Commorragh Phase 5: Shadowplay

Commorragh has been lying fallow for a little bit, so I think it’s worth another visit and for me to unearth another half-baked idea from the ‘wouldn’t it be cool?’ files.  In this edition, the idea is lighting conditions.  This is a bit of an odd thing and could be very hard for me to implement, but in the Dark City (clue’s in the name folks!) I can imagine shadows and darkness playing a major role in tactics and execution of many Kabal skirmishes.  Whether it’s hiding from enemy fire, setting up sneaky ambushes or having you face bitten off by a hired Mandrake, darkness can be both a strength and a weakness in game, but always a factor.

The rough idea would be that several areas on the table would be classed as ‘Dark’ or ‘Shadowed’ or maybe ‘Sable’ if we’re getting needlessly poetic.  Darkness would provide handy protective points for the players to use and would add a little bit atmosphere and colour to the board.  If deployed into at the beginning of a skirmish (say as an ambush mission or something) they would be the equivalent of secret deployment.  The ambusher would note which dark areas his guys were deployed in secretly and not place the models on the board.

Sight into darkness would be quite simple to enact, I think, relying mainly on Initiative values of the models looking, so a Kabalite would see further than a human slave and so on.  This would encourage players to move their guys closer to check a darkened area for targets, potentially leaving them vulnerable.  Darkness would give a -1 modifier to hit at range as well I reckon (or something like that).  Options for firing blind into darkness would be open, but only for certain weapons or units.  A splinter rifle, for example, is a precision weapon and lacks the rate of fire for a ‘spray and pray’ approach to clear an ambush point.  Splinter cannons or Shredders, however would be perfect for the role.  Obviously large penalties would be involved when trying to hit someone you cannot see.  I’m thinking a flat roll of 6s to hit regardless of statline (Shredders would probably be relegated to D6 shots rather than a Blast for the purposes of blind fire).  However, in order to keep the secret deployment secret, you would roll to wound on every hit, regardless of whether or not anyone was actually in there.  This introduces a certain level of bluffing into the game, which I quite like.

It also brings an interesting element to some of the units.  Mandrakes for example (being semi-shadow-demon-things themselves) would have added bonuses to working in shadow and penalties for working in light areas.  One of the key shadow advantages for these guys would probably be the ability to teleport from one shadowed location to another to enact their grisly mandates.  There’s a fair amount of talk in the background to Mandrakes being able to materialise out of the shadows to prey on the unwary.  I think this would translate very nicely in-game.  I picture this working in a ‘secret deployment’ style as well.  At the beginning of the Mandrake’s movement the owning player would elect to use ‘fading into the shadows’ (or something like that), remove the Mandrake from the board and note down which darkened area the Mandrake would appear in next movement phase.  This again opens up the options for mind games and bluffing, as well as a relative test of nerve for the opponent.  Does he get all his guys out of the darkness to avoid getting surprised by a balefiring lunatic?  Does stay the course and keep all his guys where they are, confident in the knowledge that you can’t kill them all?  Or does he believe that he knows where you’ll strike and only move those key units out of danger?

There are many possibilities here, my (imaginary) friends…

And I’m enjoying them.

Commorragh: Phase 4

During the previous Commorragh Phase pieces, I’ve been talking fairly high-level conceptual stuff, but I should probably start addressing the nitty-gritty.  How would the encounters actually play?

When it came to Necromunda, the game played on basically the 3rd Edition 40k rules with a couple of tweaks.  The main area that was altered for the game was that when a character lost his last wound, you’d roll on a further table to see whether or not s/he’d be able to shrug it off.  If I recall correctly (and I may well not), the table was a simple three-parter.  On a 1-2 the injury was just a flesh wound and the character could get up and fight normally albeit with modifications to their profile.  Enough flesh wounds would still put a character down for the count.  On a 3-4, the character was down and couldn’t really contribute to the battle at all, but could crawl to try to get away from danger.  On a 5-6 the character was gone and removed from the game; they’d roll on the big Injury table and we’d see what happened to them.

