Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

TWB Open Testing in August

With the next update TWB project enters the stage of open tests. What do you need to participate? Your favourite miniatures and accessories, and TWB rules available here. The upcoming update will cover prehistoric to late medieval settings.

Open testing begins!

Each update of TWB brought something unique, like real-time concept, game physics, off-the-table combat. What do we have this time? More weapons than in skirmish-oriented Mordheim, with much more gameplay difference between them than in role-playing D&D, and... all of this works on apocalyptic scale as well as in duels and small skirmishes. Not to mention that it's just a small portion of the planned equipment-based content dedicated to settings from prehistoric to medieval. There is a lot more where that came from.

What's even more important - you can finally try it out for yourselves as I've put together an alpha version of builds and points system for the said periods. This is something I would really appreciate your feedback on. Follow the link. Go ahead and experiment with those, build your unique characters.

I've also done some minor but important revisions throughout the entire book and compiled them into a single page for your convenience. You can check those online and download the pdf version.



Last but not least, you can see the examples of new graphics for the book. This is the quality level I've set for the visuals in TWB, and with luck the person I've signed up for this job will stay on the team to help bring you a fat folio packed with lots of lush full-colour pages. This largely depends on your active support of the project.

TWB is an independent start-up with the purpose to expand the potential of miniature games, make them more available, unite players collecting miniatures from different game systems as well as those that don't have their official rulebooks. I hope this will greatly encourage individual designers and sculptors to create miniatures they like, knowing that every unique model is playable and demanded, make them more competitive and in the end benefit us all. I wrote all this because we've just passed an important milestone. What will happen next? The book will continue to evolve, new content will be added, layout will improve and issues fixed. I hope all of you will stay with us on this journey, and I will do my best. Thank you.

This update covers ages from great geographical discoveries to steampunk fiction. You get rules for scores of various big guns, advanced hand weapons and ammunitions, as well as vehicle chassis to build tanks, walkers and more. Into these a dozen and a half pages I've packed dozens of "Armybooks" worth of gameplay info when it comes to assembly of your own engines of war.

Stay tuned for further updates rich with content, and please support us – TWB is a huge project and it needs crowdfunding to remain as it is: independent and player-friendly.

Your feedback is also very important, so please feel free to comment and share your thoughts.

Also, if you like TWB, be sure to tell your friends to check it out. A lot more is in store for the near future.

Wow, your diagrams and artwork are awesome.

Tabletop Wargames Builder is expanding steadily and by now it includes rules, or "datacards", for almost 400 pieces of equipment such as weapons, enhancements and special issue gear. Today's spotlight is modern combat and sci-fi, detailing among else a wide array of customizable vehicle chassis so that you can build a profile for virtually any model you might have and include it into the game.

This is a two-part update, the first entry comprising rules on weapons, armour and equipment, and the second – on artillery and vehicles. Be sure to check out both.

For those who follow, the previous update got some minor changes and all the firearms and futuristic weapons now come as a single section.

Stay tuned for more news, and please support the TWB project.

TWB is updated with the final portion of equipment: natural and bio weapons and armour. These cover virtually all the needs of an unstoppable alien/mutant horde and are capable of unleashing horrors you wouldn't want to see up close. Eviscerating the foe, bathing them in corrosive acid, turning into a mindless shell or, even better, into a walking time bomb of spores and pus. Not to mention bio adaptations that grant superhuman abilities to the host organism. Snapping pincers and a maw that can swallow armoured men whole are not enough? Turn your beast into a walking hive of ravenous pests, make it flying and invisible. As always, TWB allows for unprecedented level of customisation for all your models.

Still not enough?

Coming up starting with the next update is a multitude of skills and spells that will really spice things up with even more diverse tactics and tricks. Follow us on Patreon and support the project with your attention and donation so that the best quality gameplay and graphic content can keep coming. And most of all - enjoy Tabletop Wargames Builder.


P.S. This month I'd also like to introduce a different project with gameplay lying somewhere between a strategy card game and a classic wargame. Check it out on my Patreon page as well. I'll be launching an IndieGoGo campaign to make this one so stay tuned for updates. Cheers!

Chapter 14: Skills - the next cornerstone update for the TWB game system.

