Wargame/RPGs Interesting mix

[dafrca]

I have been toying with Stargrave and Five Parsecs from Home. Both are skirmish wargames but both attempt to add a level of RPG as well (not always successful thought).

It makes for an interesting game.

I am curious, have any of you tried these "blended games" and if so, like or dislike them?

[Brother Oni]

There's been a couple.

The RTS/RPG blend is popular with the X-Com series, Spellforce series and Dawn of War 2 being examples off the top of my head.

The Battlezone series, Men of War: Assault Squad series, Natural Selection series plus the Eximius: Seize the Frontline game are all RTS/FPS blended games.

Carrier Command and its clone, Hostile Waters, are RTS/third person shooters.

Divinity: Dragon Commander is an odd duck as it's a combination third person shooter/RTS/RPG.

Similarly, Dragon Dragoon/Drakengard was combination third person dragon rider simulation and horde slash-em-up.


X-Com and Dawn of War 2 were both very popular for their times, with your squads developing over time to better fit your playstyle.

I didn't get much chance to play Divinity:Dragon Commander - I'll probably try it again now that I have a better computer. I really like Dragon Dragoon for its story and overall lore for the world, although the game mechanics are a little clunky.

[Gwynchan'rGwyll]

Judging from dafrca's examples, I think they're thinking more tabletop than video game.

Games like Shadows of Brimstone and Star Wars: Imperial Assault come to mind.

[Eldan]

Or Mordheim, if one wants to go old-fashioned. The unit advancement system is a major draw.

[Imbalance]

Mage Knight: Dungeons for tabletop
Ogre Battle series for video gaming

[Cheesegear]

I am curious, have any of you tried these "blended games" and if so, like or dislike them?

Games Workshop does them all the time: Mordheim, Necromunda, Blood Bowl, various iterations of Kill Team, and more recently, 40K!Crusade.

The most problematic part of the the Competitive Tactical RPG, unfortunately, is the internet. It's extremely hard to play an RPG organically when half your playgroup already has a pre-built team or character in their heads, or planned out ahead of time. It stops becoming an RPG, and it starts becoming more and more about who can stack the most XP or the most upgrades on the most characters or units the most efficiently, and when that happens, you really have to hope the rubber band mechanics are robust enough to fix the power gap...And of course a lot of GW's Tactical RPGs hit a point where the power gap is so wide that the rubber band just snaps and the disadvantaged player just can't recover.

On the other hand, I really, really like both Silver Tower and Blackstone Fortress... I've never played Cursed City because GW did a short stock and scalpers did the rest.

[ufo]

The free wargame rulesets One Page Rules (available at onepagerules.com) has legally distinct analogues to Games Workshop's Mordheim and Kill Team, called Age of Fantasy: Skirmish and GrimDark Future: Firefight, respectively. The creator is currently working on something that sounds exactly like what you're looking for, called Sellswords, which I'm only familiar with from reading the early drafts sent to Patrons. The systems have a very simplistic but sufficiently robust "AI" system for playing with yourself.

[Squark]

Games Workshop does them all the time: Mordheim, Necromunda, Blood Bowl, various iterations of Kill Team, and more recently, 40K!Crusade.

The most problematic part of the the Competitive Tactical RPG, unfortunately, is the internet. It's extremely hard to play an RPG organically when half your playgroup already has a pre-built team or character in their heads, or planned out ahead of time. It stops becoming an RPG, and it starts becoming more and more about who can stack the most XP or the most upgrades on the most characters or units the most efficiently, and when that happens, you really have to hope the rubber band mechanics are robust enough to fix the power gap...And of course a lot of GW's Tactical RPGs hit a point where the power gap is so wide that the rubber band just snaps and the disadvantaged player just can't recover.

The internet isn't the problem, per se. What you're describing can happen without the internet. It happens organically with any sufficiently long-lived system. The internet just accelerates the process.

The fundamental takeaway, I feel, is that Competive RPGs live or die by a good session zero. Communicating clearly beforehand and establishing tone is a bit part of any Roleplaying game, but it becomes even more vital when competition actually is part of the game. It also requires more experienced players and GMs/Organizers/etc. to take a more active role in guiding other players and being more proactive.

And then GW goes and makes things even more complicated by throwing Game Balance to the wind

[Easy e]

Why yes, I have tried many of them.

As a Wargame Designer, the overlap between RPG and wargame has always interested me. If apocrypha can be believed, the genesis of RPGs was wargames.

In my view, there are a couple ways designers have tried to go about creating an RPG-lite experience. One is setting up competitive wargames but with a campaign element that carries over as rewards/handicaps between games. The other, is doing something similar but setting it up as a Co-op experience.

One of the big "handicaps" of making a competitive approach to RPG-lite in wargames is the inherent "opposition" set-up in a wargame setting. Their is a winner and a loser. Those who met their objectives and those who have not. The set-up of such games are adversarial and competitive as opposed to co-operative from the start. This makes create a good RPG like experience much more challenging IMHO.

Solo or Co-op campaign games do a much better job of moving towards the RPG-lite approach. Their, the baseline assumption of the game and players IS cooperation by default.

There are other handicaps, but my interaction with fellow players of such games is the parameters of competition strongly influencing how players approach the RPG-lite aspect of the games themselves.

I hope that made a lick of sense.