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 Talys wrote:
@infinite_array - I don't want to get into an argument of semantics with you, so I'll just ask -- what do you call a hobbyist interested in 40k for modelling, not gaming purposes?

Well, like I said before - that person's a modeler. Their interest lies in modeling miniatures, and not wargaming.

To your other, valid point, I think there are indeed people who model collections first, and game as a secondary hobby, and these people are no less or more hobbyists than the reverse. I guess you could say collecting the miniatures and imagining them painted and battle ready is also a hobby, as is lining up shrinkwrapped boxes on the shelf, so I retract what I said about accumulating boxes of stuff as not being a hobby.

I'm confused as to where you've pulled this from, and I'm not sure what is has to do with this discussion. It sounds more like someone collecting actions figures than miniature wargaming.

I don't think it's healthy for GW to ONLY have these customers, or even mostly derive its revenue from these customers. Among other things that's a way to lose mindshare and, eventually, relevance.

On this, I'll happily agree with you.

 infinite_array wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:

Currently, though, Historicals are going through a bit of a slump.

Uhm, what?

We're seeing plenty of new historical rulesets and miniature lines hitting the market every month. And the release of DBA 3 shows that the WRG guys are still working on their games.

Going by what we see being run at conventions that cater to historical gamers.

Not to mention what we see at conventions period.

DBA is seeing a SLIGHT resurgence. Looking at traffic on the DBA Yahoo Group, and the DBA website Fanaticus, there has been only a slight uptick in the number of posts.

And DBA3 will be the last official version of the game by Phil Barker. He is into his 80s and is reportedly not doing well.

Overall, though, given that from the 1980s through the early-00s, one could go to almost any convention and see a WRG or DBx tournament with dozens to hundreds (at Historicon) players, yet we now see that the tournaments that used to draw dozens of players are now seeing single to low-double digit attendance, and the tournaments at conventions like Little Wars, Fall In, or Historicon dwindle to just a dozen or two players (and some games no longer being played at all), then there is a "slump."

WWII gaming is currently seeing a slight increase in popularity, and Napoleonics, or SYW period gaming does not appear to be changing much.

But the Ancients and Medieval Periods are seeing much less popularity than they used to enjoy, and there is a Fragmentation in the Historical Community over a Rules Standard, driven as much by the failing of the older standard from the increasing size of miniatures, as it is simply older systems falling from favor with new research being done on the historical periods involved.

Also, from the reported sales of Historical Ancients/Medieval miniatures makers, such as Essex, Old Glory, Xyston, or Corvus Belli (which simply faded away, even though providing what were among the best 15mm ancients ever produced), which have reported a decline in sales over the last few years.

This is something that we saw a bit of around 1992 when DBM took over from WRG 6th/7th editions (when people were unhappy with 7th edition, and before DBM had come out), but not nearly to this extent.

MB

Historicon reported, last year, that they had an expanded list of tournaments at their convention. Some of them (like the HotT tournament) actually shifted from fantasy to historical settings, and the only outright non-historical tournament was War Gods of Aegyptus.

The fragmentation, I believe, is the result of the (relative) death of WAB for 28mm, and the resulting fallout. Fragmentation does not mean a decreasing number of players, but an increasing number of rules being played, with some attempting to climb to the top of the heap. I distinctly remember both Clash of Empire and War & Conquest being hailed as the successors of WAB, but much like the follows of Alexander, they've conquered their own kingdoms rather than establishing a new empire. Again, a wealth of new rules isn't exactly a bad thing - it just means less players are dedicated to each ruleset. But is it not a distinct advantage of many historical rulesets that they either share basing methods or are lax in basing requirements?

I don't believe you can use Corvus Belli as an example of declining historical miniature sales (despite my discontent with the hiatus of their 15mm historical line. I was able to find a Ancient British DBA army set at a recent convention and snapped that up without a moment's thought. But I digress...) Corvus Belli also had a Fantasy range as well, and I think it could be argued that Fantasy wargaming is going very strong these days. CB abandoned both their Warcrow and Historical lines in favor of focusing on their main source of income, Infinity.

 infinite_array wrote:

To your other, valid point, I think there are indeed people who model collections first, and game as a secondary hobby, and these people are no less or more hobbyists than the reverse. I guess you could say collecting the miniatures and imagining them painted and battle ready is also a hobby, as is lining up shrinkwrapped boxes on the shelf, so I retract what I said about accumulating boxes of stuff as not being a hobby.

