Also, none of the midwits in the C-Suite lost their jobs. Shit, even Williams is getting her golden parachute after torching WotC. Hasbro deserves whatever terrible fate (may) befall it in the future.

Greetings!

Well, there are a few problems that I have noticed with Bolt Action.

(1) Disparate Effectiveness of MMG's and LMG's when compared to the cost-effectiveness of standard Rifle Squads. What the frigg is up with that? Historically, the more machine guns you have, the more you kick ass. Bottom Line. And yet, with the point costs involved, and the dice mechanics within the rules with the units, machine gun units are actually a disadvantage.

(2) Minimalizing or Banning of Air Power in Competitive Games.
What is up with that? Superior air power is a key component of how the Western Allies wrecked the Wehrmacht from Africa to Europe. Furthermore, in the Pacific, the loss of air superiority for the Empire of Japan spelled fucking doom for their forces at every level, in every battle, whether such battles were land forces or naval forces at sea. Not to be forgotten, the slower but gradually growing strength of the Red Air Force along the Eastern Front did much to further savage the Reich's war machine and fighting effectiveness at every level.

(3) Point Costs of Tanks and Transport
This especially hurts the German forces. It becomes apparent that in so many scenario match ups, it is like a common menu of 1,000 or 1250 points where both sides are totally evenly matched in points, with one MMH team, one mortar team, one artillery gun, and one Light or Medium Tank. Maybe a truck or Half Track. That seems to be pretty much it, along with standard Infantry Squads. 

That set up sounds nice, but it essentially handicaps the relatively few advantages that the Germans possessed--Tiger and Panther Tanks, and lots of strong armoured assault guns and artillery variants. The Germans were not feared across the battlefields of Europe and Russia because they supported their infantry with armoured cars or Panzer III Light Tanks.

(4) Dissonance Between Theater Forces and Maxed Homogenous Standard Forces
Similar to aspects of all of the above mentioned, a player using various cool Theater Forces, which are more historically accurate--is essentially wasting points on expensive units, when there are more effective standard units at a cheaper cost--or they are buying themed units that mechanically are just not as effective. These dynamics ultimately mean that a player seeking to deploy a more historically accurate force will likely simply be outclassed and ploughed by a player that deploys the Maxed Homogenous Standard force.

Anyone see these problem dynamics? Or am I just too new to Bolt Action and missing something?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

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"There's always been Female Custodes" & "We've always been at war with Eastasia" & "There is no war in Ba Sing Se"

Quote from: FingerRod on Today at 06:54:37 AMI just checked my watch, it is still a story game. And that mechanic is a way for others to participate in the STORY. It 100% is not used as part of standard resolution.

And when 1 is barely a success, 2 is you do it but not well, 3 you do it adequately, etc. those are called DEGREES OF SUCCESS. And again, the failure story mechanic does not change that. It is only used as a way to introduce something "more interesting". The person doing the action can always reroll, using insight, until they get their way. Annnnnd....if the player doing the action doesn't think the failure is interesting for their character or the story, then most of the time people back it out. A table etiquette thing.

I cannot believe you keep digging deeper on this lol.

FingerRod: "My GM always let me succeed with no risk of failure, because at our table it's standard table etiquette not to allow anyone to fail if they don't want to."

Dude, that may be the etiquette at your table, but that's not the standard etiquette for all tables, and it's not what the Cthulhu Dark rules say. No, I haven't played Cthulhu Dark, but I was very involved with story games in 2010 and read it when it was released. I had been a participant on The Forge and administered the Indie RPG Awards, and played lots of its siblings and predecessors like Lady Blackbird, Blowback, etc.

In general, I find it is more fun to have the risk of failure. In my groups, it was normal for the GM and others to introduce risk of failure, even if the rules allowed for the GM to grant auto-success. If I were playing Cthulhu Dark, I'd be using the failure rules to their fullest as written - the same way that I have introduced failure and adversity in other story games like Lady Blackbird, Polaris, etc. For me, it's been more fun that way.

If you edit the look and layout for your account ( https://www.therpgsite.com/profile/?area=theme ), you can change the font size. Hopefully, one of those settings will give you what you want.

Cynthia Williams failed her promises and plans. Neither of which were going to be particularly great for the hobby, because on top of not really standing up to the woke, and aiming to illegally retro-remove the OGL, trying at switching things to digital D&D with microtransactions is... shitty.

 But yeah, pretty much a failure even from the perspective of the sketchy corporate master plan as well.

I'll wager, one of our more academically inclined members, could almost do a doctoral thesis on TBP. And how it's a microcosm of a fascist society.