Friday, June 24, 2011

Platoon Forward for WWI

A couple people asked me what I had changed to use Platoon Forward for WWI, so to make things easy I thought I would post it here.

The game I wrote about in my previous post was designed with two sides being controlled by actual players instead of having one side controlled by the "system".

The first part of Platoon Forward deals with designing your leaders for the game.  I'll list the Germans and Russians.  In this step I didn't change anything from what was written.  For those of you not familiar with these rules you design the character in this order: Personality, Motivation/Interest, Combat Temperament (which changes per battle), Combat Leadership and Background (only applied to Officer's).

The Germans looked like this for the game:
Lt. Dieter- Careful- Family- Bold- Level 3- +1 (background)
Sgt. Ostertag- Unsupportive (-1)- Religion- Even- Level 2
Obergefreiter Trager- Conformist- Wealth- Reckless- Level 1
Gerfreiters Stetter- Jovial (+1)- Revenge- Reckless- Level 1
Gefreiters Pfeifer- Cheap- Position- Reckless- Level 1
Gefreiters Schaffert- Foolish- Position- Even- Level 2
Gefreiters Knell- Lazy- The Arts- Even- Level 1

The Russians:
Lt. Vadim- Idealistic- Government- Even- Level 3
Sgt. Krylenko- Cheery (+1)- Government- Even- Level 3
Corporal Gorlice- Generous (+1)- Alcohol- Even- Level 1
Corp. Kazakov- Naive- Gluttony- Bold- Level 2
Corp. Tarnow- Cocky (-1)- Wealth- Even- Level 2
Corp. Igor- Naive- Revenge- Reckless- Level 1
Corp. Oignon- Foolish- Hedonism- Even- Level 1

Once this is done you roll up your scenario.  This is where I modified the charts and results for a more WWI feel.
The first roll one makes decides who will attack or defend.  The chart is broken down as Axis and Allies, obviously I changed the Axis to Central Powers and Allies to Entente.  I also changed the modifiers to the die rolls like this:
1914-1915- No Modifier
1916-1917 +1
1918 No Modifier
My reasoning behind these changes I felt reflected the distribution of attacks made by both sides during the war.  The early years were in my opinion pretty even, mid way through the war the Entente took on more of the Attacking posture than the Central Powers and by the end of the war both sides were pretty tired with an almost equal amount of attacks done on both sides.

The next step was to roll up the scenario.  For this I didn't modify anything and left it as is and I did not change the field of battle generator.  Although for my previous battle I did not use the field generator at all.

For determining the forces to be used I change the available forces to reflect WWI more than the WWII choices.  For most choices where Armor was called for I replaced it with Cavalry and or Armored Cars and then depending on the front and year Tanks.  Also depending on the year I placed LMG, Flamethrowers, trench mortars etc...
Since this series of battles will take place in early 1914 on the Russian front then HMG and Cavalry are available.

Well I think that's it.  I haven't done the after battle stuff yet, so I can't add it to this post.  Let me know what you think about some of the changes I've made.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks Victor. I'm really interested and thi seems a good start for a potential discussion. I'm traveling next week and I'll take with me a copy of PF.

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