Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[joncleaves]

There is an audience of ancients gamers we will never reach and we know that.

Every game designer must make the hard decisions between simplicity and
realism. In 29 years of gaming, I have yet to discover a simple game that I
thought was a reasonably accurate portrayal of reality. I do not find DBM to
be so, and I certainly do not find DBA to be so. That is why I got involved
in this project: I was faced with the choice of designing my own from scratch
or obtaining a game engine that contained already working parts.

There are players who want a simple, quick to finish 'game'. 1600 point
games of Warrior on a 6x4 or 8x5 table will never attract this type of
player. Such games do not end in an hour or less and Warrior is a simulation
with a great deal of intricacy. We may reach some of those players with Fast
Warrior, but that is not the driving force.
-We are making a game for players who want as accurate a 'simulation' as our
tiny human brains can make of events happening in our distant past.
-We are making a game for players who want a lot of 'meat' to their games,
where discrete relationships between weapons and armor and training (as we
understand them) matter, where command control is well represented and where
the next doctoral dissertation isn't going to rip the heart out of the sweat
and treasure you invested in an army of 200+ figures.

And I, for one, want the things I enjoy in life (a game, a good book, a
movie, sex...) to last for a while precisely BECAUSE I enjoy them. One hour
games and 8 page rulebooks do not appeal to me, and I got involved in this
because I know that no one else is currently worried about the other ancients
gamers out there who have a similar philosophy.

Yes, this egroup often sees issues raised that are somewhat overly
microscopic in nature. Having played miniatures for many, many years I find
the claim that this is a particular characteristic of 7th (and now Warrior)
positively ludicrous. I judged a Warrior tournament at Historicon and played
in another. I wandered both the ancients area and the general miniatures
gaming area and in no way were close call issues limited to just our game -
they are a part of the hobby. I would tell you that some of the other
periods and definitely DBM/DBA actually produced more questions/contention
than the Warrior tourneys, but you would not believe me due to my obvious
Warrior bias - I will leave that for you to observe at your next con.

Yes, we know we are not going to attract everyone into (or back into) this
particular game. It is clearly not for everyone - it is intricate by nature
and even 1200 point games last longer than an hour. The many
interrelationships inherent in Warrior due to it being a simulation as well
as a game will continue to produce judgment calls that require both players
to be grown ups. But this a truism of the entire miniatures hobby and its
gridless nature, as well as the ancients hobby with its reliance on
extrapolation where the historical record fails us.

I will not, however, quash a discussion on this list solely because I or
anyone else finds it painfully microscopic. If it is of interest to at least
two people (the initiator and at least one other who responds) then the fact
that I find it personally unimportant is no reason to snicker or whine or
quell. If someone wants to take the messages from this list and send them to
some DBM buddies to show how 'bad' we Warrior players are, I cannot stop
that. But I find such behavior terribly juvenile and worse if DBM is
involved as that system has as large a share of microgamers as 7th ever did.

If someone does not agree with the philosophy of this game system, hey that's
great. But I would request that such people do not actively work against us.
I would never do that to a game system or its players and expect the same in
return.

Jon

Bravo!!!!

Here, here!

(We frequently do not manage to start getting miniatures out of boxes
within an hour!)