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Hello, I'm just a guy with far too many World War I books, and for the last six months I've been running a day-by-day blog of the war. I volunteer as an Allied corps commander, and look forward to (Incidentally, if anyone is wondering why there's all these mechanics to determine whether you get to give orders or not, on the blog we're three days out from the start of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, for which I plan to go into buttock-numbing detail about how bloody hard it was to exercise any sort of command and control.)
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Mar 7, 2015 08:54
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I have a question. Are there any objectives in the game mechanics beyond "win" or "push the enemy off the battlefield" or "kill them all"?
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Mar 7, 2015 19:07
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Cool. Do you mind a couple more? How exactly does bringing up reserves work? And, in terms of reading the map: it looks pretty clear that grey is roads and towns, lighter shades of green are hills, dark green is woods, blue is water, but what are those sickly greeny-yellow often-triangular blobs?
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Mar 7, 2015 19:37
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Kangra posted:A few ideas for place names: Enjoying all of these. Have a few suggestions of my own.  edit: oh and for historical accuracy it should be  Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Mar 7, 2015 |
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Mar 7, 2015 20:15
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Can't sleep, had nothing else to do, apparently can still make bad puns though Hopefully one or two of them aren't too obscure
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Mar 8, 2015 02:47
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Before I withdraw, now that Grey has accepted the names, here's an annotated gazetteer for anyone who's struggling to work out the jokes. Roughly from the top left corner: Foret des Coubarbes - A "foret" is a French forest, and a "coubarbe" is a neckbeard. Hill 69 - Many battlefield features had no local name and were referred to on military maps by their height in metres. You're on Something Awful, you know what 69 means. L'Usine de Papillion - "Butterfly mill" or "butterfly factory" River Sombre - The Somme was a very sombre place; there's also a river elsewhere in France called the Sambre. Bridges over the Sombre - These are all characters from the seminal Stanley Kubrick film "Paths of Glory"; Colonel Dax, General Mireau, General Broulard and Lieutenant Roget (which then becomes "Thesaurus" after Roget's Thesarus). Ile de Huit - One name in English for a small island in the middle of a river is "eyot" or "ait" pronounced "eight"; "huit" is "eight" in French. Chemin des Putains - there was a famous ridge with an important road on top of it called the Chemin des Dames, or "ladies' path"; "putain" is French for "bitch" or "whore". Butte de Fesse - "Fesse" means "buttock"; so it's the Butt Cheek. Farms - Most of these are Blackadder Goes Forth characters: Addernoire, Georges, Melchett, Flash[heart]. "Salopard" apparently means "sod off", which is Baldrick's first name, and "Cheri" is French for "Darling". "Godemiche" is "dildo" (it looks like one), and there were a million Dead Cow Farms on the Western Front, after their most common inhabitant. Towns - The three I named are all in homage to Tommies' charming manglings of unpronounceable foreign place-names. Fonquevilliers became "Funky Villas", so on this map we have "Froussard..." which I'm pretty sure is French for "Funky". "Mangepommes" is "Eat apples", from "Etaples"; and "Glacessui" is a mangling of "windscreen wipers", from Ypres. "Grappe des Foutres" is "Cluster des Fucks". "Dulce et decorum est" is a Wilfred Owen war poem which you should read now if you haven't. "Auberge du Beagle Volant" is the shed of the flying dog, in honour of the most glorious Sopwith Camel ace of them all. River Paisne - The Chemin des Dames overlooked the River Aisne. Bridges over the Paisne - These are named after filmmakers who made WWI films; Kubrick, Georg Wilhelm Pabst (Westfront 1918), and then the leftmost bridge I had after Abel Ganst (J'accuse). Rue de Gloire - Road of Glory. Or, indeed, Path of Glory. It goes over La Fourmiliere, The Anthill, the location where Colonel Dax is ordered to make a suicidal attack. Forets de Boronne and Kryptonne - The Argonne Forest saw some of the most brutal close-range fighting. Boron and krypton are, like argon, noble gases. Norman Angell Lane - Norman Angell wrote a book about how bloody stupid it would be for Europe to go to war. Crapouillot Ridge - A crapouillot is a little toad, and was adopted as a nickname first by the French infantry (since, like toads, they spent most of their time squatting in muddy pools of water) and then to refer to their most widely-distributed trench mortar (which was green and looks surprisingly like a toad once you've drunk enough cheap red wine). Bois de Coeur - Wood of Heart. It looks like one. Bois de Jeu - There was a wood at the Somme called Trones Wood. Google Translate tells me "Trones" means "thrones". A "jeu" is a game.
