How do you make a good formula for war without it being too gamey or number crunching?

[VATROU]

So me and a group of guys on another forum were discussing how to make a good ruleset for a Fallout RP and some ideas were tossed around one was to use the SPECIAL system like so.

S = Manpower in War, Population in Peacetime

P = How they adapt to an ever changing battlefield in War, Value of Education in Peace

E = How long of a campaign they can wage until they exhaust their resources in War, Industry in Peace

C = How well the commanders inspire their troops in War, how they are viewed by others in Peace

I = Ability to invent and implement tactics in War, general Scientific proclivity in Peace

A = How well they can move across varied terrain carrying equipment and supplies, adaptability in Peace

L = The chances of getting favorable or unfavorable results in either

But for the sake of general discussion how does one make a good system for war that even casuals would appreciate without driving too many members away and what's the validity of the proposed above system?

[Dinh AaronMk]

Frankly: I don't employ statistics at all. Like all things, they should be tackled as a narrative and not on a calculative measure. These systems are useful in video-games or even in a board-game setting. But where people are writing as part of a story then a lot of things can be too ambiguous to define in a traditional or non-traditional stat-based system. And constraining story-telling to be defined by a strict set up numbers really chokes the organic nature of a story. And in styles where it's assumed that quantified numbers like unit-numbers denies any sort of twist where people with the 2:1, 3:1, or higher can win almost guaranteed against a smaller force.

And in reality

this sort of shit

through the ages

This of course requires a decent amount of planning beforehand between the relevant parties and knowing where one-another stands. But operating on stats I feels encourages an unrealistic amount of aggression since it assigns numerical values to certain successful qualities and this can lead to dick-waving and out-of-character operation to balance one against the other. And that sort of bitch-festing isn't fun.

[ethanjory]

Stat based RPs are like those child safeties on medicine bottles. Sometimes it's a good lesson for your kid to down an entire bottle of pain killers.

[VATROU]

@Dinh AaronMk What if there isn't much pre-planning and the RPers can't decide upon a fixed outcome? We all want to be the winners but we all can't win. Then say a ruleset for war might be able to break the tie?

[Dinh AaronMk]

@Dinh AaronMk What if there isn't much pre-planning and the RPers can't decide upon a fixed outcome? We all want to be the winners but we all can't win. Then say a ruleset for war might be able to break the tie?

@VATROU

Then might as well try to make it interesting. Either way you will have fighting one way or the other. But when a third party arbitrator has to be involved to calculate and announce the results of certain moves then every action becomes a long and tedious test of patience.

And like @ethanjory said, it's a good idea to not have something as black-and-white to determine outcomes. If you can't learn or don't develop the skills to mediate between one's self and another then you're not going to be a very warm individual. This sort of technique encourages and promotes that behavior. In the real world even you have to know where to work with others. There's not going to be a checklist and dice-roll that determines everything.

So I stick by my standing: from a narrative standpoint stats are too big a handicap and best left for virtual simulation (Civilization series, Age of Empire, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis) where there's a known neutral party and so these things can be calculated in real time or for board "games" where "game" is emphasized, since that's what it is. But for organic, narrative, and character writing: it's not helpful.

[Vilageidiotx]

@Dinh AaronMk What if there isn't much pre-planning and the RPers can't decide upon a fixed outcome? We all want to be the winners but we all can't win. Then say a ruleset for war might be able to break the tie?

@VATROU

My method has always been ridicule. "Goddamit, ya'll are telling boring stories, somebody gotta have the balls to lose here or the rest of us will stop reading your shit."

[Ellri]

We can see the benefits of having clear numbers for military strength, but just when you think you know who will win without a doubt, it turns out the seemingly losing party has a John Rambo on their side who single-handedly eats a quarter of the other army for breakfast.

Essentially, numbers can give a good idea, but unless you're playing a computer game with locked stats, you can't be sure who will win even with the numbers. Much easier to flip a coin.

[Vilageidiotx]

I suppose that is why dice are always favored. By giving bonuses to a roll based on stats or specific circumstances, you can put the odds in favor of the player with the best logical chances, but there is still the chance that the underdog can pull an upset by rolling a really good number. Even strategy video games work on this system much of the time.

There are a few problems that you have to deal with though. The first is the fairness of the roll, especially since this is online and there isn't really a practical way to keep track of rolls (that I am aware of). You could always have your GM be a GM in the original sense and only participate in the RP as an arbiter rather than an actual player, but you might not personally want to do that.

The other problem with introducing too many stats is that it will get players to think of the RP in terms of a game that they are supposed to win. You might want to do that, which is cool, but if you want to focus more on the writing and the storytelling then stats can be a detriment.

On the other hand, RPing without any stats in the way I am personally used to RPing comes with its own problems. For one, you have to rely more on the personalities of the people RPing with you, because a bad egg can really ruin it for everyone if they try to make things too gamey, especially if the other RPers are not steady enough to keep things moving.

[Dinh AaronMk]

@Vilageidiotx

There are some browser-based systems that have a dice mechanic. But they're their own removed thing. They're effectively their own DnD board and I'm not familiar with anything for nation-based RP'ing. Generally if you're targeting that then you're playing Diplomacy in the browser-based genre.

This is the best example of the browser-based platform I mentioned earlier, in LP form. It's got CaptIronicus of Chip and Ironicus fame if anyone cares for obscure Let's Players.

[Ellri]

There are plans in place for building a dice system to be used on the guild, but for now it is still only plans.