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Anyone who thinks that other companies have not pursued the rights/license to VOR in the last 10 years is uninformed. The fact is those in control of the FASA properties fought long and hard to try to keep their rights to VOR, it was an ideal property to market through Wizkids and would have been a major competitor to 40k. Skuzzy had the foresight to keep control of the brand and not let it fall apart at the hands of a company like Wizkids. Is Mechwarrior better for what Wizkids did to it? No.

Skuzzy has many options beyond this appeal to emotion to him. Especially so if he wants money.

He's had control over Vor for some time now. In that time, he could have published PDF support or generally did online support for the game to build money and buzz for the game. But up until now, he's consistently made ill use of today's resources for publishing, which says more about what he's really capable of, even if he got the money to do the project.

So far there is zero proof of work in this project. About the best he's done is create a crappy website and forum that you can't even join, and now a kickstart project that's price is set so high it's like he's hoping it will fail.

A more reasonable way to go about this to set the kickstart project at a reasonable $5,000. Meanwhile, to drum up support he should release official pdfs for the game. Perhaps just a quick start version of the 2.0 rules. Sure, let them be basic text documents if need be, but publish something official to show the public that he actually has something worthwhile, aka Proof of Work.

I've commissioned art before and am an artist myself. For 5k I could get a lot of good artwork, especially concept work for the new designs of Vor.

Those who contribute would be promised books or at least prints of the artwork commissioned with that money.

Then, he can turn around and take that new artwork and use it alongside the published PDFs to promote a new round of investments with another kickstart project at like $7k-$10k. This money then goes into producing a good looking working rough of the main rulebook, with proper art, design, and layout. Using previews of this new book design, he can then go forth and ask for that final ~$10k. With any money left over from the previous round he can commission sculptors to make new greens. Using all of that material as a promotion to get people to donate the last of that $10k.

Then finally, with that money the book can be put to print and a small line of miniatures made available.

Asking a community to front the $25k is ludicrous. But breaking it down into smaller steps, with each step having clear and concise proof of work, is a better guarantee for us players that we actually get something out of this.

Some people like to portray Skuzzy as the innocent victim in all this, but the reality is if he really wanted Vor 2.0 out, with the avenues available to you this day and age for publishing, it would have been out by now. It's just too bad I can't even get access to his yes-man forums to bring up these arguments to him directly.

That being said Dakka is programmed to suck at the teat of GW so you can't really expect a giant rush to praise/support something like this...

Sigged.

As for Vor, it was a great game. The issue at hand, ( Even continuing from the several other similer attempts to get it off the ground again) is that of Skuzzy himself.

The term "crap or get off the pot" comes to mind. The smart play for him would be to piggy back off of an established company, take on a couple of partners with serious gaming sales experiance, or to get himself established with an already published gaming company. I've been watching old Skuzzy try to drum up support for this little gem for about 10 years or so, and I know for a fact that he has a handful of yesmen, with NO money that trot around on that forum over there.

The old story about competition is just that its an old story. The stark fact of the matter is that VOR isn't unique enough for serious effort.

Other examples of this are Starship troopers, who's company Mongoose, took a serious turn for the worse and cut its own throat, and Mutant Chronicals, who even after coming back as the "New and Improved" came up short in the ideas department, and even more heritical, came back in 54 MM shake and bake chicken in a box.

If Skuzzy was serious, he would come up with a couple of partners who actually know something about marketing, sales, and product development. I for one loved the game at the time. To the tune of sinking over 500 bucks into the game around the same time that FASA was taking the piss on games. I was an ardent Battletech player, VOR, AND Shadowrun.

The argument about competition is pretty much mute. An example or three being Pulp City, Malfaux, AND PP. New and unique ideas that broke the mold by being constructive, unique, and inovative.

At this particular time, VOR needs a serious from the ground floor on up revamp. Regurgitated models and rose colored glasses lofting the glory of FASA do not do the game a bit of justice. The game needs to be structured, the models needs need to evolve more then just a "WYSIWYG" army that you can make up and the game needs serious fluff.

The worst thing in the world is to waste an idea on BS, and watch other people take it and run with it while you sit on the sidelines.

Seriously, Skuzzy, take on some serious partners and get the game up and running. We've already seen the "2nd run" this one is about the fourth or fifth.

By and by, the rules, the codex's and the play sheets are available on the VOR site. It has it's moments, but it needs something more then it has at this point in time. Too much time has past from last year or so's announcement till now, that there is nothing on the table coming out of your end to be new and fresh.

No hate here, I just have a desire to see the project go farther then the "talk over beers" phase and actually see some substance.

