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Okay, so this isn't a rumour so much as the ressurection of a project I was farting about with on Warseer.

It all started with a good old misty eyed reminisce about the olden days, when I was young, and you were even younger, unless you are older than me now in which case I'd have been young and you would still have been an old fart....

The discussion turned to how much Heroquest and Space Crusade were, and just how many people found them to be the gateway to wrack and ru....err..I mean, GW games proper.

Of course, those days are now gone, Heroquest and it's ilk largely unknown to too many young gamers. So we started chucking around ideas for ressurecting such a game. Officially, you can't play in a GW until you're 12, partly because younger kids either won't get it, need constant supervision, or will show the teenagers up with their behaviour and manners. So this game was envisaged as something the younger scale could play, as well us old farts still plugging away with a dirty fetish for running about a Dungeon terrorising the Gobbos.

And now we cut to the chase. We eventually settled on it being a mix between a 'buy the box and thats it' game, and a CMG. Essentially, the boxed game will contain everything the person needs to get dungeoneering. Dungeon, heroes, villains, and some treasure. But you can then expand it indefinitely buy buying in new models. The £5/6 plastics boxes that GW do, with the Clip Together models were in mind. Already available, all they need is to put a stat card in for the Dungeon game and BOOF! new market tapped.

The other addition, which was my own (and I'm quite proud of...yes, yes okay, I'll put my trumpet away now) was the idea to include Web Codes in them. The idea behind those was circular marketing. You buy your models, you get your code. You type it in online, and you get perhaps...new treasures, or a new Dungeon Floor Plan...even a limited model (old plastic Dragon anyone?). This means the kid has new models to play with (from the box) and perhaps a bigger dungeon as well...a bigger dungeon needing more inhabitants..... Simple advertising ploy...see the following steps...

1. Kid see's advertising.
2. Kid buys Boxed Game (well, okay, harasses Mum and Dad to buy it for him)
3. Kid loves it, and sees he can buy more models for it. Woot!
4. Kid buys new models.
5. Kid sees webcode, registers it.
6. Kid sees more advertising.....go back to Step 4.

Nice and simple!

So, who else has any suggestions? Main thing we were struggling with was getting the combat right!

... you missed out a trick ... Warhammer 40k the Cartoon ... move over yu gay hoe! make way crapymon, This is the dark (yet hyper neon coloured) future of mankind. We follow the adventures of Quint Praetus (random rolls in DH) he starts his life on a paridise world but is compelled to join the IG when his world is attacked by the Chaos ...

as we progess thought the story we hear about the other races nice flash backs from old soldiers ... he might even end up fighting along side Space marines or eldar, against all the terrors of the future

ok the grim future will have to be toned down a bit lose some of the blood but we'd get loads of kids playing

Hmmm... Mage Knight Dungeon? It's been done.

Getting the combat right?

Roll d6 Roll d6 Enemy rolls d6

I'm kidding

GW did a whole range of simplified range, they were quick and easy to play when I was younger and quite entertaining.

Kerrunch was easy Bloodbowl, Ultra Marines was easy Space Hulk. They were light relief compared to the full games, chock full of plastic figures and dirt cheap from what I recall.

Mage Knight Dungeons is kind of the right line of thinking, but only kind of. My main bug bear with that was the blind packed models. I wound up with several of one type, and none of others. With this idea, you know what you are getting (5 Guardsmen) with a spanky Code of Mystery.

The simplified range is the sort of thing, but infinitely expandable. One aim is that assuming the kid has mates who also play, when they turn their attention to 40k, they already have a fair collection of models which can be whipped into an army with just a couple of additional purposes.

This is a multi pronged attack on new gamers and parents walletts.

Why don't we put our multiple heads together and come up with a set of rules called... 'Dakka Dakka' utilizing all the best rules and practice**** from around the industry. You have a set core market already. Genius.


****I understand that this will be a bloodbath and few posters will survive, but dammit, that's the price of progress.

It is indeed!

Combat wise, I devised a fairly simple system using unique dice.

Each creature has three essential stats, Attack, Defend, Hit Points. Attack is the number of dice rolled to attack, likewise Defend, and Hit Points are the number of successful hits needed to take you down permanently.

