Dan Edwards
United States
Shoreline
Washington
-
I'm reading the Hornblower books again, and also broke out my copy of Wooden Ships & Iron Men. While a fine game in it's own right, I found myself thinking that WS&IM might be a decent Age of Sail (AoS) game, it wasn't really Hornblowerish.
I know that more modern efforts like Flying Colors are simpler and better suited to fleet action, and Close Action is more "realistic" for small engagements, and the old Enemy in Sight is probably the lightest and fastest with an AoS theme, yet there really isn't a light ship-to-ship game that sims the spirit of the novels instead of actual history.
IMHO, a game that tried to let the player be a heroic Hornblower type captain would be fast moving, emphasize maneover choices over real world physics, and allow for overcoming great odds with skilled/lucky play.
For the mechanic, I think that it would be hard to beat a naval version of the Wings of War: Famous Aces system - no bookeeping or written movement plotting, please. Give the famous captain/elite crews additional manoever cards. Since there is no altitude tracking, you can take the complexity saved and "spend" it on wind and weather effects.
I think going heavy on movie type "critical hits" would be a plus, so rather than always striking out hull sections you might draw a card that gives a more descriptive hit that still yields simple results "Steering ropes hit, must sail straight next impulse" or "Carnage on gun deck, broadside at half strength for one turn while officer rallies stunned crew".
Throw in some solid solitaire rules, including engaging forts with ship's guns and landing parties.
In short, make it a sim of the AoS literature and movies, sort of like Ambush! was a WWII movie game with toungue firmly in cheek.
WWII wargaming has seen the superlite Memoir '44 do well, would a superlite AoS game have an audience?
-
Mike zebrowski
United States
Unspecified
Minnesota
-
wizkids made one.
-
Dan Edwards
United States
Shoreline
Washington
-
I thought of Pirates of the Spanish Main, but for some reason (pirate theme?) it doesn't seem to fit...perhaps it merits a second look, though. I almost got some of the ships just to use as minis for WS&IM, does the game have enough meat to work as a combat game minus the pirate/treasure elements?
-
Michael Edwards
United States
Everett
Washington
YA RL'YAH
Phnglui mglw nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah nagl fhtagn! With cheeze!
-
PotSM is too simple, although I know there are beefed up homebrew rules for it.
I still want to be involved in a Con sized Close Action game, I hear that they are a blast.
-
William De Prêtre
Belgium
Zuienkerke
-
Have you looked at Kiss me, Hardy from Too Fat Lardies ? (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/27121)
The Lardies have published several Hornblower scenarios in their TFL Specials : http://www.toofatlardies.co.uk/KMH.html
The rules use simple mechanisms resulting in a fast game for large and small fights. There's not much nuts and bolts type detail but that's in line with the Lardy philosophy. The fleet commander doesn't need to tell individual captains what type of sail to set so he just orders ship X to move to Y and the rules assume the captain does that to the best of his ability, leaving the fleet commander to deal with winning the battle.
Ship crews range from elite to poor landlubbers with the expected results for morale and abilities.
As with other Lardy games KMH is card driven. Ships have a card to move and a card to shoot and for larger actions the cards deal with squadrons. Other cards deal with changes in weather, boarding actions,
fire, striking the flag,..
Shooting is handled by a number of dice depending on the number of guns on the ship with more dice added for crew experience, national characteristics, rakes and distance. Ships have a number of damage points depending on type and size but the game also uses a critical hit table with effects ranging from fires, crew casualties, losing a mast or even the powder storage exploding.
-
Andrew Swan
Australia
Sydney
NSW
-
Bloodybucket wrote: would a superlite AoS game have an audience?
As a Patrick O'Brian fan, it would have an audience in me! 
-
Murray Grelis
Australia
Sydney
NSW
I'm raising funds for Cancer research, visit my profile page for details.
-
This idea has more legs than a hat full of centipedes.
Somebody bung it on a P500 list and show me where to sign.
-
Take joy from you wins; take lessons from your losses.
