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Rulers in Table top games.

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Rising Moon Pro...
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Joined: 06/08/2009

This is a simple question, hopefully one of you may know this, how many games actually use rulers to move units across a board?

scifiantihero
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Joined: 07/08/2009
Not so simple . . .

. . since the answer is probably a lot!

I mean I've played Pirates and Mechwarrior of the top of my head that use rulers to move. I've played Star Wars Miniatures and D&D games that use a board. I've seen people playing plenty of other games that used rulers, and ones that don't.

You could probably search for mechanics on BGG to find a bunch fo information on either ones.

Why do you ask?

pelle
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Battleground: Fantasy

Battleground: Fantasy Warfare, Wings of War, Ostindiska Kompaniet (but you never heard of the last one since it's a Swedish game from 1992 :) )... Too many to list.

Also have a look at almost any miniature wargame ever created (and there are lots of them...) because whatever clever mechanics you are thinking of it is unlikely to not have been invented already. :)

Myself I hate rulers. It's the main reason (well, that and painting) for never getting into miniatures wargames, even though I like the idea of playing with small toy soldiers... End of last week I finally got around to order the rulebook for Square Bashing, the only system I know of that does not use rulers. But I'm sure in the long history of miniature games there has been many other systems that also managed to avoid rulers.

ilta
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With any minis game, you're

With any minis game, you're pretty much either using rulers or a demarcated board. Rulers make a lot of sense in a freewheeling system with lots of movement, boards make sense if you want to keep things a bit more simple.

I always thought that Pirates was particularly clever in that there were only ever two measurements ("short" and "long"), usually in groups of no more than 2 at a time, and they were defined by the height and width of the cards the ships came on.

scifiantihero
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Pirates . . .

was so cool at the start . . .

*sigh*

pelle
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Pirates was cool, and the use

Pirates was cool, and the use of the card size clever... I got a few packs and assembled some ships, played it a few times, but nah the ruler thing ruined the game for me. Same with Wings of War.

I think the really old Pirate packs (1st series?) came with a map with a square grid on. At least a few of my packs did. I never looked at the rules for those though. Maybe there is a playable game in there somewhere after all, beyond the rulers.

scifiantihero
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Joined: 07/08/2009
I don't think . . .

any of the official pirates packs came with a grid board or anything. I have seen people play on them, though, and it is quite cool. They make good pieces to use in other games as well!

:)

EdWedig
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Joined: 09/15/2009
None of the Pirates packs

None of the Pirates packs released in the US had a gridded map (although the Plunder Pack had a map without a grid). The german Pirates packs had a simple paper map in each pack that had a grid, along with additional rules on how to use the grid for movement. I have a few german packs with the maps.

unicornucopia
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Joined: 04/10/2010
Are you asking... from a

Are you asking...

from a "Should I design my game to grids... or to rulers" POV?

If so I have some personal opinionated insight on the matter.

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