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.

 Visceral_Mass wrote:

 Nurglitch wrote:
I'm thinking moreso that, taking the Godzilla series as our example, that people have an idea of how it's supposed to 'feel' and so even if the game works it's going to irk a lot of players if it doesn't play the way it's 'supposed' to work. I noticed that in previous versions of 40k, and presumably it's still a thing in the current edition, that players would complain about how their Space Marines weren't the invincible protagonists they were portrayed as in novels, etc.

The more generic you go, though, the less people feel like it's weird when a monster/robot not-from Property A can't do what a monster/robot not-from Property B can do.

When I started on Titanomachia ~6 years ago I made a list of all the GW Titan background, and then made another list of everything that the Titans did so that players could do them in the game. Since then the game's moved on a bit from its genesis as homebrew Adeptus Titanicus, but I like to think it hits the genre notes that I like.

If you gave Voltron the ability to cleave Robeasts in two, you likely wouldn't have a very fun or balanced game, at least in the eyes of the Robeast player. A lot of the things that happen in the books, comics, movies, shows, etc... happens because it progresses the story. We are talking games here so power levels and abilities need to be designed in a way that creates a balanced system while trying to stay as true to the source material as possible (for licensed games). That is why you will never see a Superman figure in Heroclix that is as invulnerable as he is in the comics.

What people like and want from a game varies from player to player, and you will never be able to please all of them. Sure, some players will not like the way character x is represented, but the same can be true for any game system regardless of whether or not it is based on a licensed property. Even generic games will have the same types of criticisms leveled against them. Some players may not like your rules for lasers, or they think the laser rules for a similar system is better.

Cool. I'm thinking moreso things like ludonarrative consonance, like various aspects of the game need to map to the source material or it's just not about that source material.

Take the Voltron example. Voltron should be able to cleave Robeasts apart. The question, game-wise, is when. What sort of resources and decisions should the players need to make to get to that point? Something I really like about the new Netflix series is that it's less formulaic than the original series, and it plays with that. So it's not enough to just form a Blazing sword, but to do so at the right time and against the right target, and at the right cost.

I've been playing a lot of Into the Breach lately, so bear with me, but consider a Voltron game like Into the Breach where you have five lions on a grid and if they all move onto the same square then they can become Voltron as their action. But while they're doing that, the Robeast is free to act because they're not addressing it, so it becomes a goal of the Voltron player to push the Robeast into a square where the damage they can do is minimized while Voltron assembles. Likewise, maybe the Blazing Sword damages everything in the square in front of Voltron and the square behind that, so the player needs to figure out how to set up the Robeast so they can do that. In the mean-time the Robeast player needs to score a certain number of buildings destroyed or turns last.

I'm pretty sure Giga-Robo does this for the anime robot sub-genre. I think it's definitely easier the less specific you get. The Giga-Robo miniatures, for example, just need to get the style right rather than be model-perfect miniature reproductions of whatever anime property. Plus, rather than just appealing to, say, Gundam fans, it hits a more general note.

 Nurglitch wrote:

 Visceral_Mass wrote:

 Nurglitch wrote:
I'm thinking moreso that, taking the Godzilla series as our example, that people have an idea of how it's supposed to 'feel' and so even if the game works it's going to irk a lot of players if it doesn't play the way it's 'supposed' to work. I noticed that in previous versions of 40k, and presumably it's still a thing in the current edition, that players would complain about how their Space Marines weren't the invincible protagonists they were portrayed as in novels, etc.

The more generic you go, though, the less people feel like it's weird when a monster/robot not-from Property A can't do what a monster/robot not-from Property B can do.

When I started on Titanomachia ~6 years ago I made a list of all the GW Titan background, and then made another list of everything that the Titans did so that players could do them in the game. Since then the game's moved on a bit from its genesis as homebrew Adeptus Titanicus, but I like to think it hits the genre notes that I like.

If you gave Voltron the ability to cleave Robeasts in two, you likely wouldn't have a very fun or balanced game, at least in the eyes of the Robeast player. A lot of the things that happen in the books, comics, movies, shows, etc... happens because it progresses the story. We are talking games here so power levels and abilities need to be designed in a way that creates a balanced system while trying to stay as true to the source material as possible (for licensed games). That is why you will never see a Superman figure in Heroclix that is as invulnerable as he is in the comics.