United States
38.978164N 76.486881W
Maryland
-
Warfare in the age you're speaking of (and for the previous 400 years) was extremely simple, brutal, and on its face not very interesting. For the most part ships lined up one behind each other on each team, and the two lines came together side-by-side and shot each other to bits. Piff poff. From a gaming perspective that's a snoozer.
Nelson got huge brownie points for coming up with the idea of (this is the exciting part) forming TWO lines! Had the maneuver failed he most assuredly would have been hanged by the British Admiralty for not doing what all before him had done for 400 years. It didn't, so he was considered a genius and now has his own statue in London. Pigeons worship him.
The reason for the previous two paras is that I wanted to indicate that naval warfare in the age of sail was just boring. Not much game excitement when all you do each turn is roll dice and record damage. About the only way I can see a game set in the era being interesting is to significantly change the history timeline, to increase the capabilities of the ships, or to expand the game's horizon into a situation like the Caribbean that bring economic and large-scale strategy issues into play.
Tuchman's The First Salute is a valuable read on this subject and puts a pretty brutal eye on piff-poff warfare. It also includes the only known description of tacking a ship-of-the-line, which in itself was worth the price of admission for me.
Sag.
Now ACW ships -- they had boilers in addition to sail, and could maneuver in a way that made the battles interesting.
-
Murray Grelis
Australia
Sydney
NSW
I'm raising funds for Cancer research, visit my profile page for details.
-
Sag, you are right if you restrict the idea to a simulation of fleet actions. Dan's idea, i believe, is to recreate the mood of the Hornblower books rather than create a fleet action simulator. I haven't read Hornblower (although have enjoyed the tele-series) but it seems similar to Patrick O'Brien's Master and Commander series. I think the frigate actions described in those books would be a great basis for a light hearted game. A card driven system similar to Wings of War could work well for a frigate action game I think. Especially if it was well written with plenty of theme. The wargame purists would probably hate it.
-
Take joy from you wins; take lessons from your losses.
United States
38.978164N 76.486881W
Maryland
-
Muzza wrote: Sag, you are right if you restrict the idea to a simulation of fleet actions. Dan's idea, i believe, is to recreate the mood of the Hornblower books rather than create a fleet action simulator. I haven't read Hornblower (although have enjoyed the tele-series) but it seems similar to Patrick O'Brien's Master and Commander series. I think the frigate actions described in those books would be a great basis for a light hearted game. A card driven system similar to Wings of War could work well for a frigate action game I think. Especially if it was well written with plenty of theme. The wargame purists would probably hate it.
Unfortunately, the options for engagement for single ships was remarkably similar, because the ships could not sail off the wind effectively. Two ships would see each other, each would make a solid estimate of their chances, and then generally one would retreat if it was faster or above its opponent. In the event both Captains chose to make a name for themselves the ships might make a single angled pass (beam-reach or lower) and then fall into side-by-side combat. The design of the ships presented no other real options. If you got downwind of your opponent you were out of the battle.
Pretty insane, but that's what warfare was like in the good old days. The "Iron Men" part of the title of the genre's most successful game is right on the mark -- sailors had to stand directly in front of enemy cannons, bigger guns at closer range than anything their army contemporaries had to contend with, and keep their head screwed on. This was BIG gun fire often at a range measured in tens of feet. It's simply incredible just how deadly this brand of warfare was. Oh, and if you survived on the losing side, only a twenty-six mile swim to shore!
Hornblower does include things like fire ships and the like, and even harbor hijackings. That could add some flavor, but frankly the sweet aroma of RPG is floating into the plot when that sort of thing is considered. My last two D&D campaigns took place on the sea, so I'm OK with that!
A quick disclaimer -- someone makes a game like this with some real decisions and some real excitement and I guarantee I'll pre-order. I just think it will be tough to stay in the historical context and produce a good game from it. Most good ship warfare games involve engines, and more than a few of them are set in outer space. Plenty of fun, but out of the genre.
Sag.
-
Harvester of Eyes.
United States
Louisville
Kentucky
My demeanor was meaner.
-
Most historical accounts of one on one ship actions set up the scenario and describe the result but often fail to provide the details of the action.