Anyway, that’s a bit of an unnecessary tangent at the moment.  The basic point to this ramble is to ask: should I use bog-standard 5th ed rules for the conflicts (albeit with various tweaks) or should I try to create a different system?  It’s a bit of knotty problem really.  Going for the 5th ed rules would be a lot less hassle, but I’m currently unconvinced that it would be the best system for the job.  It’s a bit too shallow.  However, with fewer models involved, I think the rules can afford to be a little more complicated.  Not to the mad extent of Inquisitor, but it could certainly do with something more narratively exciting than ‘you’ve failed your armour save, now fall over’ style of normal 5th ed.

Although, that said, I don’t want to go the way of needing character sheets to record damage mid-game (although I do think some character sheets will be needed for your key characters due to skills, equipment and what have you).  Maybe damage inflicts stat-modifiers mid game.  Every time you fail an armour or cover save, there could be an additional roll on a damage table to see how it affects the character.  Something along the lines of 1-2: lose a wound (chest or head), 3-4: lose 1 WS & BS (arms), 5-6: Lose movement and Initiative (legs).  Oh yeah.  Movement.

I definitely want movement to work a little differently, even if it’s as simple as giving people movement values again.  This gives a greater sense of difference between the characters and faction types.  For example, Wyches and Incubi are both close combat focused, only the Incubi have more armour and strike marginally after the Wyches in assault.  It only make sense to have the Wyches move noticeably faster across the board to compliment this obvious difference in speed and reflexes.  It could also make the Wyches more of a tempting option for hiring if they can cover ground more effectively, rather than just making them cheaper than Incubi.

Another potential difference I can see occurring is sight ranges.  In old rules, whenever sight was called into question (or indeed, any form of alertness), the detection area of a model was based on its Initiative.  I think this is a good and applicable system, but for the purposes of the game it shouldn’t work across the entire system, as it would make certain characters harder to play.  That said, an extended sight range could be a skill or perk for certain equipment setups or character types (sniper and the like).

I would also like to re-introduce the good old ‘To Hit’ modifiers.  I prefer these to the rather binary Cover Save system that 40k operates on now.  I understand that it’s quicker and involves less maths, but, like I’ve said, with a lower model count, system simplification becomes less important.  I’ll delve more into what they could be later.

That’s it for now though.  More half-baked rules tweaks and thoughts at a later date.

Maybe tomorrow.

Stranger things have happened.

Commorragh: Phase 3

Okay, then.  Last time, I blathered about accruing influence with a variety of Mercenary factions, all of whom can bring different styles and abilities to the table.  Mandrakes are your stealth fighters, Scourges are ranged recon, Hellions are highly manoeuvrable melee fighters, Wyches are consummate close combat experts, Incubi are heavily armoured, hard hitting monsters.  I think Mercs will be an all-round assault/ranged option with brute resilience, Haemonculi covens add pure resilience and slaves have great numbers, but nothing else going for them.  Each of these factions can bring a different style of play to an encounter and can present a different tactical challenge for an opponent.

Obviously, the temptation could well be to pick one faction in particular and stick with it to the bitter end, making use of the allegiance system I mentioned in Phase 2 to gain better rates and higher quality hirelings.  This could be a bad thing as it could rob Kabals of individuality or provide disproportionate advantages.  How should I combat this?  As I mentioned in an earlier post, one way to do this would be to inflict penalties to allegiance based on casualty rates.  This would cause the player to have to weigh up how cautious he would be with his hirelings.  This also has the side effect of giving your opponents some level of influence on your allegiances.  If they want to stop you gaining favour with a Wych Cult, then they can go out of their way to kill your hired Wyches, letting you take a hit in you Wych allegiance and stymieing your progress with them.  Adding a voluntary additional objective like this could add a nice bit of extra depth to the conflicts.  I don’t want it to go too far though.  Otherwise all the games would end in a ‘kill the hirelings’ mess.

The rate of allegiance gain or loss would have to be balanced, which is always the knottiest problem in any games system.  Well, with a couple of exceptions.  Obviously, if one Kabal keeps going out of its way to kill Wyches, it won’t be gaining any favour with the Wyches any time soon.  This leads me to the idea of simultaneously decreasing the allegiances of Faction-killers, forcing some sense of risk/reward into their actions as well.

