Are there tactical peacegames?

[Trekkin]

There was a post on these forums a while back about how to play pen-and-paper RPGs as cheaply as possible, and that got me thinking about tabletop wargaming, both in how expensive it is and, in a broader sense, how many of the games' rules (true line of sight in particular) demand that players be sighted, able to grip and move the minis, etc. in a way that pnpRPGs do not. That got me wondering if it would be possible to put a wargame together that didn't have these problems.

It turned out to be fairly straightforward, as a test case, to adapt (most of) Battlefleet Gothic into something playable on a 1cm grid, so the entire state of the board is easily describable numerically as well as visually and can be played with graph paper and #2 pencils as d6 rolling cylinders and so forth. Works as a proof of concept, but of course it's totally unshareable given, you know, GW.

That led to some half-finished rulesets for doing things like fighting wars between aerostats in the upper Venusian troposphere and building competing dungeons for a kind of capture-the-flag, but it occured to me that they're still very much war games, and I'm as tired of writing rules for inflicting violent death on enemy units as I am playing games with them -- and I know many of my associates don't play mini wargames precisely because they aren't interested in running a war.

And this is where I turn to ask you, Playgrounders: can we solve the biggest problem with tactical wargames and make a game about tactics, using some of the same tropes about spatial reasoning and probability, without requiring that the players enjoy commanding (simulated) lethal violence? Or, more pertinently, has this already been done? Are there any games out there that you would call tactical peacegames?

[Cespenar]

A great part of European-style strategy board games are peacegames. There are worker placement-centered games, such as Pillars of the Earth or Puerto Rico; or tile-based games like Catan, Carcassonne, etc.

They mostly pivot around the theme of economic competition, and are very famous in Europe (mainly Germany).

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah. The whole genre usually referred to as "Eurogames" are largely about building stuff and indirect interaction/competition. Generally speaking they're low on randomness, intended to be social (rarely have players eliminated), and have a reasonably chewy level of depth with quite simple actual mechanics (often out of a quite thinky scoring system, especially in Reiner Knizia's games).

[snowblizz]

Aren't those like just straight up boardgames?

Chess, checkers, go etc I guess arguably a lawful pacifist stupid would call wargames but they are so abstracted as to lose most of the wargameyness IMO.

The stuff listed so far is what I would broadly call board games. And there are loads, but not an interest of mine really so I don't know them too well.

I recall a friend of my explaining (works in a gaming shop) a game of gnoes in a submarine that sounded quite fun. (OK googled and it's called Red Novmeber and I guess you could argue it's about war, what with the nuclear submarine and stuff, but that's really mostly window dressing, it's a cooperative game about fixin the sub after all or not as the case may be IIRC, bailing out on everyone else is a soft win I think).

You'll want to check this place out I'd say:
https://boardgamegeek.com/

[warty goblin]

In the computer game end of things, you could argue that a lot of city builders amount to this. The tactics are rather different, insofar as they're about figuring out how to build a good housing area in order to supply that industrial area, but it sorta fits.

[Knaight]

Yeah. The whole genre usually referred to as "Eurogames" are largely about building stuff and indirect interaction/competition. Generally speaking they're low on randomness, intended to be social (rarely have players eliminated), and have a reasonably chewy level of depth with quite simple actual mechanics (often out of a quite thinky scoring system, especially in Reiner Knizia's games).

A lot of them don't have the spatial stuff as much, and those that do often don't emphasize probability much complements of being either deterministic or close to it. With that said, keeping in mind those two facets:

Settlers of Catan: The space on the board matters, distance matters, and it's broadly peaceful, although there is some implicit violence in the Cities and Knights expansion.
Power Grid: There's randomness in what shows up when, with enough going on that a knowledge of probability is useful, and the board has a strong spatial component.
Pandemic: This is a personal favorite, and it fits your case perfectly. Probability matters and people are always crunching the numbers, it has movement on a board in the style of a war game (each player controls a piece, each piece has 4 action points per turn, which includes moving from one spot to an adjacent one, along with actual actions). It's also about curing diseases, thus taking it pretty far from war game territory.


Pandemic in particular fits the "tactical peacegame" moniker, and would be the very first thing I'd look at for this.

[Spore]

So....Fantasy Football, Bloodbowl (although killing is an option in BB) or any Madden title? Anything based on Rugby or American Football. Because that is a wargame without death.

[Kaptin Keen]

Management games, 'Tycoon' games, sports games, Sim's games, simulators that aren't Sim's, even the highly malignant dating simulators and harem games - though an unsighted version of these last might be sort of missing the point.

There are even avoidance games - such as Amnesia: The Dark Descent - that would sorta qualify.

[houlio]

The last mini game I really got into is called Guild Ball. It's a very low-magic tactical rugby game, ala Bloodbowl but paired down to only six players. It involves significantly less violence than Bloodbowl (all the players are just taken out and can return to the field after being woken up with an icy sponge). The game itself is very fast paced and has quite a lot of interesting decisions to make. Each team has a unique line up of characters who all have different stats, abilities, and plays they can make so that each model feels rather unique.

Otherwise, many of the Euro-genre of board games are peaceful but still involve cut-throat competition. I'm not entirely sure you would call them "tactical" as much as "strategic" though.

[GloatingSwine]

Actually, a game I couldn't remember the name of but now can if you want a computer game: Offworld Trading Company.

It's an RTS about economic conflict, there's no direct way to attack other players (though there are some ways to mess with their productivity/profit margin), it's all about base building and economic management.

[Knaight]

Actually, a game I couldn't remember the name of but now can if you want a computer game: Offworld Trading Company.

It's an RTS about economic conflict, there's no direct way to attack other players (though there are some ways to mess with their productivity/profit margin), it's all about base building and economic management.

I was considering listing this one, but there are direct attacks in there - you can hire people to just blow up an opponent's building.

[Vaz]

Stellaris 1.6.