General Announcements or other OT Stuff

Gentlemen,

I am away this coming weekend fighting a different war of Prussians vs Russians (1941 Barbarossa in 15mm scale with Frank Chadwick's "Command Decision" rules) and will not be around to play SoW or have time to set up games. I'm away from Thursday evening to Monday morning. I may have time Monday to set up a scenario for a game Monday or Tuesday night but it will be a close call. We may have to put off the three battles this turn has so far generated until the following weekend. That happens to be Easter so we may have to delay there also, if people wish to have family time, we'll see.

We have actions at:

Bayreuth
Weimar
Ascherlseben

General Yorck

Sir, I have just come back from our lead columns. The most amazing thing has happened sir. The men. All the men. They voted to make you a Saint upon your death. A saint, sir! An entire company volunteered to ride down to the Vatican personally - of course I had to stop them because it would mean going through the French lines if they went right away. But they are ready to force the Pope to comply, sir. At the point of the bayonet! And what is more amazing, sir ... What is so wonderful to behold, my general, is that none of them are even Catholic!

General Yorck, the impact you have had on these men. Entire brigades are calling you Saint Yorck, the "patron saint of amazingly-brave-but-not-necessarily-successful-in-the-short-term soldier" ... Truly inspiring, sir. Truly.

Sir it was but days ago we - and nobody else - discovered three French corps here. And we gallantly fell back upon your command. And this morning we have discovered one and probably two more corps! That make SIX corps sir! On behalf of the entire Coalition YOU are taking on SIX French corps! And the men, sir. They want to take on nine or ten corps! Most prefer not even to load their weapons. Bayonet only sir!

I am truly inspired to be on your staff sir!

Colonel-Major-Lance Corporal Helmuth Schenkel

Enjoy your time Digby!

Pat I will take 3 of what you are taking since I am 3 times your size.  

Enjoy  your  weekend  Martin. Sounds like  a  great  excuse  for  vodka.
It's  a  rare  hook up  for  me  too this  weekend  with  a  gaming  friend, although  it  will  be  fantacy boardgames  and 'wacky  backy' I expect, if I can keep  the  pace

All 8th-11th May orders are now in. We have 3 battles to fight; Saalfeld, 2nd Ascherlseben and Dessau. All three are super-critical as well so we should see some bloody fights. I have discovered that people seem to get quite upset when you step on their supply lines.

The war is hotting up! I'd suggest that the rules are working well if we are all so aggrieved by losing our lines of communication.

I like to think of it as "heightened awareness of communication and supply nuances"

To be blunt you should not get your LoCs cut at all. Wargamers love to hurl every last soldier they have at the enemy and keep few reserves. A corps kept in the rear area with its divisions allocated to LoC security would have saved a lot of people a lot of grey hairs.

Also of course subordinates obeying orders helps a bit

A note on roleplaying.

Unfortunately confusion over roleplaying, what it is and how it works, has caused some problems in the campaign. I want to clarify and explain a few things. We are about to enter a new phase of the game which will involve negotiations instead of fighting. During this phase roleplaying will be paramount and some players will be roleplaying multiple characters.

The first key thing to bear in mind with roleplaying (RP) is that the character is separate from the real person; so if Bob the player goes behind your back and says something to someone else in the guise of general X talking to general Y, do not write to another player as you, the actual gamer and say "Bob is doing something wrong/weird/is wrecking the game/etc. Bob isn't doing that, Bob is playing a role and has chosen to use some kind of subterfuge to achieve either his character's own ends or the ends of his nation (national interests).

If you are uncertain about what a player is doing or why, raise your concerns with me via a PM and I will be happy to explain. DO NOT go talk to another player about it as he most likely will simply not know or could also misunderstand. That might only exacerbate the problem.

Players right now are playing multiple roles. Some are generals commanding a corps as well as army commanders, or monarchs.

Soon we'll have diplomats as well and these characters will be played by the same players but will function only within the Diplomacy forum in order to propose, counter and discuss peace terms or truces. Please make sure that you not only keep the player separate from his character but also the multiple characters he is playing separate as well.

To assist in this, I have decided we should make use of avatars within posts.

