HOLF Players' Guild Forum

After much consideration and some discussion, we have a name for the Civil War naval module.

The name is Wood, Iron, Steam, and Canvas. The acronym is WISC.

The name is a minor variant of one suggested by Steven Mathena, with one modification hashed out by John Sanders and myself. Thanks to Steven for his suggestion!

OK, I think I have this mostly ready to go - one question on which I still want player input is below.

In both PATE and the new Civil War module there will be sea areas, coastal waters, and harbors. In the Civil War there is also navigable river. Some rivers meet the coast at harbors, but others do not (in fact the majority do not - only 6 of the 22 navigable rivers on the map do).

In PATE we pair up the coastal waters and harbors, so every coastal water has a harbor with the same name, and vice versa, and the combination of a coastal waters and a harbor is called a port.

This is mostly an announcement for people in the current test game, but it's potentially interesting to others so I'm posting it here.

In the last test game, there was no naval module, so anyone who commanded ships on rivers got the maps for their ships thrown in with their maps for the land units. As the naval module stands up, I'm going to change that. Your GITM report will only contain the tac maps for your units and the strat maps needed to show your units (though if your ships happen to be on those maps, then of course they will appear).

Opening disclaimer: Those of you who were around during the early and middle stages of the development of NWOL know that I sometimes do my thinking in writing. Those of you who weren't have a chance to observe it now :) None of these posts really require replies from anyone, but I like to get user feedback as early in the development process as feasible and this board seems like a good way for me to do both things at once.

The subject at hand: another difference between CWOL and NWOL that's going to cause game design issues.

A design question as I work on the CWOL naval module. (It's still not too late to email me suggested names for the module. The criteria are: pronounceable acronym, historic significance, and some sort of second meaning).

As I think most people know, I am working on the Civil War naval module, getting it ready for a full test when (if?) NWOL-4 finally grinds to a halt. In order to do that I need to work on a way to display ships in ports on the land maps. (In NWOL we don't display them, we just list them below the map; but since in the Civil War ships can sail on rivers, and ships in rivers appear on the land maps, ships in ports should appear there also.)