I'm confused as to where you've pulled this from, and I'm not sure what is has to do with this discussion. It sounds more like someone collecting actions figures than miniature wargaming.

At one point there was some back and forth as to whether miniature wargaming was more about the collecting/modelling miniatures or wargaming. But anyways, it's not important. I do think that the primary collector-hobbyist, primary-modelling hobbyist, and primary gaming-hobbyist are equally important. I don't know how the groups, taken as a whole, rank in profitability. For example, the guy who spends $30,000 a year by snagging everything GW and its subsidiaries produce in multiples is no doubt highly profitable, but there are very few like him. But there might be a lot of guys who spend $10,000 a year (and shelving a lot of it). As a whole they could be very significant revenue. Or not.

Tyron wrote:
Can you provide a logical reason why he is doing all this?

In my view WHFB sales probably have fallen to the level that the game is no longer profitable to support. GW have accepted it is a failure, and rather than put a lot of time and effort into redeveloping what is a partially toxic brand, they have decided to write something new that can take over useful assets from WHFB without a lot of cost.

That product is AOS, a very simple game, aimed at newcomers to wargames and casual gamers, obviously written very quickly, that offers a way to reabsorb all the existing WHFB models into a new, simple system. The special rules about shouting and declaiming slogans, are ideal for the kiddy market.

All the rules and scrolls are available free online, an instant taster for people like me, who gave up Fantasy in 2nd edition because I hated Herohammer. I can d/l everything and play some trial games using figures from other systems. If I don't like the shouting rules, or other flaws (base to base, etc) I have the experience and confidence to house rule them away.

To make a WHFB kit into an AOS kit, all GW need to do is substitute the square bases with the new round ones, and print new packaging.

The only flaw in this concept, is that newcomers need some guidance to the relative strengths of units and armies or they will be quickly dismayed by stupid walkover battles. This is achieved in AOS by (1) the boxed starter set is balanced, and (2) the official scenarios will be fairly balanced.

Obviously tournament players are left swinging in the wind, but it has been obvious for some years that GW doesn't care about them anyway.

Most of the money will come from model kit sales. Reaction to the new Sigmarines has been very positive, even people who dislike the rules are buying the figures for 40K armies. (It has to be said, the figures in the boxed set are very cheap by GW standards.) Plus, if GW feel the market will bear it, they can issue special edition compendiums of fluff, scenarios and war scrolls, that will be bought by completists.

In summary, Fantasy has been relaunched with a clear target market, at minimum cost to GW or the player, and ongoing support will be equally cheap to maintain.

The only thing that could go wrong is mistaking the potential of the kiddy and super fan markets.

@infinite your suggestion that gamers are somehow more significant than collectors is, frankly wrong, and mildly insulting to some. We all collect or have collected toy soldiers, that is why we are here. But what you do with them is up to you, and no ones hobby is more prestigious than any one elses. Action figures are as close to miniatures as wargames are to chess. Similarities yes, but reductive to suggest they are the same.

Whatever reasons Corvus Belli gave tends to prove the point:

The historical sites were not doing well enough to justify their continuation.

As for the "flowering of different rules sets," all that means is that no one set of rules has the income that WRG did in their heyday (if people want to mention another mis-managed company).

And an increase in the number of tournaments means nothing if the total number of players involved declines (as it seems to have done).

I can go from two games with five hundred players each to ten games with two dozen players each, and that is still a 75% reduction in the number of players.

And that number of players may not be enough to support the rules set (as many of these rules authors are discovering).

MB

Personally I regard myself as a wargamer rather than a collector. I have never bought models for display only. Every single figure I have ever bought was with the view of using it in a game (RPG, skirmish or mass battle) of some sort. I used to make model kits of planes for display when I was a boy, but then I turned to wargames, and if I buy kits now it is with the idea of using them in a game.

That said, like many wargamers and modellers, I have a lot of stuff stashed away in the attic that I never got around to doing anything with. Some of it has been through a number of house moves over the years. The most extreme example is a couple of boxes of Rouge Trader era Space Marines, both metal and plastic, that I rediscovered when moving house two and a half years ago.

I must have bought them in the late 1980s, removed them from their packaging and packed them into cartons, then ignored them for 25 years while being distracted by many other projects.

Nostalgia apart, GW have the money from those figures, and they don't really care why I bought them.

