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Feeling for you, chaos0xomega. But also appreciate that you're at work, given the whole "national defence critical" thing. *salutes*

Meanwhile, my life is now about 50/50 game design and marketing, with a possible 60% shift towards marketing. I don't mind this, so much, because it's sales that puts food on the table, but it's not my comfort zone and - right now - I can get away with leveraging my virtual presence (podcast interviews and video content etc) but when lockdown eases I will have to hit the road and hooray for social anxiety!

Still, got to play a Versus (PvP) mission with Number Two Son. He is *not* a wargamer, so this was a huge coup. As he is currently enjoying playing Modern Warfare Warzone with his friends, he could immediately see that Zero Dark was an analogue version of that kind of FPS experience and got into it, playing some excellent tactical moves to keep me on my toes.

He suggested starting heroes with no upgrades but having them seek out loot boxes to upgrade themselves during a Versus mission. Suffice to say, I *love* this idea.

 precinctomega wrote:
Feeling for you, chaos0xomega. But also appreciate that you're at work, given the whole "national defence critical" thing. *salutes*

Meanwhile, my life is now about 50/50 game design and marketing, with a possible 60% shift towards marketing. I don't mind this, so much, because it's sales that puts food on the table, but it's not my comfort zone and - right now - I can get away with leveraging my virtual presence (podcast interviews and video content etc) but when lockdown eases I will have to hit the road and hooray for social anxiety!

Still, got to play a Versus (PvP) mission with Number Two Son. He is *not* a wargamer, so this was a huge coup. As he is currently enjoying playing Modern Warfare Warzone with his friends, he could immediately see that Zero Dark was an analogue version of that kind of FPS experience and got into it, playing some excellent tactical moves to keep me on my toes.

He suggested starting heroes with no upgrades but having them seek out loot boxes to upgrade themselves during a Versus mission. Suffice to say, I *love* this idea.

Marketing is definitely something I'm not good at either, but will need to improve eventually once I have some more stuff ready for release. Yeah, see, there I am putting it off with excuses, too.

And sometimes you get fantastic ideas from non-traditional gamers, and that is a great one.

Feeling for you, chaos0xomega. But also appreciate that you're at work, given the whole "national defence critical" thing. *salutes*

Hah, thanks, but its nowhere near as glamorous or important as it sounds, im mostly just keeping the lights on and maintaining infrastructure so that the actual important work can continue uninterrupted.

Marketing is important though, Im not as effective at it as I could/should be I think, but its very time consuming to do for free, and somewhat expensive to just buy advertising. I just launched my webstore for late pledges on my recent kickstarter and have dropped the link in a couple places, got a few sales but im still not getting a lot of visibility on it

I worked on creating some aircraft profiles for the USAF and Communists to properly test out my Korean Air Wargame more fully.

I have also started putting together USN/USMC, Royal Navy, and Australian Forces for a more completely look.

This means I have been researching the conflict pretty heavily to try and get these right. It is setting up a nice "scenario" driven campaign by date in the War.

I finally got my targeting and EWAR system mostly figured out (took a loooooong time). Now I need to revisit my movement system as its been a pretty persistent bugbear for me over the years, I've never managed to settle on something that I was actually happy with.

Made a few tweaks to the Wars of the Republic after some playtesting from a few different sources.

Got the updates back to my editor. In return, they sent me the final cover art which is pretty great looking!

I spent most of the last couple days feverishly building and painting so I can get some photos for the PDFs on a couple of rulesets. Plus, have some content for ongoing marketing online via the usual online channels and methods.

Today (and yesterday), my only contribution to my game design was to research a god quality drawing tablet so that I can start drawing digitally and to stop myself from feeling held back by a lack of art. rough sketches are all well and good, but digital art lets you put colour in, and switch things around easily!

 some bloke wrote:
Today (and yesterday), my only contribution to my game design was to research a god quality drawing tablet so that I can start drawing digitally and to stop myself from feeling held back by a lack of art. rough sketches are all well and good, but digital art lets you put colour in, and switch things around easily!

ANY progress is progress, no matter how small. My design blog got an update, and I revised this 'mockument' for one of Saucer War One's factions to better reflect the changes to its fluff that have come about:



https://miniaturemartin.com/2020/06/13/saucer-war-one-faction-sketch-1-antic/

I've reached the stage where I'm really happy with the fluff for the 3 initial factions. All have believable motives, none are two dimensional 'goodies' or 'baddies'. All are embroiled in the tangled mess of secrecy that keep the reality of the first Saucer War from the eyes of the unknowing public.

