Skirmish Games thoughts

I'd thought I'd set out my thoughts on what makes a good tabletop miniatures skirmish game. They are of course just my opinion, I'm sure you'll disagree as much as you agree, but I will give reasons for my answers.

As a bit of a preamble, most of my skirmish games tend to be near future or science fiction in an urban environment. It's just what I like, so that clearly influences the design choices I have listed below.

So what does make a good solo minis skirmish game for me?

Hidden enemies

From the 'Blips' of Space Hulk to the 'Possible Enemy Forces' of Two Hour Wargames, hidden enemy (and blank, or no contact) tokens are a great way to increase tension and suspense in a solo game.

They mean you do not have a perfect view of the battlefield from the moment the game starts. You don't know where the enemy will come from, what they will be and even if you are just chasing shadows.

This means that you are making choices based on where the enemy may come from, causing you to spread your force as you would do in a real life situation.

If anything this is an advantage over a competive two player game.

Objectives

It often seems like every battle is a war of attrition, slugging it out toe-to-toe, when often they just happen to be chance encounters.

Giving the opposition, and your own forces, a task either ahead of the game or during it helps to eliminate this issue.

Morale

I've chucked morale in here, as all too often as a role-player it is easy to forget that no-one wants to fight to the death in general.

As a skirmish game, if this can be tied in to the immediate effects of combat all the better. By this I mean, rather than a separate roll being required (which I often forget), if morale is factored into another roll then that helps.

Random Activation

Skirmish games are moving away from the IGOUGO method of combat as used by GW. Nobody wants to be standing around as the enemy pound on your forces before you do the same.

Some games use card activation, token pulls, and activation dice. My personal preference is for token pulls, but that is just because I have mini d6 I can use.

Reactions/Overwatch

I like games where every character is on permanent overwatch (sorry can't shake the Space Hulk terminology even after 20-odd years). Why should my character be able to run scott free across the front of an enemy just because he has enough movement score to do so?

Shouldn't he be supressed by another figure before I make that dash? Isn't that more 'realistic'? Well it is for me, anything that encourages proper tactics (as I see them) has be better than static forces.

Easy to remember rules

Gaming on your own can go two ways, one is super detailed, where everything is tracked and as many factors are taken into account as the player can stand.

The other is more streamlined and simplified, maybe some abstraction, as it's just one person running the whole thing.

Now for me I sit on the streamlined end. I don't have the time to try and learn all of the edge cases, rules exceptions and other minutiae that someone else may love. I can handle lots of stats, make whatever judgements are required on the fly etc., but trying to remember different ways to roll the dice are currently just not going to happen.

Recommendations

So the big one. What games do I recommend, and why?

Some of these are tenuous, and even out of print, but they work for me at this moment in time.

Two Hour Wargames
This game introduced me to Possible Enemy Forces and their real possibilities for solo play. It's true I met them in Space Hulk first, but their use was different and very PvP in that game.

THW also introduced me to actions leading to reactions. This mean that you lose control over your characters (which I love), but makes them seem real.

Fast & Dirty - Uncontrolled Forces
FAD is a great ruleset (let down by exception based 'skills'), with a supplement for enemy AI and objectives.

This means that opposing forces are always pursuing some objective, which can change depending on dice rolls. Sometimes they ruthless engage and others they are happy to make their way past if you are content they do so.

Bolt Action/Other Warlord Games games
This is for the dice/token pull mechanic. I like this because it randomises the order of movement among the available figures, meaning you might be able to lay down fire before making a crucial move or not. That uncertainty adding to the solo experience, when it could be the other side standing still throughout.

Now I like token pull because it ensures that every model activiates each turn, and because I use tiny dice it doesn't clutter the table. I have a variety of colours for the dice meaning that as many as 7 or 8 (I forget how many colours) factions can operate on the same tabletop.

Your own favourite rules
So for me that is Advanced HeroQuest, it's just a ruleset I know so well, and I can incorporate all of the above quite easily into them.

I know that may seem a strange choice, but AHQ is really just the standard Games Workshop stats expanded to the use of a d12 instead of a d6.

There's a possibility I will tinker with a d6 dice pool system (Mini Six mixed with The Department's GoalSystem), that I'll be able to use for skirmishes and role-playing but that's for another time.

Roll your own

I haven't had time to write up my investigations yet, so here's a general solo playing post.

So one of the boons, and banes, of solo play is being able to do your own thing.

It is almost overwhelmingly a good thing but I often find myself in the opposite camp, and this post is a reminder to myself of the good things over the bad.

