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.

Not sure if this is the best place, but does anyone know of any 54mm wargames? Successful ones, ideally.

Inquisitor was the only one I know of. Wouldn't call that successful, exactly.

Why?

Inquisitor has died off in most circles, but it still has a core of dedicated fans and is a great game (if you like the idea of narrative wargaming).

I made a list of companies that sell 54mm models and other modelling resources on the 'Clave - perhaps one of the sites there will lead you to a game that suits you?
http://www.the-conclave.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=22.0

Isn't Mutant Chronicles 54mm? I know nothing about it other than the fact that a few people I know used MC models as the basis of Inquisitor conversions...

There's loads of 54mm minature manufacturers out there, producing all sorts from Historical to Fantasy to SF to, well "Adult"... But I don't know of any game other than Inquisitor thats 54mm.

I thought MC was 30mm, with oversized mutants? Or am I confusing it with Dark Age, which definitely is that...

Hmmm, it seems that Mutant Chronicles was 54mm but is no longer supported due to lack of sales.

Ah... Perhaps that dreadful movie killed it? The Curse of Uwe Boll (or one of his ilk).

But anyway - Inquisitor is a sucessful-ish 54mm wargame, with whatever lack of popularity it has being not really down to the scale (I think) but to the maturity and specificness of the game.

Mostly just curious as I am working on my own game and I thought, as a modeller, how much I would love 54mm for painting/modelling oppurtunities.

Thanks, guys. I think I will go forward with the idea, for now, as there isn't anyone cornerning the market for 54mm wargames currently.

Are you planning to make and sell models for your game? Or is it mainly an excuse to build some cool models?

What sort of game is it going to be?

I am going to see about making rules, models, and terrain for a game I want to sell. It will be a rule set that supports a Modern Combat game, as well as a Sci-Fi game. I am blending concepts from all the games I have ever played, taking all the best parts, and constructing how I wanted to see a lot of games work.

I really hope to find a sculptor, as opposed to relying on my own sculpts. I hope to sell them in packs, like PP's Battle Boxes, along with rules and some terrain.

Of course, all of this comes after a lot of rules testing, which I have yet to do.

The only thing I liked about Inquisitor were the 54mm miniatures. The rules never impressed me, but not for reasons linked to the scale.
That being said, I still continue to expand my collection of Inquisitor & Inquisitor-compatible figures. The thing I miss most as someone who enjoys this scale,
are decent conversion bits & accessories in the baroque "imperial grimdark" style. Things like heads (eg gasmasks!!!), backpacks, weapons and other
bits of kit, the stuff you could use to turn historical 54mm figures into cultists, inquisitors, chronogladiators or mutants. So if you want to start a range, perhaps
this would be a good & not-too expensive beginning. There must be plenty of Inquisitor collectors in the same situation as me, certainly since GW withdrew it's
conversion packs.

If you're looking for a sculptor, the guy who runs Tins Bits sprins to mind. He did a nice chainsaw dominatrix & cool chaos warrior in 54mm.

Thraex wrote:The rules never impressed me, but not for reasons linked to the scale.

That entirely depends on what you expect the game to be. It's no RPG or skirmish game, and it's not supposed to be "balanced". It's all about crafting a narrative, so it's as much collaborative tabletop theatre as it is a wargame.

Or, as PrecinctOmega put it: "It's wargaming for poets"

Well.... actually I think it fails both as a skirmish and as a narrative game. Don't get me wrong, I like the "wargaming for poets" idea. Unfortunately the Inquisitor rules do not accomplish anything in this regard. They contain the usual mechanisms for shooting, fighting, moving, using special powers etc. that you find in any roleplaying or skirmish game, with lots of detail, but nothing to actually stimulate narrative development. And if you choose to go narrative, the rules will only get in the way, because they're essentially very mechanistic old skool rpg rules. If you play it strictly by the book as a skirmish game, you're having an overly detailed session of WH40K Killteam with percentile dice. but who really wants that? I can do without rolling for a hit location, and I know more exciting skirmish rules.

Chew on these.

http://www.freewargamesrules.co.uk/19th-century.html

I remember one they use at Historicon called toy wars but I can't find the publishers name right now.

Thraex wrote:Well.... actually I think it fails both as a skirmish and as a narrative game. Don't get me wrong, I like the "wargaming for poets" idea. Unfortunately the Inquisitor rules do not accomplish anything in this regard. They contain the usual mechanisms for shooting, fighting, moving, using special powers etc. that you find in any roleplaying or skirmish game, with lots of detail, but nothing to actually stimulate narrative development. And if you choose to go narrative, the rules will only get in the way, because they're essentially very mechanistic old skool rpg rules. If you play it strictly by the book as a skirmish game, you're having an overly detailed session of WH40K Killteam with percentile dice. but who really wants that? I can do without rolling for a hit location, and I know more exciting skirmish rules.

