Play be email campaign

[KTravlos]

Friends lend me your eyes. I need your knowledge.

I have promised the members of my e-club in Greece to run a operational level play by email campaign for them. Either set in a 19th century setting or a sci-fi setting that is essentially 19th century in space (think Legend of Galactic Heroes). I have some ideas from Paddy's generalship game, but I have some more. I will lay them out to you in case you are aware of a system out there that covers them.
1)   2 Players play the role of Chief of Staff/ Commanders in Chief who have operational command of a major military operation (a war) for two sides. Think Moltke the elder, Benedek 1866 etc. The others play the roles of corps commanders. Remaining corps, division, and brigade commanders are NPCs. Players essentially command corps on an operational map.

2)   Battles are fought by me either by automatic system or using one of the rulesets I have.


3)   I want politics and personalities to play a role. I consider the positions of Chief of Staff/ Supreme Commander as fundamentally managerial/ political position. Part of it is managing the personalities under your command, and part managing political expectations from the High Command. Indeed I am envisioning a double game. On one level players play to gain VPs and objectives in the war for their side, but they are also trying to survive politically. They may lose either due to the war going bad, but also because they fail to manage their subordinates and the political expectations of higher ups (think Political Points as Victory Points). I envision NPCs to have characteristics like those in Altar of Freedom but also political ones (like political appointment that cannot be removed from command without costing the player Political Points). Players decide issues like promotion, demotion etc but must consider political cost. CnC players maybe demoted to Corps Commanders, and Corps Commanders may be promoted. Payers can intrigue against each other.

4)    Οrbats are battalion based, but players can only really command to the brigade level (i.e breaking up a crops to send units to various tasks).


5)   My friends are not that familiar with good war gaming, so logistics should play a role but als be straightforward

6)   Operational rules should be simple enough, but provide players with the opportunity to create a great game and easy to accommodate with rules like Neil Thomas 19th century rules, or Big Bloody Battles.

I might be asking too much, probably I am as this is a RPG/Wargame mix, and I will in the end probably sit down and right my own rules, but if you are aware of some system that covers these stuff please tell.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Sounds great.
Might I recommend you look at 'To The Last Gaiter Button' or that stable of rules by our noble friend Bernie. Top campaign rules.

[fred.]

If you are GMing the whole thing, and sending out situation reports by email, and getting responses in. You may not really need any rules as such.

Some broad ideas on movement rates and strategic scouting distances should do for the operational level.

I suppose some depends on how much you want the player to control, vs how much you think their officers will do automatically. Will their officers send out scouts and forage for food - or will they have to order this to happen?

With logistics - you can probably handle this fairly abstractly with the player's adjutants warning when supply is running low if the forces goes (or plans to go) too far off the beaten track

Some fudging may help to keep things interesting - otherwise forces may blunder past or go off into the wilderness.

To get things moving at the start - it may be worth having one side already having made a surprise attack - which has cost both sides dear in troops and experienced commanders. Your players the reserves moving to plug the gap / exploit the early successes depending on their side!

[barbarian]

Do you plan to play in english ?
If so, I'm in.

[Chris Pringle]

Maybe you should have a look at Sam Mustafa' s game Longstreet? Players have exactly the kind of political etc motives you're talking about. (Or so I understand - not seen it myself.)

Chris

[GrumpyOldMan]

Hello KTravlos

I posted a quick answer on TMP. Here's some more information.

Have a look at David Heading campaign 1618 Something http://web.archive.org/web/20010427010338/http://www.1618something.co.uk/index.html..

Rally Round the King although it's in a fantasy/medieval setting has some good campaign ideas.

If politics are important have a look at AK47 from Peter Pig http://www.peterpig.co.uk/rules_ak47.htm where it's incorporated through political flow charts. It's set in post war Africa but it has been modified for other periods. Here for SCW http://mr-home.staff.shef.ac.uk/rules/mex36.html. At https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/RFCM/files/AK-47%20Republic/ there are variants for Chinese warlords, Mexican revolution etc.

