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I've been working on my scifi game for a while and have hit an interesting point in development where I have to think about how to get players into the game as easily as possible.

The idea was to have 3 games using the same miniatures.

The first would be a rpg-like very low model count skirmish, similar to Necromunda/Mordheim in scope. Heavy on narrative and customization.

Then released at the same time are the "Fireteam" rules, which would be small battles of about a platoon + support of troops, including light vehicles. The basic unit of troops would be a fireteam of 3-6 models. Tanks might be included but their stats would be toned down.

Then finally the "mass battle" rules with numbers of troops close to 40K would be available at a later date.

All 3 games would use the same core rules and methodology, but stats and rules would be altered to better suit the scale.

Putting aside the amount of work, and assume that each system works as intended.

Do you think this setup would be attractive to gamers, or confusing?

Sounds interesting to me.

I'm all for increased versatility of figures, so I think it's worth looking at.

For instance, I based my 28mm ancients on 20mm discs so that I can use them in skirmish games and then mount them on movement trays for large battle games. Many gamers will want to try and re-use the same mini's for different games.

yeah,
Pretty much every game does this anyway.

40k - dude do you want to play a 500pt, 1500pts game or 3000pts...
Xwing - dude do you want to play 50pts, 100pts or 200pts

So other than check out my idea of ? I might make a game?
What is this thread about?

Panic...

 Panic wrote:
yeah,
Pretty much every game does this anyway.

40k - dude do you want to play a 500pt, 1500pts game or 3000pts...
Xwing - dude do you want to play 50pts, 100pts or 200pts

So other than check out my idea of ? I might make a game?
What is this thread about?

Panic...

I think the point of this is that measuring individual line of sight is cool in skirmish games and challenges are cool in platoon level stuff but neither of those have any place in a game once you reach mass battles and bring in air strikes and artillery.

Yeah the idea is of different levels of detail depending on the scale of the game. You play 40K in the same manner whatever the point size.

For instance in the small game you may have 6 figures and care about fatigue, health points, ammo etc. Then in the next game up you abtract a bit more, and the next level you're down to working with squads rather than individuals.

I think this idea has mileage if you're willing to put the work in, as there's a few of games out there that can do this. 40k has the (fan made but excellent) In The Emperor's Name for squad-level skirmishes, 40k for platoon level and Apoc for mass battle (even if it's a little clunky at that level). Mantic has Deadzone and will soon have Warpath for mass-battle.

What I think will be key here is, rather than simply making each level more abstract/less complicated, it actually needs to be different. Keep the feel and setting the same, but make sure each ruleset has its own identity, to the point where it's not just 'a bigger/smaller game of X'. This is why I listed ITEN rather than Kill Team, as the former is a completely different ruleset while the latter is just '40k, but smaller.

Vertrucio,
What you're reffering to by "Scales" is the "Scope" of a ruleset. That is how big a battle (how many miniatures and how much space) a ruleset is meant to encompass.

 Panic wrote:
yeah,
Pretty much every game does this anyway.

40k - dude do you want to play a 500pt, 1500pts game or 3000pts...
Xwing - dude do you want to play 50pts, 100pts or 200pts

So other than check out my idea of ? I might make a game?
What is this thread about?

Panic...

I would disagree. I think that most games actually do not scale up well beyond a certain point.

40k Plays at different levels, but it's still basically a 1-2 platoon level game. It doesn't play at the warband skirmish level (a'la necromunda),despite what some folks say, it's a really abbreviated game at the 500 point level, and beyond 3000 points it really bogs down. Not that some folks don't enjoy large games, but compared to rulesets written for a specific scope it performs quite poorly for anything over the "company" level. Sure, people play Apocalypse, but it's terrible from a game design perspective. There's a reason that Epic 40k was written for Battalion level play and they didn't just use 40k rules and tiny miniatures.

Vertrucio,
Making three sets of rules is possible, but I would recommend not being too connected to certain mechanics, and being willing to streamline as you get to higher larger scopes of rules. LIkely you will want to drop or disregard certain stats entirely when you get to the Company level. Far better, IMHO, to change the rules for a better game than to stretch mechanics to game scopes where they don't belong for the sake of uniformity. I think your original idea of two games with roughly the same relation ship as Necromunda and 2nd edition 40k is a great place to start. If it were successful, Company/Battallion level rules can be a project for the future.

As for can it be done, it already has. Battletech has done this for decades, there's a RPG (A time of War) though it doesn't use the same minis, and then there are rulesets at the Platoon (Battletech), Company (Alpha Strike) and Battallion (Battleforce) levels that can share miniatures. Each has it's own rulesets but share many of the same mechanics and are cross-compatible for campaign play. Mantic games also seems to be going this way. Using their Warpath universe, they have a Boardgame (Project Pandora) a warband skirmish game (Deadzone), a Platoon level game (Warpath 2.0), and though they haven't been given any love recently, for "Mass Battles" they have the Warpath 1.0 rules. All use the same miniatures, though some of the rulesets are entirely different.