I to have advocated for Skuzzy to team up with a larger company to bring VOR back, but the truth is if Skuzzy had partnered with someone else where would VOR be now? Name one game company other than GW that hasn't gone belly up or dumped it's games in the last 10 years? After being screwed over by FASA and some other personal issues, Skuzzy took a different path using his talents to do other graphic art projects for none-game related companies.

The only company that is a good fit for VOR, IMO, is Reaper. Great miniatures company, poor game company. VOR is a great Game, with a need for miniatures.

I agree with the above post. Most people love Reaper models, but how many people use their models for Reaper games?

NecronLord3 wrote:I to have advocated for Skuzzy to team up with a larger company to bring VOR back, but the truth is if Skuzzy had partnered with someone else where would VOR be now? Name one game company other than GW that hasn't gone belly up or dumped it's games in the last 10 years? After being screwed over by FASA and some other personal issues, Skuzzy took a different path using his talents to do other graphic art projects for none-game related companies.

The only company that is a good fit for VOR, IMO, is Reaper. Great miniatures company, poor game company. VOR is a great Game, with a need for miniatures.

Privateer Press?

They need a Sci-fi game to round out their catalog imho.


Not to mention many of the PP folk have worked with Skuzzy in the past, etc., but I also don't know what the relationship is between Skuzzy and say Matt Wilson etc. Maybe they all don't get along any more, who knows...

Mattlov wrote:
Iron Wind Metals still produces all of the old figures.

And after IW FK'd my last order, they're unfortunately on my never to order from again list sadly.

I'm mixed on VOR. Loved it back then, but its been far too long since then and its faded pretty good. Will look into it if it comes out, but cant say I want to donate or shell out...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

12thRonin wrote: Roughly 10 years has passed and nobody has picked up the game. If it were such a commercial success, we wouldn't be having this discussion. I seem to recall that this was shopped to different publishers at different times.

If you recall that, I think your recalling wrong. i dont recall that at all. I seem to remember that the game was stuck in legal limbo over who owned what for the longest time after FASA imploded.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Grot 6 wrote:As for Vor, it was a great game. The issue at hand, ( Even continuing from the several other similer attempts to get it off the ground again) is that of Skuzzy himself.

The term "crap or get off the pot" comes to mind. The smart play for him would be to piggy back off of an established company, take on a couple of partners with serious gaming sales experiance, or to get himself established with an already published gaming company. I've been watching old Skuzzy try to drum up support for this little gem for about 10 years or so, and I know for a fact that he has a handful of yesmen, with NO money that trot around on that forum over there.

The problem is that, he's been there, done that with FASA and looked how that ended up. Why would he put his concept and game back into someone else's hands, when the first time he did that with a VERY successful company, it folded and he had a mess for a while?

I liked VOR, but I can see why he wouldnt try and get backing from another company again. He might have a bunch of yes men, but dakka has its GW fan boys and naysayers of anything non-GW. Oh yes it does....

The slowdown has started already.

A few grand in the first week to get the hopes up then it'll filter down to nothing each day.

I reckon he'll hit $12k maybe $15k.

Hey, im not an "old school hard core wargamer", and so, i dont know this system... But i am very interested in the scenario.

I would be glad to see something about the rules and scenario, if possible, there is any "fast to learn free starter set" online?
As i said, i liked the scenario, and wanted to know the rules...

(sry if this sound like out of topic or piracy, in that case, just ignore the post...)

Well I cannot go into too much detail, but here is a summary of the way Version 1 rules used to be:

A skirmish-sized game, you'd have maybe 30-50 models per team, and maybe 1-2 vehicles. It depended on what race you played, really, and your style of play.

Turns are "alternate unit activation", meaning each player takes a turn "activating" a unit. You cannot activate the same unit twice in a turn (unless a special rule says otherwise). Instead of phases, each unit gets a set amount of MP (movement points) as described in their statistics. Units use these points to move, shoot, etc. Once all the units in a players force have had a turn to move, the current game turn is over. Games last about the same as 40k, around 6-7 turns.

Instead of a six-sided die system, vor uses a ten-sided die system. The modifiers for shooting and close combat are more detailed than 40k, as is the saving system because of this. Vehicles have Turn Costs in addition to normal MP costs to move, but they usually have substantially more MP than infantry. Squads have Cohesion, and must stay within a set distance of eachother and must use their MP in the same way as their squad mates when possible (I.e. if the squad leader moves 6" and fires a gun, his mates must try to do the same if possible).

Instead of a force organization chart like 40k, Vor uses a buildup system from basic forces. For instance, if you want to take Elite Squad A, you must take 2 squads of Basic Squads A, B, or C. In this way, it helps to limit the list spamming that is common in other games.

What really sets the game apart is the way the setting can have an effect on the game. Before the game is begun, the players roll on a massive "Battle Terrain Chart" using a d100 system. There are a whole mess of randomly-determined battle effects that can occur, which force the players to think on their feet and adapt. No 2 games are ever the same.