Using custom D6, the sides would have 1 Head, 2 Torso, 2 Arms, 1 Legs. When attacking, whatever you roll is where you have attacked. The defender then rolls defence. If any defence dice match an attack dice, the attack is blocked. Any that aren't are taken as a hit point.

The beauty of this system is that you can realistically reflect more complex things like I, T, W and WS just by altering Defence and Hit Points. A Troll, for example, would lack the wherewithall to block most attacks, so it's Defence would be low, perhaps only 1 or 2 dice at the very most. But since they are exceedingly tough, they have high points, say 6 or 7 (numbers out the bum here people, bare with me!). But a Chaos Warrior, he would have higher Defence to reflect his competence, but fewer Hit Points than the Troll.

Heroes, and some hard villains, can then make themselves harder to kill with bits of Armour. A Helmet, for example, can change/block (not sure which..needs playtesting) one point of damage per turn. Thus, the Heroes can be taken down with mass gankings, as with all good games!

... nice but i don't think we need to reinvent the wheel ...

what we need to do is turn WH and WH40k in to smaller games which can be finished in 1/2hour ... i don't know about you guys but i found it very hard to intrest any of my family in playing a nice 4hours game of risk (i was an odd child) but any thing that could be set out and played in half an hour they were happy to.

I think the biggest thing that turns most people (YMMV) was that there were rule to what you could collect ... i'm 10yrs old i want an elf, a dwalf, and a chaos dragon ... i don't care how i want them in my army

And in this game, you could have whatever you wanted.

It's more a device to sell models and introduce the as yet untapped younger market. It's all cash in the pocket at the end of the day, provided costs can be kept down for producing it.

Amen Brick wrote: I understand that this will be a bloodbath and few posters will survive, but dammit, that's the price of progress.

priceless!

but really, im surprised GW hasnt been done before. Etiher that or dumbing/goring the whole of warhammer 40k down entirely to suit a much larger audience.

Hi.

''but really, im surprised GW hasnt been done before. Etiher that or dumbing/goring the whole of warhammer 40k down entirely to suit a much larger audience.''

Sarcasm IS the lowest form of wit you know....

As far as I can remember GW used to provide a wide range of games suitable for all ages and abilities.
From 'Trolls in Da Pantry' to 'Dark Future '.

But lots of games seems to incur lots of expence without increasing the total amount of minatures sold to make it worth while to GW .So its much better for GW to 'make' one game suitable for everyone.(Grimdark TM)

Unfortunatley 40k suffers from minimal game development and far to much product hype.IMO.

I do agree with MDG that a simple space hulk /dungeon crawl intro game for younger players would be a brilliant idea.

However do you need to have specialised dice?

Number of attack dice and number of defence dice great!
Simple opposed rolling and hit points are a great game mechanic used in lots of games.

But rather than symbols why not just have to beat the score ?

Eg if John rolls 4 attack dice . 2,3,5,5.
Dave rolls 3 defence dice. 1, 4, 6, His 4 and 6 roll cancels out the 2 hits.
This way a '6 hit' is harder to cancel out than a '2 hit' for example.

This introduces the concept of better hits , without boging the game down with 'to hit rolls'.

So all we need is
Movment rate, (number of squares on the board you can move per turn.)

Attack value.(Number of attack dice you throw.)

Defence Value (Number of defence dice you throw.)

Hit points(How many hits before the model is removed.)

Ranged attacks.?

In fact Space Crusade -Heroquest type games seem to be ideal introductions into WH and 40k .IMO.

TTFN
Lanrak.

The level of Space Crusade/Heroquest is indeed the right sort of place to be.

The only problem with those games, from a GW point of view, was their relatively stand alone nature, beyond the few expansions, hence my thoughts to getting it round to being semi-collectable.

I think the trick will be in making the boxed game stand alone enough that although it is reccomended, you don't *have* to collect any more models.

Howard, I have seen keerunch! but not ultra marines, do you have pictures or other information about rules? Now I dont want to bedisrespectful, but are you sure you are not talking of space crusade?

got to love wiki i bring you Ultra Marines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Marines