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Mar 8, 2015 19:53
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I would like to offer a vote of thanks to the German commanders for playing (it takes two sides to have a war), to Stalinator the Garrulous in particular for amusing us all with his frequent communiques, and to Grey Hunter (it takes someone to run the game to have a game) for the truly lunatic amount of work he's putting into this. And I thought I was going to be disappointed when the WitP LP fell over and died! edit: on the subject of Roll20, sometimes there's just things you need to chat out in real time rather than forum posts, ya know? We kept it open to outsiders and I like to think we did a good job of hashing things out in the thread where they're easily seen as much as possible. Also the map-drawing options are hella fun and with the permission of Generation Internet I'll post one of those maps in here so you can see the sort of fun we were having with it. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 08:56 on May 6, 2015 |
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May 6, 2015 08:50
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100 Years Ago The great German right wing's advance into France reaches its high-water mark. There can be only one place to go today, and that's the First Battle of the Sombre. Armee d'Internet General Joffre's decision to entrust his last-ditch defence of his left flank to a French-Canadian general with a taste for Indian food (at least, this is why later historians assume that he was renowned for muttering "Currie, Currie" at moments of great stress) has been a Matter of Some Debate almost since it was made. Nevertheless, since I care not for the doings of generals, we shall bypass it entirely. Suffice to say that the French have somehow scraped together three motley corps together for their last stand to blunt the Germans' grand flanking march. The plan, at least, was simple. They cannot pass. Private Marcel Franchouillard of 3eme Division tells us of the mood as they marched forward to battle. quote:We knew that all France depended on the success of our defence. The songs of August died in our ears as we took up our assigned positions, trusting to God and our officers. Pont de Mireau The first action of the day occurred at the Pont de Mireau, on the French left. Setting the tone for the day, it was brutal and deadly. Gunner Alain Grognarde, 2eme Division: quote:The cavalry stood no chance. One moment they were trotting up the lane, the next moment they were fighting off the entire German army. Only a few troopers escaped, but they carried back to our headquarters vital messages about the enemy. And then, as the enemy started to come across the bridge, we opened fire, all our batteries at once. For the rest of the battle we had to pass orders and messages by hand signs or writing. Some of us never got our hearing back. And then the German guns opened up. quote:In a moment, the scene changed. Shells fell all about us. How we didn't die in that first cannonade I have no idea. The batteries to either side of us were destroyed in inferno, limbs of men and horses flying everywhere. I was detailed by Captain Escargot to take a message back to Division HQ reporting the situation. That decision saved my life. I have felt guilt about not dying with my comrades ever since. Why me? Grognarde was present at Divisional HQ when messages began to arrive from Glacessui. quote:Apparently the Germans advanced in close order, and our machine-guns and rifle-fusillades scythed them down as though they were stalks of corn. Their messenger seemed barely to have broken a sweat. "We'll win the whole war at a stroke", he said, "if only they'll oblige us and keep attacking!" But he surely could not have known what was happening some miles to the east... Chemin des Putains In the East, the French generals chose to occupy the high ground of the Chemin des Putains, rather than trying to conduct an active defence of the bridges. On the Chemin itself this paid dividends, blunting the German push. But, further east, their flank at Mangepomme was not securely held, and the Uhlans launched a cavalry charge through the outskirts of the town. It was conducted in grand, sweeping fashion, the troopers closing fast and setting to work with lances and sabres. And then the machine-guns find their mark. Down go the horses. Down go