Worst Rabbit Hole: Rapid Dice

 

I hereby declare that I may be on the verge of madness and about to start something which may well get away from me if I'm not very careful. After a fabulous game of Black Powder Napoleonics this weekend, my lifelong playmate Grant and I discussed this idea I had about Rapid Fire wargames.

I had an idea which came from the interview Ken (The Yarkshire Gamer) did with Colin Rumford and Richard Marsh of Rapid Fire wargames fame. They were discussing the reasoning behind Rapid Fire Reloaded which revolves around their ageing eyes and a desire to get away from charts and tables. They had my attention.

I am vaguely familiar with their newest rule-set and whilst I am a devotee of their rules I think their new, simplified version can be taken to a more logical and complete conclusion still. I posed to Grant, what if we can get away from tables and charts completely and better still, away from a rule book when playing a game?

In Rapid Fire V2 (for example) we roll to hit (with modifiers) and then we roll for damage if successful. We refer to charts comparing Gun Class to Armour Class, refer to modifier lists and finally to the reference chart for damage. What if we can replace all that with a shooter verses a defender dice roll? I take the inspiration from Black Powder which required a shooter roll and a defender morale role to determine casualties - the old Warhammer mechanism. But what if I can make it simpler than that?

What we are starting to come up with definitely has its roots in Rapid Fire but it's also built on an evolution I came up with years and years ago when I developed a series of detailed charts to expand the Rapid Fire d6 system to a d10 system. Anyway, here's what we are starting to tinker with.

As you can see from an experimental unit card I have included at the top of this post (the Cromwell tank) each tank has two values for the main gun - AP (Armour Piercing) and HE (High Explosive) but expressed as a dice - in this case a d10 for AP and a d8 for HE. The higher value the dice the better the gun glass. You can also see tanks get two dice values for Armour Class - in this case d10 for frontal armour value and d8 for side armour.

We are proposing that the shooting player (if in range and once observing the enemy target) rolls their gun dice and the defender rolls their armour dice. If the attacker scores a higher result after modifiers then it is a hit. Furthermore, we propose the difference in scores is the damage done up to a maximum value of 4 damage points at which point an AFV is destroyed. We get the four points from Rapid Fire: Light + Light = Heavy damage and 2 x Heavy Damage = KIA ... thus four damage.

When I expanded the Rapid Fire Gun and Armour values to d10, it provides the ability to divide those classes into five dice types - d4, d6, d8, d10 and d12. So from my top two Gun Classes (1 and 2) I can now attribute a d12 for example and so on down to the d4.

I have already turned my attention to infantry and crew figures, giving them a 'Duck and Cover' roll (like an Armour Class) which is rolled against an HE roll from a gun or a Firing Group of infantry or support weapon. Support weapons get a dice value like the guns and Firing Groups count figures with modifiers and round down to the nearest dice.

I've started writing this up and we will start play testing to see how we like it. This is all very raw and I have no idea if this sort of thing is reinventing anything. I'm not the type of gamer who habitually buys and reads new rules and I'm not interested in this new game mechanism or that one. I am also not so arrogant (I hope) that I think I've got the ultimate answer to anything.

We will see how it works and if anyone is interested, I'll report back. If I can squeeze the few factor lists onto the back of my unit cards, they may be the only written reference material we need to play. Imagine that - not having to endlessly flick through rule books during a game or turning to a reference chart which typically doesn't include what you were looking for? That might not be possible but we'll give it a red-hot go.

Oh, and if they work and if anyone is remotely interested in it, I will make whatever is developed completely available through this blog. I am not a commercially minded person.