"HMS Clyde spotted the 40 gun French frigate Le Coq as it attempted to slip the English blockade. Even though out gunned, Capt. Idlemind of the 32 gun Clyde engaged the enemy ship. In a short sharp action Idlemind was consistently able to out manuever the larger vessel inflicting several devasting rakes. After thirty minutes the French frigate struck it's colors."
As a gamer, I want to know and understand exactly what happened in the underlined section AND be able to game it.
BTW, I've been knocking around a chit activation small engagement rules set for using PoSM ships and a 2" hex mat from Hotz Art Works
-
Take joy from you wins; take lessons from your losses.
United States
38.978164N 76.486881W
Maryland
-
scribidinus wrote: Most historical accounts of one on one ship actions set up the scenario and describe the result but often fail to provide the details of the action. " HMS Clyde spotted the 40 gun French frigate Le Coq as it attempted to slip the English blockade. Even though out gunned, Capt. Idlemind of the 32 gun Clyde engaged the enemy ship. In a short sharp action Idlemind was consistently able to out manuever the larger vessel inflicting several devasting rakes. After thirty minutes the French frigate struck it's colors." As a gamer, I want to know and understand exactly what happened in the underlined section AND be able to game it. BTW, I've been knocking around a chit activation small engagement rules set for using PoSM ships and a 2" hex mat from Hotz Art Works
Put me on your subscription list please, for both your game and your source of historical accounts. Tuchman laments that very little detailed information survives from the period, for basic ship tasks and management let alone engagements.
Sag.
-
Lawrence Duffield
United States
Fort Bragg
California
-
Quote: Tuchman laments that very little detailed information survives from the period, for basic ship tasks and management let alone engagements.
Barbara Tuchman wasn't a Naval historian. People like Robert Gardiner and Richard Woodman have gathered an enormous amount of solid evidence of how things were done and what happened. Look at the extensive coffee table book series published by Chatham or the British National Maritime Museum for examples. Gardiner's book on the Frigates of the Napoleonic Wars is brilliant. There are others as well, way more than your typical game designer needs to fire his imagination.
A lighter, more abstracted treatment might even be MORE historically based than the WSIM mechanical model. As you pointed out, more depends on individual happenstance and chance ("Captain, the mainmast is hit - we're turning to the wind!") than in most combat models. The real life interesting decisions are often improvisations to reverse a sudden turn for the worse or capitalize on the enemy's predicament. There is room for a tremendous amount of card-driven or table driven random events.
Hornblower and its ilk compress wide swaths of history into a single voyage by a particular captain in a single ship, but Forester invented next to nothing of his "scenarios" - they really happened to somebody or other. Parkinson wrote a couple of good books as well as O'Brien's series, and there are several others of greater or lesser interest. Lots of scholarship in those novels.
-
Ted Groth
United Kingdom
Whitefield
Lancs
-
Back in 2004, Dennis Ugolini posted some proposed rules for "Letters of Marque" which fits the description reasonably well. It was designed to be played using the ships from Pirates of the Spanish Main from the FIRST set. There are cards to represent different ship configurations, with boxes to mark off damage, and also lists the speed/manueverability. I printed the cards out and laminated them so I could simply use a dry erase marker on them. You can aim high or low, and damage is recorded for rigging/masts, or castle/gun deck or lower hull, and the dgree of damage is range dependent too. So yes there is some writing to keep track of damage, but no preplotted movement. Movement is strongly influenced by the wind of course. Players roll for initiative, then alternate moves, choosing one ship to move at a time, until every ship has had a chance to move. There are also rules for boarding actions. I only tried playing this a few times but it seemed to work pretty well. My only complaint might be that the numbers used for crew size are too small to allow for capture of a disarmed large ship when boarding from a small ship, and this could easily be adjusted.
It was designed to be played using the ships from Pirates of the Spanish Main from the FIRST set, so it has none of the newer ship styles in subsequent "Pirates of...." editions. Of course it wouldn't be too hard to reason out some rules for the schooners that allow greater maneuverability close hauled or when tacking than a square rigged ship would have, for example.
