Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

(Waves hands in back of room) I have! I have!

I have all five of these, and they are very much in the vain of what we used to do. The emphasis is on EPT, with all the articles by JM. The downside is that the publications runs are very limited, so you have to jump on them when you hear about them. All in all, I like them, which is why I bought them.

Pick me Mr Carter! Pick me!

Seeing as how I never got past EPT, as far as game systems go, this is right up my alley. I will check it out.

Shemek

Sorry to be away for a bit; real life has been intruding...

From AsenRG:
"The royalties are killing us" - Germans in WWI.

There was a scandal when the troops found some dud shells in their laps. The Kaiser was not happy.

Yeah - I don't think I'm lying, either. But according to the guy, by constructing custom stats for the opponents (in a game where each enemy combatant has his, her or its unique skills), I'm lying to the players...
Yes, I called BS already, according to my own advice.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around these notions. I was taught that the referee / GM was strictly a neutral party. We made our own messes, thank you.

Oh yes, I'm sure there's a long and illustrious tradition! The first time I got acquainted with it, I was 7 - when I read "The Good Soldier �vejk"...they mentioned court martial there. And there was even a mention of "that officer was a bastard, so of course he got shot in the first battle - some of the holes were in his back, reportedly"...
I'd call that "a court martial from your social inferiors".

Lots of similar historical examples. One of my favorites is from the Lace Wars when a particularly nasty British infantry Major asked his troops not to kill him until after the battle. Once they won (Fontenoy, I'm thinking) he raised his hat and called "The victory is ours, my lads!" whereupon a bullet hit him in the forehead. Despite his facing his regiment at the moment of impact, his troops all insisted that he'd been hit by enemy fire so his widow could collect his pension.

A death of thousand cuts, then. Fits with OAL.
Didn't they confiscate the Eye and apply it again?

Yep. Nobody found the Eye, which was annoying. It was a one-off, Phil stipulated after the incident was all over.

"A few games" is longer than such people tend to last.
One of my favourite GMs was fond of telling the story of such a player. Said player decided to go with a shirt and epee to war. Then, while sneaking around looking for recon, hidden in a swamp, he noticed a man in good, expensive armour and with a glaive. Said character had met some guy they didn't know, either. The two exchanged some words, and the guy with the glaive killed the other, seemingly in vengeance.
What did the PC decide? Why, of course, he jumped up, pulled his epee, and charged. While in waist-deep water.
They guy met him head on while he was still in knee-deep water, unarmoured and with no shield. You can guess what happened exactly two swings of the glaive later; it's not like the unarmoured guy should have counted on his mobility to even stand a chance, not at all...

The player had the gall to complain that "it's too easy to die in that system" (which they were playtesting). One of the other players looked at him and replied "the system's fine, it's you who's the moron".

I feel I've been lucky; never had anybody like that in an RPG session or campaign. Miniatures games, now...

...I'm afraid I must agree with Dave Arneson. He can decide whether to accept what has happened in their games or not. But "losing control"? That's impossible.

I'd agree. I never really understood why he felt that way; we managed to run a pretty big PBM game while keeping him in the loop on all the decisions, so I'm not at all sure what his issues might have been.

FLGS, mostly?
(Actually, I'm afraid they're everywhere).

Sadly, I fear you're right.

Surrounded and outnumbered by light cavalry in a field?
I think these guys would need their roleplaying skills for negotiating a surrender.

I'm thinking of opening the negotiations with "We're the Sweeny, and we haven't had our dinner!" and go from there. We'll see if anyone gets the joke.

As for your Modesty Blaise advantage, you mean this Modesty Blaise right?

Why yes, I believe I do. Chirine and Vrisa would have gotten along with Willie and Modesty just fine, I think...

I'd consider signing for those courses.

Let me see what I can work up.

Now that would be just cruel!

But funny. Really, really funny...

Originally Posted by Bren

I assume you mean the comics version, not either of the two movies. Also, I find it difficult to believe that Gronan doesn't know who Modesty Blaise is.

Yes, very much so. The pop movie was fun, with lots of delightful scenes - McWhirter, the Scots accountant telling the minions to aim carefully because the rounds cost three and six each, for example - but the comics are much, much better.

We shall see, shall we?

Originally Posted by AsenRG

I lodge henceforth an official request that both stories be told.

On the way, if I may use that phrase in this context...

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

1. Exactly! Sometimes it's "too easy". Fortunately I have been playing with the current group for enough years that they generally sniff out any ambushes before they can be sprung. However, they do occasionally slip up, and I'm right there to "push them off the cliff".

