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My 2 Cents,

A Universal Build Your Own Troops Tabletop Skirmish Game is a great idea. LIke others have pointed out, to varying degress of success, it's already been attempted.

Ganesha Games - Quick and fun, but I feel it's more of excuse to do light Role play with any particular figures you own. Something you can teach your kids, or friends, in a single night of gameplay, great for small skirmishes, but nothing really army sized.

2 Hour Wargames - I understand why the Reaction system is popular with some people, but I find it cumbersome, and not intuitive, for anything beyond All Things Zombie. Again more suited for light role playing with miniatures, and not army sized battles.

Shockforce/War Engine/GWAR by Demonblade Games/Dark Tortise Productions/Aaron Overton - Good Core Rules for tabletop battles. Designed mostly for skirmish, but handles 40K sized battles, about as well as 40K does, but it's out of print. They've had plans to re-release Warengine as a Fantasy Game, a WWII game, modern, etc... but Honestly I think they just have fun working on army rules for their own play and haven't had the energy, or funds, to push for it to be published again.
Shockforce had a minaitures line, but Diamond Distribution dropped them when they failed to reach pre-order quotas, so the game limped along for a few years by word of mouth sales. GWAR used what was essentially Shockforce 2.0 rules in a setting no one but GWAR fans cared about. Shockforce 2.0 was released briefly and then the company closed it doors. War Engine was the core rules put up on the internet to help encourage play to continue. The Wiki and rules eventually dissapeared. Honestly, I think they are hoping to turn a profit on it again, someday.
I playtested for Demonblade Games, and ran Demos for Shockforce 1st edition, so I might seem a little biased, but it's honestly my favorite of the bunch.


A universal game, without a setting will have a niche audience. The hard part would be selling miniatures makers that your game is worth them supporting, without them profiting from it some how,

Have you guys take a look to FUBAR rules? Its only one page or two and it uses D6.

FUBAR is cool, but it's abstract to the extreme.
http://thegamesshed.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/fubar-one-page-sfmodern-rules/
I don't think it has enough granularity for a company to be convinced that it would feature their models in a unique way. It's almost Panzer 8 (http://panzer8.weebly.com/) in it's simplicity.

In the Emperor's Name (by the same authors) is more granular, but it can't handle the number of units that FUBAR can. Still, both are worth trying out, as (Despite ITEN's 40k setting) they are both completely generic and flexible.

What I mean is using FUBAR as a startup for developing and extending the open source rules up to 20 pages. The guys at Theminiaturepage forum consider seven pages as a normal for a good skirmish game rules.

 Capt. Camping wrote:
What I mean is using FUBAR as a startup for developing and extending the open source rules up to 20 pages. The guys at Theminiaturepage forum consider seven pages as a normal for a good skirmish game rules.

I'm a TMP guy too and 7 pages does it for me (you could probably fit most of Song of Blades and Heroes core rules on 7 pages), but 2 pages (FUBAR) is pretty darn short to be a commercial success. It's a very elegant and simple ruleset, and that's kind of the point. I'm just not sure how it could be expanded to the size of a sellable ruleset and still be FUBAR.

Off topic a bit...

What might be cool to see is the best and most highly regarded ultra-simple homebrew or free rulesets issued in one book.

The idea is to have this for free to download and have contributions. See for example Wordpress development.

 Capt. Camping wrote:
The idea is to have this for free to download and have contributions. See for example Wordpress development.

Well, an idea is for it to be that way, yes. While that is the model that I'm using, from the thread you can see that there are plenty of other equally valid suggestions for this sort of model.

Someone did ask, though, what is in it for the designer to create and maintain such a system. For myself, it's partially just that I enjoy doing it: I love the design process and while I was in a major block for a number of years, I'm fully back in the swing and enjoying myself as much as I did when I wrote the first edition. That said, one can't really expect to do this sort of thing for free, forever... and no, I'm not expecting to do that either. However, there are a few things that I'm planning on to help in that regard. I'll share the first idea here for others who might be interested in the same.

For most designers, their goal is to make a game and then make the money off of selling miniatures. That's not my goal as I just don't have the financial wherewithal to do so and it defeats the philosophy of the game, anyways, as in my experience whenever a system has "official" miniatures, players tend towards being fixated on those being the ONLY miniatures to use. So, I'm just going to sell the rules... but they're still going to be free.

"Wha??"

There's a precedence for this sort of thing: webcomics. There are a number of very successful artists who have followed this model: they produce their content for free, as daily updates in their case (in my case it'll be monthly). After a certain amount of time has passed (usually when there's enough content to fill a book), they put together a compilation book and sell it. Fans that want to support the artist and/or want a printed copy for gifting or travel purposes buy it and have a hard copy of the work. That's what I'm going to be doing with the rules: once the Alpha Release is complete (which it will be in a couple of months), I'll be firing up a Kickstarter for the book. The initial goal will be to create a "pretty" PDF version (high quality art, professional layout, automatic updating if I can, etc) and a stretch goal will be the physical book. People that want to support the existence of a quality rules system that is independent of the whims of miniature companies can support it, as can those that enjoy the heft and convenience of a physical book versus a PDF (that is still somewhat slower to navigate than a printed copy). As I continue to create content (army lists, new rules, variations on the game to add a narrative version or to support other scales, etc) new compilations can be printed to meet whatever demand exists for those.*

There are other things that will help with keeping the motivation going, as well, such as trading miniatures for ad space on the site (I'm a hobbyist first and foremost, so more stuff to convert and paint is always welcome, and the game's main reason to exist is to support the hobby) as well as simply continuing to refine my design skills to maybe get hired on to write something for a larger publisher.

So... that's why I'm doing this: not to rake in the dough (my wife and I both work in Tech, so we're doing okay when one of us isn't laid off) but just to help put something good back into the hobby.

*: another way to view it is that after I finish the Alpha Release, the website will turn into a free version of White Dwarf Before It Sucked: lots of new rules, with periodic compilations of those rules being sold in a convenient all-in-one format.