The rules can be found in the earliest page or two of the files for POSM or if I did the link right, here:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/file/6466
-
Ben Vincent
United States
Vancouver
Washington
-
A Wings of War style Age of Sail game sounds like a lot of fun, and not too difficult. You'd want different decks for ships that handle differently - so maybe a xebec deck, and sloop-rigged deck, and a couple of square rigged decks (for fast and slow turning ships). You could color code the arrows on the maneuver cards to correspond to the point of sail - i.e. for the straight move maneuver you use the long (green) arrow when at your optimum point of sail, the short (red) arrow when you're at your worst point (close hauled for a square rig), and the medium (yellow) in between. The turn cards would work similarly.
Then you just need a few simple rules about playing maneuvers, such as:
- you must play a turn card when facing into the wind
- you cannot play two turn cards in opposite directions back to back - there must be a straight move between them
The damage decks could work much the same. Some effects (rudder damaged) might only occur when you are shot from a specific direction. Maybe raking fire makes you draw an extra damage card. Perhaps ships with big guns can only fire every other move, to account for their longer reload times. Maybe track damage to each side of the ship instead of just one total. Some quick and dirty boarding rules to round it out.
I'd play that game.
-
Ted Groth
United Kingdom
Whitefield
Lancs
-
SabreRedleg wrote: A Wings of War style Age of Sail game sounds like a lot of fun, and not too difficult. You'd want different decks for ships that handle differently - so maybe a xebec deck, and sloop-rigged deck, and a couple of square rigged decks (for fast and slow turning ships). You could color code the arrows on the maneuver cards to correspond to the point of sail - i.e. for the straight move maneuver you use the long (green) arrow when at your optimum point of sail, the short (red) arrow when you're at your worst point (close hauled for a square rig), and the medium (yellow) in between. The turn cards would work similarly.
I like the idea of cards with different red/yellow/green arrows depending on what point of sail you are on. One thing I would add would be instead of having a description of what point of sail is "optimum" or "worst" or in between for each type of ship, I would suggest shading the different wind angles from the center out to the edge of the card. Then when the wind comes in from the direction of the red shading, you have to use the red maneuver arrow, likewise for the other colors. This way the turns could be specific to wind direction. After all, if you are already close-hauled on a starboard tack, then turning to starboard will be very difficult, but if you are close-hauled on a port tack you are effectively in a similarly poor wind position, but turning to starboard is the easiest thing you can do! Of course since the different types of ships would have different card decks, you could easily represent the different sailing characteristics, such as the relative ease of tacking a fore-and-aft rig like a schooner, as compared to a square rigged ship. It would be worth spending the time to be sure that combinations of manuevers (like "wearing ship" instead of tacking a square rigged ship) work properly too.
SabreRedleg wrote: Then you just need a few simple rules about playing maneuvers, such as:
- you must play a turn card when facing into the wind
- you cannot play two turn cards in opposite directions back to back - there must be a straight move between them.
If you have the different wind directions indicated on the cards, then you wouldn't need the rule about forcing a turn when facing the wind. Instead, you simply would be limited to those cards that included the available ranges of wind angles. So a straight ahead card would not have wind directly on the bow as an available range, and could not be used when you are "in irons."
I would think that the limitation that you cannot play two turn cards in opposite directions back to back would only apply when turning through the wind, tacking or gybing. No restriction on going from close-hauled to a beam reach and back, you just don't travel as far as if you were going straight.
SabreRedleg wrote: The damage decks could work much the same. Some effects (rudder damaged) might only occur when you are shot from a specific direction. Maybe raking fire makes you draw an extra damage card. Perhaps ships with big guns can only fire every other move, to account for their longer reload times. Maybe track damage to each side of the ship instead of just one total. Some quick and dirty boarding rules to round it out.
I'd play that game.
I would too! I like this your take on this, and I hope you don't mind my suggested changes. (If I haven't been clear enough, please let me know!) I haven't given the firing/damage much thought yet, but your suggestions sound like a good start.
I am inspired to try and put a prototype for this together, although I don't know when I would get the time!
