Light Bobs 250′ In the Works

Brother David, my good friend the GamePoet and myslef have been hard at work (if you call playtesting had work) on a new version of Light Bobs. This game is being seriously rewritten and is looking very promising. I just finished up the first draft of my Designer notes and thought Iwould share them here.

If you are interested in being involved please drop me a not via the contact page here.

TY – Chris

Design, Insight, Campaigns and Solo Play

Introduction and campaigns

The game mechanisms in Light Bobs are designed to give a game that has the feeling of the period, not just the battle. Like most published games of the past and present, Light Bobs can be played as standalone game where players setup a game, have a great time and then pack up. To gamers just starting out in the hobby this is great, but it isn’t too long before they yearn for a campaign.

In a campaign game you can truly prove who you are and how good you can be. But campaigns can be a black hole. When you rely on other gamers to participate in a campaign life always seems to get in the way. Players take longer and longer to submit orders or even play the battles generated by the campaign.

By using the Leader skill rules, the Mini-Campaign players can be in a mapless campaign. With the beginning of each new battle having been created by the Leaders themselves.

The player as a character

Light Bobs attempts to satisfy the desire to play in a campaign but does it in an easy and enjoyable way. As mentioned earlier, you are a Leader. Borrowing from our role-play cousins, your Leader has skills that make him who he is on the battlefield. At the end of the battle, win or lose you have a chance to add or enhance your skills. You also have the chance to increase your Military Rank which in turn allows you to raise a larger force for the next battle.

Solo games

The fog of war in the game due to the Command Card system and the First Move Generation of each game turn is so good that you can play a solo game and not automatically know which side will win. You would truly have to cheat to trick the game.

A new twist on morale

Most wargames treat the individual unit as the focus for morale. Though an accepted system, it is not necessarily the best system for the period and it tends to slow down the game. Battle Line Morale tracks the level of an entire Regiment of the army. As this multi-unit formation is stressed it will be forced to test its morale. Failure is usually incremental with units starting to falter, edging to the rear. As the game goes on and the units in the Battle Line start to get battered small cracks will appear until eventually units just break and run, thus eventually ending the game.

Return Fire or who goes first?

Most games, past and present have either one sided fire meaning when it is your turn some or all of your units may Fire on the enemy. Or in some cases it is considered simultaneous. I owe the overall theory behind this to George Jeffries for all you Grognards of the 80’s.

In Light Bobs a new approach has been take. The theory is that Fire on the battle field wasn’t always IGYG or simultaneous. More often than not one unit got off the first volley or series of volleys.

In Light Bobs if a unit is commanded to fire at a unit both sides check to see “Who Fires First”. Each unit makes a single die roll checks for a few possible modifiers and compares it to their training values. The results are simple, either one Unit fires first or they both fire simultaneously. If one fires first, then the other must deal with any damage it took before it fires back.

Now the command “don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes boys” has some meaning.