What people like and want from a game varies from player to player, and you will never be able to please all of them. Sure, some players will not like the way character x is represented, but the same can be true for any game system regardless of whether or not it is based on a licensed property. Even generic games will have the same types of criticisms leveled against them. Some players may not like your rules for lasers, or they think the laser rules for a similar system is better.

Cool. I'm thinking moreso things like ludonarrative consonance, like various aspects of the game need to map to the source material or it's just not about that source material.

Take the Voltron example. Voltron should be able to cleave Robeasts apart. The question, game-wise, is when. What sort of resources and decisions should the players need to make to get to that point? Something I really like about the new Netflix series is that it's less formulaic than the original series, and it plays with that. So it's not enough to just form a Blazing sword, but to do so at the right time and against the right target, and at the right cost.

I've been playing a lot of Into the Breach lately, so bear with me, but consider a Voltron game like Into the Breach where you have five lions on a grid and if they all move onto the same square then they can become Voltron as their action. But while they're doing that, the Robeast is free to act because they're not addressing it, so it becomes a goal of the Voltron player to push the Robeast into a square where the damage they can do is minimized while Voltron assembles. Likewise, maybe the Blazing Sword damages everything in the square in front of Voltron and the square behind that, so the player needs to figure out how to set up the Robeast so they can do that. In the mean-time the Robeast player needs to score a certain number of buildings destroyed or turns last.

I'm pretty sure Giga-Robo does this for the anime robot sub-genre. I think it's definitely easier the less specific you get. The Giga-Robo miniatures, for example, just need to get the style right rather than be model-perfect miniature reproductions of whatever anime property. Plus, rather than just appealing to, say, Gundam fans, it hits a more general note.

I agree that certain aspects of a game need to map the source material, that is what you want your players to connect with. My point was that you only need to do that to a certain degree, because there are too many story elements that can't be accurately portrayed without "breaking" the game in some way and most players understand this, which is why ludonarrative dissonance and power equilibrium doesn't keep people from enjoying the multitude of games that have those "problems". Even your Voltron examples present a certain degree of narrative dissonance and power equilibrium from what happens in the various anime episodes.

My other point, that I think got lost was that a generic game isn't inherently better and/or easier to design than a licensed game. I think the depth of the system and what you are trying to accomplish with that system determines that more than the source material.

Let's step away from the giant monster/robot genre for a second and look at X-Wing. It's basically Car Wars with a Star Wars skin. Part of the issue is that in order to keep it interesting, and keeping a core group of consumers interested, it needs to keep expanding its content. So there's all sorts of weird expanded-universe style ships and stuff coming out that doesn't really make sense (to me at least, I'm not a huge SW fan). By contrast Warhammer 40,000 isn't licensed so the creators can pretty much do what they want with it, including re-writing it when they realized a pastiche of generic tropes doesn't cut it when trying to sell plastic.

So there's something in between licensing a property that wasn't originally developed as a game, and developing a generic set of rules. I think developing a property as a game is a great way to go, and that it's easier than paying licensing fees, and retrofitting a game around a property.

I think it's worth mentioning Richard Garfield's Roborally.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/18/roborally

It's a board game, but the original game came with pewter miniatures that you were supposed to paint, and you can equip your robot with all sorts of weapons, so that kind of makes it a miniature game. What's really unique about the game, is that you program a sequence of movements for your robot using randomly drawn cards, and until the next turn there's not a whole lot you can do. You might get pushed accidentally by an opponent, or end up being shot, or crushed.

So not only do the playing pieces portray robots, but they behave like them as well.

There are now better programming games out there (i.e. Robot Turtles)

 Nurglitch wrote:
Let's step away from the giant monster/robot genre for a second and look at X-Wing. It's basically Car Wars with a Star Wars skin. Part of the issue is that in order to keep it interesting, and keeping a core group of consumers interested, it needs to keep expanding its content. So there's all sorts of weird expanded-universe style ships and stuff coming out that doesn't really make sense (to me at least, I'm not a huge SW fan). By contrast Warhammer 40,000 isn't licensed so the creators can pretty much do what they want with it, including re-writing it when they realized a pastiche of generic tropes doesn't cut it when trying to sell plastic.