Maybe a non-combat way of enhancing allegiances would be useful here?  A simple purchasing system could work.  Spend a certain amount of money (what do Dark Eldar use as currency anyway?) to gain a certain number of allegiance points or favour or whatever.  If I’m going to do that, I should really grade the costs, so that when your allegiance is very high or very low, it costs a good deal to raise it any more, whereas the middling rates are a lot cheaper.  This would allow players to better make up for murdering opposing hirelings, provided they were smart about it.

A further idea is that of negative allegiance or active disfavour.  This would actively set the slighted faction against the offending Kabal, offering cheap rates (or maybe even providing free troops) in encounters against them.  Obviously, you wouldn’t be able to hire any faction in negative allegiance, giving further incentive to keep on the good side of varying factions, which again plays into the feel of the world.  The one exception to this allegiance system as I see it, would be Slaves.

Slaves obviously wouldn’t have any organised faction or any allegiance to them.  You fight for whoever owns you.  So what’s to stop a Kabal from flooding the field with chaff and wearing down their opponents with attrition wars against unworthy adversaries?  Well, the way I see things, a Kabal relies on its Slaves to bring in the income.  Working metal shops, equipment halls weapons manufacturing, you name it.  One way or another, it’s the Slaves that are going to do the work.  A Kabalite wouldn’t lower himself to petty manual labour.  So, by fielding Slaves in the conflicts, you get a cheap (or free) mass of unskilled and poorly-equipped combatants, albeit at the cost of potentially weakening your overall financial position in-between games.  It also provides a potential mission-hook of directly attacking the slaves of another Kabal to weaken them for later.

Of course, Slaves won’t be the only way of accruing funds for a Kabal.  There are always Realspace raids, but I think that’ll be for another time…

See you later! (Or not)

Commorragh: Phase 2

Okay, now we’ve had brief chat about how the gangs (or kabals or whatever) could be constructed; the next step is to think about the reasons why these gangs would be fighting.  Now, as anyone who knows anything about Commorragh can tell you, it’s a very dangerous place.  Fights happen and casual murder abounds.  However, it’s not completely lawless.  Such a society could not exist.  That’s not to say that there’s any kind of central constitution or set of rules or anything.  Actually, thinking about it, it’s not really law.  It’s order. There’s a distinct difference between the two.  Order seems to be kept by faction and by individual.  After the aristocracy fell, organised gangs (kabals) rose from the anarchy and now keep order in the areas that they control.  This provides a ripe canvas for conflict, as all these kabals would be trying to screw each other over for gain, be it territory, resource, favour from another faction, you name it.  However, such machinations must be planned carefully or a full-on war between kabals could erupt, disrupting the order of the area and (more often than not) weakening both sides regardless of who one.  This environment favours the smaller-sized conflicts with distinct objectives to be achieved and strict parameters for failure.  This is very good for the type of game I want to do.

However, that’s just the kabals.  They’re only one faction in Dark Eldar society (although they are broadly speaking the most powerful and generalist).  You also have Wych Cults, Haemonculi Covens, Hellion Gangs, Incubi Temples, Mandrakes, Alien Mercenaries and the vast multitudes of Slaves knocking about.  However, some of these things are just going to be too specialised to be a full playable faction in the game.  Incubi are a good example to illustrate what I mean.  They have a very strict role and a (sort of) code of ethics to them, and I just don’t see them being involved in these kind of gang war on their own.  I can see them being hired as shock troops and bodyguards though, just not a faction in their own right.  Same for the alien mercenaries.  They wouldn’t be organised enough or well supported enough to participate in and of themselves.  Hired, no problem.  Mandrakes as well.  God knows what they're up to.

Now, in games like Necromunda, you had your distinct gangs (Orlocks, Van Saar, Escher, Goliath et al) and you played strictly to that gang’s layout and quirks.  Van Saar ran highly tech-based, so would have relevant skills and equipment for that theme, Goliath were brute-force close range fighters and so on.  There were some mercenary choices, but it was broadly you having your one gang choice and playing to that.  Gorkamorka was simpler.  You had Gorkers and Morkers.  They weren’t so much gangs as schools of thought (cunning or brute force) and only governed what skills you had available to you.  I see this game as being different from both on that front.

