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Sighdan wrote:
They are the most profitable, they are offering something that is attractive to a larger audience than say historical war gaming. The reason scale is important to my ruleset is that I do intend to create miniatures specific to my game. In fact It is a necessity because the type of miniatures required are either nonexistent or incredibly rare. Not to mention the models themselves will have to have a synergy between them or the game cannot work.

You might be surprised by your conclusion that any of the "big name brands" have a larger audience than historical war gaming. There is a reason why companies like Warlord, Perry, Victrix, Plastic Soldier Company, Gripping Beast, Wargames Factory...have been able to expand faster into plastics than any of the other big named companies that you would like to follow. The historical market is huge, they can sell plastic at lower prices and still keep the lights on. Fantasy and sci-fi gaming has higher margins and less competition. They also tend to be good for drawing in young gamers who are easier to sell on the new shiney.


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 PsychoticStorm wrote:
then I said 2D and height I did not mean they disregard the height as a concept, but as a dimension, they do not need physical terrain to function a piece of paper saying forest or hill is enough, I am not trying to lower them, its a design philosophy, but I think it works only in historical games up to the world war, from there on it is not ideal.

So...Ambush Alley is confused? You probably find as many people playing any of their games in 10mm, 15mm or 28mm - all happily without too much concern. I know the demo game of Force on Force that I played with them a few years back was done in 15mm - and we had snipers and RPGs on roof tops to deal with.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

Sighdan wrote:
They are the most profitable, they are offering something that is attractive to a larger audience than say historical war gaming. The reason scale is important to my ruleset is that I do intend to create miniatures specific to my game. In fact It is a necessity because the type of miniatures required are either nonexistent or incredibly rare. Not to mention the models themselves will have to have a synergy between them or the game cannot work.

You might be surprised by your conclusion that any of the "big name brands" have a larger audience than historical war gaming. There is a reason why companies like Warlord, Perry, Victrix, Plastic Soldier Company, Gripping Beast, Wargames Factory...have been able to expand faster into plastics than any of the other big named companies that you would like to follow. The historical market is huge, they can sell plastic at lower prices and still keep the lights on. Fantasy and sci-fi gaming has higher margins and less competition. They also tend to be good for drawing in young gamers who are easier to sell on the new shiney.

All of your points are valid, but here is where I am coming from...

1.)First if you lump every rule set written for historical wargaming into one category, then yes, they likely blow the big dogs out the water. However as you said earlier wargaming is fragmented. If you look at the individual rule sets and the following of each I think it is fair to say that the big IPs are certainly on top.

2.)It has been suggested by a few people that I should not concern myself with scale but instead worry about the rules. Well the reality is that I am worrying about both, and for good reason. I want the gameplay to work well and be very entertaining, but I also want the aesthetics to be pleasing. I want the models to have a draw for painters. I want the pretty. Secondly there is currently no acceptable range of miniatures I can find(spent around 20 hours total so far looking) that would work for my game. Sure there are a few figures here and there, but nothing that will fill the core unit choice. The center of what the game is based around. So I will need to produce my own. It is also worth noting that I said from the start my idea is scalable, I just wanted feedback as to which scales people enjoyed playing the most. Then came the posts essentially telling me scale shouldn't matter.

Force on Force an excellent example on what I hate in wargames design!

Essentially FoF is designed for 15-20mm to take advantage of the 1/72 models that are available in the market, but players are free to scale it if they so wish, but should do the conversions themselves, the rules themselves are too detailed for a large scale engagement better fitting for 28mm game but the vehicles are too big at that scale so are the forces suggested in the scenarios, there are no army lists for pic up games and players must either make their own balanced scenarios or use the ones provided.


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Historical wargaming is both fragmented and in large supply because the IP is already there and so are the miniatures in a variety of scales, prices and quality, a game designer does not have to concern himself much beyond writing the rules, also in the historical scene players are expected to find balance or play imbalanced scenarios based on actual conflicts that are by their nature imbalanced anyway, when you reenact a battle that has already been fought and won/ lost there is no need to "balance it".

When you are out to create your own game, everything should concern you, IP, scale, balance, design, target audience and many more.

I can't follow what you are saying. Why does using a base as a measuring device require an expanding table? If I say infantry move 1 base width and cavalry move 2, how is that different in actual effect than saying infantry move 6" and cavalry 12"?

How does this approach disregard the vertical plane?

Thank you for sharing your opinion. I'll save my opinion of individual vs. formation based designs, but will ask you this - how does figure scale change any component of your design model besides the presentation? To answer my own question, it doesn't if you do not assume a 1-1 relationship between figure scale and table scale. For someone with extensive experience you seem to be thinking only in terms of WYSIWYG designs and model-scale terrain (e.g. 40K) hardly the "norm" for anything not beer-and-pretzels level simulation.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
The issue with these systems that use base with as their measuring scale is that the battlefield should expand accordingly, once you realize that you can find the optimal base with that the game is scaled for and disregard the other scales if you want to, an advantage these games have as far as different scales are concerned is that they are essentially 2D games disregarding the vertical plane.

I my personal opinion, different models scale should demand different requirements from the game system, at 30mm the game system should be more concerned for single models than formations likewise at 15mm individuals should not be a concern.