In Place of Chainmail?

[Aeolius]

I never played Chainmail and don't use miniatures in my games; I only DM online.

That being said, I'd like to see WotC release "e-Chainmail", a scaled down version of Poser, coupled with models from DAZ3D. I could create an elf, clothe him or her, assign weapons, armor, and equipment, then pose the figure as I choose. The same could be done with simplified "models" of troops, for mass combat.

Then, I could either take my model and render it atop a realistic landscape or a simple grid, or animate several figures in mock combat. This would also allow me to emulate an environment that no battlemat could match - undersea encounters. Simulating combat or movement in three dimensions would be no problem, for "e-Chainmail". In fact aquan, auran, and variable gravity plane encounters are its forte.

Hey, I can dream, can't I?

 

[Kesh]

Wow, interesting posts. It's especially interesting when compared to the sentiment on the official Chainmail forum on Wizard's site. Most of the CM fans who hang out there (myself included) are not interested in plastic minis, and many have flat-out refused to buy into the new game if it uses them.

That being said, I also don't have as much interest in a mass-battle game. I prefer skirmish combat, which is what the majority of D&D battles are anyway... I wouldn't mind if there were mass-battle rules, I just hope skirmish is the primary format. Which seems to be the case, based on some official posts recently.

For the guy who said he thought Chainmail was "mostly gnolls"... I wish. To make it clearer, there are seven 'factions' in chainmail:

• Ahmut's Legion - mostly undead of various types
• Ravilla - elves who are allied with dragons
• Drazen's Horde - various evil humanoids, mostly orcs and goblins
• Mordengard - dwarves and elemental creatures
• Naresh - gnolls and Abyssal demons
• Thalos - humans, gnomes and constructs
• Kilsek - Drow and subterranean creatures

... plus a 'Mercenaries' faction, which is just creatures that are unallied with any other faction.

There's really a lot of figures to choose from, many standard D&D staples and a few new creatures. In fact, some of the unique creatures will be included in the Monster Manual II with D&D stats! So, none of the figures are useless in D&D games once that comes out. (mmmm... Abyssal Ravagers... )

Plus, it's not terribly difficult to convert your own characters or monsters to CM stats, and I have a feeling the new minis game will make it even easier. I just hope they stick to pewter figures... or at least make pewter D&D figures alongside plastic ones. I've grown to enjoy painting minis!

Oh, and for the record... gnolls kick butt. They will be the main humanoid threat to the other races in my homebrew campaign.

 

[Qlippoth]

Were the old Battlesystem rules any good? I just picked up the 2nd ed. Battlesystem and Battlesystem Skirmish rules at a garage sale over the weekend. From what I've seen in flipping through them, it looks to be fairly well integrated with 2nd ed. d&d rules.... so how difficult would it be to convert this to d20? Were there any significant shortcomings in that ruleset? I'm not an experienced wargamer so I don't know how to judge these sorts of things.

http://www.d20reviews.com/Eric/conversions/Battlesystem3e.rtf

 

[kengar]

I just hope they stick to pewter figures... or at least make pewter D&D figures alongside plastic ones. I've grown to enjoy painting minis!

Oh, and for the record... gnolls kick butt. They will be the main humanoid threat to the other races in my homebrew campaign.

mmm Gnolls ! I love smacking down players with gnolls. Most of the CM minis I own are gnolls bought for just that reason. I've never even played the skirmish game.

I do hope we see some cheaper and/or plastic minis for some of the "grunts" though. I like flinging a dozen painted orc minis at a low level party as much as the next guy, but I don't want to spend $40 to do it if I can avoid it.

 

[Bob Aberton]

I have a very simple system that I use for Mass Combat.


Divide the combatants into equal units (for example, if you have 100 men, you would divide them into 10 units of 10).

Then, average the unit's saves, BaB, and AC. Treat each unit as one creature, so if two 10 man units were fighting each other, you would treat them as two creatures (with the average saves, BaB, and AC of each person in that unit). When one side hits the other unit, roll for the appropriate damage, then multiply that by ten.

Now add up the unit's HPs. So if each man in the ten man unit had 10 HPs, the unit would have 100 HPs. Say the other unit did 80 points of damage. Now divide that by the number of men in the unit (ten, in this case) to see how many were killed. So, in the case of 80 HPs being dealt, 8 men were killed, because they had about 10 HPs each. Any "leftover" damage (whatever is left that is not quite enough to kill another person) results in an injured soldier.

Then, it is the other unit's turn, and the process begins again. So lets say that this unit inflicted 70 HPs worth of damage to the other unit.

This means, that at the end of the combat, The unit that attacked first lost 7 men, and the unit whose turn was second lost 8 men. In the next round, the unit's stats change, because unit A (the one that attacked first in the previous round) has only 3 men left, and Unit B (the one that attakced second) has only 2 men left. Therefore, the HPs have to be re-figured. In this second round of combat, Unit A, with 3 men, has a clear advantage over Unit B, with only 2 men left.

Use the regular rules for Cover and Concealement, Initiative, and Surprise.

This has been playtested and works well.

Well, whaddaya think?

