Acknowledgement to DBA?

[skc]

I know this may be a contentious issue but here goes.

I am trying to promote Truimph! in my mainly DBA playing Club, and although there is interest, I detect some reservation to try these rules. They say, Truimph! is a rehash of the DBA ruleset, and the main bone of contention is that there should be some acknowledgement of its DBA origins. (one of our members is also on the committee of SOA)

Is there any way I could put them at their ease and perhaps could this DBA origin not be acknowledged in future editions?

I really would like to get them to take to Truimph! It is, in my view, much more authentic than the "chesslike" DBA, regarding simulation of Ancient battle

Thanks in advance.

[David Schlanger]

I know this may be a contentious issue but here goes.

I am trying to promote Truimph! in my mainly DBA playing Club, and although there is interest, I detect some reservation to try these rules. They say, Truimph! is a rehash of the DBA ruleset, and the main bone of contention is that there should be some acknowledgement of its DBA origins. (one of our members is also on the committee of SOA)

Is there any way I could put them at their ease and perhaps could this DBA origin not be acknowledged in future editions?

I really would like to get them to take to Truimph! It is, in my view, much more authentic than the "chesslike" DBA, regarding simulation of Ancient battle

Thanks in advance.

Thank you for raising this issue here, and honestly this is not contentious for us at all.

We really appreciate you trying to promote Triumph! and understand some of the challenges you may be facing in a DBA focused club. We hope that you will win them over as we 100% agree with you that Triumph! produces a much more authentic game than the “chess-like” DBA regarding simulation of battles.

Please keep in mind that we at WGC spent 15+ years pouring our hearts and souls into DBA, supporting it in many many ways and contributing to the DBA community. We loved DBA and when developing Triumph! wanted it to ultimately have a similar feel, fit a similar footprint (approx. 45 - 60 minute games), and we wanted to be able to use most of our DBA figure collections that had been built over those many years playing DBA.

There are many published wargames which are derivative of previous publications. ADLG, FOG to name just two have similar mechanics to other games like DBM or DBA. There are a multitude of others and many have some similarity to rules previously published by WRG. It is very useful to a miniatures game to maintain things like basing for existing miniature collections. A lot of games will look from a distance like their predecessors because they come from similar roots. But look beyond the surface and you will find the rules have their own unique twists on miniature gaming.

To your point. perhaps we could acknowledge the parts of Triumph! that have historical links to DBA, but I fully believe that any such action would be appreciated by some, but scorned by others. There are also complications based on permissions of the authors. There are reasons why many games do not make these kinds of acknowledgements, one being that the name of those rules is the property of someone else and the actual acknowledgement could be construed as an endorsement of the competing rules set as a replacement. It would likely make little sense for either party.

The developers of Triumph! have played systems like DBA, DBM, Warhammer Ancients, FOG and countless other games before developing Triumph!. Did our experiences with those games influence the development? Absolutely. In the case of DBA, our expertise with the game meant that we knew the things that the mechanisms in DBA handled well and the things it handled poorly, inadequately or just not at all. That is why Triumph! is a different game. Did we use some similar basic mechanics which are used in other games? Yes. But these basic mechanisms come from concepts that predate DBA and many current games. The terminology in Triumph!, the troop types, the actual game play and the mechanics for movement, combat, the army lists, the terrain, the battlefield size just to name a few things are all very different in Triumph!

In summary, we do not plan to acknowledge DBA or its authors formally. But if anyone asks me personally, I would praise DBA for being innovative for its time and being a very fun game, but with many shortcomings. There is a reason we fell in love with it many years ago. But we view Triumph! today as a different game.

We are sorry if this will cause additional difficulty for you at your club. Honestly, you are the first person to raise this issue with us (at least that I remember) since we started working on Triumph! years ago.

Please let us know if there is anything we can do to help you convince your club to give Triumph! a go. We would be happy to help.

DS

[JonathanJ]

I'd like to hear the answer to this.

Having been around for the "messy breakup" that led to the development of Triumph!, I just assumed that the desire for a clean break (on both sides) and copyright issues led to the current situation with "legacy systems."

Edit:
Oops, I was a little too slow posting this...
Thanks for the response

[rhialto]

Well, I'd just point them to David's post above: that should suffice. If that's not enough, then nothing likely will be.

[David Kuijt]

Well, I'd just point them to David's post above: that should suffice. If that's not enough, then nothing likely will be.

Exactly so. As several posters have mentioned, there were some strong emotions back in the day. Rehashing those strong emotions to fight for a small fraction of a market is a poor strategy for advancing Triumph!; this is why we are focusing on supporting our game and bringing in the new products we have in the pipeline -- battle cards, fantasy triumph, campaign books, scenario books, theme-focused stuff. Covid has forced us to modify how we support the game, shifting from live campaigns and scenarios at major gaming conventions to youtube videos and Arkein's recent effort on Tabletop Simulator (TTS).

We are confident we have a good product (a good game). We are doing what we can to support it. That's our plan.

