Causing a Ruckus

 

Causing a Ruckus

Although set in an Historical context, Ruckus is very much a narrative event that the players create between them as such it is as much about your story as it is about History and there are many ways in which you can adapt the game to suit your own particular narrative. You should feel free to take ownership of Ruckus and make it your own. Here are some ways in which various players have been using the game to create their own adventures.

Above Mark's Beautifully painted Landsknechts

Mark Taylor My major wargaming adversary and special pal, Mark has been playing Ruckus since its first outing which is surprising since Mark has an aversion to skirmish games! His Gaston Villa Retinue has already been featured in previous articles but Mark also has created some beautiful Landsknecht and Swiss Retinues. Mark persuaded me to write profiles for Robin Hood et al and that led to a whole Outlaws of Sherwood campaign.

“When my good friend and wargaming buddy Mike told me he was thinking of designing a skirmish game based on Billhooks I replied with my usual positivity “I don’t like skirmish games, they’re rubbish!” So encouraged by my enthusiasm he set about writing Ruckus. A couple of months later, chained to a chair I agreed to a play test. Within a few minutes our heroes were name calling and boasting about their impressive codpieces. I can honestly say I have never laughed so much and had so much fun playing a wargame. I now have half a dozen retinues, from Robin Hood to the Italian Wars, yes, I am hooked! I don’t like skirmish games but I love Ruckus!”

and his Swiss Retinue

Ben Mallet Ben is a Ruckus veteran, an early convert to the game who has been a great help with play testing.  “Rob Squires and I decided to combine Billhooks and Ruckus and fight two interlinked games over a small village. We began with a scouting mission to the village, a perfect moment for a game of Ruckus. This developed into us setting out three objectives across the table ready to be captured. Whoever held the objectives at end of the game, would acquire a benefit for the subsequent clash of Billhooks. Our three objectives were as follows: an abandoned artillery piece, capturing this would allow you to add it into your army; some wandering priests who would grant a “Wandering Cleric” event card from the Gallia theatre in Billhooks Delux; and last but not least, a cart in the centre of the table would allow you to take a special event card of your choosing before the battle!”

“The billhooks game was, for my Wars of the Roses force at least, a sorry affair. After a few failed morale tests my army had crumpled. A less than majestic test of this combination of the two games, it was nonetheless an exciting evening of games. For future games we may experiment more with the rewards from the preliminary Ruckus game. And there is the possibility of playing the games in reverse order with the Billhooks game result determining which leader is found in a Warwickesque retreat fighting off pursuing combatants in the fog? Whatever we do next, this experiment definitely gave us much to think about for future Ruckus/Billhooks combined games”

Ben's  de Lyne Retinue is based on one of his ancesetors and Ben has even written a family tree for his Retinue!

Anthony March lives in New Zealand. “Tom Swan and the Mongrel's Arms. I aim to play some games based around Christian Cameron's books set in 15th Century Italy. Much of the action is urban brawls so men are typically unarmoured and using their arming swords.  The main characters will have three versions - unarmoured, in half armour and in full harness.”

Rob Squires has been an invaluable help in creating this game,Rob is always looking for a way to break a game, exactly what is need for playtesting.

 Rob Squires “Over the last couple of months, I have been playing a Ruckus/Billhooks campaign with some friends, set during the fictional Second Breton War of Succession 1400 using HYW rules for both systems. This has essentially been an RPG where I initially acted as the games master, controlling adversaries and NPCs. Making use of the Push RPG system We have played 2 session so far, totalling 9 games of ruckus and a billhooks battle. The first game we played at Bristol Independent Wargaming. The 3 players each had a spear in the same Ruckus Retinue, each composed of different types of Retainers, one of archers, one men-at-arms and the other Jinetes, their objective was to find an undisclosed holy relic.   At the end of the first session, whilst playing the "Oh brother where art thou mission", despite a straightforward capture of brother Ambrose, one of the Hero’s betrayed the other two - killing several of them and absconding with the monk!”

“The second session was at my house we played for 11 hours! Which I think is testament to the joy, and unpredictable humour Ruckus provides. This centred around a chase where the two players betrayed in the last game chased the other, the key events for this session were an ambush played using billhooks rules and a city escape at night using Ruckus.” 

Stuart Reynolds "I am 32, moved from Kent UK to Kanagawa Japan in March 2023, I have been here for almost a year but plan on staying indefinitely. I was working in Sports Direct for 8 years in the UK and decided it was time for a life change. I am finally putting my history degree to use and am teaching here in Japan. Warhammer is sparce here, and historical games are non-existent. There is a fairly sizable expat gaming community, but I wanted to introduce Japanese people to the game. We cannot hope to build a community here without the support of the locals, so I have been putting the work in to teach and translate some rules for various games so that people can get involved. Japanese people love gunplay, card games, and train models, so getting them into tabletop wargames just seems like the next logical step, it has been a great way to share my culture, improve my language skills, and have a great time doing it.