With the long-promised skills added to the list of options, no two regiments will be the same.  Unique combat training multiplies tactical diversity provided by gear. You can give everyone similar muskets but teach every regiment its own tricks, such as firing a volley that makes all but the stoutest rout in fear, specializing in storming hills and strongpoints, or redoubling their effort after suffering losses.

Below you will find some examples of how virtually the same class of troops can change their tactics and battlefield role based on skill selection:

Willem's Bolt Casters (Line infantry, move and fire 360°, destroys morale)
"- Once the duke's right flank is broken, send in the cavalry to pincer strike the middle...
- What if it doesn't break?
- It will. We've got Willem on the right."
Musket, Bayonet
Box Formation, Thunderous Volley

-----
Striped Jacks of Merrywinter (Shock troops, quick shots)
"Stay put for now. We wait for when the highborn pussies are fed up playing soldiers. Then the Stripes step in and show how things are done."
Musket, Broadsword
Snap Shot, Assault, Dynamic Entry

-----
11th Coastguard Veterans (Mobile, strike first, extra attacks)
"Did you know captain Whitemane just retired from privateering? Some malady or whatever. Sly old bastard caught the wind that His Majesty has dispatched the 11th."
Musket, Cutlass
Skirmish Formation, Reckless, Scarred Veterans

-----
His Reverence's Vigilant (Support/armoured melee)
"For our guardian angels to wield the devil's own weapon! Oh Lord, what other trials must we endure to prove our conviction!"
Musket, Longsword, Heavy Mail
Overwatch, Covering Fire

-----
Zephyr Dragoons (Versatile storm/hold ground, superior mobility)
"I heard the Emir was pompous and arrogant beyond measure, but to claim that he rules over the skies!"
Musket, Bardiche
Volley Fire, Relentless Charge, Drop Insertion (yep, they arrive on flying carpets)

-----
Doug's Barking Dogs (Devastating long range)
"If yar looking fer som reliable boys ta take a bite at the Lion's side, try seeking out Doug of North Barrows. Just watch yarself. Folks say, not olla 'is dogs are barking."
Musket, Broadsword
Concentrate, Snipe, Volley Fire

-----
Headtakers, the Hobgoblin Cadre (Fearless, versatile, cheap in points but limited control)
"Remember, you form up in ranks, hold the muskets with both hands, the hole pointing at the enemy. Then we pounce at them and bash some brains out."
Musket, Cleaver
Battle Rage, Heavy Handed

-----
Les Trois Mousquetaires (Fencing heroes)
"One for all and all for one!"
Musket, Foil, Duelling Dagger
Heroes, Seize Initiative, Teamwork, Blademasters

The same way as you grant the models their distinctive colours when painting your collection, you can fine-tune their tactics and playstyle to fit the background and your image of the regiment. Most peculiar variants are possible. A witch-hunting division within a knightly order, fighting in a very "unknightly" way of backstabbing and ambush to counter raw destructive power of magic? If you can imagine it – you can build it with TWB tools.

When it comes to gameplay diversity, TWB broadens your horizons more than any other wargaming system out there, and it’s just the top of the iceberg, getting bigger with every add-on.

Magic skills and a vast spell repertoire are coming with the next update, so stay tuned, and remember that your support is crucial to the project staying independent and getting more exciting goodies such as top of the line graphical content. Please join us on Patreon and tell your friends about this project.

Enjoy!

After a longer-than-usual hiatus, I am back with a new update - Chapter 15: Magic and Spells!

With Magic unleashed, entire battalions of spellcasters arrive on the field to wreak destruction and mischief, raise protective bastions around allies and disintegrate formations in spectacular blasts. While arcane pyrotechnics may not be such big news (I mean, we already have tactical warheads and singularity cannons), the versatility of magic brings tactics to a whole new level.

TWB system encourages combining spells and skills to gain advantage where the enemy might not expect it. Specialize your spellcasters or increase their repertoire, add new effects to familiar spells.

Rust + Pyromancer = Smelt armour (on the wearer)
Force Arrow + Ice Mage + Replicate Spell = Torrent of ice shards
Force Bolt + Storm Caster + Replicate Spell = Chain lightning

A new set of magic skills allows to turn virtually any model into a spellcaster or build exactly the character you want to represent you in roleplay. Show the enemies a true nightmare on Elm Street by combining Sleep and Nightmare spells with Pyromancer skill and watching them die trapped in horrible visions, while burns and blisters cover their bodies.

