Tuesday 3 January 2012

Who's in charge here? (2)

Two more cards for the deck of leader types, as well as a piece of flash fiction to tie in, for last week's Expansion Joints; Jennie's back and busy, and this week's is already up. The word to use last time was present and the narrative has to be 15 words max.

"On your feet, scum! An officer's present."
"No, sir, you're past. We voted you out."

The cards are aimed at capturing the flavour of traditional and radical without suggesting any specific method being used by the leader. The traditional is assumed to be low-key, but relatively safe, working against extremes, with the radical more explosive and riskier, but the assumption being made that both can be learnt by other parties if dramatic.

More importantly, the traditionalism and radicalism are not necessarily in conflict, don't simply cancel each other, and can be complementary, even overlap. Just like in real life.





The suggested use of the deck is in the first post. A new concept introduced with this pair is 'area of influence', which I'm assuming to mean the area over which leadership extends in mechanical terms in-game, perhaps to a single unit in the case of a squad leader, a given radius in the case of a hero, or an entire force in the case of a general.
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4 comments:

The Angry Lurker said...

Reading a book about the Marines in Iraq and a platoon leader was replaced for poor leadership not long into the campaign, these cards work well.....

Porky said...

It's crucial to the way we do things these days and I'd guess there's a lot still to be said, in wargaming not least.

You've reminded me of a Steinbeck / Ricketts line from The Log from the Sea of Cortez, their 'non-teleological' take being:

"... that the people we call leaders are simply those who, at the given moment, are moving in the direction behind which will be found the greatest weight, and which represents a future mass movement."

Game Master Rob Adams said...

You know I really like these cards. What program are you using to create them? I think it might be time to put out some free downloads for WTNW. Use cards for orders and markers etc.

Porky said...

The excellent OpenOffice. The structure might look complex but it's just a series of rectangles laid one over the other, with the minor variations in colour giving a sense of depth. If you don't want to judge the arrangement by eye, you can just do the math on the frame widths and coordinates, which is easier than it sounds. Those downloads sound like a solid idea, for the player base and the game. If you used fragments of the existing art and textures, you could really place them in the WtNW world and have them match the high standards of the rest of the range.