Even in that short list of factions I made, there are a number that would work as hirelings rather than full factions and this would lend itself to a far more varied hodgepodge of gang make ups, as I see people wanting to go for a variety of different gang makeup from all the hired forces.  In some ways this is a good thing, but might end up with the opposing forces being too indistinct and losing character.  How could this be combated?  One possibility is a favour system.  The more you hire, say Incubi, the more they would favour you as a regular employer.  You would gain (if not trust) then at least a little extra consideration.  Yet, at the same time, the other mercenary factions wouldn’t care much for you and you would gain any favour with them.  In fact, up against another gang who had hired wych cultists, your rampant slaughter of them (maybe) would cause you to be seen as an enemy or at least an antagonist and they would be far less likely to work for you.

This system, I’ve realised, potentially falls into the trap to people throwing their lot in with one mercenary faction and endlessly taking advantage of cheaper rates and better equipment, making it feel less like a Kabal and more like a Temple on the march, which I said earlier was incongruous to the logic of Temples.  There should be risk involved in the act of hiring on guys like this.  So I’m thinking of something like a penalty if too many of your hirelings die in a conflict.  After all, the Temple isn’t going to think highly of you if you keep getting their members killed, regardless of how often you hire them…

Okay, that’s the discussion for today, but this section is definitely going to need more thought.

In a good way, of course.  There’s a lot of potential here that needs to be explored.  As ever, any comments or ideas are appreciated.

PS Thanks to you anonymous guys (not sure if you were one or two) for linking me to similar projects.  When time allows I’ll definitely have a look through and see if there’s any insight I can glean from them.  Fingers’ crossed!

Commorragh: Phase 1

I suppose the first thing to think about when trying to design a game like this is wondering what form it should take.  I’ve stated my inspiration for this as being gang-level skirmish campaign games like Necromunda and Mordheim.  That seems like a natural starting point, as the gang violence is probably going to be the meat of the game.  Assuming I take further ideas from those games, another question arises.  In Necromunda, each one of your gang members, from juves to leaders, was their own character.  You named them, equipped them and developed them all individually.  Mordheim, by contrast worked by a different method.  You had some individual characters, but you also had groups of Henchman; guys who were less individual than the named characters.  Where the important characters rolled on dedicated injury tables whenever they got taken down in a fight, henchman got a single flat D6 roll to see whether or not they survived the wounds, representing their more expendable nature.

Another key difference between Henchmen and Characters was in experience and advancement.  One of the most fulfilling things about Necromunda was having one of your juves (low-level gang members) grow over time and claw their way up the gang hierarchy and become more and more dangerous as time progressed.  Henchmen had opportunity for advancement, but these were often less plentiful or developed than Characters, who had far greater opportunities for skills and stats.  Equipment is another defining difference, with Henchmen having far less options for tweaked layouts and less flexibility and character as a result, especially seeing as they were hired on in groups rather than individuals.

That may have been sounding like I don’t like the Henchman system, but that’s not really the case.  The Mordheim system may have sacrificed some of the depth of the Necromunda gang system on a strict model-by-model basis, but the game became streamlined as a result.  It also helped you to get more attached to the characters you did have, as you would (by and large) prefer to have a henchman throw himself in the way to blunt an attack than one of your few characters, whereas you wouldn’t really get the choice in Necromunda.  I also think that the more disposable nature of the Henchman system fits in better with the feel of Commorragh as whole.  People would get thrown away wholesale if necessary with little to no remorse from the loss.

I think that, for the combat section of the game, the Henchman System of Mordheim is probably going to be a better fit overall, with a few more individual characters to act as lieutenants or important allies.  This too conveys the extreme segregation of Commorragh society into the haves or have-nots as well as providing more scope for en masse gangs to develop without horrific amounts of paperwork to endure at the end of each engagement.

However, my decision is by now means set in stone.  These Commorragh posts are really me having a conversation with myself and mulling over ideas.  Well, that’s half true.  They’re also serving as progress updates and discussion points for anyone who might be interested in joining in or giving ideas or criticism.  At the very least have a look at some of the games I mentioned earlier (if you don’t know them already).  They really are quite good.

Free (legal) downloadable rulebooks for the systems can be found through the following links:

Mordheim

Necromunda

Gorkamorka 1

Gorkamorka 2

So long!