It's almost as if GW did a half-ass rule-writing job just to cash in on the popularity of 40K and justify a new range of figures.

But only a cynic would suggest such a thing.

In general you can play any set of rules with 54mm figures. You just need to make appropriate adjustments to measuring distances. For example, if the 28mm rules give a movement distance of six inches, double it.

Obviously you need a larger table, but that's part of the fun of playing with large models.

Thraex wrote:Well.... actually I think it fails both as a skirmish and as a narrative game. They're essentially very mechanistic old skool rpg rules with nothing to actually stimulate narrative development.

As the person who recently used the system to run a game with 30 player characters (and 20 NPCs!) where the 13 players managed to do everything from discussion and bribes to overcharging (and firing!) orbital weapon satellites and strapping hallucinogenic bombs to hijacked Valkyries inside 90 minutes, I think you're heavily underestimating the potential and overestimating the complexity!

As for stimulating a narrative, the way that scenario came together to produce a truly climatic story was far more the player's imaginations than even close to what I had envisioned. I gave them the basic setting, and they picked that up and ran with it.

And that's considering only a single game we played that day. For the event as a whole, I wrote an entirely new world (including seven thousand years of history, orbital data, atmospheric composition, geography, biology, culture, local astronomy and warp routes), around a hundred background characters (and brought almost as many back again from previous events), a few foreground NPCs and plenty of recent events to stir all the intrigue and rivalry. Attendees also contributed their own pieces of the overarching story, writing their own scenarios within the setting.
Draw back even further, and that was just one event within the community written Carthax Sector, where we've got hundreds of player characters all with their own interactions, rivalries and alliances.

I've never really had problems with the game not stimulating a narrative, simply because there's a lot of delightfully imaginative and creative players who are so dedicated to it.

I've seen larger scale gaming using toys about GiJoe or Star Wars size. The range these have been converted from are often in cheaper shops and do soldiers and pirates, but some have had high modification - not my figures but photographed at an event this year.

MarcoSkoll wrote:
I've never really had problems with the game not stimulating a narrative, simply because there's a lot of delightfully imaginative and creative players who are so dedicated to it.

Indeed there are, and it's thanks to these players and their imagination, and of course the 54mm miniatures, that participating in a game of Inquisitor can be worthwhile. But as a set of rules, it's mediocre at best. If you're happy with it, then good for you. To me it's what WH40K is in 28mm gaming, I play it occasionally simply because at least I can get someone else to play it.
So people, buy the GW miniatures, look elsewhere for rules ;-)



Automatically Appended Next Post:
On the range thing... I really don't understand why a 54mm skirmish game should need weapon ranges at all. Why not scrap them and give all guns effective unlimited range (except for pistols & grenades maybe, which could be treated as close assualt weapons)? If you have enough terrain, this will do nicely. Same thing with movement rates actually, why bother with a few inch more or less depending on profile? Simply give every miniature an unlimited move in a straight line and 1 turn. Slow creatures must choose between moving and turning, fast ones get an extra unlimited straigth line after their turn. Or something like that. Should work on a relatively small table with enough terrain features.

Thraex wrote:On the range thing... I really don't understand why a 54mm skirmish game should need weapon ranges at all.

Firstly, so that it's easier to hit at close range than at long range. Secondly, so that (say) sniper rifles are more accurate at long range than (say) pistols.
Both are as you'd expect in real life and would therefore expect a detailed ruleset to take into account.

Yes, terrain layout is usually the ultimate limit on the range at which you can shoot something (given, that technically, the rules don't give any weapon a maximum range, just making it unlikely you'll hit at long enough ranges), but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't include range modifiers. By a healthy majority, most games I know do.

Simply give every miniature an unlimited move in a straight line and 1 turn. Should work on a relatively small table with enough terrain features.

I have seldom heard a movement system suggestion I less want to play (particularly for Inquisitor) than that one.

The reason you care about a few inches more or less is mostly because a few inches is still a hell of a lot, even at 54mm scale. Where's the thrill in the hero making it there just in the nick of time to deliver a pithy quip and save the day if there's no element of chance in it?
"How many corners has he got to go round/walls has he got to bounce off to save the day?" (as your system would boil it down to) is a lot less interesting than managing to roll just enough actions right at the critical moment.

For a game which has been designed with a degree of detail, things like range modifiers, movement rates and hit location are going to be part of it. You personally may not like detailed games, but that's your problem, not Inquisitor's.

MarcoSkoll wrote:
For a game which has been designed with a degree of detail, things like range modifiers, movement rates and hit location are going to be part of it. You personally may not like detailed games, but that's your problem, not Inquisitor's.