Add into that a full Custom Force Creation ruleset, and you have a pretty solid game system. It needs a bit of streamlining for bigger battles, but for its intended scope it is an excellent system.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here's a good intro batrep that was designed to give new players a good perspective into the game mechanics:

http://bioplazm.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=808

What happens if one side has more units to activate than his opponent?

Does he forfeit some of them or move them one after the other until he's finished?

No, he gets to move them after the opponent has moved all his units. In all the games I've been in it hasn't been more than a few units though, so it wasn't a huge advantage/disadvantage.

Interesting, it's a system I think falls down because of this. I'm currently writing a games system with a prearranged publishing offer. This is a problem I've encountered which seems to unbalance the game somewhat with the outnumbering player having a huge advantage being able to hold back his best units to the end if he wants.

Hides behind building, moves out when the enemy can't retaliate, fires or whatever then moves first the next turn back behind the cover.

Essentially it's JSJ on a squad level with nothing much the opponent can do.

I am creating a system of my own (i think all of us do it lol)

I wanted my system to be something like that, but found the same problem...

It is a skirmish game, with a range of 10 to 30 models in game, and so i created a mechanism to avoid it...

Models have a Initiative value, who go from 1 to 100 and just control what unit act first...
It got a lot of special rules to control it, but in the end it work well.

Someday i will post this system somewhere ^^

leejerrum wrote:
Interesting, it's a system I think falls down because of this. I'm currently writing a games system with a prearranged publishing offer. This is a problem I've encountered which seems to unbalance the game somewhat with the outnumbering player having a huge advantage being able to hold back his best units to the end if he wants.

Hides behind building, moves out when the enemy can't retaliate, fires or whatever then moves first the next turn back behind the cover.

Essentially it's JSJ on a squad level with nothing much the opponent can do.

Point is though: if he outnumbers the opponent by that much, his "best" units either are not comparable to his opponents "best", or they are so expensive they take up a huge portion of the army, in which the normal tactics for deathstars apply. It isn't really a flaw at all. If you have played the game, you'd find that the difference it makes is negligible. All units can pop out of cover, snap off a shot, and take cover again. It actually is a much more realistic and less abstract system then the other popular game systems use.

But yeah, I know, I'm posting on dakka, which has a fierce aversion to anything not made by GW.

FoxPhoenix135 wrote:

Point is though: if he outnumbers the opponent by that much, his "best" units either are not comparable to his opponents "best", or they are so expensive they take up a huge portion of the army, in which the normal tactics for deathstars apply. It isn't really a flaw at all. If you have played the game, you'd find that the difference it makes is negligible. All units can pop out of cover, snap off a shot, and take cover again. It actually is a much more realistic and less abstract system then the other popular game systems use.

But yeah, I know, I'm posting on dakka, which has a fierce aversion to anything not made by GW.

Hmmm, in an equal points wargame I'd agree with you.

As a team based advancement system cut from similar cloth to games like Necromunda it doesn't work. The team with the most players doesn't always have inferior players. If his squad is more advanced the problem presents far more acutely.

The 1-100 initiative system also seems problematic. Different races I would guess have different initiatives, so the system will revert back to "you go I go" in a situation where the faster races (like eldar) are fighting a slower race (like orks). That's assuming you have monorace teams of course.

I like how some of these people posting are trying to put down legitimate discussion about the problems with VOR and Skuzzy's plan by saying how Dakka is so anti anything GW.

Well, I play no GW games at all, but I've found Dakka overall to be reasonable.

I, for one, was a very big fan of VOR in its day. But even back then I saw a great deal of its fault. The game had issues well before

For example, the vehicle system really didn't work all that well. It was bad enough that everyone basically restricted their use to walkers, which handled basically like infantry. But at the same time you could blow up a walker, or tank, with a pistol shot, which was just stupid.

The AP system could also cause things to drag. They even had to include an alternate AP use rule in the book, and that's never a good sign.

These are actually some issues that plagued Warmachine in MK1 and even in MK2.

The armor saves could get ridiculous as well.

You may want to see VOR with rose tinted glasses, but in reality it had problems well beyond what FASA did to it, and some of those problems were caused by design decisions made by Skuzzy.

Anyway, I did notice that he's nearing $5,000. However, I don't think he'll get over $7,000. The reality is there were only a few VOR players back then, and even fewer now after years of talk about VOR coming back from Skuzzy himself, but no action. Hence why I suggested he go for $5,000 first, then use the money to make Proof of Work to show off and get the remaining amount.

One of you guys who made it on his board should actually tell him that, who knows, maybe he'll listen to you.

