Wednesday, October 9, 2013

BKCII AAR - North of Caen and an Ethics Question

I've grouped my video AARs of my play of the IABSM scenario, North of Caen, into a playlist.


It was an enjoyable game in that it went down to turn 9.  I would need to nail down a few of the details to play it again.  I think it would make a decent con game because it would introduce people to the rules fairly well, without armor and artillery.  Though, I would want to have armor, at least, in a game, because we all love playing with tanks.

Here's some info on the game. (See my question below on the ethics of releasing this information.)
North of Caen scenario table measurements


And units.


Germans CO 9, (2) HQ8, 6 Heer Squads, 2 MG42s

British Regulars CO 9, HQ 8, HQ 7, 9 Regular squads, 3 mortars rated at 2/80, (3) 12cm squares as pregame arty strikes rated with 4 dice against each unit under the templates.

Pregame arty templates
British have I break German force, or take 4 of the five buildings. Two buildings closest to the road junction are stone. Others are wood.

To take a building, the British need one unsuppressed squad or HQ in the building...I need to think through this part because standard BKC rules states that for an objective to be taken 3 unsuppressed squads and an HQ need to be in the area.  Which would mean leaving people in the buildings. Which, in this small of a scenario, I don't think you can afford to have a unit in there.  I want to say the last one with troops in the building.  They can even be suppressed.  In which case I would take this to the last turn because the Germans could've possibly taken on the of the buildings back because the British squad had 5 hits on it.



Next time I believe the Germans should set more foxholes up front, this is how the left flank stayed so resilent.  Possibly, on the right flank, just post up in the buildings and force them to cover the open ground.  The British, I wonder if grouping them all together might be a better strategy.

Now to the ethics question.  So this scenario comes out of the IABSM rulebook.  In fact, there are many scenarios I want to use out of other books and convert to BKC...or other games I'm playing.  Now, I don't have a problem with using them myself because I paid for them.  

However, should I post the details like troop lists and my map, and the objectives online for all to use? I'm giving credit to it and making slight modifications, but I'm not sure the scenario creators would be too keen. I'm pro, paying the creators for their work so I want to do right by them.  I like posting AARs and that means including some of the basics...but maybe I don't include that info and tell people to buy the books...maybe I answered my own question.

Please give me your thoughts on this.  

7 comments:

  1. Tough question. As long as you are showing your interpretation of the terrain from the scenario as you do in the pics above, I don't see a problem there as you are not showing the map from the rules. Make the details a little more vague as to the order of battle without going into specifics of the platoon structure and the like and that is probably OK. Easiest of all, ask Rich. More than likely he will give his permission to post whatever.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If anyone can use the scenario from your blog without the original, then I think that you have overstepped the line, morally. Maybe not legally, but as you say, you want to do right by the creators.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Interesting question. The ONLY thing wrong, is if you take a scenario (map, OOB, description, objectives, etc) repeat it verbatim... and call it YOURS. There is NOTHING wrong with basing a scenario of your own design on some other work (in fact It's very common among gamers... we all modify and tinker as we please). Keep in mind, you aren't charging a price for the work.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Interesting question. The only thing wrong with it is if you post a scenario from another company verbatim (OOB, map, objectives, etc) and post it as your own. There is nothing wrong with taking a scenario from one company, tinkering with it (say for another set of rules), and perhaps adding some things heren there.... and posting it. We all do this anyway, and it's pretty common practice with gamers really.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I would think as long as you're just showing pictures of the board layout, and of the organized units (w/o too much detailing of the unit compositions themselves), then there shouldn't be too much of a dilemma. You could always modify facets of the terrain and the forces involved to make the scenarios 'your own'.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I think as long as you say where you got the idea from, and don't show the scenario pages from the book it should be OK. It's free advertising for the book after all and I doubt 6mm gamers would buy that book anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I think showing your interpretation is fine. I agree with Chris that you might want to touch base with TFL to see how they feel about the Orbats. I would probably not go into specifics of figures exactly in text, but I don't think you could be faulted for a picture of your forces in review.

    ReplyDelete