in there is a must for selling this to a wider audience - even including "lapsed" DB gamers. I really hope this is to be an objective of one of the imminent version iterations. Having just read a US Civil war book with a personal account and seen how many of the terms used in Fire & Fury were used in the book as well means I was about to post a similar call to arms anyway!

"suffering" "1HP3B" and "1HP2B" is one of my biggest personal dislikes.

Good post Lawrence.

If this ruleset is to appeal to non-gamers we must use English, where possible, and common English at that.

madaxeman wrote:I've always thought that avoiding acronyms, and getting some "real world" terms in there is a must for selling this to a wider audience - even including "lapsed" DB gamers. I really hope this is to be an objective of one of the imminent version iterations. Having just read a US Civil war book with a personal account and seen how many of the terms used in Fire & Fury were used in the book as well means I was about to post a similar call to arms anyway!

"suffering" "1HP3B" and "1HP2B" is one of my biggest personal dislikes.

I don't think we'll match the colloquial feel of Fire and Fury, where both sides were of the same culture and language. Histories and personal accounts in our period are in a multiplicity of languages, some now dead and others changed beyond comprehensiblity. Even terminology in translations and "modern" histories is not consistent and reflects the time in which they were written and there is often uncertainty in exactly how some terms should be translated.

It should be noted that terms in Fire and Fury are given precise game definitions, so "Skedaddle" = "immediately and permanently removed from play", "lively fire" is a particular line of the shooting effects table corresponding to a certain net dice result etc. So can Tim come up with some concise and historical-sounding terms to replace 1HP3B and 1HP2B ?

I hope not. There are enough technical terms already. 1HP3B may look ugly, but it is memorable after a few games. It avoids having to learn a technical term and then translate it to 1HP3B.

rogerg wrote:I hope not. There are enough technical terms already. 1HP3B may look ugly, but it is memorable after a few games. It avoids having to learn a technical term and then translate it to 1HP3B.

I have to agree with the sentiment of this Subject.

The use of unnecessarily 'complicated' sounding and unhistorical terminoligy is not only annoying to experienced gamers but, worse still, highly intimidating to novices and those coming into the hobby from an historical angle. i.e evryone who should be buying the rules.

Just to add my 'pennys worth' to the list of annoying phrases;

The use of the word Mechanisms in section titles - it may be accurate but completly unnecessary.
The term 'Battle Group' it is far too close to 'Battle Line'. Why not say 'Unit'?
Disorder / Disruption , I agree with using the term 'Shaken'.

I could go on but I think the point has been made.




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