So there's something in between licensing a property that wasn't originally developed as a game, and developing a generic set of rules. I think developing a property as a game is a great way to go, and that it's easier than paying licensing fees, and retrofitting a game around a property.

I would agree with you that the impetus that creates X-wings problems is the need to keep expanding.
However, it's not the ships and expanded universe items that are the problem, as most players seem to really enjoy them. The problem is the huge glut of extra rules cross-polinating special abilities, etc. Whether because a company is trying to get the most out of a license or simply the weight or a legacy system weighed down by expansin (previous edition of 40k), it's nearly impossible to course correct such a trend without a reboot.

I do agree that there is a middle ground to be had but I'm not sure what it is.

Battletech represents one possibility where a game has enough granularity that new rules are mostly weapons and equipment that fit into the existing rules structure without funamentally changing the game. On the other hand, battletech is also a 30 year old game with aguably clunky mechanics that aren't up-to-snuffin the current market.

Kings of War is a possinbility. It deliberately constrains the rules to make a streamlined game, while still periodically releasing new armies, campaigns, etc. It tries as best it can to focus on generalship rather than list-building.

For myself I still gravitate toward Mech Attack for it's simplicity and flexibility. It's not a game that is going to support tournament play, a gaming community, etc, but that's really not the point of such games. Mech Attack, and almost all games by Ganesha and Osprey are experiences designed around a group of gamers having small campaigns or one-off play, which -despite our aspirations to the contrary- is all most of us have time for anyway.

 Nurglitch wrote:
Let's step away from the giant monster/robot genre for a second and look at X-Wing. It's basically Car Wars with a Star Wars skin.

As I understand it:
* X-wing is really Wings of WW1 / WW2 with a Star Wars skin, and
* the next Car Wars will be X-wing with a Car Wars skin

What's nice is that Star Wars as a a property is a thing with ridiculous amounts of toy figure / ship / whatnot, so it's easy to dole this out over years and years. Plus, it's a live thing so it never gets stale. Literally printing money because there's always something new and the dollar amounts are deliberately kept managable, while the quality is Collector-grade. I suspect X-wing might be the only game with a lower play : purchase ratio than GW. As brands go, hitching your wagon to the Disney-managed Star Wars is not a bad idea.

Doing a Marvel or Harry Potter game has similar potential.

Also:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
* X-wing is really Wings of WW1 / WW2 with a Star Wars skin, and
* the next Car Wars will be X-wing with a Car Wars skin

By that metric, Wings of War is a Blue Max with a "no hexes" skin.

Going back to giant robots (and monsters), apparently Monsterpocalypse is back as a hobby game. You could, in theory, play that strictly as robot vs robot.

If you hadn't mentioned the new Mpoc, I'd never have known. I wonder how the rules go.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
If you hadn't mentioned the new Mpoc, I'd never have known. I wonder how the rules go.

I've seen it mentioned that the old prepainted figures cannot be used with the new rules (in official games).

I'm curious to see how the game does with hobby miniatures that require assembly and paint. Most of the kaiju gamers I've encountered over the years aren't hobby gamers. I also know that a huge draw for many Monsterpocalypse players was the prepainted miniatures.

Yeah. If these had been preassembled PVC that probably would have been "better" from a gaming standpoint. I think PP is going to have trouble if they can't convert it into the next Warmahordes game they want it to be.

I still think as Mecha games go, Mech Attack has the best blend of rules fun vs. complexity, and the best looking line of (widely accessible) mecha is the Reaper CAV line. I much prefer the old metals, but the bones line is great when you need to buy two forces for most of your home games (like me) so need to cut costs.

Even the new plastics from Battletech, while affordable in the new lance packs (at places like the Warstore it ends up being 7 bucks for four mechs), are a bit "old fashioned' if my meaning is understood. They definitely look like small 80's metal models. CAV also benefits from a pretty good selection of vehicles and infantry that are nicely scaled against the mechs, as the entire line is equivalent to "N" scale in model railroading.

