By definition "fantasy/Sci fi" means things that are fantastical/fictional and not encountered in our own lives (except trolls and rouge troopers).
Do you prefer your fantasy games to be nearer the plausible (a giant can be killed by rank and file) or is it Ok to wander a long way off ( a wizard that can hypnotise a whole army).
The same would apply to science fiction . The Expanse or Dune.
martin :)
If you boil it down then any conflict is a result of a series of checks and balances. A WMD Wizard does not just appear in isolation. There will be a vulnerability or means to counter that force... by extension a good, well designed set of fantasy or sci-fi rules will have an element of plausibility and means to counteract any threat. Newton's First Law writ large if you like. This would lend itself to a points based system with a wide selection of troops to select from... cheap and overwhelming in numbers or costly and small...
If a Wizard could hypnotise a whole army then he would need lots of energy and chances are there would be some with immunity to the casting. Any imbalance will be temporary.
In most fantasy rules I have encountered, magic users have to 'power up' which makes them static and vulnerable... or in the case of the Witcher it costs the spellcaster. The candle that burns brighter and all that...
Even a force of plate armoured cavalry can be brought low by a simple spell such as a 'plague of itching' - just try scratching in full armour! In Dune, sandworms were attracted to vibration making any form of machinery or energy weapon hazardous to use. In the Neal Asher Polity, the Prador were victims of their own aggression and paranoia and did not play well together. Hi-tech can be subverted by virus-like Jain technology while in Expanse pretty much everything is vulnerable to the Protomolecule of the Builders but it feeds off energy - deprive it of matter/energy to feed off and it 'starves'.
In a historical context the unarmoured Filipinos held off the armoured conquistadores for years armed only with hardwood sticks. They waded into the surf and stunned armoured soldiers in their armour and left them to drown long before they could use their Toledo steel blades or bring their arquebuses to bear. Basically they used simple physics and their environment to defeat their enemies.
Back in my previous incarnation as a gamer (70's-90's) I did play one rules-set (whose name completely eludes me) where it was possible for the lowliest creature to kill a demi-god. All hits and damage were done on % dice and normal rank and file may need 98% or something to do a hit but it was possible. I seem to recall only played it a few times and then moved onto other things.
Its a shame I let a lot of rulesets go when I got divorced alongside a lot of figure that I suppose would be Vintage stuff now. Some of it goes back almost 50 years. Ain't hindsight wonderful.
Back in those days it was mainly on the fantasy side of things. I never really got into the 40K side of things but did venture into the odd game of spacehulk (a classic).
OK I admit it, I did use to play G**** W**k***p games (dont want to be cursed and banished for saying those dreaded words).
Loved Star Fleet Battles which I used to umpire large multi player games for . Even though you had to add up and subtract a lot and keep focused all turn every turn due to the movement sequences. (I can elaborate on this if anyone is interested as a mechanic if wanted).
Cheers
Derek
Derek,
I've played them all and still have large fantasy amd sci fi collections but all for thr Mantic range of games - Kings of War and Deadzone mainly. Nothing to be shy of!
I still have one fantasy army. For "Hordes of the things" I have an undead army. All 15 or so bases of it. Found it in the shed when hunting for a box this afternoon..
For anyone who has not heard of the ruleset it is a fantasy version the equivalent of DBA. I think by Osprey. No I am not going to explain that one either. LOL
Derek
Hordes of the Things was WRG, written by Phil Barker. It was seen as a superior rule set to the original DBA in many ways, and provided inspiration for many real world variants. Not sure why, but I recall this been a big topic of discussion back in the day.
Was a long time ago. I think I have seen the rules somewhere here recently but no idea where or when lol
Derek
My fantasy gaming has all been in 25mm. I have played Hordes of the Things, but I found the very thing that made DBA/DBM work for me for medievals made the fantasy armies TOO generic and the group basing a turn off. I also like the feel of the traditional fantasy bucketloads of dice approach, rather than everything determined on a single D6. I graduated to Armies of Arcana as an alternative to the dark side (GW). AoA has a comprehensive points generation system for large scale battles which you can tailor to your own figures and the fanbase developed a Lord of the Rings low magic variant. Low rolls are good (which suited me as I am a chronic snake-eyes roller). I've subsequently adopted Lion/Dragon Rampant for smaller scale conflicts among my Game of Thrones derived armies.
Is it any good as a rule-set compared to the PP offering (which I have also not played)? Have been contemplating going back into fantasy to a limited degree with a minor magic or possibly no magic at all.
derek
Do you mean HotT and WAM?
WAMneeds more figures and is larger battles than HotT, which is fantasy DBA, so element based units with around 12 per side.
WAM, if I remember correctly, is units of 4 bases with 2, 3 or 4 figures per base. But as a square based game, unit basing doesn't matter so long as both players know what is going on.
I was tempted to try 6 or 10mm for WAM. I really like the special terrain elements of WAM.
Closest I went to fantasy was---I played D&D back in the 70`s and did a Snotling army for some later rules, But it never grabbed me. I never understood magic as it is not something I can do in RL
Just remembered we played Heroquest too. Didn`t like that either.
I don`t do modern either as I dont acually know how to arm and aim the weapons.
I like Bows and spears and a few Muskets and cannon.
I have a slight problem with "plausibility" and "fantasy" cohabiting the same sentence :)
I'm afraid it's just not something that works for me.
Simon
Feints, decoys, misdirection and subterfuge are part and parcel of RL warfare, plus battlefield tricks like using poison arrows, pit traps, fire, flaming pigs to scare elephants, dummy troops, that kind of thing to distract enemy attention. I've read of RL accounts of pots of poisonous snakes and beehives catapulted onto enemy galleys as well as the usual noxious gases and firebombs...
I like the subtler use of magic, or 'battle magic' as it sometimes referred to... tweaks that can add to your own troops and detract from your opponent. I liken magic use to either the 'artillery' category - the blasting fire of Orthanc, grenades, bombs etc. or the battle magic - like 'dullblade', armour-like skin, turning arrows into flowers, effects to slow the responses of the enemy and augment the armour and weaponry of your own troops. Making the opponent smaller or your troops larger (or appear larger) and other illusions can be a powerful tool. These are no different from the mods and power ups in computer gaming... localised and short term... it just takes a little imagination... Nothing like bigging up your crumbiest, weediest unit and making it a battle winner...
In most cases in a stand up fight magic users on a battlefield tend to cancel each other out, or negate each other's effects. Sometimes these attempts at warding can fail. They are simply another weapon in the arsenal...
Pitching a magic user bound not to take a life against a baddie who deals death on a daily basis can be fun. My personal favourite from my D&D days - a plague of itching cast on a unit of charging armoured cavalry... you try compulsively scratching in plate armour AND trying to ride a horse... ;D Much more fun than cooking them in a fireball... and cheaper!
I prefer the more plausible, to the extent that I have some Leonardo war machines that never made it off the drawing board. However, my interest in military history means I have little time to dedicate to producing non-existent armies Much prefer them on TV and films eg. just thoroughly enjoyed the Mandalorian and Boba Fett series on Disney+, but would never spend time playing that kind of thing.
Some of the Tang dynasty gunpowder innovations are simply mindboggling and would appear science fiction to those who had not encountered them before. Rocket batteries, fire lances etc. My personal favourite being the thunder crow... part drone, part glider, part two stage incendiary rocket, like a V1 doodlebug launched from a torsion catapult... nice! ;D
In many respects these are more plausible than Leonardo's devices which he never took to fruition. Mind you just his bridge building and map making was battlewinning stuff! His triple prod catapult was invented by the Tang (and used)!