Read Online Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who by David M. Ewalt - Free Book Online
Authors: David M. Ewalt
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powder. Something whizzed past my ear like a fat, angry bee. Close the pan, swing round the weapon, empty the cartridge into the barrel, tamp it down.
Cock the gun, shoulder it. Return fire.
Fighting in Napoleon’s Battles uses a system of modified dice rolls: To attack, both players roll 1d10—one ten-sided die—and then add or subtract based on factors like type of soldier, location, and formation. If the attacker ends up with a bigger number, they’ve killed a few enemies.
A fight is further complicated by rules for morale: If enough soldiers get hurt in a regiment, it will become “disordered” and can’t return fire or initiate hand-to-hand combat. Fail to recover from disorder and you could get “routed,” forcing your troops to run away from combat. If they happen to run into another regiment as they flee, those guys panic as well.
It’s not an easy system. Each player was given a photocopied “training scenario information chart” describing all these modifiers, but it was so complex as to be useless: When you need nineteen footnotes to explain a single page of information, you know you’re in trouble.
All this complexity even flummoxes the experts. Tom and Paco,our two volunteer game masters, spent a good portion of the match debating rules between themselves and issuing conflicting instructions—and I don’t think they were doing a bad job. It’s just the character of the game, complex and confusing. War games are meant to provoke discussion, not stimulate the imagination like D&D.
The fact is that in any historical-miniatures battle, only 10 percent of the match is really spent playing. Half the remaining time is spent arguing about history, and the other half arguing about the game’s rules. War is hell.
A round us, I could hear panic and pain. On our left, the cavalry was being routed, falling back and exposing our flank. But my regiment held its position. We traded three volleys with the French infantry. They kept advancing. They were only forty paces away when our cannon finally opened fire.
The explosion took me by surprise, and I nearly dropped my ramrod. I reflexively turned to look but caught only an instant of motion—the big gun rolling back and digging into the earth—before it was enveloped in a huge cloud of thick gray smoke.
Then I heard the screams. The gunners had loaded the cannon with canister, a mix of scrap iron and musket balls—ineffective at long distances, but murderous up close. The shot tore into the French line and shredded its front ranks. The shocked soldiers who remained panicked and were routed, turning heel and fighting back through their own men—anything to get away from the big brass gun.
At this point, I was ready to declare Prussian victory. But one of the peculiarities of Napoleon’s Battles is that soldiers get routed all the time. Just as a player manages formations, he must also manage morale, rallying troops and reimposing order to keep as much of his army fighting as possible. The idea is that everyone gets their buttkicked, but good players know how to take a beating. A successful general advances like the tide, surging and breaking, losing ground one moment but gaining the next.
The French learned this lesson quickly. When their light infantry was routed and fell back, I marched my Landwehr regiment forward into the hole, hoping to pursue and destroy. But on their very next turn, the French commander was able to rally the unit and stop their retreat.
At the same time, he moved two more infantry units toward my position. I needed a turn just to change formation from march column back into a line. So by the time I was ready to fight, I had exposed myself to fire from three separate French units. When the French attacked, their commander would roll 3d10 and add them together; my only way to avoid slaughter was to roll higher, but I’d get only a single d10.
He picked up the dice and tossed them on the table. One, one, and four.
I rolled a
Cock the gun, shoulder it. Return fire.
Fighting in Napoleon’s Battles uses a system of modified dice rolls: To attack, both players roll 1d10—one ten-sided die—and then add or subtract based on factors like type of soldier, location, and formation. If the attacker ends up with a bigger number, they’ve killed a few enemies.
A fight is further complicated by rules for morale: If enough soldiers get hurt in a regiment, it will become “disordered” and can’t return fire or initiate hand-to-hand combat. Fail to recover from disorder and you could get “routed,” forcing your troops to run away from combat. If they happen to run into another regiment as they flee, those guys panic as well.
It’s not an easy system. Each player was given a photocopied “training scenario information chart” describing all these modifiers, but it was so complex as to be useless: When you need nineteen footnotes to explain a single page of information, you know you’re in trouble.
All this complexity even flummoxes the experts. Tom and Paco,our two volunteer game masters, spent a good portion of the match debating rules between themselves and issuing conflicting instructions—and I don’t think they were doing a bad job. It’s just the character of the game, complex and confusing. War games are meant to provoke discussion, not stimulate the imagination like D&D.
The fact is that in any historical-miniatures battle, only 10 percent of the match is really spent playing. Half the remaining time is spent arguing about history, and the other half arguing about the game’s rules. War is hell.
A round us, I could hear panic and pain. On our left, the cavalry was being routed, falling back and exposing our flank. But my regiment held its position. We traded three volleys with the French infantry. They kept advancing. They were only forty paces away when our cannon finally opened fire.
The explosion took me by surprise, and I nearly dropped my ramrod. I reflexively turned to look but caught only an instant of motion—the big gun rolling back and digging into the earth—before it was enveloped in a huge cloud of thick gray smoke.
Then I heard the screams. The gunners had loaded the cannon with canister, a mix of scrap iron and musket balls—ineffective at long distances, but murderous up close. The shot tore into the French line and shredded its front ranks. The shocked soldiers who remained panicked and were routed, turning heel and fighting back through their own men—anything to get away from the big brass gun.
At this point, I was ready to declare Prussian victory. But one of the peculiarities of Napoleon’s Battles is that soldiers get routed all the time. Just as a player manages formations, he must also manage morale, rallying troops and reimposing order to keep as much of his army fighting as possible. The idea is that everyone gets their buttkicked, but good players know how to take a beating. A successful general advances like the tide, surging and breaking, losing ground one moment but gaining the next.
The French learned this lesson quickly. When their light infantry was routed and fell back, I marched my Landwehr regiment forward into the hole, hoping to pursue and destroy. But on their very next turn, the French commander was able to rally the unit and stop their retreat.
At the same time, he moved two more infantry units toward my position. I needed a turn just to change formation from march column back into a line. So by the time I was ready to fight, I had exposed myself to fire from three separate French units. When the French attacked, their commander would roll 3d10 and add them together; my only way to avoid slaughter was to roll higher, but I’d get only a single d10.
He picked up the dice and tossed them on the table. One, one, and four.
I rolled a
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