Now I just need to make the rules follow suit. Easy, right...?

Started doing some editing on my Diadochi game as I finish painting the models for bat reps. Once they are done being painted, I plan on launching the game on Wargame Vault with a few batreps on the blog.

Deleted.

@PrecinctOmega- I Saw Zero Dark in the top seller son Wargames Vault again. Good work!

I have been waffling around a bit about how I want the Roman formations to work in Wars of the Republic.

Currently, they are not very strong on the attack, but rock hard on the defense. Therefore, good tactical play can defeat them by use of terrain and flanking attacks. However, I have found the Romans weak on the attack themselves.

I am not sure if I am ok with that yet.....

I think I figured out the Detection basic mechanics now for my Korean Air War game.

Did some work preparing my Successor game for publishing on Wargame Vault.

Also, started documenting the rules for my Korean Air War game in a bit more sophisticated fashion.

I've been giving a lot of thought to the backstory behind my massive pipe-dream backburner project of making a tabletop wargame. I've realised that the main attraction of said wargame has to be the art, models, and stories, and how well you can immerse yourself into the game. Making the rules balanced and the units interesting is one thing, but it takes some real depth to make a game stick - look at 40k, its rules are the most hotly complained about I've ever seen, and yet they still keep going, and the reason for it (besides being very well know, easily accessed and having exclusive stored in every major population centre) is that their fluff, and the imagery of the units, is so finely intertwined that you can literally get lost in reading it. Limited backstory, like "this faction hates that faction because of their hair" or "these guys want to kill everyone because they are the bad guys" might give you a foot in the door, but if you can't back it up with more depth, people will likely just drop it again.

so I'm working on the fluff, and getting it fixed in my head what I want the armies to be like before I even start trying to design them with stats and rules. Make some doodles, write some stories of skirmishes between the factions, and maybe even writing some short novels based in the universe - then, when I've got the background locked in, I can start to give them stats.

I think the GW experience is very different than many similar games Bloke.

That is part of why I am attracted to "historical" games. The "background and Fluff" is all ready in place! It is just making a game that matches the Fluff to some extent.

I spent some time today continuing to flesh out my Korean Air War game. I think the core rules and Aircraft profiles are done. I am surprised at how streamlined and simple the core rules are. Now it just needs to perform on the table..... LOL!

Got Heirs to Empire: Wars of the Diadochi ready to add to Wargame Vault on September 1st.

Also, I am still waffling around a bit on the Wars of the Republic and what to do with the Hastati/Principe as they are not very good on the attack, but rock hard on the defense..... More playtesting is in order.

Did some very minor administration type crap: tweaking some settings in Mailchimp, setting up a Google Form for playtest applications and feedback. Not a lot else.

Oddly, I frequently get ideas and concepts for games from dreams. Weird, I know.

Last night, I had a dream to help me figure out how I wanted to do the Campaign for my Korean Air War game. I need to be able to feather various aircraft in and out of the campaign based on how they were used in the conflict. As the campaign moves through time, access to aircraft will have to change.

Therefore, I think the "historical" campaign will be based on "Periods" of the war that will move you through the campaign. The first battle will always be a set battle based on the first Twin Mustang battles vs North Korean Yaks. From there, the "winner" of the engagement will be able to start choosing the scenarios as we go into each phase of the war.

The second dream also was about how to do a solo/co-op WWI game based on the Harlem Hellfighters..... maybe?

There was a mix of mechanics that I have started to write down. It involves grid based movement like To The Strongest across No Man's Land. Players will get a random amount of momentum to move their platoons across. Then there will be randomized "challenges" that will degrade the approaching troops Elan and Momentum. The goal is to get across No Man's Land with enough Elan to win a combat in the opposite trench line just off the board edge on the opposite side. I am think a 3x4 board in 6 inch grids going long ways.

Challenges will be mounting friction to your troops, and not just combat/casualty type situations. Things like barbed wire, quagmire, injured soldiers, communication trenches, busted radio lines, airplane strafing, Unexploded shells, etc. Early days still.

I spent time on some online marketing.....

Yesterday was a new one for me. I was in a "what could be a game" mood, and due to the volume and nature of the previous nights dinner, let's just say it was pretty "windy" in the car. I jokingly said that you could make a game about farting, to wind my mrs up. She said "don't even think about making a game about farting".