their riders. It's infantry work from here, fighting house-to-house. And then disaster strikes. Caporal Phillip Geriatrix takes up the story. quote:Our enlightened leaders ordered us east, as quickly as possible, to slaughter the enemy and let their impure blood water the fields around Mangepomme. In fact, as we were soon to find out, they ordered everyone east, as quickly as possible. The sheer weight of men in such a small space made it impossible to keep one's bearings. One German artillery piece and ten shrapnel shells could have accounted for the lot of us as we blundered into each other, swore, got tangled up with other regiments, swore again. Meanwhile, the men of 2eme Division continue their excellent job of defence. Coubarbe General Stalinator spent most of the morning writing rude letters to his opponent and ordering the occupation of Coubarbe, which proceeded with few casualties. By midday, the Germans had an entire division packed into the town, just waiting to storm out and assault the Chemin des Putains from two sides. Which brings us to the misadventures of Private Jean Crapaud of 1er Division... quote:The motto of the Foreign Legion is "march or die". The motto of our regiment is "march, march, and march again"! We spent the entire morning going in circles. First we were told to help defend Coubarbe, so we marched up to Coubarbe. Then we were told that we should fall back to Grappe-des-Foutres, so we marched back almost to Grappe-des-Foutres. Then we were told that General Tragula had issued fresh orders, and we should return to Coubarbe. His name was not particularly popular on the march as we thought of him sitting safely in his headquarters, enjoying his customary gluttonous lunch with the finest wine, while we men had to subsist on pinard and bread. Pinard was the cheap red wine on which the French poilu kept himself going. By winter, men on trench duty would get an allowance of half a gallon per day. But, back to today, it was well that the orders for a return had been sent. Coubarbe was ready to explode with Germans. quote:In their grey uniforms they melted into the buildings. One moment there was nobody there, and the next it seemed as though the entire German army had come to force a path through to Paris. We watched as they charged uphill at our comrades. Some of us rejoiced as they were cut down, but I felt sick to my stomach. I knew that sooner or later it would be our job to kill or be killed. The Western attack At this point I do have to stop and pay attention to those drat generals for a moment. General Tragula and General tatonkatonk's post-war memoirs both covered this morning's events in great detail, and so we have a reasonable picture of what might have been. General Tragula favoured an immediate counter-attack, claiming that the historical record agreed with his guess that the Germans could have been caught manouevering at the Pont de Mireau. While also taking credit for all of 2eme Division's successes on the defensive, he also maintained until his death (from a heart attack in 1969, in the bed of his latest mistress) that the war could have ended in 1914 had General tatonkatonk had the elan to push forward, crush their opponents, and cross the Sombre in concert with the BEF. By contrast, General tatonkatonk argues that he had no way of confirming the guesses of his overly-aggressive (and overly-fed) superior, and that his actions in not attacking immediately in fact saved his division (which he would later make extremely effective use of throughout the rest of the war) from being destroyed, thus enabling it to march east and reinforce the Bois de Jeu at a critical moment. I have no interest in this Matter of Some Debate, you can make your own mind up, but the thought does occur that General tatonkatonk was entirely justified in not wanting to attack based simply on his superior's hunch. Coubarbe Back to the east. Denied the chance to attack at the Pont de Mireau, it's perhaps unsurprising that General Tragula soon began screaming for a counter-attack into Coubarbe before retiring for his afternoon nap. Private Crapaud: quote:The enemy continued advancing. We continued watching. Why were we not either attacking or retreating? That was the worst part. Once we actually moved, I had no room left in my mind for fear. I felt strangely detached from it all, almost as though I was letting someone else control my body. (Part 2 to follow...)