[greedo]

I was hesitant to try Triumph originally because I saw a lot of the harsh feelings when it evolved from DBA, and the similarities between the two games are obvious.

But many games have branched from DBA without headache. Fantasy Rules! had a great following, and Age of Hannibal is a branch from FR!, being promoted by the Little Wars TV guys. There was a samurai Age of War game that also was obviously DBA derived, but they don't really speak to their parentage directly. This is the evolution of wargaming. Personally I'm in love with Impetus simply because it made everybody comfortable with double sized DBx bases, which, when added to the "can't just turn to a flank on contact" of Triumph makes the units really feel like units.

With all that said, I'm really excited by a lot of what Triumph offers that is very new.
The Terrain Cards immediately springs to mind as a completely new mechanic that I haven't seen in other ancients games (Piquet is the only other one I know of).
But more than that, I like that Triumph is embracing wargaming in the modern age.
i.e. It's authors are actively putting out youtube videos of how to play (and are very available on the official forum like this one)
Classifying the troop types as loose order and close order, and having specific, simple rules for each.
Having lots of troop types means the exceptions list is miniscule, whilst still being able to cover a huge swath of history. It's a great break from the WRG -> DBM -> DBA definitions that was really needed. Systematizing the various troop interactions so that it's easy to follow and teach really drew me in.
Battle Cards are a great way to introduce scenario specific but optional rules to units that you might want to add some "Zing"

The big one I like is the Meshwesh idea of army lists being dynamic, and online. Updates are effectively brought into play for free, hopefully without too much repainting or rebasing required. Warmachine from Privateer Press has moved in this direction, and it's great.

I live in the Bay Area, and there's a pretty big DBA community around here. That said, they seem to be open to trying Triumph, so I'd love to introduce them. I do think a major hurdle will be convincing them that this is a great game is in it's own right, and not just another DBA derived game that they are comfortable with.
Being able to play bigger games very quickly at conventions should help this.
Also, with players who have plenty of experience in DBx, making sure that they don't port rules over by mistake. Tournaments should perhaps help this one, as the rules are frankly much more systematic, and the QRS has it all. A really great, and modern (and chitless!) system.

[skc]

I think why I've noticed this at Klub is that we have a guy who is on the Society of Ancients committee bringing it up. Anyway will work on him and the others and also mention some of your comments.
I'm not that interested in all the politics, I just want to play!

I've been a long term DBM player. Whilst I still enjoy it and those large +-100 elements, +-6hr games, as I get older I tend to look for something quicker and lighter. BB-DBA helped fill the gap but while nice as a "chess-like" Ancients intro game, for me its not really an authentic Ancients battle simulation. Equal elements a side, restrictive movement, equal weighted element losses etc just don't Gel. (and that "Barkerese!")

Truimph! so far seems to tick all the boxes with simplicity like DBA, but Points and movement like DBM. Also the fact that new versions of the rules are not going to incur extra charges, the wealth of free material on the website, and the Youtube vids are also a big plus.

I've had the rules about 6mth now but thanks to Covid I 've yet to play! Klub has again opened up so hopefully soon. I am also looking at the TTS developments with keen interest and really must make more effort in that direction.

Thanks guys for the clarifications and feedback.

[skc]

Just one more point.
I run the Klub's Facebook Page (Durban Historical Wargames Group) and have been prompting Truimph! on it.
Regarding this DBA issue if the matter keeps on resurfacing, do you guys mind if I post your comments on the Page? (If that would help)

[David Kuijt]

Just one more point.
I run the Klub's Facebook Page (Durban Historical Wargames Group) and have been prompting Truimph! on it.

That's great!

Regarding this DBA issue if the matter keeps on resurfacing, do you guys mind if I post your comments on the Page? (If that would help)

Hm. That's up to you, I guess -- we can't really stop you. However, I'd like to point out some concerns. First, if done well (carefully), it's quite possible that would be fine. Our posts on this public forum are, well, public. If you quote us properly with proper citation, that's public information.

The main drawback I see is that here we are engaging in conversations with other participants. There's a back-and-forth, listening to each other and responding vibe. If you post our comments in response to a perceived concern elsewhere, that is using our comments in a debate that you are having with some third party (parties) -- which is not quite the same thing. Even if we are responding to the same (or similar) concerns here, we cannot see and are not responding to specific things that your club's members might be asking.

So I guess the answer is this -- if you are discussing issues regarding Triumph with your friends and associates, there is no problem (would never be a problem) with your quoting our public statements to make your points, especially if they are cited properly (date, time, location/link). Because it is clear that it is still a discussion between you and your friend.

If your friends want to engage in discussions directly with us about these issues, asking questions or expressing concerns, we would welcome it. Here is nice; facebook is also nice; in private email is fine too if they don't want to engage in a public forum. It's all good.

[skc]

No problem. I met up with some of them today and they're more settled on the issue. In fact they're interested in trying the rules in 2 weeks time. (So will let 'sleeping dogs lie' for now.