Hollandazed: Thoughts, Ideas, and Miscellany — game design

The Shot & Shell Battle Series originated because I had designed three previous games that had somewhat similar rulesets but at different scales, with different combat procedures and different ZOC rules and different activation mechanisms (an I-go-U-go for this one, chit pull for that one, activation roll for this guy over here). I couldn't really call those three previous games a "series", because for me as a gamer the appeal of a series is that you only need to learn the rules once, then you're off to the races. Having to learn each game separately, and if you happen to...

Suppose we have a game about the Battle of Hastings. It's a game about a single day - 14 October 1066. Men on high ground holding fast against a sophisticated invading force, until their discipline breaks. The important factors are the advantages of those invaders, and the discipline of the defenders. When the game ends, one or the other would have won out. Though the end result might be wildly different from match to match, the essential nature of the battle remains intact, with the same troops fighting over the same ground, and each match will follow a broadly similar...

One of the things I really enjoy about John Theissen's operational ACW games (More Aggressive Attitudes, Objective Shreveport!, and Hood's Last Gamble, for those keeping score) is how difficult it can be to have a proper battle. Whenever you declare combat, your opponent usually has the option of attempting to Retreat Before Combat (RBC), with a 66% chance of success (sometimes more). With a successful roll, the enemy stack slips through your fingers. And, when the shoe is on the other foot, you slip through theirs. Both sides generally want to do battle with the enemy, because winning battles decisively...

On what I imagine to have been a pleasant September morning - being partial to autumn, I generally find September mornings to be pleasant - there rode a man who would be dead in ten days.  Now, by rights, he shouldn't have been riding. This man - an intelligence officer - had two days prior disembarked his ship to make contact with one of his assets, an enemy commander who wished to defect, and in so doing, turn over possession of a key fort. Having made the agreement, our young officer was to return to the ship. But in the...

You nudge your little square division to the front, compare its attack factor of 4 to the enemy's defense factor, and roll the die: ugh, a six, AL, attacker loss. You flip the counter to its reverse side, reducing its attack factor to 2. Half the cardboard men under your command are dead. Only they're not, because as all grognards know, and as many rulebooks are quick to point out, a step loss doesn't represent death, but simply a reduction in effective fighting strength. That's bloodshed and wounds and prisoners, sure, but also general discombobulation and dispersal, exhaustion, morale collapse,...