A Narrative Battle By Paul Le Long (Originally Published in Lone Warrior 189) In his excellent book Wargaming Campaigns, Donald Featherstone has a chapter entitled A Narrative Battle all about a campaign he played set in 1859. I confess that I find this a disappointing chapter in that it is just the author describing how he went about a campaign; whereas the title always suggested to me something more daring like running a campaign in the style of a freeform roleplaying game. Then I thought about using the Fate Chart that I talked about in LW185 set out below in slightly modified form. (Those of you reading the hardcopy of this article may want to take a look at the electronic version as the colours are clearer and the photos later on will be clearer as well). Just to remind you how it works, when you want to know the outcome of an action does side x win the firefight for example you decide how likely that outcome is and then roll 4d6. You start right in the middle of the top row at 0, each 1 or 2 moves you to the left (bad), each 5 or 6 moves you to the right (good) and each 3 or 4 keeps you in the middle. -4-3 -2-1 0 +1 +2 +3 +4 Sure Thing No, but No, but but Yes Yes and and and yes, and Very Likely No No, but No, but but Yes Yes and and yes, and Likely No No No but Yes Yes Yes and yes, and 50/50 No, and No No No, but but but Yes Yes yes, and Unlikely No, and No, and No No No, but No, but but Yes Yes Very Unlikely No, and No, and No, and No No No No, but Yes Yes Impossible No, and No, and No, and No, and No No No but but So for example: Does unit x beat unit y in a firefight? Based on the situation we opt for Likely. Rolling 4d6 and getting a result of 1,2,4,6 we end up at -1. Cross referencing -1 and Likely we get a result of but So unit x has won the fight but something hasn t quite gone to plan. What that something is, is up to you and may spark further rolls. Anyway, putting the two concepts (Fate Chart and Narrative Freeform Roleplay) together I thought I could stage a one-off tabletop battle without any rules at all simply using the Fate Chart to decide how key events turned out. I chose an American Revolution battle with forces, terrain and scenario generated randomly. This was a simple game where the Americans would be attacking. Here is the initial set up:
Here is a close up of the British right defending a village (note the terrain tiles stolen from the boardgame Memoir 44 which I talked about in LW188)
The game began with the Americans advancing pretty well right across the table.
The first bit of action was on the British left where as you can see from the next photo several battalions of Continentals engaged a British brigade consisting entirely of grenadiers the latter were outnumbered but of much greater quality than the Americans. Now here is where the narrative nature of the game came into full effect as I dispensed with all rules of any kind shooting, morale and so on everything went out the window and was replaced by a simple storytelling method influenced by the Fate Chart. So for example I was asking questions like do the redcoats win the firefight? and generally gave them a likely result. Once you know who s won a firefight you also know who s lost it and that poses other questions do the losers run away? Do they retreat in good or bad order or do they grit their teeth and carry on? I will not bore you with a blow-by-blow account of what questions I asked and how I interpreted every result, the beauty of this sort of thing is that it is freeform and you do what you want according to your tastes and what you think is important. Actually I could have done this better because I ended up asking the wrong questions which produced a fight that was not very decisive in the short term. Basically you need to tweak to suit what you want from a game. In the end the grenadiers beat the tar out of the Continentals on this flank and that was really the only thing we need to know. What you want to do is get into the habit of asking the pertinent questions at key decision points we don t care if volley number three caused minor disruption in the enemy ranks, we want to know who, probably after several volleys, wins the fight, how do the losers respond, and what state are both sides in afterwards.
On the opposite flank the Americans attacked the village which was defended by British light infantry, Indians and an artillery battery. The questions here were how are the attackers affected by the fire of the defenders? (they were pretty disconcerted but managed to press on), do the attackers press home their attack at bayonet point? (they did), do the defenders stand? (some stood and others fled) and who wins any resulting melees? (the Americans, emphatically, though not without some loss from sniping on the way in). This portion of the game involved the advance of four or five battalions, fire from artillery and four units of skirmishers, a bayonet charge over rough ground and several melees as well as the reaction of the various units to shooting, friends routing and several other things. In a traditional wargame that would involve quite a bit of dice rolling, consultation of tables and/or rules for shooting, morale, hand to hand combat, cover modifiers, range modifiers, morale modifiers, effect of roundshot or canister.and so on, and on. In this game this was all worked out in minutes by asking a few pertinent questions at various decision points and checking the Fate Chart for that random element. Next the two armies fought out an indecisive little battle in the centre while the victorious Americans in the village reformed and headed towards the right flank of the British centre.
The soon to be victorious grenadiers on the left had still not quite whipped the Continentals and therefore couldn t lend a hand. All of which meant that the British ended up being pretty nearly surrounded and I didn t need a Fate Chart to tell me that it was all up for the British in this battle.
Conclusion So did it work? Broadly, yes. It wasn t perfect because I was making it all up as I went along and if I ever do this again in future I would do some things differently. But as an experiment in freeform narrative wargaming (is that even a term?) it was a success. There were no rules to worry about, I simply adopted a storytelling approach, looked at a situation, asked a question or two about how things turned out, calibrated the likely outcomes on the Fate Chart and away I went. The battle unfolded in a sensible way and the game felt about right. The Fate Chart does allow you to buck the odds but in the end you get results that feel right British grenadiers outshoot Continental line; Indians disrupt close order troops but can t stand a bayonet charge and so on. Pertinent questions with sensible probabilities at key decision points in the battle is what we want in a game of this kind. If nothing else this approach was fun to try; I won t be adopting it for all my games but it does make an interesting game and a nice change of pace. It also focuses the mind on the things that are really important in a battle rather than being distracted by the minutiae. Give it a try; it s an oddly liberating experience.