{"id":4579,"date":"2015-11-16T11:01:49","date_gmt":"2015-11-16T11:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bucksurdu.com\/blog\/?p=4579"},"modified":"2015-11-16T11:01:49","modified_gmt":"2015-11-16T11:01:49","slug":"game-designers-corner-thoughts-on-volley-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bucksurdu.com\/blog\/?p=4579","title":{"rendered":"Game Designers’ Corner: Thoughts on Volley Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

I like mechanics that “feel right” as well as being good approximations of the physical effect being modeled.<\/p>\n

I had a recent Email exchange with Lori Brom — just prior to the death of her dad, Larry. \u00a0In my note to her I mentioned that I might have been the only person who really liked the original volley fire mechanic in The Sword and the Flame. \u00a0For those of you who don’t remember it, her it is:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(I intentionally only show part of the card and didn’t put a lot of effort into making it look good, because I don’t have permission to reproduce it.) \u00a0So for British rifles, as an example, I would roll a SINGLE six-sided die. \u00a0If the roll was a “4,” the result is “1\/3.” \u00a0That means that I would count up the number of firing figures and for every three figures, I would inflict one casualty on the enemy. \u00a0Then you would draw cards to tell if the casualties were kills, wounds, leaders, etc. \u00a0It was the “1\/3,” “1\/4,” etc. mechanic that appealed to me. \u00a0Then the question arose, “what about remainders.” \u00a0In the original rules, reminders were lost. \u00a0In an issue of the Heliograph, someone proposed a method by which you rolled on a separate chart with a d10 to see if the remainder turned into an extra casualty or not.<\/p>\n

Clearly many folks who played TSAF didn’t like this mechanic, because in subsequent editions of the rules, Larry moved to a d10-based mechanic, and I think a die roll for each figure. \u00a0But the elegance of the original approach — as well as the single die roll — always made a lot of intuitive sense to me. \u00a0When you fire by volley, you KNOW most of those bullets don’t strike a target. \u00a0This mechanic replicated in an elegant way that felt like volley fire to me.<\/p>\n

When we were developing GASLIGHT I initially toyed with this idea, but dropped it in favor of rolling for each figure. \u00a0I figured Larry know what he was doing when he dropped this mechanic from TSAF, probably the single most successful set of wargaming rules ever. \u00a0As I said earlier,\u00a0I like mechanics that “feel right” as well as being good approximations of the physical effect being modeled. \u00a0To me, this felt right.<\/p>\n