You don't know what they know... do you?

[OT Tom]

An idea I had while wandering around the forum was how about rolling the other person's dice and marking the damage in secret?

One thing that I noticed was that as players we tended to look over each others' shoulders, get a good idea of their shipping, roll lots of dice and then know exactly what hit where and so where their weak spots were to exploit etc.

Instead how about if you kept your ship card secret, you rolled your foe's dice and if they hit you applied all the damage in private without them knowing any more than "BOOM you hit the front, oh bum!  ".

For example:
The greasy English want to shoot my graceful French ship.

They tot up all the dice they need, including the extra one I give them, and hand them to me.

In secret I roll this piffling few, check where it has hit and to see if it has damaged my graceful beast.

If no joy then I look smug and mockingly tell them to try again when they are not all drunk.

If however they've managed it I inform them, probably through teasing, saying something like: "Well done little English man you managed to hit something LARGER than a barn door around the middle of my ship what next, a whale!?" Then being the honourable French man that I am I note down the damage and adjust my dice when I am putting whacking great holes in his little fish-and-chip tug boats.


The aim of this would be to simulate an air of the unknown where you aren't quite sure what damage you've done until you get there and see how many dice are coming your way.

You could probably also adjust your answer depending on his dice.
Really low -
Feel free to mock mercilessly but remember what goes around comes around.. and it is usually rolling D8s!

Low -
Inform them that they missed and maybe poke a little fun.

Hit, just -
Tell them they hit you and whereish: Front, Middle or Back

Hit, high -
Be more specific where you hit, talk about how there is a fire in the engine area, one of the guns looks unhappy or a tesla is now lacking its coil.

Finally -
"Wow that is so much higher than the target number I just want to cry" - Tell a small story in appriciation about how the turret got blown off and you can see some poor buggers recreating that tragic scene from the film Memphise Bell when the front of the plane gets blown off  !

Goodness what a long post!
Any way, thoughts?

[Alius]

A lot of room for abuse. If there were a disinterested third party to micromanage insure that both sides are playing fair, then this would be fun.

If you and your buddies are pretty trusting of each-other, then this could work, otherwise.

I do have a recommendation, however. Instead of you rolling your oppenents dice. They still get to roll. They will then know what they rolled. Maybe at the beginning of the game, let them glance over the ship cards of your fleet so they have an idea of when to cry fowl.

But, you can keep track of damage in secret instead of letting them see things.

Another option is the long distance observation. You play with your cards revealed, but an opponent can't look over anything up close unless they have a ship adjacent to the one in question.

They can only go based off what they can see from affar.

The reasoning behind the latter is that damage on a ship will be rather telling once it gets applied. She'll suddenly slow down. Fewer guns will be firing.  There will be smoke billowing from a whole side or through a rent. You name it, someone on the bridge is going to notice. (They did have scopes and binoculars in the day.)

These are just thoughts. Take 'em or leave 'em.

[IronTomBonney]

+1 on Alius' post, although I do not think that distance observations would work out of the box as the amount of information revealed at a given distance could be subjective and open to argument.

Nevermind the table chatter based on the die rolls.  That's going to happen anyway.  If I were to do something like this, I would probably include an optional observation step prior to movement that would require you to give a good description of your ships condition with all of it's damage abstracted in, but say it comes at a cost of 1MP.  Valuable information for the captain, but the time spent in observation comes at a price.  Movement MP is pretty damn valuable, so it will deter a lull in the game that might occur at the start of every round as you both describe your ship damages, which could take a while for 2+ ships per side on the map.

[OT Tom]

Interesting ideas and fair points thanks both.
Unfortunately we've not had a chance to get back together to try any of this out. I think what spurred this for me was when both my opponent and I kept looking over each other's cards and flying just out of ranges etc. It all seemed a bit too fixed/1000ft generalish.

I like the idea of having an observation rule. Somthing like this?
"The Raven's crew are going to take a shufty at that French beastie over there at a cut to their movement, what do they see?"
"A few more air vents and a few less guns than were in the origional design."

Something like that?
Presumably it would happen premovement so as to make sure there is an incurred detriment?

[IronTomBonney]

Yeah, just like that.