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May 6, 2015 11:02
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^^^ I would love to see an Isonzo scenario for this game. "You have three armies who between them have sixty pairs of boots, no shovels, 400 matchlock muskets, a half-eaten sandwich, and no trenches. The enemy is sitting on top of a mountain making rude signs at you. They have one regiment of green troops and a battery of ancient guns with bronze barrels. You are the attacker. You are always the attacker."Rincewind posted:Is there any room left for anything on the Allies side? Sure is. (Someone please make sure HEY GAL sees that we're open for signups again, I fancy my chances attacking a division of pikemen with artillery and Lee-Enfields.) steinrokkan posted:You know, Grey only talked about the number of defensive troops we will be getting Grey knows the force ratios that were required to achieve anything worthwhile in 1915, I'm sure. Tomn posted:By the way, Trin, you mentioned in the MilHist thread that you wanted to hold off on how your WW1 research influenced your experiences in the game and vice versa. Is that forthcoming in part 2 of your ersatz histories, or are you planning to keep your mind a closed steel trap until the Treaty of Versailles? I'll bung it in the milhist thread now that I can't give away that e.g. we're just about to counter-attack the gently caress out of Coubarbe, which I am confident the Germans are now well aware of. However, it won't go in Fake 100 Years Ago because there is no alternate universe in which I care about generals, even though I've just spent weeks pretending to be one. (There is a reason I added that flavour stuff to my orders about how I was primarily concerned with how many wines were to be served with lunch.) Speaking of which... 100 Years Ago - Part 2 The German Hammer Meanwhile, the German hammer is swinging round in the east, just waiting to fall on Caporal Geriatrix. quote:We had been waiting so long that rumours were already flying. Our guns were destroying the enemy as they left the safety of Mangepomme. The Germans were burning the town to the ground. The English had appeared on our right and were even now marching past Norman Angell Lane! It was only a great illusion, stories we told ourselves for comfort, far more palatable than the reality that was about to strike us. And much we needed the comfort after the confusion of the previous hours. Little did we know that the Germans were sneaking round across the Paisne, to the Auberge de Beagle Volant, whose name would become so notorious in years to come, to take it without an answer from ourselves. Somehow, he and his men hold the line. And they're not the only men under fire. Private Franchouillard of 3eme Division has just occupied trenches in the Bois de Jeu. quote:We all expected the enemy howitzers to open up as soon as possible, and that would be the end of us. When we saw them charging up the hill, we cast our eyes up to the heavens and decided that truly, God works in mysterious ways. Our officers steadied our nerves as we waited for them to close, and then as one we let off a great fusillade. The German dead fell under the feet of their comrades, rolling downhill, tripping up three men as they went. We reloaded and fired again, and again. Still they came on, taking what cover they could and crawling. Messages reached us that our comrades to the right were under heavy pressure. We had to hold out. And so the line was held. The tale of how the Germans failed to press home their advantage in manpower and in guns, and utterly destroy their opponents is, I'm told, heavily covered in German-language treatments of the war. English-language treatments quite naturally prefer to focus on something else... Schroedinger "Better late than never" was the sentiment as the BEF's remaining unscathed Corps marched to the field. They'd been held back from the early fighting near Noms in case of emergency. That emergency was now upon the Entente, and Private Thomas Atkins was in the thick of it. quote:It tells you how much of a shambles it was that I shouldn't be here to say this. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We all knew our base-wallahs weren't up to much, of course, but this was something else. I was the Colonel's batman, you see, so I got to hear all the news that arrived. The first inkling that something was amiss was this snooty letter from a French general, no less. He went on and on with giving us useful advice, with "Attack!" in their lingo every other line. The Colonel muttered something about being damned, and asked me to burn the letter. Skirmishing will continue for a few days, but both sides have diverted reinforcements to other sectors. The great German advance had finally run out of steam, and as this became apparent, a sulky silence spread over the battlefield. It would be long before it sprang into life again; but we will return eventually to the Sombre valley. Actions in Progress Battle of the Dnieper Battle of Chardonnay Battle of Le Pen Erdogan's Offensive Further Reading makersley.com for more in this vein about the war! There's a lot going on at the moment; the shitshow at Gallipoli is well underway, the Germans are just about to make another push at the Second Battle of Ypres after having used gas for the first time, the Russians are backpedalling furiously on the Eastern Front, and the Ottoman government is preparing to perpetrate genocide. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 00:11 on May 7, 2015 |
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May 7, 2015 00:08
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Bacarruda posted:That's actually not as bad as I feared it would be. We gave the Allies a much tougher beating that I thought we would. My theory for 100 Years Ago (that I never found space to work in) was that the BEF sent three corps in August instead of two, and we saw III Corps in this battle; its actual constitution was Regular Army men, mostly regional county units from around the UK (quite a few of them from Fusilier regiments, and quite a few from near the top of the order of precedence); Buffs, Warwickshires, Highlanders, Lancasters, Essexes, and so on.
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May 7, 2015 09:54
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Both sides of the hill need some love, yo. Come and fight with us! Our hats are better and every man gets half a gallon of wine per day!