Vertrucio wrote:One of you guys who made it on his board should actually tell him that, who knows, maybe he'll listen to you.

I agree with that. Have skuzzy get something out that shows VOR 2.0 is alive and well at least in his head. Give the public something more than just emoty promises with no backing. At least give us some more emptyy promises with details about the game.

I've just picked up the book off eBay and I must say the rules seem pretty tight.

I haven't read the vehicle stuff yet but aside from the aforementioned initiative problem it all seems convincingly good.

What's your stake in this Fox besides quacking? You make alot of baseless accusations to criticism. Stop taking pages from Romeo's playbook and come up with something original.

I hate to break it to you but when you try to raise money hard questions get asked. You better have good answers besides crying " YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!!!!!1111!!!ONE". And yes, I'm perfectly familiar with what Kickstarter is and if he's resorted to this for funding, that shows how successful the attempts at mainstream funding have been and just screams success.

I'll also ignore the fact this same thing comes up about every two years where Vor is coming back and it's going be 40k, Warzone, Rogue Trader, Epic, Stargrunt, and every other game system rolled up into one ball of awesome. Maybe there should be a special character inserted Duchess Atomizer for all the substance we've seen out of it.

About the "you go i go" problem of the initiative... Yeah, i know that, i am working on it right now.

In essence, the ideia is that no race/army can have so many high initiative guys that it just play first.
40K world example: eldar would not have overwhelming initiative, they will have better initiative than others... That means they get slow units (lets say, Dark Reapers) and fast units (banshees?). The simple ideia is that, when you are from a fast race, your fast guys can not be bet, but you still have your slow guys, who are faster than the regular slow guys, but are not faster than everyone...

Maybe Initiative should go from 1 to 10 only... Thanks for the help...

Interesting Dwarf Wolf. Simple fix is roll a dice and add it to initiative. It gives slower guys a chance to act first but the majority of the time they're going second.

Ok I guess I should reply to the personal attacks against me, although I don't know why this became personal in the first place...

My interest in Vor is purely recreational. I loved the game, and would love to see it come out in a new-and-improved version. Also, I know what it's like to put family first for a while, so I can emphasize with Mike on that point.

12ronin, if you cant come up with anything but the same tired argument about how his other funding attempts are failed... Maybe its time you quit following this thread. You are obviously getting quite upset that Mike has any supporters at all, which hints at a personal vendetta of your own. We already knew that he hasn't really taken it around to other companies because he wanted to self-publish: to keep the game how he intended it. I don't have a problem with that.

Ok, now that the attacks have been answered in kind, I can shed some light on the game mechanics in question:

Sorry for not being more clear in my summary, but Vor is an equal points game. It also does not assign initiative to individual units. At the start of each turn, each player rolls off for initiative for his army, and the winning player can choose who goes first. There are no problems with the turn sequence, and it gives players a chance to turn the game around.

Yup, I agree the vehicle rules are a bit wonky, but on the Bioplasm forums they have thoroughly discussed the problems, and Mike assured us hes since updated them in 2.0.

I suspect we might see a small boost toward the end, as people who aren't sure they can commit to large amounts make a decision, but I agree we probably won't make it to 25k without a miracle. Still, it's nice to think about!

bbb wrote:As far as games with "create your own army" rules there was also Aetherverse. You can download those rules for free right now too. It also followed the trend of games that failed even though you can create your own armies.

http://www.aromaticgames.com/?p=18

Well, it failed because I became unemployed at a critical junction and couldn't justify putting any money into it. On the other hand, I never had any goals of it being a "big" game, that's why the 2nd edition is going to just be free-to-play. Designing is completely a hobby at this point, which ironically is freeing me up to spend more time on it: I don't need to worry about doing a lot of the business-side crap.

If the VOR guys can get the money together to relaunch, more power to them. I just hope they redesign the army creation system to have more character. In the first edition, armies created with the rules were completely boring, had no special rules, and were less powerful than the stock lists. It was clear that the creation rules were an afterthought and were really only a toss-in. Hell, the complete lack of character in the VOR army design rules was a specific inspiration for me: I wanted to let people create armies that had as much character and uniqueness as any "stock" list, not just a boring statline.

If they can work that part out, then I'll look into picking up a copy when it releases.

but I agree we probably won't make it to 25k without a miracle.

Thanks for admitting that you're a duck. Explains alot about your rabidness to beat down and attack any criticism of THE PLAN.

You've missed apparently or it doesn't fit into this strawman you're constructing there that I played it and a whole lot of other factual problems. Further strawmaning that I apparently have an axe to grind against someone I never met when all I did was point out problems. Come back when you have something factual and not made up in your head and stop combining things other people have said with me.

History isn't on your side here bro. Enjoy.

This thread is closed. Too much flaming.