What if I made a solo narrative war game?

Because I'm kinda making a solo narrative war game.

Welcome back, readers! Great to have some of you coming over from The Lone Toad to dive deeper into Croaker RPGs and what I’m making.

With Identity close to being released as a free game in the main newsletter just next week, I can move on to some other projects.

What is this War Game thing?

I love war gaming from afar. I watch videos about it quite a lot on YouTube and read about it. War gaming has shared DNA with roleplaying games, and I’ve come to appreciate it as an exciting hobby.

But I’ve never picked it up. Why? It seems like a bit much doesn't it? Minis, painting, maps, terrain, and then you have to find a group and place to play. Not to say that is impossible, but it’s a large commitment for someone coming into the hobby fresh.

Still, I love it and want to get into it. I have Five Parsecs from Home and even tried to play a few rounds on a VTT (it worked but it was a lot of work). Solo narrative war gaming is a really cool concept, but you still need all the ‘stuff’. Yes, you can play with whatever you have but the rules still call for elevated terrain, rulers, and a pretty big board to play on.

I highly rate this game. Very well done.

But what if you could play a war game with the stuff you have at your desk? No need for minis, terrain, or painting. But still, have a dramatic solo war game with an overarching story?

That’s what I’m trying to do with Shot and Spell.

Shot and Spell (or Flamelock)

The overarching goal of Shot and Spell is to be able to play a whole battle with what you have at home. You need a bunch of dice (especially D6s), a piece of paper and a pen (for drawing and measuring distance). That’s it!

“How does it work?” Thanks for asking imaginary internet person! To build a battle you drop a whole bunch of dice on a piece of paper and depending on how they come up you draw that terrain feature. It could be a stream, a barn, a grove of trees, a hill, etc. You’ll always have a different battlefield to fight over, one with unique tactical situations to consider.

The concept was inspired by Cartograph: Atlas Edition and Stoneburner.

After you create a map you deploy your forces to battle the evil enemy. How do we represent your forces? Dice! Different units use different dice. So a block of pikemen are represented as 2 d6s and heavy horse are a D4. It also has the added benefit of being the unit strength counter. So when your pikemen take one casualty you rotate dice to show it as 11 total.

What about distance? Do you need a ruler or measuring tape? Nope, just a pen to measure distance. It’s done as a full pen (for ranged shooting) and half a pen (for movement) distances.

How do you kill stuff?

Resolution is meant to be quick and easy. Units have basic stats, attack, defence, and morale. Many units have bonuses due to charging, or terrain they are on or other things. So let’s go through a simple combat.

Standing on the field, crops trampled into dust, is the Red Spears, a veteran block of pikemen who have campaigned with the Company across the Commonwealth for many years. They stare across the field at the wretched mass of undead revenants and prepare to advance upon them.

The Red Spears have an attack value of 4, which is high (6 is the max, 1 is the minimum). They push forward and engage the revenant host. There are 12 troops in the unit (represented by two D6s, both showing 6). They roll 12 d6s, one for each of their troops. 8 of the dice show 4 or under, meaning they score 8 hits. Not bad!

The Red Spear advance with iron discipline, soldiers standing tight, the ones behind shouting encouragement to the front ranks. The decomposing faces of the revenant did not scare them, they’ve seen this before. Pikes slam into flesh as the block collides with the undead mass.

The mass of revenants is one of the weakest units in the game, with a defence of just 1, but there are a lot of them, 20 to be exact. They are represented by a d20 on the battlefield. The revenant host has been hit with 8 successful attacks so they must defend 8 times. They roll 8 D6s and are looking for 1s. They get three 1’s on the dice, so 3 of their number are saved, but 5 revenants have been destroyed, marking a good result for the Red Spears.

Do you want to do a battle? (Yes, you do)

Alright, so I’ve been play-testing Spell and Shot and have run a few battles already. Here is a battle report from a mercenary company versus an undead army.

Unit list here along with my terrible handwriting.

Generally, Undead units have more troops but are weaker than mercenary units. This battle is a pure domination affair. Kill the other units to win. I was also testing rules for magic spells so I launched a few fireballs at the undead. I’ll explain more about spells later, still working on it.

Deployment!

Let’s do some battle!

You see the battlefield as I set it up. The random dice gave me a pretty open battlefield but had a stream cutting through the centre, closer to the Company’s side. The undead throw themselves into battle according to their tactics (more on that in the future), but I fully control the Company forces, so I stand in a defensive line at the stream.

The stream gives a penalty to units standing in it, so the Company sits back and waits in defence while launching a fireball and shooting the threatening undead horse unit on the right (the d8).

To battle!

The Company waits for the Undead to reach the stream and then spring the trap. Charging down into them, they crash into the undead units inflicting huge casualties. On the right, the undead horse unit succumbs to elite pikemen who then turn to attack a revenant horde in the stream.

The firelocks try to fire into the melee but keep hitting their allies. And my light horse is kept in reserve. In the far back of the battlefield, a new undead horde has risen.

Little friendly fire never hurt nobody.

The battle progressed and several undead units were smashed in the centre but with huge casualties to the pike blocks. My elite pike block (the white d6s) had to take a morale check due to high casualties, mostly from the firelocks shooting them in the back (sorry!). They passed due to their high morale rating.

Originally I designed undead to be without morale rules. They don’t know fear so they can’t run. But I realised this dragged out combat so I’ve instituted a break rule for undead. They won’t run but when they get to a certain point they just can’t maintain a viable unit and are destroyed. 20 revenants are a problem, but 3 is just a speed bump.

I brought my Light Horse around the flank and prepared for the final push.

Victory!

The Company finishes off the last remaining undead and the battle is finished.

What did I learn?

It’s fun! - Probably the most important point, I had a great time fighting this battle. The random terrain generation means you never know what you're going to get, making it quite dynamic.

The system works - The underlying resolution mechanic works quickly and makes sense. Tweaks are needed but overall it’s quite fun. I’m adding some other rules for situations where two units are close but not yet engaged, forcing one to attack the other instead of passing them.

The battle is the right size - Enough units were on the page to make it interesting. More and you wouldn’t be able to maneuver well.

Enemy tactics need more work - Need to give the enemy units a bit more flexibility around how they act.

Buff enemy units - Enemy units should probably be naturally stronger than Company units to compensate for the player’s ability to use terrain and other skills to their strength.

The Future!

I plan on working on Shot and Spell (or Flamelock, name TBD, what do you think people?) over the next couple of months along with other projects. I hope to release some playtest rules in the near future so stay tuned!

Also, this will be a solo narrative war game so I need to create a campaign and think through those rules.

What do you think about solo narrative war gaming? How does it compare to solo RPGs? I’d love to hear your thoughts below!

Until next time!

Thomas from Croaker RPGs!