A few more example builds:

Battle Mage + Fear + Beam of Light + Command = Gandalf style wizard
Battle Mage + Storm Caster + Force Ray (Sustained Lightning) + Hold = Sith Lord
Telekinesis + Barrier + Gravity = Mass Effect style psionic
Blood Mage + Weakness + Corpse Bomb + Raise Dead = Diablo 2 style necromancer
Spellslinger + Force Arrow + Paralyze = Hogwarts wizard

TWB is on par with any roleplaying game when it comes to the list of options available to your characters, but don't forget that all of it works nice and smooth when entire armies clash in a wargaming apocalypse. Attach spellcasters to mixed formations or field them in regiments of their own, create powerful warriors with a magic trick or two up their sleeves, experiment, and enjoy the freedom of TWB.

Support the project if you like it. Remember, you can help promote TWB on social media for it to achieve the ultimate goal - bring together all miniature collectors and give them common ground for unbound wargaming experience.

The project will also benefit a lot from your donations to remain top of the line among even pro game releases both in terms of gameplay and visual content. The game is currently developing at a steady pace, but community support will allow to bring in more of the highest quality book illustrations as well as miniature kit designs, counters, cards, templates and all kinds of extra goodies. Also, with enough supporters I'll be able to devote all of my time to making games and publish more content with shorter intervals.

Rick Priestley covers this excellently in Wargame Design (an excellent book for research btw). In a nutshell, any systems that have attempted to be applicable to a variety of warfare periods tend to be rather washed out because they fail to capture the feel of warfare for any of those periods.

Consider the following:

In Medieval times infantry with heavy armour and/or shields could advance through arrow fire. Sure they would take casualties, but the battle was mostly determined by bloody melees between tightly packed formations.

Moving into Napoleon's times we still see tight formations, but firepower is clearly much deadlier, though melee remains important.

Fast forward to World War 2. Troops fight in much smaller units in skirmish formation. Firepower is highly lethal to the point that melee is a relatively rare occurance.

In summary a gamer looking to play one of those time periods is going to expect some authenticity i.e. they want the rules to capture the feel of the type of warfare they're trying to portray.
Achieving this across multiple eras without seriously altering your core rules is very difficult, if not impossible. (Though I would be happy to be proved wrong & wish you the best of luck with It!)

I don't want to sound disrespectful towards the founding father(s), but game design is about finding solutions.

Why change the core rules? The core describes the physical model of the world, the behaviour of things, people, horses, projectiles on the table. With the development of warfare neither of these change.

What does change is the equipment, materials and tactics. The latter is represented by specific formations available in certain periods. If you read the equipment and regiments sections you can clearly see how first the heavy armour, then the conventional formations become obsolete as new options(!) become available. It is these options that make armies evolve, adopt box formation for musketeers that can move in any direction and shoot in any direction without wheeling, and, yet further along the timeline, break into smaller tactical squads and seek cover from overwhelming firepower of the big guns.

I can go through a hundred examples, but don't want to bore the readers. In short the tactics and the dynamics of the game change in accordance with the setting and reality of the described period.

Even if you look at the optional fantasy elements such as magic, their battlefield role can change significantly. depending on the weapons and special gear available to common soldiers. I provide options but leave restraints to the players: too many direct offensive spells can devaluate your knights and shieldwalls way before time, putting skirmishers, infiltrators and magical countermeasures to the front. Sounds like modern days, hell yeah. Well so it should, it's fireballs for you. Neither of this will break the games, but can make things look and feel much different from what people got used to from books and PC games. This sh#t is realistic.

The content I've alrady published is improved regularly, old stuff gets revised, since I'm posting chapters real-time, can't help it. So until the final release expect some things to become outdated, but you can see the clear picture already.

Denis Nazarets wrote:
I don't want to sound disrespectful towards the founding father(s), but game design is about finding solutions....Why change the core rules? The core describes the physical model of the world, the behaviour of things, people, horses, projectiles on the table. With the development of warfare neither of these change.

Fair points Denis. You're right it's not impossible, just quite a challenge.