2. Why not? May be you could do it via email, or skype? You can call it "Chirine's Tactics: Basic 101" The stories would be great fodder for this thread!

Shemek

Shemek

I'll see what I can do...

So, I'm a US armor commander detailed to relieve Bastonge; I have to get 2/3rds of my force to the town, or the paratroopers are lost.

I look over the board that Gronan has done, and I see right away that it's ripe for multiple ambushes. So, turn one, I seed a jeep down the road to see if anyone's home. Sure enough, dear old Tom T. shoots and misses with his biggest, baddest unit - a Flak 88mm, hidden (You guessed it!) under The Pink Tree of Death. Game turn two, thirty-six Sherman tanks roll onto the board, wheel-hub to wheel-hub, and a half dozen Wildcat tank destroyers pull onto the hill overlooking the table on my left flank. (Gronan's eyes bulge out at the massive display of armor.) Game turn three, 36 rounds of 76mm high-explosive blanket the far end of the table, blowing all the camoflage off the German units. The tank destroyers then kill them with their 90mm guns. For the next five turns, I moved the barrage back down the table, closer and closer to my front line, and kill or expose all of the ambushing Germans. Any of then shooting at me gets hit as well; yes, I did lose some tanks, but then we had a lot more back in the reserve. Somewhere about turn eight, there was nobody left to shoot at me anymore, so the remaining 2/3rd of my command has a nice quiet drive into town.

This is a 'box barrage', pure and simple.

So, I'm a task force commander, and we're about to be attacked by those other people. I have three of my Scorpion tracked infantry carriers, with a squad of troopers, two energy cannon, and six multiple-warhead guided misslle; two Archer self-propelled artillery units, each with a 175mm L/150 gun and six MWGMs; one Tarantula command unit, with a 175mm L150 gun and a battle computer; the infantry squads have missile and grenade launchers as well as cone rifles. Those other people have a mass of power-armored troopers, and a dozen six-tube rocket launchers on grav-sleds.

We're using Gronan's "Planetfall" rules, his successor to the McEwan "Starguard" and "Orilla" rules. (We played a lot of these back in the day; one of the players was a guy named Larry Bond. Yes, that Larry Bond.)

I take up my defensive positions under as much cover as you can get with an armored task force, and Fred gears up for action. His gravsleds and troopers all have a maximum move speed of 55 mph, so I give Gronan my first turn fire orders - I drop a barrage on the spot where Fred will be at the end of game turn one. He duly arrives, and gets to see what lots of high-explosive does to gravsleds and power-armored troopers. Being a stout fellow, he continues the advance, and meets my second turn of fire which arrives where he does - again, he's moving at a constant rate, just like the artillery software likes.

Nothing lived long enough to get within range of my infantry.

This was a simple 'rolling barrage'; nothing fancy, and I didn't even need to use my slide rule.

Footnote: Fred, to his eternal credit, never did anything like this again; he asked us to reply the game as a training exercise, and developed a very clever attack mode that made any opponent's job a whole lot harder.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

So, I'm a task force commander, and we're about to be attacked by those other people. I have three of my Scorpion tracked infantry carriers, with a squad of troopers, two energy cannon, and six multiple-warhead guided misslle; two Archer self-propelled artillery units, each with a 175mm L/150 gun and six MWGMs; one Tarantula command unit, with a 175mm L150 gun and a battle computer; the infantry squads have missile and grenade launchers as well as cone rifles. Those other people have a mass of power-armored troopers, and a dozen six-tube rocket launchers on grav-sleds.

We're using Gronan's "Planetfall" rules, his successor to the McEwan "Starguard" and "Orilla" rules. (We played a lot of these back in the day; one of the players was a guy named Larry Bond. Yes, that Larry Bond.)

I take up my defensive positions under as much cover as you can get with an armored task force, and Fred gears up for action. His gravsleds and troopers all have a maximum move speed of 55 mph, so I give Gronan my first turn fire orders - I drop a barrage on the spot where Fred will be at the end of game turn one. He duly arrives, and gets to see what lots of high-explosive does to gravsleds and power-armored troopers. Being a stout fellow, he continues the advance, and meets my second turn of fire which arrives where he does - again, he's moving at a constant rate, just like the artillery software likes.

Nothing lived long enough to get within range of my infantry.

This was a simple 'rolling barrage'; nothing fancy, and I didn't even need to use my slide rule.

Footnote: Fred, to his eternal credit, never did anything like this again; he asked us to reply the game as a training exercise, and developed a very clever attack mode that made any opponent's job a whole lot harder.

Ahh, he sighs with a tear in his eye, and cigar firmly clamped in between teeth. "Don't you love it when a plan comes together?"

Shemek