My club uses our miniature collections for a wide variety of rulesets. Here's what we do for our fantasy miniatures. We play Song of Blades and Heroes for warband skirmishes of 8-14 figures per side. Those of us with big collections play Kings of War for Mass/Company level engagements, and we're about to start using the new SBH-inspired "Of Gods and Mortals" ruleset for platoon Level. Each of these rulesets is tailored for a specific scope and there's no reason to try and stretch them beyond their intent. Kings of War would be a terrible platoon level game and Song of Blades and Heroes would be equally bad with high numbers of troops.

I agree with the line of thinking of the OP, many game systems do consider it.

Very small squad or skirmish rules tend to have more detail of the wargear each model carries and are used more individually than tied together as a coherent squad. Necromunda and the 40k skirmish rules show that to some degree. I like "Federation Commander" where you can play "fleet scale" or "squadron scale", really the options and detail ramps up as you go to fewer "models". 40k you could still use the old Inquisitor rules and just use the 28mm models.

Huge battles appropriately enough "Epic" takes the 40k game and makes it playable in a couple hours than to field an "Apocalypse" game and take a day or two.

Considering the scale of battle to be played, a thought to keeping the amount of "work" to play about the same for each level of play is a reasonable thought.

Worthy efforts, hope they go well.

My only concern is varying the stats for troops, weapons, etc. from game to game. It may cause confusion to the players, and have the unintended consequence of gremlins creeping into the rules.

What dice system are you thinking of using? (D6, D20, D100)

I think that most gamers would like to use miniatures for more then one scale. There are a bunch of games that play at 2 different scales - even GW's LOTR SBG vs WOTR.

However, I think the real problem is on the side that is producing/selling the miniatures. If you're producing minis for a mass battle game of 100 minis, you need to pump out boxes of minis which look coherent as a squad. However if you'e doing a skirmish game of 5-10 minis, you want 5-10 unique, dynamic and/or customisable sculpts.

The two are opposed in terms of skills, materials and labour involved. Meaning that most companies don't have the resources to tackle it on their own. Can you think of a company other than GW or PP that would fit?


Also in your list, what exactly is the difference between a fire-team and a mass-battle? To me, a '40k scale' game is ~60 minis per side, but that also seems to fit in with ~10 squads of 6 for a 'fire-team' game. I think you'd want to delineate the games so the number of models would only overlap at the absolute extemes.

Thanks for the clarification in terms. Scope is a much better term to use than scale, since that confuses with the actual miniature scale.

The idea was that the rpg-lite skirmish version took place on a kind of impossible dyson sphere that's filled with ancient and powerful tech. However, the whole system is also filled with automated defenses that only let the smallest of ships land at set intervals and only in small number. Militaries from across the galaxy are sending small teams to the sphere, while mercenaries and treasure hunters also hunt for valuable tech.

The model counts for these 3 games would be as follows.

rpg-lite skirmish: 5-10 models depending on faction, individuals

Fireteams (Platoon) rules: ~30 models, broken up into fireteams averaging 4 models with some individuals. Although some factions will go as low as 15 models. Light and medium vehicles, along with walkers and exosuits are common.

Mass Battle rules: 60+ models, broken up into squads of around 10 models. Tanks and other heavy vehicles show up, along with some form of super heavy showpiece units.

The manufacturing aspect is something I have definitely thought about, which is why the mass battle rules would be coming much later after the game is more established. This way, the players have had time to build a collection of miniatures, and my company has had enough time to build the cash reserves to go plastic, or at least have enough clout to draw in kickstarter money to start plastic production.

The system uses D10s for now, although I've considered going up to D12s for just that little bit more granularity. There is some backlash to using anything but D6s, but when I describe the setting, factions, and show some my prototypes and artwork that resistance usually goes away.

Rules confusion to players between the 3 rules sets is a very big concern when I first thought of doing this. But, making each rules set very different overall should help solidify which rules belong to which game. I'm definitely writing the rules for each with the idea of streamlining. For example, the Fireteam rules still have individual models shooting at other models, however the mass battle version has entire squad based shooting similar to 40k.

Battletroops

Classic Battletech

Alphastrike

There you are, one game, three scales. Except there are about seven different ones in total.

 master of ordinance wrote:
Battletroops

Classic Battletech

Alphastrike

There you are, one game, three scales. Except there are about seven different ones in total.

I'd actually go:

Standard Battletech

Alpha Strike

Battleforce

 Mattlov wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
Battletroops

Classic Battletech

Alphastrike

There you are, one game, three scales. Except there are about seven different ones in total.

I'd actually go:

Standard Battletech

Alpha Strike

Battleforce

Yeah, that's the order I used in my post too. Battletroops doesn't use the same scale of minis (though I guess it might be possible....) as Standard, Alpha or Battleforce. Interestingly though, you could probably use Battletroops and Time of War (the BT RPG) with the same minis, though you'd probably want to proxy something other than the old 80's minis.