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So here’s a little something else I’m working on. We’re going to have Consumable Items added to the game, these will be things like potions or scrolls for fantasy games. They’re items you can use and then they’re gone. Most of them just cost 5 XP to add to your character. What I’m thinking of doing with them is instead of having it be an item you add to your character permanently on the character sheet or card, I was going to make printable mini-cards. Before your game you can add these items to members of your gang as long as you don’t go over the fame point level for the game you’re playing. So like if your gang is 385 points, and you’re playing a 400 point game, then you can add up to 3 potions. You’ll have to assign them to a gang member to carry though, so that’s why I thought mini cards would be good. You can keep the mini card with your character info and then just discard it when you use it.

I haven’t decided yet… but would it be good to have thrown items the same way? Like, once you toss a stick of dynamite, you can’t really toss it again. Right now you would just add dynamite to your character and treat it like any other weapon with unlimited ammo. Kind of feels like once you throw it, it should be gone, but that could change how a bunch of BWG characters are played right now.


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And also, after flip flopping 18 different times I finally decided to keep the core rules as a full size book (8.5x11), since i think it will work best for PDFs and POD, and since the hardback gameworld rulebooks will be that size too.

I've also decided that rather than having one huge list of equipment for all genres mixed together, I'm going to have separate chapters for each genre with appropriate equipment sections in each one. I think it'll be easier and more user friendly that way.

I think what I may do is start off with just the fantasy-lite rules, and then get the playtest version out with that.. then add new settings to the book over time as I get all of the other special rules worked out.

I like the idea of full size so good decision there!

Regarding thrown weapons, I could see someone carrying around a few sticks of dynamite, or a few knives... so whatever works best from a gameplay perspective, imo.

Yeah maybe I’m overthinking the thrown weapons a bit

Been kind of wondering about another project.. rather than rolled up game mats, maybe doing something like printed 12” square board tiles on thick cardstock. having them set up like a road system (or dungeon corridors?) where the roads always match up in the center parts of the tiles, and you can lay them out in a variety of ways. Then you can stick your buildings and other terrain on top. Thought something like that would be more flexible and also easier to pack up and transport than a rolled up game mat.

A little worried about the costs though. It would need a lot of variety and when I did those Bad Lands tiles they were $100 per side. No idea how much it would cost to print, but I’d need to do at least 1500 copies. Just not sure something like that would sell well enough to print that many…? Maybe I could do them in a smaller pack of 6 tiles that will hopefully be cheaper and that way folks that want bigger boards could buy 2 or more.. and suddenly 1500 might not be so bad.

What if for thrown weapons or weapons with limited amounts of ammunition you made it so there were so many uses available for each game and the model rearms in the post game phase when they return back to base? Another option would be to have the model make an ammunition test or something similar every time one of these weapons are used to see if they still have any left to use, similar to the ammunition tests in Necromunda.

Any thoughts on random turn activation? For instance having players draw tokens from a bag, or flipping cards corresponding to their faction to determine who gets to activate a model next, kind of like how turns go in Bolt Action. Keeps players on their toes, gives players with a higher model count an advantage throughout the turn as opposed to just at the end, and breaks up the 'I go, you go" gameplay.

Really looking forward to these rules coming out. =]

Yeah maybe I could have certain amounts for some items.. like you could carry 3 ninja stars, but just 1 bottle of booze since it's bigger?

Working on getting the character profiles laid out. I decided to give each race a base stat line that will be like for a common townsfolk kind of guy, and then you can increase your stats if you're a gang member or hero.

Here's another 2 page spread You can click to enlarge. I'm planning to do 1 race per page for the core rules, but in the actual fantasy book it will be more like 1 whole class per page with bios and art and stuff. Everything is condensed here to save space/pages.

I'm not a fan of ammo rules. If someone's used to fighting with thrown items where you'd put it on the character card, then they ought to carry enough to last a while fight. Are ninja stars so powerful that we would need to track them individually? Even dynamite you'd carry enough to be useful.



I can see having weapons in singles on a card if they are scenario items that can be picked up, but part of what I love about this game is the lack of statuses to track.

True, I definitely don't want to overcomplicate things.

As far as cards for items go, I always liked that idea for an adventure game kind of thing, but when it comes to war games I feel like a roster or army list is more convenient, or stat cards like Warmachine. Depending on how things go, I might want to look into doing an RPG kind of supplement later on, but first I want to focus on getting the game done and start releasing the different Gameworld books. I'm planning 4 at the moment, and I'm thinking they will probably take about 6 months to do each book and make them nice.

So right now I'm planning the fantasy game first, Lair of the Wurmqueen. Then a Blackwater Gulch book, followed by Mechadrome, and the 4th will be a victorian steampunk kind of world. But, it will take a while to do each one... I want to focus on one at a time rather than spreading myself too thin.