I think in you defensiveness you're completely missing the point I'm making about Inquisitor, which is that a narrative game is not about fiddly details such as an inch more or less of movement, or distinguishing one big gun from another by means of statline numbers. A narrative game should be concerned with mechanisms driving the story on, or constructing one, not with the nuts & bolts detail accounting of either traditional wargaming or 80s roleplay, which is where Inquisitor got it's rules wholesale. This produced a playable game but rather ho-hum not really very different from any other playable skirmish game, and as such is a missed opportunity. Sure, rulebook contains plenty of cheerleading on narrative, but that's all it is. If you and your players have a knack for narrative it'll work out. If you're wondering how to go about it, you won't find much inspiration in the Inquisitor rules and would probably be better of looking at some Indie rpgs to raid for concepts you might apply to miniature gaming. At worst, you end up thinking narrative gaming is about detail, or amateur acting to illustrate the results of stat rolls.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

MarcoSkoll wrote:
Firstly, so that it's easier to hit at close range than at long range. Secondly, so that (say) sniper rifles are more accurate at long range than (say) pistols.
Both are as you'd expect in real life and would therefore expect a detailed ruleset to take into account.

Yes, terrain layout is usually the ultimate limit on the range at which you can shoot something (given, that technically, the rules don't give any weapon a maximum range, just making it unlikely you'll hit at long enough ranges), but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't include range modifiers. By a healthy majority, most games I know do.

LOL, are we talking about the same size of game? That is, a gaming table representing, say, a section of a street, couple of buildings, maybe some cars and with about 10 54mm figures in total? Or a fight in a Warehouse? (I'm taking examples from the Inquisitor publications) Because in such a skirmish game, close & long range means nothing.

The reason you care about a few inches more or less is mostly because a few inches is still a hell of a lot, even at 54mm scale. Where's the thrill in the hero making it there just in the nick of time to deliver a pithy quip and save the day if there's no element of chance in it?
"How many corners has he got to go round/walls has he got to bounce off to save the day?" (as your system would boil it down to) is a lot less interesting than managing to roll just enough actions right at the critical moment.

My granddad used to play napoleonics in that scale.
There were rules for it back in the 1960s.
Back then, it didn't require a company to stay in business to have you play it. You liked it so you played it - it's not like historicals change their 'codex' after all (units for a given time period and locale don't change a lot).
On a 10' long or so table (believe it was a 10x6)

Thraex wrote:Are we talking about the same size of game?

Ultimately, I've played games set on terrain from cargo holds in zero-G (which had characters throwing half tonne crates at each other) to boggy swamps (where there was more than one ambush out of the stinking mud) to hive sectors (with running sniper battles between the peaks of towering slums draped in thick smog clouds), with a number of characters anywhere between 2 and 50.

So, no, we're not. Anything that would limit the freedom for the game to be played with that kind of variety would be a bad thing.

You can make that subject to a test, with modifiers for difficulty if you like the thrill of the dice (I do).

And, what, exactly, is the action roll, other than a test with modifiers for difficulty? The further you need to go, the more passes you'll need and the harder it is. The more you fail by, the less distance you cover.

It might not be a typical way of doing a test, but it's actually very close to how a game like Fudge does all its tests.

...whoa. Necromancy.

Our (Skirmish Wargames) experience is that 54mm wargaming is growing - in that there are others out there doing it apart from us nowadays! There is usually one game at each UK show, and from what I hear about the US, there too (I have taken 54mm games to Historicon, but that's another story )

We have always gamed in this scale in all periods, and as we are scattered all around the country, put on games at shows as our 'club meetings'. For SF we actually went up-scale, initially to 120mm (Necromunda-Rex) and then 95mm 1/16th scale for Warhammer 40K-Kingsize (that's what the game photos earlier in this thread are of). But of late we have also been talking about actually doing SF in our traditional 54mm - and scratting around for figures! So if m_n_o_p decides to go ahead, he will have some support from us!!!

em_en_oh_pee wrote:Not sure if this is the best place, but does anyone know of any 54mm wargames? Successful ones, ideally.

54mm wargaming abounds on the historicals side of the equation and fits in around 1/35 to 1/32 scale. This scale is well supported in plastics, metals and resins. 54mm is a very popular WWII scale because so many companies make models that fit the scale with Tamiya, Academy and Dragon on the vehicle and infantry side and adding in airfix for softer plastic troops among others. 54mm has never been an overly popular scale for fantasy and sci-fi up to this point, though. With the larger minis games are geared more specifically toward skirmish level encounters as a full on company level fight would require a massive amount of table space to pull off. Along with the small scope, the rules for 54mm games tend to be a lot more detailed as well as fewer models and troops means the extra bookkeeping isn't a chore.

Skriker