Tony Bath's Setting up a wargames campaign (included in this book http://www.nobleknight.com/productdetailsearch.asp_Q_ProductID_E_2147450710_A_InventoryID_E_2148234438) is great too.

Cheers

GrumpyOldMan

[Leman]

If you are looking for a campaign that covers military and political decisions in 1866 then try Trapped Like a Fox, from the same stable as To the Last Gaiter Button. It ptovides a ready made campaign including maps, charts, counters and cards, as well as a set of rules for combat, although you can of course use a different set.

[Hertsblue]

If you are GMing the whole thing, and sending out situation reports by email, and getting responses in. You may not really need any rules as such.

Some broad ideas on movement rates and strategic scouting distances should do for the operational level.

I suppose some depends on how much you want the player to control, vs how much you think their officers will do automatically. Will their officers send out scouts and forage for food - or will they have to order this to happen?

With logistics - you can probably handle this fairly abstractly with the player's adjutants warning when supply is running low if the forces goes (or plans to go) too far off the beaten track

Some fudging may help to keep things interesting - otherwise forces may blunder past or go off into the wilderness.

To get things moving at the start - it may be worth having one side already having made a surprise attack - which has cost both sides dear in troops and experienced commanders. Your players the reserves moving to plug the gap / exploit the early successes depending on their side!

Fred is right when he says that you may not need formal rules. You are in the ideal "Kriegspiel" situation, where no player has a complete view of the situation and all actions/interactions come through you, the umpire. In that position you may want to "wing it" and ignore any outline rules when circumstances demand it. The main drawback to such a course is that it places a fairly heavy load on the umpire - but I guess you are probably prepared for that.

I would strongly recommend using an historical basis for your campaign - one of the late 19th century wars would be favourite. It means that you would not have to strain your brain inventing a back-story and players who did their own research would be rewarded. It also means that you would have ready-made maps that could be used more-or-less straight off the page.

Finally, I would always have some form of random event generator. Nothing in human affairs ever goes entirely to plan, due to famine, flood, fever or sheer bad luck. A pack of event cards is a must in any campaign.

Hope this helps.  

[KTravlos]

Friends. Thank you very much for your suggestions.

I will be umpiring, and I am afraid I am only keeping to my close greek club. It will be in English but I would like my first campaign to be a bit of a local event. Sorry for that. I will make any rules publicly available.

The way I have it in my mind players will mostly give orders and decide how to use their time (ala Paddy Griffith). Corps Commanders may decide the disposition of divisions or brigades in battle, but that is most of their direct power (I am thinking of breaking the battles down to division sized actions). I will solo the battles using 19th century rules or BBB.

What i really want for them is the twin burdens of operational command and political battle. Random events will exist, but some of them will be political and some military.

There will be essentially three broad states of the world. The true state, only known to me and the state each side and the palyer in each side knows. For example I will know if commander x has the traits a or b, but players may hear rumors of it. To learn the truth they will have to manage their personnel decisions well or await action. Orbats will be the same. Only I will know true game statistics. They may have abstract ideas about the elan or training level of a unit, but only action or activity will provide them with more accurate information. Maps are the same.

Man I really think I might go for it and write my own rules.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Keep us informed of how it goes!

[Techno]

Hope it goes well, and your club really enjoys it !!
Cheers - Phil

[Luddite]

Not sure about rules, but something to consider is rather than using email, to use Facebook. 

Create a closed group, and run it through that.  It gives a central location for communal content, and you can do all the secret squirrel stuff via private messaging.

I do a lot of roleplaying that way and it works really well.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Says a man called Luddite!

[toxicpixie]

The Captain is unfairly maligned, he wasn't anti-technology just pro-workers not being exploited

[Luddite]

The Captain is unfairly maligned, he wasn't anti-technology just pro-workers not being exploited

Anti technology that disadvantaged the workers.

Pro direct democracy.

General Ludd.