There has, up to now been some great articles published within the pages of Lone Warrior. These, together with a few commercially produced sets of rules and books, have blazed a path we can all follow. There is no doubt that John Bennett's "Gussie" articles and Tony Bath's "Setting-up a wargames campaign" rank among the best and started many along that most rewarding road of campaigning solo, rather than sticking to the more sterile "one-off" battle.
Having said this, I hope members will allow me to have a crack at enhancing their campaigning, if only by offering up my idea on how "Characterisation", within an ongoing campaign should be handled. Basically, it's just a slight variation on an old theme, but, hopefully, it may give members new ideas themselves or at least, add a refreshing "twist" to rules that may need spicing up a little.
MY CAMPAIGNING
Over the years, I have produced a number of small and some quite large, efforts at solo campaigning. Looking back to my beginning in the hobby, in about the 1967-68 period, I remember some great "one-offs" fought against friends using Airfix "moderns", and an odd tank or two. Later, I moved onto the American Civil War, after reading some vast books (to me) borrowed from the library and carried round in my briefcase at school. It was at this time that I tried out my first attempts at campaigning; not much, but I do recall making the decision not to wargame anything but solo from then on; and I never have.
In the 1970's, the Seven Years' War encroached upon my 'gaming' and I set up my largest campaign to-date. Set around the 1750's, it had no name, only a loose collection of states, all with a paranoid hatred of each other. The whole thing lasted over 3 years and was still on-going when I sold off my 18th Century figures. Recently I have considered making my return to this land, but at a later mythical date, during a Napoleonic-type period of its history and have started some more detailed mapping of its countryside. Funny what a little nostalgia can do.
Of course, my latest "large" campaign is FRANCONIA; an imaginary medieval campaign based, very loosely, on France during the 1400's. It is from "Franconia' 5,' rules that I draw this article; more specifically from its Characterisation rules.
Many "Old Lags" out there will be familiar with the ideas contained here in. But I will not exactly cover rules, which more eminent gamers than myself have already offered up to us; only add, on my own personal ideas, which have stemmed directly from them. So, let's get on with it.
As a keen solo medieval campaigner, I could not possibly run my extensive "Franconia" campaign without the use of Character Cards. Of course, members (except possibly the very latest recruits to the hobby) will be conversant with the mechanics of producing such "cardboard" characters as a number of classic articles dealing with such things have already appeared in Lone Warrior (see articles by John Bennett, Bill Farley, as well as Tony Bath's book).
Excellent though these writings are, they all left me with a number of anomalies in my rule-making which I could not prevent from occurring. Initially, I tried the "Playing-Card" method of producing characters for my campaign. Simply, one deals out a number of ordinary "playing-cards" for each character and by reading off from a previously designed chart (each card represents one characteristic) thereby giving the "Cardboard Character", a list with which to form his personality. I abandoned this method in favour of throwing dice to achieve the same results, this being simpler and quicker. Unfortunately, the anomalies still occurred, leaving me frustrated in efforts to produce "believable" characters.
What anomalies?
Well, a number of times I produced characters with conflicting personalities; in fact, a mass of Jekyll and Hyde characters appeared; men whose original characteristic was "vicious thug", who enjoyed torturing young virgins, were suddenly given (a couple of dice throws or turn of cards later) an unswerving desire to be unstintingly generous and turned out (again by dice or card) to be beloved by one and all. Not very believable I would have thought. Similarly, characters who's IQ's came out only just higher than a stuffed parrot, within a couple of throws of the dice, suddenly took on the trait of a political or military genius, no less! (Lions led by Donkeys, perhaps?).
O.K., so there were a number of numbskulls who made it up the political or military ladder to success, but there were very few idiots who made it big by using their intelligence. And, how many vicious tyrants do you know who were "beloved by all"?
What I turned to was some simple, very simple, mathematics; mathematics that would average things out, so that, if a character tended to either stupidity or genius, then this would show in other Personality Traits. Similarly, if he was a vicious bastard, then he would, in all probability be a selfish bastard as well! I decided, therefore, to make my characters more "round" rather than the flat, "cut-out" personalities I had been dealing with.
THE MECHANICS
I must make it dear, before I go further, that these rules are fitted to my own taste. They are not "gospel", so feel free to play about with the formulae as you wish.
At first glance, they may appear to be complicated, but they use simple math only. A few tries with dice, pen and chart will make things clearer. Using Tony Bath's book "Setting up a wargames campaign", I listed 11 characteristics which I considered to be of relevant importance to decision making in my campaign. They are: A) Disposition. B) Morals. C) Generosity. D) Loyalty. E) Appearance. F) Temperament. G) Popularity. H) Activity. I) Intelligence. J) Political Ability. K) Military Ability.