Long story short, I made a game about farting. I call it "poop", and it's an incredibly tasteless memory-based game about trying to fart whilst avoiding unfortunate and messy side-effects.

As a joyous and entirely accidental side-effect, the game features cards, and they have the word "poop" on the back. As a result, I turned to my mrs that evening, after making the cards, and said "would you mind shuffling the poop deck". then we laughed. Well, I laughed; she sighed.

Edit: I think POOP is all ready a card game. Still, a fun idea!



I made some minor tweaks to Wars of the Republic on stat lines for Romans. Just need to run them through a few scenarios now.

I also started working on the Manuscript for my other Osprey title, Castles in the Sky. This will be V4, with V3 having gone through a version 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4...... however, I am still not 100% happy so switching it up to V4 now!

I am re-evaluating scenario win conditions, point costs, Friction, some weapon systems, and completely re-arranging the way the rules are presented in the book. What could go wrong?

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/castles-in-the-sky-9781472844934/

June 2022?? Thats an insane lead time? 2 years to design and publish a game that you theoretically mostly already designed? Or did it get pushed back because of your desire to v4 it?

Nope, that was the lead time. They have a very packed publishing schedule and they have get Osprey stuff in with other stuff from Bloomsbury. They only have so many printing presses I guess.

I actually have to have the manuscript to them by April of next year. This one also requires original art and pictures as there is not much you can pull out of Osprey's existing catalog for flying battleships!

Are you responsible for getting your own artwork or do they handle that on their end?

Sourcing flying battleship artwork is something I am looking forward to doing for my own game!

 some bloke wrote:
Yesterday was a new one for me. I was in a "what could be a game" mood, and due to the volume and nature of the previous nights dinner, let's just say it was pretty "windy" in the car. I jokingly said that you could make a game about farting, to wind my mrs up. She said "don't even think about making a game about farting".

Long story short, I made a game about farting. I call it "poop", and it's an incredibly tasteless memory-based game about trying to fart whilst avoiding unfortunate and messy side-effects.

As a joyous and entirely accidental side-effect, the game features cards, and they have the word "poop" on the back. As a result, I turned to my mrs that evening, after making the cards, and said "would you mind shuffling the poop deck". then we laughed. Well, I laughed; she sighed.

Ha! Reminds me of a board game called Nasty Habits I designed in college for a course. Players are dealt a number of nasty habits and they run around the board trying to get rid of them by getting cured or passing onto other players and not picking up more habits. Once you are habit free you have to make it to the center of the board and get into "Sebastian Ambercrombie's Etiquette Club of America" - some of the cures were pretty hilarious that required a bit of action. I still have the full prototype from over 30 years ago. Alas, all of the game companies I peddled to at the time were not interested - just too progressive for its time!

chaos0xomega wrote:
Are you responsible for getting your own artwork or do they handle that on their end?

Sourcing flying battleship artwork is something I am looking forward to doing for my own game!

From what I have seen, Osprey will handle the artwork and artists but you may need to handle any photographs. That is why the quality of the photos can vary so wildly between books.

If you look at the reviews for Men of Bronze, a common complaint is about the photos. That's because I had to get the models, paint the models, get the terrain, take the photos, edit the photos, and send them on to Osprey. I did not have any models when I sold the book and I am not a photographer. Therefore, the pictures they got were not that inspiring. I am pretty sure Robey Jenkins has spoken about this for Horizon Wars as well.

I think they have made in roads into the community, as for Wars of the Republic and Castles in the Sky I did not have to source my own photos. Instead, they used their industry connections to get the photos too. i was very happy as that was a big stress point for me when doing Men of Bronze.

Yesterday I did some more work on a tile exploration game I'm putting together, working out the mechanics to ensure that the plots trigger in the games, despite random tiles on the board (and not all the tiles being used).

I also looked into the bits I would need for a better trial run of my fart game, which I was surprised to find to be moderately fun when we playtested it (but extremely slow due to key design aspects being absent). I can probably throw a much better version together for about £10, so roll on payday!

Spent some time re-working some of the mechanics for Castles in the sky.

Actually had a little back and forth chat with a buddy who had come up with an idea for a game, and we started taking notes. Did a little bit of social media junk, looked for artists, and administrative stuff like that. Hoping to do a bunch more playtesting on the solo/co-op horror skirmish minis game I'm currently working on. Ideally would like to publish via Wargame Vault by end of year, but of course that depends.