The old Mechwarrior clix figures are big and somewhat cheap, even now, but I find some mecha and definitely the vehicles are so over-armed it's not even funny, like they were covered in glue and rolled in a weapons pile. For a game like Mech Attack, its hard to even glance at a vehicle and determine which of the 3-5 weapons systems its actually 'armed' with as it's main weapon.

My other thought was CAV mechs with vehicles/flyers from Dropzone Commander.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Nurglitch wrote:
Let's step away from the giant monster/robot genre for a second and look at X-Wing. It's basically Car Wars with a Star Wars skin.

As I understand it:
* X-wing is really Wings of WW1 / WW2 with a Star Wars skin, and
* the next Car Wars will be X-wing with a Car Wars skin

What's nice is that Star Wars as a a property is a thing with ridiculous amounts of toy figure / ship / whatnot, so it's easy to dole this out over years and years. Plus, it's a live thing so it never gets stale. Literally printing money because there's always something new and the dollar amounts are deliberately kept managable, while the quality is Collector-grade. I suspect X-wing might be the only game with a lower play : purchase ratio than GW. As brands go, hitching your wagon to the Disney-managed Star Wars is not a bad idea.

Doing a Marvel or Harry Potter game has similar potential.

Albertorius wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
* X-wing is really Wings of WW1 / WW2 with a Star Wars skin, and
* the next Car Wars will be X-wing with a Car Wars skin

By that metric, Wings of War is a Blue Max with a "no hexes" skin.

I can't comment on Blue Max, but I think it's pretty well established that to make X-Wing, FFG took the "Wings" mechanics/rules/templates/etc that they already owned the rights too and tweaked things a bit for the Star Wars universe.

As for Car Wars, does it use templates?

I played in a game of GasLands last week. It uses Templates and Hot Wheels, but does so in a rather fast-play manner and with a pretty usefull "gear" mechanism that regulates speed, number of movement options, risk and number of actions per round. I rather enjoyed it. One of our members did a writeup with his impessions and pics.
https://www.chicagoskirmishwargames.com/blog/2018/03/05/a-hazardous-wind-gaslands-impressions/

 Eilif wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:
As I understand it:
* X-wing is really Wings of WW1 / WW2 with a Star Wars skin, and
* the next Car Wars will be X-wing with a Car Wars skin

As for Car Wars, does it use templates?

It's been a while, but that's the last thing I read, but we won't know for sure until SJG finalizes things, likely in the KS to be launched some time later this year.

 Eilif wrote:
I can't comment on Blue Max, but I think it's pretty well established that to make X-Wing, FFG took the "Wings" mechanics/rules/templates/etc that they already owned the rights too and tweaked things a bit for the Star Wars universe.

Blue Max is the predecessor of Wings of War, but with hexmaps, basically, and a couple of more involved rules (fuel rules were more complex).

You might say that the core of X-Wing is a stripped down Blue Max/WoW though. No elevations, no fuels, no ammo (except for ordnance), less involved damage...

Cool news about Monsterpocalypse!

I'm kinda challenged as seeing anything hexed as the predecessor of the Wings engine.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I'm kinda challenged as seeing anything hexed as the predecessor of the Wings engine.

Because... why? Because hexes don't work or something? They are actually much better than a clear mat to avoid discussions, "accidentally" moving more and things like that, so...

And well, Blue Max planes didn't have a maneuver dial, but they certainly had the next best thing: a maneuver chart.

http://youplay.it/play/bm_planesChart.asp?PlaneCode=SPSN

Because Wings is about the flightpath system, which doesn't use hexes at all.

Gaslands all ready is the car wars equivalent of X-wing.....

1. Manuever templates
2. Custom dice

.... all it needs is pre-made vehicles and custom driver cards. After reading the rules i wondered how Osprey got this and FFG did not.

https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2017/12/review-gaslands-osprey-games.html

Now, the question for this thread is if such a system would work for Giant Robot/Giant Monster battles too?

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Because Wings is about the flightpath system, which doesn't use hexes at all.

