General Announcements or other OT Stuff

What is most tedious is the drama; people leaving because they don't agree with X. That's very frustrating. It makes me feel like I am putting in tens or hundreds of hours of work and if people quit because of one event its as though the game doesn't mean anything at all to them. That's very discouraging.

My next project aims to have 1 player per nation so that if a player leaves I can "AI" that nations movements after a suitable period of confusion.

I shall probably try for even smaller battles, ones that 2 a side can play if that's practical.

For now though do people want to carry on the 1813 game?

I'm sorry that I haven't been in a position to participate in the online games. I rather enjoy the campaign nature, but a variety of time zones, continual work schedule changes, and new home yard work/repair/improvements this summer have killed my ability to meet up with you all.

I think this current campaign iteration was an attempt to fix a few issues:
1/. the large numbers of players needed for battles
2/. The high stakes nature of each battle (I think issues with this were bad feelings about kriegspiel rulings, anger when the program glitched out and required value judgements to be made, and others?)
3/. Excessive data management to be made on the GMs side.

Has this campaign been an improvement versus the penninsular one? We might want to have a debriefing about what went good and what was wanting....

Since you shoulder the majority of the work and angst of the campaigns Martin, I think it's fair to want to make a campaign that fits your needs/wants first. If this isn't it, then give it a definitive termination point (by date in real life or game time or sudden death objective). I think that if there was some definitive end point we might have a few fun battles and maybe some 'mail mary' game moves (which are gamey and annoying in many cases, but can be hilarious).

Online campaigns often have challenges around people leaving for both good and bad reasons. It'd be interesting to see what structure you come up with to help guard against this.

One thought I just had regarding rulings. I recently was playing a table top roleplaying game and the GM asked us players to define the best, and worst outcomes for a situation. He then rolled some dice to determine where on that continuum it fell. I'm not sure it'd work in this format, but if you are in a situation that involves a tough ruling, you might canvass the best, worst situation in PM's from people. As a GM you might choose to 'prune' some of the more unbelievable 'best' situations. You could then use this is a range and simply dice it off (use multiple dice for a bell curve). This would give more player input while allowing for GM guidance.

1/. and 3/. were achieved with ease. 2/. is always going to be an issue with human players.

I like your resolution system and will use that in future. The recent Leipzig game is one where I could apply it. For my part I do not want to replay that game, we've done it once, its hard to redo a game like that and retain surprise and the result was close to what I expected anyway.

I know I am a terrible repeat offender when it comes to being inactive ( ), but I for one am willing to keep trying to stay involved in the campaign.

That's easy for me to say, as I'm not able to participate in the online games, and Martin's the one left with all the paperwork! So I'll back whatever decision is made. As fun as the complex games are, having a easy, streamlined version to mix it up is very appealing.

Josh/Hannibal/Wurttemberg

The Second Battle of Dessau closes the 16th to 19th May turn.

Apart from at Leipzig where I am declaring a draw the Coalition has been critically defeated at three battles and for the most part their armies are in complete disarray and retreating eastwards. I think this is a good time to place the campaign on temporary pause since there will be no battles next turn due to the Allied armies recoiling rapidly.

We can resume the campaign at a later time with the Coalition troops having fallen back to at least beyond the Elbe where they will be reinforced with fresh forces that are moving west through Poland.

What about a French pursuit?

Historically those being pursued always outrun their pursuers as they have more incentive to get away and they can forgo slow baggage trains and the like.

We can resume at a later date somewhere east of the Elbe. I'll keep all the files and material so we can resume when players wish to.

I have noted a dropping off of interest in this campaign recently and I have plans for something new, big and exciting - and a little unusual, an 1815 'what if' campaign. I think it will also provide much more flexibility for all players as well as take us away from a historical basis that tends to channel my thinking (yes, guilty, m'lud!)