I have played a few dozen games of Ruckus now, using proxy miniatures until my Perry minis order arrives, and I have to say this is one of my favourite skirmish games in recent years!  I particularly love the duelling system! 

Also down South, on the Isle of White, Elliot and Nigel Davie have been using Ruckus to play Samurai against Ninjas, with no major changes to the rules"

Elliot Davie "Our Never Mind the Naginatas campaign made its first debut today. Overall it was really good fun and managed to piece the rules together from my frantic notes having only read them a couple of hours previously Both my samurai were knocked out, however both on the road to recovery, looking forward to our next campaign game and to see the characters develop further.

We had a couple of thoughts, we debated switching the push back from whoever did the most wounds to whoever did the most hits in order to make the fights more mobile like an Errol Flynn duel even if no wounds are scored, and the other being some form of mishap in melee with if you roll all ones however, we have not trialled this at all."

Nigel Davie "First games of Never Mind the Naginatas. Suzuki the novice of Shimano Kawasaki. Did a good day’s work badly damaging two other samurai, but was shot down by a cowardly gunner!  We had a few thoughts based on our first try out, but all seemed to work well with Elliot doing his first bit of player refereeing. "

Thoroughly Tested I am fortunate to have such an excellent team of play-testers and their help has been invaluable in honing Ruckus into its present form, I suspect between us all we have probably played more than ninety games. Ruckus has existed as a full set of rules of 60 pages for over a year and condensing those pages down to just 32 pages without losing the essence and flavour of the game has been a challenging process. There was no way we could include all of the ten scenarios, but deciding which ones to use and which to leave out was a real head scratcher. The decision to omit the steeds and mounted combat rules was a no brainer as the initial game is set in England at the time of the Wars of the Roses and so most warriors could be expected to be on foot. Leaving out the campaign rules was a real wrench as they are very much at the heart of the game and hopefully, we can publish them at a later date.

Mishaps and Calamities. It is not possible within the confines of a small introductory rule set to cover all the Heroic deeds that Players may wish to perform during a game therefore Players should feel free to be creative with the Gambit rules.  You want your hero to leap from a moving wagon onto the back of a horse but it’s not in the rules?  Agree a Mishap and a Calamity event for each Gambit you wish to try. In the above example roll for a Mishap when leaping from the wagon 1=Mishap, the Wagon hits a pothole and the Hero has to cling on and misses the opportunity to jump, he remains stationary for this turn. Calamity, he falls from the wagon, roll for injuries.

You can increase the Risk factor for Movement Gambits to perform particularly risky acts of heroism. In the above example you may feel that this very risky deed requires a separate Gambit roll for leaping from the wagon and another for landing successfully on the horse, or that for such a risky enterprise a Mishap will occur if the Player rolls a one or a two or more on the Mishap roll.

Remember, that the risk of Calamity increases as the game progresses and that Heroes add their Prowess to the Calamity roll.

Heroes and their Weapons. Ruckus is a game of Heroes and it is the fighting skill of the Heroes that is important rather than the weapons that they carry which is why we have focused on Heroic skills rather than weapon choices. Historically, Medieval warriors of the knight class and Men at Arms practiced their Martial Arts in full armour. One French knight, Jean le Meingre, Marshall of France, and leader of the vanguard at Agincourt, known as Boucicaut, (the Mercenary) is said to have run miles in full harness and could do gymnastics, even somersaults “fully armed” He could leap onto his horse without using the stirrups! Although Boucicault was evidently an exceptional warrior, all knights were taught to fight from an early age. Such men practiced with all manner of weapons and could as easily kill with a dagger as with a pol axe. For this reason, Heroes in Ruckus may be armed with any weapon, it is their fighting skills that distinguish them, not what they carry in their hands.

Retainers. Retainers are more defined by their weapon type and have generic profiles with Traits that are specific to their role, there is no reason why they should not attempt Heroic feats, however they are far more likely to suffer a Calamity as result of failure.

Fun First. Although it is possible that Ruckus may have a future as competitive game, it was a deliberate decision to not write the rules in such a manner, as such an approach would require attempting to predict every possible situation or combination of skills, and writing clauses and subclauses for each one. It is not possible to predict every outcome, and I did not want to use energy that could be used more profitably on extending and improving the game, trying to do so.

The One Rule to Rule them All is there as a final arbitrator and although it is possible that some players may try to abuse this rule by using it to attempt impossible or highly improbable actions it is my experience that such players will try to abuse the system regardless of how we write the rules. This game is not written for those people but for the majority of wargamers who wish to escape to a different world and have fun with their friends.  

And not forgetting my good friend Jordan, represented above in the form of the redoubtable Sir Henry Graves, who has put a lot of thought into the game and helped me put the original game together.