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May 7, 2015 10:58
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Here's an opening bid.
Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 18:16 on May 7, 2015 |
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May 7, 2015 17:56
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Please, don't anyone think I'm setting myself up as some kind of self-elected chairperson here. Just think of me as a facilitator.
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May 8, 2015 20:18
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JosefStalinator posted:A facilitator of letting us know how far up your trenches can go? Honey, if your uneducated rabble couldn't work that information out based on y'all's equivalent map (unless, as I suspect, your inferior German spades have been rendered unusable the instant they touched honest French soil, and therefore you cannot in fact dig any trenches at all), then I'm very sorry for you. We'll be happy to babysit them for the duration if you just want to send them all quietly across No Man's Land at midday.
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May 8, 2015 21:23
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I would dispute that "too much artillery", or even giving the defender a pre-planned bombardment, inherently broke the game (unless we're talking "too difficult for the GM to adjudicate it all"). It was simply far too obvious where the Germans were going to attack, and even within that attack the mud made their likely lines of advance obvious, so we took a not-particularly-difficult-to-calculate risk selling out everywhere else to defend that one small gap and carpet it. If, for instance, they'd also cleared an area of wire in the salient, or north of Bathstreet, or opposite Vegas, 'we'd probably have ended up at least keeping far more artillery firing over there, and we wouldn't have been able to redeploy wholesale. Even just not having the mud would have made the defensive bombardment far less concentrated and less effective. Then, once the initial pre-planned bombardment ran out of shots, they'd have then had a much better chance with a second wave of attack against a decapitated BEF division. (Admittedly, knowing what I know about history I would have made a couple of rule tweaks like not allowing Team Horizon Blue to use gas and I'd probably also have cut their shell allocation in half to reflect early-1915 shortages, but those are small concerns.) Grey, if you do come back to this later, and I'd love for you to do this: hopefully you don't mind the advice that if you're sticking with the idea of at least scaling things up somewhat, then whatever size and type of map we play on, for this reason it *must* include at least two and preferably more credible places where the attackers could reasonably attack. steinrokkan posted:To sum up the Over the Top experience - I think the lack of information about the game provided to the players sounded like a fine concept, but proved to be a huge problem. Uncertainty about rules made people jumpy and led to arguments in the chat room; it also basically meant lot of time was spent making plans under completely arbitrary assumptions, which never had a chance to be realized, and even when we got to making plans that seemed realistic, it turned out the maths we did using provided information were completely misguided. I would agree with this. Our side dealt with this by resorting to rulebooks, but what I think we found is that there's a huge difference between reading e.g. "Roll 1d6 then apply combat modifier; unmodified 1-3 is a miss, 4-5 is a suppression, 6 is a kill", and being able to properly exploit that knowledge. In hindsight, which God knows is a perfect 20/20, I think we'd have been able to get the "don't really know what we're doing" effect just from pure unfamiliarity with the system. Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 12:38 on Jun 16, 2015 |
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Jun 16, 2015 10:22
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Someone asked how much artillery we were pre-planning for between our first and second lines? Not a sausage. Selling out entirely on No Man's Land (on the reasoning that artillery directed into our own rear areas might prove un-useful, while arty in NML would always have a good chance on interdicting your lines of either reinforcement or attack), and if you lot had broken through I was taking the risk that we could then deal with you entirely with call-in fire from guns that were scheduled to be bashing the area opposite Vegas.
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Jun 16, 2015 19:01
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 02:52 |
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Tomn posted:As an aside, if for some reason you're not completely sick at heart with the slaughter of modern industrial warfare, Verdun is currently 50% off on Steam - only this time, you get to be the poor bloody infantryman! I'm considering picking it up myself, as I'm told it's pretty good. Verdun is fantastic, as long as you can find some people to play with who are prepared to actually play the game properly - as with any MMO game, the pubbies are a bunch of incredibly frustrating imbeciles (which is fine as long as you're playing MG and they're running witlessly down your barrel again and again). I don't even like FPSes as a rule, but Verdun is great fun with players who know what they're doing because there's way more to it than just "SHOOT MANS". I'll totally log back in and play a few rounds with anyone who's going to buy it.
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Jun 16, 2015 21:09
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