PUMMEL
PUMMEL! (Pick Up Multigenre Miniatures, Easy to Learn) is a miniatures wargame rules system created by Polymancer Studios, publisher of Polymancer magazine and Polyglot. PUMMEL! was first published in 2006.
History
PUMMEL! was first introduced in Volume 1, Issue #10 of Polymancer magazine as a set of generic miniatures wargame rules, designed to be used in roleplaying games. Like Polymancer's RPG rules system Mojo, PUMMEL's rules have been released in printed form as magazine articles in Polymancer magazine.
The original PUMMEL! article was in the same issue of Polymancer as a military science fiction adventure scenario, and the weapons list and specific rules in that article reflected this. However, subsequent issues of Polymancer magazine contained other adventure scenarios that featured large-scale battles, and Polymancer Studios made free PDF supplements available which included PUMMEL! statistics for the weapons used in those games.
Some of the genres for which PUMMEL!™ special rules and weapon stats were created include:
- World War II, for a scenario that took place during the Winter War.
- Ancient Egypt
- 17th Century Pirates
- The Old West.
- The Pulp Era.
- Space combat
Usually, these supplements included Mojo stats for the same weapons.
In Polymancer magazine and in press releases, the game's name is spelled in all-caps and with an exclamation mark at the end of it (e.g. "PUMMEL!", not "Pummel").
Nature of rules
PUMMEL! uses a d10 mechanic, in which both hitting and the effects of being hit are resolved with a single die roll. There are a lot of die modifiers, however, many made specifically for individual scenarios. The list of die modifiers for some scenarios can take up an entire page (reflecting the many details that could effect combat).
The PUMMEL! rules use the metric system, with a default scale of 1 centimeter to 1 meter (or 1:100, see Scales). Each turn is five seconds long. The various scenarios assume the use of 25mm, 1/87, HO, or 1/72 scale miniatures but the original PUMMEL! article in Volume 1 Issue #10 of Polymancer has a table for converting to other scales.
The relative strength and weakness of various weapons and armor in PUMMEL! are abstracted, expressed as bonuses or penalties to the basic 1d10 mechanic. This is relative to the genre being depicted. For instance, a WWII tank canon could be an "ultimate" weapon in a WWII land combat game but an "inferior" weapon in a sci fi game .
Various ways to adapt the PUMMEL rules to existing RPGs were suggested in the article, but a lot of it was left up to individual gaming groups.
Space PUMMEL!
In Volume 2, Issue #7 of Polymancer magazine, a set of space combat rules based on PUMMEL!, called "Space PUMMEL!," were included. These rules had the same weapon and armor abstraction as basic PUMMEL!, with the addition of rules for damaging individual ship systems.
These rules were supplemented in Volume 2, Issue #8, with a set of ship design rules. These rules were entirely centered around combat, in that no rules were given for adding cargo space, passenger space, or other non-combat functionality to a vessel. The article containing these rules instructed the reader to "assume they are there."
See also
- Polymancer magazine
- Mojo
- Polyglot