-
Kenneth Bailey
United States
Ypsilanti
Michigan
-
Mike Zebrowski wrote: wizkids made one.
Would that be the game that after 2 attempts still can't get the most famous US ship of the age right? Would that be the game that is absolutely too simple? Would that be the game that you're supposed to construct, but if you sneeze you break a sail?
That game?
-
Take joy from you wins; take lessons from your losses.
United States
38.978164N 76.486881W
Maryland
-
You're all being very forgiving on how ships moved back then. The technology of the day boiled down to two ship types
-- big square rigs that could carry dozens of guns, were moving castles, and could only travel downwind with any level of control and speed. A tack of a square rig when done well would take fifteen minutes.
-- small lightly-armed ships that could run away upwind from the big ships.
You can break out the big ships a bit into frigates and SotL but pretty much that entire first category travels downwind or close to downwind only when in battle. This is why they all lined up and blew holes in each other. Big ships carried big guns and they won battles. The limitations to ship counts and ship sizes were cost, not technology or strategic advantage.
Pirates of the Spanish Main chose to drop wind issues, which made the game simple and playable. It's not terribly accurate, but it's a game -- it doesn't need to be. Attempting to create a game similar to the real-life sea battles of the era result in the same thing that reality did -- piff poff.
Bring economics into the game and make it more strategic and you have some interest, but not combat interest.
Sag.
-
Michael Edwards
United States
Everett
Washington
YA RL'YAH
Phnglui mglw nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah nagl fhtagn! With cheeze!
-
Well, one man's piff poff is another's interesting slugfest.
Luck certainly does play into things, but obviously it's not all, or the British wouldn't have won all the time. Training (to increase rate of fire and accuracy, and therefore effective weight of shot) certainly was a large part.
Yes, maneuver is slow, but important. Lots was written on it, many interesting documented single ship duels exist that made plenty of use of it. Yes, large battles were mainly lines of ships.
As for technology or strategic advantage, that ain't all innit either. Again, there were many example of inferior English ships outfighting their opponents - to the point where a Captain might be court-marshaled for failing if the odds were only moderately in the enemy's favor. They shot Byng, and all. And there's the American super frigates - admittedly kind of using a technological and moral loophole to achieve victory.
But that heck with all that anyway - it's immaterial. The suggestion is to simulate Hornblower, not history. Just like a reader or viewer doesn't want to watch the whole six hours of chasing down a ship in real time, what is being suggested for the game is a fun age of fighting sail game - with the feel of Hornblower type action. As you say, it's a game, so it doesn't have to be terribly accurate - just has to get more of the feel in than some of the simpler games have.
Obviously ship to ship combat in this era has a high romantic action interest, or it wouldn't be written about and filmed so often. That's what the game should deliver on.
Not that an economic, strategic game wouldn't be bad, mind you - just not the target here.
-
Ben Vincent
United States
Vancouver
Washington
-
Sag, I think you're missing the point. The original poster wasn't looking for a realistic simulation of Age of Sail combat - there already are games that do that. He suggested a quick playing cinematic style game. PotSM is too simple - I don't think you can have a sailing game and ignore the wind - but there's room between PotSM and WSIM for something fun.
While in reality a duel between two closely matched ships might involve days of pursuit and maneuvering for advantage, followed by one ship striking their colors when they've been maneuvered into an untenable position, from a gameplay perspective it's simply more fun to duke it out.
I think for a game like this you'd want to focus on smaller ships, as they've done in Pirates of the Burning Sea. Battles between ships of the line might not see much maneuver, but when you're fighting with sloops, cutters, corvettes, and the odd frigate, things get more interesting.
Ted, I think you idea about putting the wind angles directly on the maneuver cards would work great!
I think 1805: Sea of Glory will fill the economic/strategic niche.
-
Ted Groth
United Kingdom
Whitefield
Lancs
-
Sagrilarus wrote: You're all being very forgiving on how ships moved back then. The technology of the day boiled down to two ship types
-- big square rigs that could carry dozens of guns, were moving castles, and could only travel downwind with any level of control and speed. A tack of a square rig when done well would take fifteen minutes.