Having a rules system that works from ancient rules right up to futuristic would be excellent for those of us who play games from a variety of time periods.The problem you'll encounter in selling such a system is that many gamers only play specific periods. So a game that is designed with 100% purpose to represent the tactics, weapons, units and nature of war for that specific period is generally going to be more immersive and enjoyable for those respective gamers. e.g. highly tactical sci-fi games are my joy. So I'm going to seek game systems that do that best, not a "jack of all trades" system. Not that that is neccessarily how your game will turn out -it sounds excellent. It's just a vital thing to bear in mind when designing it.

 thegreatchimp wrote:
The problem you'll encounter in selling such a system is that many gamers only play specific periods. So a game that is designed with 100% purpose to represent the tactics, weapons, units and nature of war for that specific period is generally going to be more immersive and enjoyable for those respective gamers. e.g. highly tactical sci-fi games are my joy. So I'm going to seek game systems that do that best, not a "jack of all trades" system. Not that that is neccessarily how your game will turn out -it sounds excellent. It's just a vital thing to bear in mind when designing it.

I see. It's not that I want to mix everything together. It is that I can fit all the gameplay mechanics in one book without losing their unique flavour. There are settings when this approach particularly shines. For example, post-apocalyptic worlds where conventional firearms, high-tech experimental wargear and scrap-armoured knights with swords can coexist with tribals, who completely reverted to dancing around fires and praying to spirits.

It is not a problem to write 7 different books - one on each technological period by my classification, and the 8th one on magic. It is only a matter of time and community support. If it comes to that, then in each book I'll detail all aspects of roleplaying in a particular technological setting: laws, cultures, warfare, living conditions, materials and skills, etc, for greater immersion. I started this one book for a practical reason: to build a foundation, from where specialized rules and narrative spin-offs can branch in all directions.

I'm not in fact selling it. TWB is practically a freeware product which is a good opportunity for many new players to try out wargaming without investing a lot of money in expensive rulebooks and armybooks of famous brands. Not that TWB will lose to anything else on the market in any aspect, so they can stick with it if they like.

In fact, I'll soon get to the sci-fi part with builds and points and I'd be delighted to hear your thoughts on comparing a tactical sci-fi game with these rules and any other system you like, in terms of whether it loses in immersion or lacks something vital.


Automatically Appended Next Post:


Hi, fellow wargamers. This update took a bit longer to prepare, but I dare say it was totally worth it. It is not about writing more but rather going through lots and lots of tests to balance out points and builds. And it's just grazing the surface.

The update is a complex one as I've looked through previous chapters and rebalanced a lot of weapons and gear after weighing them thoroughly against one another. We are not just moving towards realism and variety, but player-friendly rules and gameplay design.

First, you've got the new chapter: Models and Points. Part 1, covering periods from stone age to the great colonial empires. It provides you with a lot of options and examples to design and build a troop, a character or a faction to your liking.

Second, you get rebalanced weapons and equipment for the said periods - the tables in pdf format with all item profiles grouped together and easy to compare. Perfect for reference as well.

Third, I made a small change to the magic system which nevertheless massively overhauls the spellcasting mechanics in TWB, making it much more balanced and comfortable for the players. This change was a last moment decision, so I decided to exclude spellcasters from this update, but they'll appear in the next one along with an updated Magic chapter.

---

What is there to look forward to in the coming months?

1. Remaining builds and points for all tech levels up to the spacefaring age, including natural and bio weapons and mutations.
2. Introduction of fantastic creatures, special racial abilities added to the lists and unique profiles for some of the most distinguished inhabitants of the fantasy and sci-fi worlds.
3. Strategic orders, special missions, terrain, etc.
4. A lot more of the stunning graphical content and page designs you've been complimenting so far, from me and our great artist. This last part really depends on your support of our work though - as I have to outsource the illustrations and perhaps attract more people to speed things up. It is with your donations that this independent freeware project can really shine.

Since I'm updating the book real time as I write it, I don't have much opportunity to go back to edit things or reorganize old-new content. Once I'm done with the bulk of it, I'll go through the entire thing again, implement minor updates, correct the wording, and group relevant sections together to improve navigation and integrity.

From this point on I'm also expecting a lot more feedback from you, on what content you'd like to see, what your experience with the open testing was like and more. Feel free to comment and contact me with your feedback and suggestions. Also don't forget to share the link with your friends. I look forward to hearing from you again soon. Cheers!

Denis Nazarets wrote:
I'll soon get to the sci-fi part with builds and points and I'd be delighted to hear your thoughts on comparing a tactical sci-fi game with these rules and any other system you like, in terms of whether it loses in immersion or lacks something vital.

Cool man, look forward to reading that