Captal (Al) is my guinea pig and he has recently deleted his portrait of Blucher that is his forum avatar, replacing it with a Prussian flag. From now on, when he posts as Blucher you will see a small thumbnail portrait of Blucher at the top centre of his posts. He is shortly going to assume the role of a Prussian diplomat and when he posts as that character a portrait of the diplomat will appear at the top centre of his posts.

For anyone else who needs a second character who would be doing any actual in-character posting, please PM me and I will help you find a suitable person and portrait.

Note that Monarchs, generals and Napoleon will NOT post in the Diplomacy thread. Only diplomats will post there since this will represent various neutral locations far removed from the campaign area. Any player who wants a new character may have one - just PM me first to get the green light to set him (or her) up.

The thumbnail avatars that will go in the top centre of posts must be no bigger than 125 pixels wide by 170 high. I can obtain, resize, crop and host images for anyone who needs one.

The removal of your main forum avatar as your game character is important in this. By all means follow Al's lead and use your nation's flag.

Questions? Fire away.

Thanks

Would you like people taking multiple roles to transfer to the alternative picture scheme soon? Or do you want to trial it a bit with Captal?

Dave

I'd like people to do it asap please. In fact its essential for the Diplomacy Forum - that means I need interest from the French team!

EDIT:

Please note as I mentioned above, generals involved in the fighting CANNOT be involved in diplomacy. It is assumed that any such talks are being held far away from the region of the war - perhaps in Paris, Vienna or a neutral location.

Players must create a new diplomacy character to post in that thread.

Thanks all.

Do we manually insert the appropriate image in each post then? Or is there a slicker way to do it?

Dave

Its a manual insert.

French team, we need some action from you.

The Coalition has offered a truce which needs a response and you need to make decisions about Leipzig.

I still lack orders from several players as well.

Okay, okay fine. I'll do it. Stop twisting my arm. I will substitute for a French diplomat, and tho my preference is a Prussian general I will keep their interests at heart. Truly

For example I would agree to a truce but will just start demanding things after it is signed, as the French are wont to do. I think it is perfectly reasonable that Prussians give up Alsace-Lorraine. The French will allow them only up to the East Bank of the Rhine as long as the French get to retain a Morrocan dance group in Leipzig (that was the Leipzig decision the French had to make, right? Ballet or Modern dance troupe?) If the Russians want Korea they can have it but only down to the 38th parallel and the French get to stay in IndoChina. Canister rounds will be tracked on both sides; the Russians need to dismantle 300 cannon to ensure parity with French artillery. Howitzers are not impacted. The French get to build a cool line of fortifications that protect them from everywhere except the Ardennes because nobody is dumb enough to launch an offensive through there. The Russians get half of Poland. Everyone vacates Jena because the cost of living is too high. And someone has to form an Alliance called NATO just so the French can refuse to join it.
Ok - all the above is my starting position in the negotiations and be forewarned that I will simply not change my position on this.

Now all I need is to manually insert an icon that has rows of white flags and I am all set. I will practice writing posts with Frnch accents. Any questions? Good.

I have concerns about this treaty not addressing self determination of various national groups. Obviously this sort of thing must be formally outlawed, otherwise how will the wise rulers of the realms create/destroy/modify borders and retain their (new/old) subjects absolute loyalty?

This is not a peace treaty, merely a document formalising a truce.

The losses after the second day of Grautzsch have been calculated. Napoleon has gone back to Leuthen though Duke Constantin's army is shattered.

This concludes operations for the period of 12th to 15th May.

Strategic positions and fresh news will be issued to both headquarters shortly.

An arrangement to agree a temporary ceasefire may now be reached perhaps?

The 16th to 19th May turn is running. Good luck gentlemen!

Any newcomers to the KS forum - if an 1813 strategic campaign interests you, drop me a PM. Openings are available on both sides though the French are in more need of players right now.

It appears I am unable to send private messages. I'm sure I am missing something but.......

So Martin, I am interested in taking part in the campaign but am nor sure if I will be able to commit enough time. I don't know the format of this campaign but if it is like any other on-line campaigns I have taken part in then time to think on strategy, issue orders etc would not be a problem but the commitment to regular live battles might.
Can you give me an idea as to what to expect?