Minor tweak.. I realized I made a mistake with the character naming conventions. There are no more "Gang Members" as the mid-range level type, we renamed that to Henchmen.. not to be confused with the old wimpy henchman we did away with in BWG. So the 3 levels your characters can be are Heroes, Henchmen and Minions

You need 1 Hero to lead your gang, and you can add 1 additional hero for every 300 XP points spent on your gang (rather than the old method based on model count). They're the toughest and are allowed to use rare / enchanted weapons.

You can have any amount of Henchmen or Minions. Henchmen are tougher, but cost more XP, but they will have more skills and abilities. Minions are wimpier, but cheaper.. they have limited skills but you can take more of them. Minions are mostly townsfolk or animal/creature pets.

And we still have Artillery, but that is going to be treated more like equipment.

Looks like I should have the core rules ready to share this weekend. All I really need to do right now is build a roster sheet for building your characters & gangs. What I decided to do is start out with the rules for building your characters from scratch, since that will be the most flexible, rather than including lots of premade characters. That’s the part that’s been holding things up so much. This way I can get the rules out there, and then add characters later on in separate little downloads for different genres.

So I’ll post a link here once it’s ready, but I’m going to wait to spread the news around the web till I get the new website up and running. That will be next on my list. What I’m really hoping to do with that is have a blog style news site as the main “hub” for the game, with news about where to get cool new models and link worthwhile KS campaigns and that sort of thing, but also do articles about gang building, or painting, and a big download area for all of the rules and character cards and stuff like that.. and eventually integrating an online store so it’s all under 1 roof rather than the separate store site I have now. It will take a long time to do all of that though, and to build up a lot of content & news, so the site will probably be a little sparse for a while.

That's awesome news. Looking forward to trying them out

OK, here are the rules

http://www.gangfightgames.com/download/1988/

Like I said it's pretty texty at the moment, I'll be expanding things and adding pictures and diagrams and more content over the next few weeks and months, but this should be all you need to get started and get some games going

Working on the new site now - http://www.skirmishgames.com/

I haven't added any news yet, but eventually I'll be posting news and links to sources for different models that will work well with the games, plus articles about gang building and stuff like that.

Right now I'm focusing on the rules section, planning to have all of the rules available right there on the site for easy reference, plus in PDF form, so here's that .. http://www.skirmishgames.com/rules/

Once I start doing the separate gameworld books I'll also add them to the rules section, but it will kind of be a lite version.. you can get the basics but for the full game you'll want the books that will have all of the background and art and special campaigns and other goodies

Looks good. Friends and I are gonna throw down a few games next weekend.

Seems like a good idea. One thing you have over other generic skirmish game systems is established settings and miniatures.

Yeah But for what it's worth I'm mostly just going to be doing new minis for Blackwater Gulch at the moment, not Fantasy or other genres. I'd spread myself way too thin if I were to start doing every genre, and I'd end up with just a handful of different minis mixed in rather than a proper product line with several different gangs or factions.

So that's why I'm going to be illustrating how players can use whatever minis they want. Planning to do regular blog articles with gang building guides where you can use a handful minis from big army games to form a gang. I think I may do my Stormcast army for the first example. Or Khador since I have a winter guard themed army, more men than warjacks.

Though since I'll be getting a lot of art done, I'll have plenty of concepts ready to go for later if I ever do decide to make new minis for Fantasy and other genres. I have been thinking about maybe just doing special, unique hero character minis that you can mix in with other minis.

Hi,
first excuse my not so perfect English. I try to get better, promissed ☺)
I played GW games for years before I found out, that there is a whole world full of different skirmish games on the market.
So I tried many of them too and have not yet found a real favorite. When I stumbled over BWG I really liked it because it is what Savage worlds showdown promisses, its fast fun and furious.
Now I'm really into the idea to get an generic rule system.
So pleas go on
Since
But there are two things that could be fixed. First the way how far you can move (run). If you look on the paladin profile, that guy could activate 5 times to move 4' (=20'!), which is way to much in my eyes. And second if you want to use mounts and vehicles, then tehy shold have a move rangeby themselves.
It doesn't make sense, when a horse becomes slow, becaus a tiny little slow halfling is riding it.

And if you jump it always is successful.

So far my thoughts. Thanks for the work you do and for sharing it for free! If you start to sell the books (and the postage to Germany is affordable) you got a customer already

Thanks for the feedback One of the reasons for the movement change was to make the character attributes more valuable. I felt that just moving 6" and then running 6" more was also too basic and I wanted different characters to be faster or slower.

How about having a maximum movement distance? No character can move more than 12" on foot, or 18" on a horse?

For horses, I didn't want them to have their own stats like they do in Warhammer because I was afraid it would slow the game down. So that is why I was kind of treating them like equipment. Since you can't get off or on a horse in the middle of a game, I didn't feel like they should have their own stats. But it's still not too late to change it.