Blue Max by GDW, circa 1989 (Phil Hall) used hexes, but has the same "mechanic" as a flight path system where you select your maneuver, and then move your plane to that hex and orientation. Same thing as using the Xwing maneuver sticks, or the Wings of War cards, just on hexes. Heck, Blue Max in 1989 included a separate rulebook for using miniatures (sans hexes) for the game. And FFG had the license and remade Blue Max into a really fancy hex based game, but gutted it by only including 3 planes per side, with no campaign, rather than the dozens in the original. Nice production values, terrible execution.

If you played Blue Max, you can play Xwing, Wings of War, Check your 6!, whatever. The basic mechanics are similar, its the chrome that differentiates it: ammo, fuel, elevations, how damage is handled, etc. And each of the previous areas are optional add ons in Blue Max, so you can make it as detailed as you like. Gameplay doesn't suffer either way.

I've played and loved Battletech since it first came out, and still play it when I can. The looong games are a bother, where it takes half the afternoon to score those hits, or hit the right spot to down another mech. I prefer to play to missions, or turn length, or set some other agreed upon end for the game and how to decide the winner. We also play campaigns, which puts the brakes on "kill em all, last mech standing wins" games, because you'd never be able to replace or repair the stuff you lost. Of course, then its getting into a different kind of game. I've tried some of the other mecha games, all the way down to Mobile Frame Zero (lego mech battles), and none of them scratch the battletech itch. And until they sort the miniatures, I'll continue to happily use my cardboard stand-ups where my Wasp looks like a Wasp, and my Unseen can be seen, even if they are 2-D

Flightpath is momentum / limited turn.

Mechs and Monsters can stop and pivot on the spot.

Flightpath would work fine for a Flash vs Reverse Flash vs Johnny Quick game.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Flightpath is momentum / limited turn.

Mechs and Monsters can stop and pivot on the spot.

Flightpath would work fine for a Flash vs Reverse Flash vs Johnny Quick game.

Good point. How does Tanks! handle that aspect? That is also a flight Path style system IIRC but for tanks which can not only stop and pivot, but also rotate a turret.

 Easy E wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Flightpath is momentum / limited turn.

Mechs and Monsters can stop and pivot on the spot.

Good point. How does Tanks! handle that aspect? That is also a flight Path style system IIRC but for tanks which can not only stop and pivot, but also rotate a turret.

http://tanks.gf9games.com/HowToPlay/tabid/117/entryid/74/movement-basics.aspx

It's not really flightpath - it's just using the Wings Initiiative.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Because Wings is about the flightpath system, which doesn't use hexes at all.

It introduces human error, yes. Other than that... it's the exact same mechanic.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Flightpath is momentum / limited turn.

Mechs and Monsters can stop and pivot on the spot.

Good point. How does Tanks! handle that aspect? That is also a flight Path style system IIRC but for tanks which can not only stop and pivot, but also rotate a turret.

http://tanks.gf9games.com/HowToPlay/tabid/117/entryid/74/movement-basics.aspx

It's not really flightpath - it's just using the Wings Initiiative.

Thanks for the link. That was really helpful. I could easily see such a system with giant Robots/Kaiju!

I will have to move future developments into the Game Design section.

Man, I am really pondering getting back into Mech Attack lately for some mecha gaming, I bought the rules way back when they came out and assembled some of the paper minis, but then life got in the way, and I never really liked the 2.5d mechs, even though the swappable weapon aspect was really neat.

Now that I went back and took another look, by adding in the house rules for flyers, VTOLs, etc, Mech Attack really would make for a much more accessible way to play "Battletech Lite". It's a shame to ignore such a detailed and evocative gaming universe just because the rules are so intimidating.

I'm thinking of getting several of the new Lance packs for Battletech Alpha Strike as each one has 4 mechs for about 8 bucks online, and then buying some minis from Microworld Games for VTOLs and Tanks as they have some really neat ones for probably the best price on the net for vehicles in 6mm stuff. I have lots of papercraft 6mm buildings, so that's easy.

Swappable weapons was one of the big things for my Titanomachina game, nearing production, but it's strictly robots for now.