Cheers!

Hi Iain

Thank you for your interest.

There is an element of having time to issue orders but one mechanism I am using in this campaign is that the player who issues orders to his forces to move first, has them move first on the map, stealing a march on the enemy and gaining the initiative. I chose this method in order to push the game along at a brisk rate since in a previous campaign there was no compulsion to send in orders promptly and consequently some turns dragged over weeks.

So yes, the map turns which are a half-week each of campaign time might only take us a week of real time to process - or they could take several weeks if, during the turn, a battle results, since we tend to have to wait a few days to gather enough people to fight the online battles.

You are completely free to attend as many or as few online battles as you are comfortable with and can fit into your personal schedule; there's no pressure whatsoever to attend battles. However if you are the senior general present at a battle and you cannot make it, I do ask that you issue a plan of battle via the private forum for your side so that the players who do show up to play have some orders from high command to follow. Such plans can be as brief or as complex as you like, nothing fancy is necessary.

The communications on the two private forums of the two sides do include a reasonable element of role playing but you can dive into this as deeply as you are comfortable with. Some players do hardly any role-playing, some do a good deal more but there's no rules to say you must.

If the above seems appealing, have you a preference as to which side? I am more in need of French commanders at the moment as the team has lost a couple recently.

Greetings Gentlemen

It has been brought to my attention that a player has been sending PMs direct to other players in the campaign, discussing strategy and the like.

Please DO NOT do this. All letters to other commanders should be sent as PMs to me and I will forward them on. I need to have it done this way so I know what is going on!

In addition if enemy light forces are near the route of comms between sender and recipient there is a chance the letter may not get through.

Many thanks for your understanding.

After last night and yet another wasted week I am having long careful thoughts about the campaign.

We had a fantastic battle yesterday but I wasn't made aware that a good part of the French army was AI controlled for much of it, so they lost heavily. I have to scrap that result and reschedule the game. This makes things very tedious for me and I am carefully thinking where the campaign is headed.

We have lost numerous players since we began for a variety of reasons, but on the flip side we have gained a few. Several players in both teams do very little (one or two have excellent reasons for this that they make me aware of, others just leave a silence and I have no idea if they are even still playing).

The infrequency with which some players can make the games is also a concern; last night's battle took 2 weeks to organise, mostly for 1 person and he dropped early on and could not return.

The point comes where I am not prepared to keep pouring in so much work for so little effort on the side of others and I may call a halt to the campaign and start another that will have yet again a different format; 1 player per nation so if that player doesn't issue map orders his forces do not move and if he does not show up to a battle, his forces fall back (not a defeat, not that bad, but they recoil and give terrain up). This gets me over the problem of 'sleeping partners' in the big teams that slow things down.

I have already begun work on another game design, mostly for my own curiosity.

This post is about testing the waters for the ongoing campaign and to gauge the vote on whether we carry on or start something new.

Your opinion counts.

I am one of the newbies but would like the/a campaign to continue/start afresh. I am keen to carry on but the work load is yours Martin and so, as far as I'm concerned you get to call time or not.

Regarding fighting the actual battles, I am also one can not play as often as others as I have to travel for work. Clearly it is preferable to have more players per side but is it strictly necessary? As you scale down the forces a Corps becomes a division and despite being new I am prepared to command a division so for more experienced players it must be a relatively simple task.

I have administered an on-line campaign before and I gave up for the very reasons you stated Martin. I hope you do not feel forced to do the same.

People can make things complex all on their own without prompting, so I am all for a campaign being "fought" online with just a few that culminate in battles fought by a larger group on a saturday, sunday, etc.

Another thing to consider is intentionally setting up campaign battles to allow solely human versus AI in cases where you just don't have enough players. Or, for the more adventurous, replace AI with that ONE player who just can't fathom going over to the other side for a day. Personally I'd like to be that one player just for once, anyway .. what the heck.

Anyway, it can allow for campaigns, minimize the churn and could make the scheduling life easier. In other words, one doesn't have to be "in" the campaign to participate "in" a weekend campaign battle, yet my actions can indeed impact the campaign itself.