-- small lightly-armed ships that could run away upwind from the big ships.
You can break out the big ships a bit into frigates and SotL but pretty much that entire first category travels downwind or close to downwind only when in battle. This is why they all lined up and blew holes in each other. Big ships carried big guns and they won battles. The limitations to ship counts and ship sizes were cost, not technology or strategic advantage.
Of course you are right.
The potential game being sought here isn't completely accurate historically.
Even so note some of the details: strictly speaking, individual ship designs must have had some differences in sailing ability, even if it didn't come into play very much in the restrictive manuevers of a typical battle line. Also, the discussion so far about the concept of manuever card decks for different styles of ships didn't say exactly how restrictive those manuevers might be. I would guess that if a large ship is in irons, and the square sails are backwinded, the available maneuver cards for that point of sail might very well indicate that the ship drifts backward down wind, and the change in pointing angle would be very small, which would reasonably simulate the slow awkward tacking motion of such a ship.
Sagrilarus wrote: Pirates of the Spanish Main chose to drop wind issues, which made the game simple and playable. It's not terribly accurate, but it's a game -- it doesn't need to be. Attempting to create a game similar to the real-life sea battles of the era result in the same thing that reality did -- piff poff.
Bring economics into the game and make it more strategic and you have some interest, but not combat interest.
Sag.
But the potential game we are talking about, and that the original poster brought up for discussion, isn't intended to be at either extreme. No, it wouldn't be such a great game if it was made to be completely historically accurate. On the other hand, this potential game would not be so offensive to sailors as completely dropping the wind issues and making fantastical ship configurations. etc. The intended result is something that is much MORE accurate than POSM, but has more of the swashbuckling feel, and more interesting actions than an attempt at a strictly accurate simulation game would be.
For comparison, Wings of War is a great game, (or game group), even though it is essentially a 2-D air combat game. Yes there are altitude rules, which work well enough, but ther are no provisions for real 3-D moves such as falling leaf descents, or a barrel rolls, or a wingover bought a copy of the old Yaquinto game "Wings" and read carefully through the through the rules several times. This has much more detail for simulating the handling of WW1 planes in combat, and is probably a great simulation game. But I haven't plyed it yet, while I DO get to play Wings of War, because it is simple to play, the action is fast, and the history and physics are accurate enough to portray the different feel of handling the different aircraft, a satisfying way. It seems that we could achieve something of the same style and level of detail that would work for sailing ships.
Yes, we may be too forgiving if you want an accurate simulation. No we are not, if you accept that the goal is a fun game that give a good feel for sailing ship manuevers, rather than a full historical portrayal.
Edit: I see others are making the same distinction between full simulation, and a fun fast moving game with just enough simulation.
-
Michael Edwards
United States
Everett
Washington
YA RL'YAH
Phnglui mglw nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah nagl fhtagn! With cheeze!
-
SabreRedleg wrote:
Indeed, I am with child to see if that game turns out to be good!
-
Pete Belli
United States
Florida
-
SUGGESTION:
Start here to get the basic design for your ship playing pieces...
...and then pile on the chrome.
-
Harvester of Eyes.
United States
Louisville
Kentucky
My demeanor was meaner.
-
Quote: Put me on your subscription list please, for both your game and your source of historical accounts. Tuchman laments that very little detailed information survives from the period, for basic ship tasks and management let alone engagements.
Sag.
The first iteration of the chit draw rules set was originally posted here. As Wooden Ships and Iron Men Lite.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/file/info/12676
The intent was to be as light as Memoir '44. Simple roll to hit, no CRT and simplified Wind rules.
They went over very well at a couple club meetings but I was not completely happy with them and began a rewrite that incorporates more historical detail without radically altering the basic mechanisms. It'll also clean up some the little things that irritated me.
The rewrite remains unfinished but I might be tempted to finish it if thumbs and tips keep rolling in.
-
Pete Belli
United States
Florida
-
Interesting stuff.
We have been charting a course through these waters...
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/302246
...when discussing a low complexity Civil War naval game using plastic ships.
-
|
|