Boons

You can play any game/setting you want
If you want to play something obscure that there is no hope of getting any group for, then there's nothing stopping you. So if that's a Police Quest or Hill Street Blues homage to regular police work, or Witch Hunting in a fantasy world of your own devising, then get to it!

You can use any system you want
Similar to the above, if you want to use Advanced Heroquest to run in the Warhammer FRP 1st edition setting then go ahead.

You can get rules wrong and nobody cares
Forget to roll for knocking down an opponent in Pendragon or screw up a damage roll in Mini Six, it doesn't matter.

You can play any character you want
Want to play as a Hylian wanderer in Ryuutama?

At a time to suit you
If you have a demanding job, or worse yet, live in a place other than US, then getting a group together even online can be a difficult process.

There is no-one to embarrass
Your character take a shine to the Princess, want to role-play that romantic relationship that's so important to your character. Well now you can sweet talk to your heart's content, and not to some sweaty GM.

You can cheat and no one cares
Did that shot between the eyes just take out your character permanently? Well, you can re-roll that surely, what's the chance of that happening again?

You can try different things and reset
So that ruleset you cobbled together or wanted to tryout not giving you the results you wanted? You can easily switch it over to something more in line with your vision of your game without someone complaining about it.

Banes

There is so much choice
Choice paralysis is a real thing for the solo gamer. When you can choose anything, you can often end up not choosing anything.

Game acquisition
You can keep getting more and more games just to try out - without finding the acutal time to try them out.

There's no-one to hold you to account
Don't feel like gaming tonight? Well, there's no-one to tell you to be on time, or anyone to upset by skipping the game.

New Hope City: PI

So the first system I am going to try is New Hope City: PI (NHCPI) designed by Two Hour Wargames (THW).

There are a few reasons for this, first is that my first real introduction to solo gaming was with THW's Larger Than Life, a pulp miniatures ruleset that first focused on playing a single character and going on what would be recognisable as an adventure. It was from that I discovered their 5150 New Beginnings rules and then after that Mythic GME from which I have never looked back.

Well NHCPI takes the cyberpunk-ish city from New Beginnings and adds an investigation method to it. As all THW games are written for solo/co-op play this means the rules are designed to work for solo players too!

So, what are they like on first look?

Quite table heavy, although I don't mind that, particularly as a lot of it is in the initial generation of the crime.

Abstract clue based. So to 'solve' a crime you need to find/solve a certain number of clues (the amount is variable and set by the type of crime and then a random roll). There is no assistance in what these clues and connections are.

My next post will be a walkthrough of my first crime, and an introduction to the first members of the Mayhem Police Department (the name I chose for the city based on a World Works Games printable terrain and RPGGeek search).

Solo Investigations

So as stated one of things this blog will cover is solo role-playing games, that is playing an RPG without a GM.

This is a fast growing area of the hobby, and with the coronavirus pandemic has become more prevalent.

Generally when I solo RP I use the industry mainstay Mythic GM Emulator (hereafter called Mythic GME). This is, in my opinion, the best solo emulator there is, however it does have drawbacks, particularly in its handling of investigations.

Now investigations in RP have long been an area of difficulty, even in group games. They can be hard to provide the necessary clues to the players, and have the mystery wrapped up in a satisfactory TV or novel  style way.

Given those difficulties it is even harder for these styles of adventure to succeed in solo play as one of the joys of solo play is seeing where the story goes, which is difficult when that story is trying to end in a particular way.

That is not to say that people have not tried, and there are a number of systems and approaches both for group and solo games, although group games understandably is where most of the work has been aimed.

In order to find out which investigation methods and systems work best for solo play I intend to give each of them a playthrough for at least a couple of investigations. That should hopefully let me see that system in action sufficiently to have an educated opinion of each of them.

I intend to follow each system exactly as written to give each its fair chance.

Now in order to make the comparison fair I think that other factors should remain static as far as possible, and this relates specifically to the underlying RPG system I use to resolve actions and scenes.

Ordinarily I would use the classic version of Freeform Universal (otherwise known as FU). This small but fantastic system is great at providing a small narrative push with each roll which would work extremely well for the social interactive nature of most investigations. However when trying to review the systems I feel this could get in the way of how they operate so have decided to use a more traditional system based on John Harper's Danger Patrol beta.

Finally, I have decided to base the run throughs in the same place, a cyberpunk-style city of the near future based on Blade Runner, Detroit: Beyond Human, AD Police, The Department of Fabricant Management and others, where androids and related problems exist alongside good old human foibles and greed.