 

[kengar]

Sounds workable to me, Bob. The main thing -IMHO- in larger scale combat is that it is consistent and fair while it speeds up combat resolution- especially when it isn't the focus of the game (RPGs v. War/Skirmish games).

I had worked out a saving throw system that I thought made sense "on paper", but I haven't playtested it. Let's say a "squad" of 10 (1HD each) orcs has an average Reflex Save Modifier of -1. A Web spell gets dropped on them and they are all standing within the area of effect.

Whomever is controlling the orcs rolls a save on a d20 and applies the modifier (in this case, -1) and compares it to the spell's DC. Depending on the margin by which the roll succeeds or fails, a greater or lesser percentage of the troops are affected. Using the table below:

miss by 5+ = 100% affected
miss by 4 = 90% affected
miss by 3 = 80% affected
miss by 2 = 70% affected
miss by 1 = 60% affected
make exactly = 50% affected
make by 1 = 40% affected
make by 2 = 30% affected
make by 3 = 20% affected
make by 4 = 10% affected
make by 5+ = 0% affected

So if the Spell DC was 13 and the modified roll was a 14, 4 of the 10 orcs are caught by the web spell. Round down for fractions. It probably isn't worth it to use unless dealing with more troops/squads than just 10 orcs, but you get the idea.

Make sense? Or is loopy?

 

[Phoenix8008]

Doesn't this, by the way, point to an easy way to sell boxed sets of miniatures? If you, as DM, could buy a set of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil figures, wouldn't that be tempting?

This idea, I LIKE! I sure would buy a set of mini's geared toward a specific module. Heck, I've already found several Reaper mini's that seem to be made just in time for my runnings of WotC's modules. An Ogre Mage, a Vrock demon, and several others that I can't think of off the top of my head.

They might need to split it out into a few smaller sets that go together to cover the module, but I'm sure it's possible somehow. How profitable it would be for them, I can't say. But if WotC had made prepackaged sets of mini's to go along with their adventures, I'm sure I would have bought them.

 

[mmadsen]

Most of the CM fans who hang out there (myself included) are not interested in plastic minis, and many have flat-out refused to buy into the new game if it uses them.

I don't know much about the mini market, but it seems to be dominated by hardcore mini collectors who largely buy and paint their armies. RPG players get a bad rap for buying books they never use. Mini collectors seem to buy lots of figures they never get around to painting and never get around to using in battle.

Anyway, it would seem that hardcore collectors don't want to lower themselves to buy plastic figures. They prefer pewter, even if pewter figures cost more.

Casual fans though don't want to spend a lot of money on figures and a lot of time painting them. Casual fans might get into a game if they don't have to spend, spend, spend then paint, paint, paint to field a decent army.

 

[VoodooGroves]

Pewter vs plastic

Ye gods!

Most of the hardcore war gamers I know collect in a specific way.

First, you buy some kicking and deadly cool looking miniatures for your front line troops.

Second, you find a game (Battlemasters, Crossbows and Catapults, Dungeon Strike, Hero Quest, etc.) that has acceptable plastic minis you can use to fill out your units.

I have alot of metal miniautres. Hundreds - easily. But there's no way I'd have the mojo to build an entire army (or a few armies) out of metal minis. Cripes, I must have 500 dwarves, but only 50 or so are metal. Undead, probably 75 metal, 300 plastic.

It comes down to economic terms. Most of my friends (we're all pretty much 30 somethings - a few older, few younger) STILL cruise the game aisles and discount toy stores looking for plunder. Hech, the other day I'm at the Barnes & Noble with my wife...I'm over checking out audio books and I meet her and my daughter at the checkout. My daughter is holding this discount "excavate and build your own mastadon" activity kit. I say to my wife (who's an archaeologist) "Starting young huh? Never to early is it?".

She says "Its for you. I figured since it was $3 you'd want it to glue a little plastic skeleton on."

I say "Excellent!"

She says "There were only 3 left, so that's what I got for you."

Love. True love.

Back to wargame reality. There are, of course, some people out there who, for instance, play Napoleonic period wargames and have little rules like: "All miniatures must be metal" or worse yet "All miniatures have to be painted". Sure, Games Workshop insists you only use painted miniatures for their games as well, but really - forget them. But the Napoleonic guys (and gals I guess, although I've never met one) tend to go one step further ... "Um, we're enacting an EARLY PERIOD BATTLE you moron. You can't have a unit of muskets in green coats and yellow trim unless this is a MIDDLE OR LATE PERIOD battle. You can't use those unless you want to paint red stripes on them now."

By and large, however, must wargamers I know who still collect figures don't really have the disposable income to drop $400 on metal miniatures to build a new army. Instead, alot of creative improvising and plundering of other packaged games goes into the creation of their armies.

As far as wargame rules, I sent something off to Ranger Wickett to review. I hope he likes it and it can be part of the Natural20 community-developed stuff. If he doesn't, maybe I'll just post the PDF here or work out some better way to disseminate the info...

 

[Kesh]

This idea, I LIKE! I sure would buy a set of mini's geared toward a specific module.

You're in luck then. There's a boxed set of minis to go along with City of the Spider Queen coming out, complete with Chainmail stat cards for the figures.