Next I set out the following chart: PERSONALITY SCORE
| Characteristic | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A DISPOSITION | Morose | Gloomy | Average | Cheerful | Happy | Sunny |
| B MORALS | Depraved | Vicious | Weak | Average | High | Saintly |
| C GENEROSITY | Miserly | Thrifty | Careful | Average | Open-Handed | Generous |
| D LOYALTY | Treacherous | Untrust worthy | Average | Dutiful | Loyal | Totally loyal |
| E APPEARANCE | Repulsive | Ugly | Average | Striking (Beautiful) | Handsome | Adonis |
| F TEMPERAMENT | Hot-Head | Excitable | Nervous | Average | Calm | Serene |
| G POPULARITY | Detested | Disliked | Average | Liked | Popular | Beloved |
| H ACTIVITY | Lazy | Idle | Average | Average | Energetic | Vigorous |
| I INTELLIGENCE | Idiot | Slow | Average | Clever | Intelligent | Genius |
| J POLITICAL ABILITY | Useless | Makes Mistakes | Average | Good | Excellent | Political Genius |
| K MILITARY ABILITY | Incompetent | Bad | Unlucky | Average | Good | Brilliant |
As may be seen, the above chart is very similar to the one used in Tony Bath’s book, but with a few distinct differences to suit my own personal needs. Of course, not all Personality Traits are covered here: i.e. Courage (as I consider even brave men, at times, show extreme cowardice, and cowards have made unbelievable stands against the worst odds. I do not make a decision on this most unpredictable of characteristics. I let Fate decide for me in the heat of battle).
PRIMARY TRAITS
I decided that: a) Disposition, b) Morals, e) Appearance, h) Activity, and i) Intelligence, could all safely be assumed not to have any bearing upon each other. After all, one's appearance does not tend to have a bearing upon Intelligence (although, being human, we all make sweeping judgments about people by their appearance, rather than by other less obvious traits). I therefore made these 5 Characteristics my "Primary" traits, upon which All Personalities would be built.
They are all decided upon by a single D6 throw reading off the appropriate "trait" from the "Personality Chart', above.
SECONDARY TRAITS
c) Generosity, d) Loyalty, f) Temperament are more complicated to decide upon. The following formulae were used for each, using the "Primary" Trait scores, already thrown for:
Generosity
Morals + die throw (7)
As will quickly be realised, the above formula simply averages out the "b) Morals" Characteristic with a Die Throw (marked (7) to indicate a mythical 7-sided die - see note on this later!)
Similarly:
Loyalty
Morals + Disposition + die throw (8)
Temperament
Disposition + Intelligence + die throw (7)
All this is probably dear as mud, but, a few tries with dice, pencil and paper, will help the less mathematical amongst us (I include myself in this) sort things out. For the moment, let's continue....
We come finally to probably the most important (and most complicated to work out) characteristics of the above 11:
Popularity, Political Ability and Military Ability. These are dealt with in the following way:
Popularity:
Disposition + Morals + Generosity + Loyalty + Appearance + Temperament
As before, the formula simply averages out of 6 the previously known characteristics. (Please note: Popularity is not dependent on Chance in my campaign, only upon a character’s own attitudes. Therefore there is no Die throw in this formula!)
Similarly:
Political Ability
Activity + Intelligence + die throw (8)
And:
Military Ability
Activity + Temperament + Intelligence + die throw (8)
I make no excuses for using the above 3 formulae. This is how I think "Popularity", "Political Ability" and "Military Ability" are best decided upon within my campaign. Of course, my personal preferences may not be to everyone's taste, so you may wish to bring in other factors (but, of course, you'll need to make the appropriate changes to the formulae to balance things out. You might end up with a character obtaining a Military Ability score of .75 or +9, if you're not careful!). Which brings me to one final point, mentioned above: the "7" and (as can be seen) the "8" sided Dice? Basically, these are easily explained:
Note on die throws marked "7,' or "8":
Marked "7": Throw normal D6, if a "6" is scored, throw again:
- 1,2, or 3 let die = "6"
4, 5, or 6 let die = "7" - (easy, innit?)
Marked "8": Throw normal 6 sided die, if a "6" is scored, throw again:
- 1 or 2 let die = "6"
3 or 4 let die = "7"
5 or 6 let die = "8"
CONCLUSION
Naturally, the more intelligent of you out there will have seen that some of the formulae will not give exact results. Keep calm, and round the scores down as necessary, to give totals you can read-off from the "Personality Chart". Oh yes, and "why" the use of unusually sided dice? Well, after a number of tries with just "normal" dice (D6), you'll find that no characters appear with Political Genius or Military Brilliance as characteristics, due, of course, to the "rounding" of their earlier characteristics.
So, my answer is to give a boost to the dice throws. Geniuses do turn up in "Franconia", but not that often and so far, out of nearly 400 characters used, I've only turned up 6 military supermen. Napoleons do not appear in my campaigns quite with the regularity as they used to. By the way, I now have all these formulae on a computer programme (written by "yours truly") combined with a "Personality Naming" facility, programmed with 80 male and 40 female Christian names.
In short, I allow my computer to decide, not only a person's character, but also his or her name as well. It does save on throwing dice, after all.
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