For the fantasy games, there are going to be a lot of different mounts, like a Pegasus, or big lizards like Cold Ones. Some will have other special abilities, but they will also cost more XP to ride

I wish shipping didn't always have to be so expensive. I am using a shipping company that has warehouses in Europe so hopefully it won't be too bad

Sure, a maximum movement distance would be an easy way to keep people from running everywhere in one turn.

But since you are not allowed to dismount in the middle of the game (sad to hear that - cowboys hop on and of in the most exciting cinematic moments) it would be easy to overwrite the caracters quickness with the quickness of the mount instead of modifying it.
Then a rider on a horse is allways as quick as all other horse riders.
But still there should be a chance to test if your jump is successful or if you'll fall down.

The reason I didn't want to include mounting and dismounting was that I was afraid that it slows down the game, and then also you have to make sure that you have a miniature for your guy on foot and on the horse. And then, what happens do the horse when you get off? Does he just stand there and wait for you to come back, or wander off?

I imagine 1 game turn lasting for about 1 minute of real time if it was happening in the real world, so most gangfights would just really be a few minutes long.. it seemed like it would be strange to get hop off your horse 1 minute, then get back on the next, and then off again. Maybe I am over-thinking it

I have been thinking about removing the rules for vehicles though, that the focus should be on men and having tanks and other vehicles just takes away from that. I mostly wanted to have them for Mechadrome, but I think the new armor, mount and model size rules will work well enough for them.. mechs will just have a lot more health and that makes them tougher to take out.

Oh no - please don't scrap the vehicle rules...

I did some games with savage worlds Showdown rules. And there where just two things I really didn't like. The first (and main reason) it's to hard to create characters and compare them (Points are calculated in a ugly and hard to use Excel spreadsheet). Second was to many different dice.

So I was excited when I saw you making my dream come true. An easy to use system with caractercreation for different timelines and vehicles...

OK I can keep them I was just thinking that they won't really be used in the fantasy game so I probably won't really get around to playtesting them properly .. I was mostly planning to use them for Mechadrome's mechs, but I don't think I'll be updating those rules for a while. The plan is to do the fantasy gameworld first, then update Blackwater Gulch next, and then Mechadrome for #3. So realistically that will probably be a year or so from now. But I'll put together some sample car & mech stats for folks to try out

Cool, thanx. I'll try to set up some pirates in my next vacations (it's getting too busy at work) and thinking of some pulp or al capone games. Therefore the car rules come in handy.
But I'll have to wait until March to get some playtime

Will you be trying to keep the point values consistent between settings?

Yep! All genres have the same exact character creation rules, it's just a matter of which races you want to play with or equipment you use. so, some characters may cost more points if they have more powerful weapons, but that's about it. So far in all my tests it's all scaling up nicely.

 Necros wrote:
The reason I didn't want to include mounting and dismounting was that I was afraid that it slows down the game, and then also you have to make sure that you have a miniature for your guy on foot and on the horse.

Like this?

 Necros wrote:
And then, what happens do the horse when you get off? Does he just stand there and wait for you to come back, or wander off?

If they are like my horses, if they hear a loud noise, or see something that may taste good, or just feel ornery, they haul ass and refuse to be caught again. (just kidding, only 2 of the 7 are pains in the ass to catch, of course one of those IS the horse that I ride... )

Yeah just like that

What I think I'm going to do is have the rule be something like .. Characters must stay mounted for the entire game, unless you have a suitable model to represent the character on foot.

But then, if you get off, it will leave and not come back?

Could also have rules where you can steal horses from stables and stuff like that too.

Been thinking about this more.. Maybe it might be better to have an "experimental rules" section on the website, and that's where I can put the rules for vehicles and other things that I want to include but haven't been able to test yet. that way players can try them out and see what they think and (hopefully) tell me about it

Since I'm starting off with the Fantasy gameworld I want to focus more on fantasy things at the moment.. and get that all done and balanced and fun, and then move onto the next genre when I'm happy with it

I like the idea of an "experimental" section on the site, maybe with an easy way to submit feedback on those since you're still tweaking them.

Cool .. just updated the rules .. I moved Mounts to be under the special equipment rules since they are kinda like equipment. I'll rewrite the vehicle rules and put that under an experimental rules section. Since the whole site is running off of Wordpress, I can turn comments on for that page, so folks can leave feedback if they want

First though I want to get the races and stats defined for Horror themed characters like zombies and demons and stuff. Between that and Fantasy we should have the majority of the special character rules defined so you could mix & match to make your own game settings if you want... like modern day zombie, fests or not-wfb khorne vs not-wfb elves

Added the Undead races

http://skirmishgames.com/rules/undead-hordes/