Post by grabula on Dec 17, 2014 6:05:11 GMT
I'm not going to give you advice on how to keep things hot with your signiificant other, no, I'll leave that to facebook memes and mens magazines. I'm here to talk about how to keep Robotech RPG Tactics fun, ongoing. Gamers are notoriously short attention spanned - if a company isn't constantly releasing new stuff at a hurried pace the nerd rage kicks in and they move on. With Wave 2 probably not coming until late spring early summer, and then a big question mark after that, how do you guys think you could keep Robotech interesting?
I've got a sort of general idea. I started gaming a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away. The emhpasis often in the beginning was on replicating ancient battles, narrative storytelling in miniature and in some cases simulation through miniatures. The second is the one I want to talk about. These days I think gamers tend to focus on the competitive side of gaming, tournemants is the word of the day! I'm not knocking competitive players, gaming inherently involves some competition and I believe the competitive focus has come from a lot of different sources. Many gamers these days got their start with Magic and other card games. GW pushed big RTT's in the 90's and that spirit was kept up by it's fans through today. When I started most gamers were coming from a roleplaying background or a military history background. The latter preferred simulations and reenactments on the table top while the former was interested in playing through action scenes on the table top. I find narrative play more interesting and for years I was spoiled by involvement in a couple of groups who preferred narrative play. These days it's got hard to find, a focus on balance and fair play being the order of the day for tournemants.
I think setting up narrative games can be fun and exciting and keep the interest and energy up with your favorite games. With Robotech we're blessed with an abundance of material to either copy or use as inspiration for setting up narrative games. Some general ideas for designing narrative games could be:
1 - Playing out battles from the source material! There's tons of battles to play through from the cartoon series, not to mention the books, comics and spin off movies.
2 - Objective based scenarios - things like 'get your forces off the opposing teams table edge as quickly as possible', capture, recover and return objectives on the table top. Escort missions like in the book are good.
3 - Don't focus on 'fair'. The battle doesn't have to be setup equilaterally. In fact sometimes point systems can be a bugaboo for enjoying the game. Instead, once you're comfortable with what units in the game can do, design games around lopsided forces where objectives have to be reached by the smaller force. The UEDF is surrounded and must defend the center of the table for 5 rounds while they face waves and waves of Zentraedi pods. An Elite strike force must hunt and kill a key charater on the table then get away before being destroyed.
4 - Don't be afraid to adjust on the fly. Rules are good, and games absolutely require them but don't be afraid to change the rules for narrative games. Write some house rules for certain situations, or change certain rules to make the scenario a little more fair for one side and so on. The key is to have fun in narrative games.
5 - Consider larger games with multiple players. A lot of games are nominally designed to be played by two opposing forces, and many gamers translate that as 2 players. I used to play in a historically oriented miniatures club and we'd regularly have between 6 and 12 players for a single game. We'd split up commands, alter rules to accomodate multiple players, and on occasion write our own rules so we could play the way we wanted to! The reason was because we found the more the merrier is definitely true in gaming! A lot of people enjoy the social aspect of gaming so imagine instead of splitting 8 people up into 4 games of 2 each, you all come together on the tabletop to play a game together!
The most important point however is to have fun. In that group I spoke of, we could play simple games for years just because the company we kept (and the whisky we drank!). I think Robotech can easily accomodate narrative games and large mulitplayer games. I have an idea floating around in my head where Khyron and Breetai put together two forces to oppose a larger UEDF force, and Khyron get's a little pushy trying to outdo Breetai's troops, who knows where it goes from there!
Finally, I think campaigns are a good way to keep a small group satisfied for long periods of time. Simple if-then flow charts and so on for campaigns can be fun but more elaborate ones if you have groups of dedicated players can be awesome. I know a group of guys who get together every year and play warhammer fantasy battles in an epic storytelling campaign and the thing that binds them together and keeps them playing year after year is the fun they have doing it.
I've got a sort of general idea. I started gaming a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away. The emhpasis often in the beginning was on replicating ancient battles, narrative storytelling in miniature and in some cases simulation through miniatures. The second is the one I want to talk about. These days I think gamers tend to focus on the competitive side of gaming, tournemants is the word of the day! I'm not knocking competitive players, gaming inherently involves some competition and I believe the competitive focus has come from a lot of different sources. Many gamers these days got their start with Magic and other card games. GW pushed big RTT's in the 90's and that spirit was kept up by it's fans through today. When I started most gamers were coming from a roleplaying background or a military history background. The latter preferred simulations and reenactments on the table top while the former was interested in playing through action scenes on the table top. I find narrative play more interesting and for years I was spoiled by involvement in a couple of groups who preferred narrative play. These days it's got hard to find, a focus on balance and fair play being the order of the day for tournemants.
I think setting up narrative games can be fun and exciting and keep the interest and energy up with your favorite games. With Robotech we're blessed with an abundance of material to either copy or use as inspiration for setting up narrative games. Some general ideas for designing narrative games could be:
1 - Playing out battles from the source material! There's tons of battles to play through from the cartoon series, not to mention the books, comics and spin off movies.
2 - Objective based scenarios - things like 'get your forces off the opposing teams table edge as quickly as possible', capture, recover and return objectives on the table top. Escort missions like in the book are good.
3 - Don't focus on 'fair'. The battle doesn't have to be setup equilaterally. In fact sometimes point systems can be a bugaboo for enjoying the game. Instead, once you're comfortable with what units in the game can do, design games around lopsided forces where objectives have to be reached by the smaller force. The UEDF is surrounded and must defend the center of the table for 5 rounds while they face waves and waves of Zentraedi pods. An Elite strike force must hunt and kill a key charater on the table then get away before being destroyed.
4 - Don't be afraid to adjust on the fly. Rules are good, and games absolutely require them but don't be afraid to change the rules for narrative games. Write some house rules for certain situations, or change certain rules to make the scenario a little more fair for one side and so on. The key is to have fun in narrative games.
5 - Consider larger games with multiple players. A lot of games are nominally designed to be played by two opposing forces, and many gamers translate that as 2 players. I used to play in a historically oriented miniatures club and we'd regularly have between 6 and 12 players for a single game. We'd split up commands, alter rules to accomodate multiple players, and on occasion write our own rules so we could play the way we wanted to! The reason was because we found the more the merrier is definitely true in gaming! A lot of people enjoy the social aspect of gaming so imagine instead of splitting 8 people up into 4 games of 2 each, you all come together on the tabletop to play a game together!
The most important point however is to have fun. In that group I spoke of, we could play simple games for years just because the company we kept (and the whisky we drank!). I think Robotech can easily accomodate narrative games and large mulitplayer games. I have an idea floating around in my head where Khyron and Breetai put together two forces to oppose a larger UEDF force, and Khyron get's a little pushy trying to outdo Breetai's troops, who knows where it goes from there!
Finally, I think campaigns are a good way to keep a small group satisfied for long periods of time. Simple if-then flow charts and so on for campaigns can be fun but more elaborate ones if you have groups of dedicated players can be awesome. I know a group of guys who get together every year and play warhammer fantasy battles in an epic storytelling campaign and the thing that binds them together and keeps them playing year after year is the fun they have doing it.