I also have many more rulebooks than I need or play with. When you can't find time and space to play a game, or paint figures, reading a rulebook gives you a bit of hobby involvement.

even if you game with your miniatures, you have to collect those miniatures first...
i'm just saying that calling someone ignorant for saying that miniature wargaming is a collecting hobby first, and a gaming hobby second, is rude and unnecessary...
i would think that we all, for the most part, would want to be more inclusive to fellow hobbyists, but this new release has been nothing if not polarizing, and people have said a lot of stuff in the heat of the moment ...

cheers
jah

@JamesY.
I think the point trying to be made, was that rule sets should ADD value to the product range for people who want to play war games with war game rule sets.
The fact the extreme ends of the spectrum cover the majority of people in between , mean that rules and minatures are equally important.

So writing rules specifically for people who do not play or do not think the rules are all that important .
Although much easier , is not going to grow market share when other companies provide good rules and equally good minatures(subjective appearance aside.)

What has happened over the last 10 years is GW plc has lost sales volumes , as players move to other companies offering rule set which offer added value through the GOOD rule sets they sell.

And so GW plc remaining customers have to pay more each year to make up for falling sales volumes.

The feeling that collectors are rewarding GW plc for writing crappy rules is common among some players.
And some collectors really can not see what they are whinging about.As nothing apart from the retail price has changed negatively for them.

However, what if in an alternate reality it had been the other way?

Before you can buy GW plc minatures you want to paint .(Still awesome art work and back ground narrative, some things would never change..)

You have to buy lots of books you do not really want to read.Most people would have have to buy at least £300 worth of books and skim read them so they know enough about the rules to allow them to buy the GW minatures they really want to paint in a GW store.

Then you have to buy the boxes of minatures that are at least DOUBLE the price of other minatures.(Some things never change ...)
And when you open up the box to finally paint the minatures you have been looking forward to for ages...
Its just a box of wire frames modeling clay and some basic sculpting tools.

When you complain that the way GW plc advertise and sell the box of minatures implies it is fully formed and ready to paint , they say' well we do not cater for the people who want to just get on and paint.
We expect people to 'sculpt a narrative minature' with the products we sell them.

And the players who just stick paper on the wire frames with the name of the model written on say.
'The rules are solid, why are you winging about having to put a bit of effort in to the part of the hobby we do not care about?'

Perhaps this may let collectors understand what GW plc have done the war gamers who used to enjoy GW product?

`

 Peregrine wrote:

Deadnight wrote:
at least in their minds. whatever they do, the internets will rip it to shreds.

IOW, GW sucks at writing rules so they'd rather ragequit and publish obvious garbage instead. Why are you defending this behavior?

Just because I'm not 'all the negative, all the time' does not mean I'm defending it. I'm just offering an alternative narrative. It's not perfect, it's not even good, but if you're willing, and put (a lot of) effort into personalising it, you can get something out of it.

I sympathise with the 'type of gaming' gw wants to encourage. I certainly don't agree with their methods.

 Peregrine wrote:

GW seem to want to put the game in your hands, and leave the responsibility for what kind of games get played up to the players. this isnt bad.

Of course it's bad. GW isn't encouraging customization, they're just publishing a half-finished product and saying "do the rest yourself". A good open-ended game provides a solid foundation of careful balance and well-functioning rules so that you can devote all of your time and effort to building the game experience you want instead of trying to fix basic things like "how many knights equal one dragon" or "WTF do I do if my models are on 1" bases". With AoS GW has abandoned this responsibility entirely. It's garbage for competitive play, it's garbage for pickup gaming, and it's garbage for "casual" scenario gaming.

Oh I'm not disagreeing. Models on top of bases is silly. No points costs can work (a lot of historicals go this route) but it does not work in the way they've rolled it out here.

It's good for a kids entry level game, maybe. And that seems to be the target. And it can work, with a lot of effort outside of pugs and tournaments, even if other systems are still better.

 Peregrine wrote:

too many people dont want the responsibility for ensuring their opponent has a good time, and that the game is 'fun'.

Well yes, because it's a pain to deal with. Why should I have to spend a bunch of time carefully analyzing our respective armies just to have a basic pickup game? If I'm going to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a game I think I'm justified in expecting it to work "out of the box" without having to be an amateur game designer just to ensure that both players have fun.

Why base it around a pick up game? That's not the type of game gw want to push. We play historicals et. at at mates house - and we discuss what kind of game/scenario we'd like ahead of time. We all get input and we all get our chance to run a game. Do we just slap down armies? No, we put down what makes sense and what's appropriate given the context of the scenario- again, discussed pre game. It's our responsibilit to ensure both sides get to act as participants and that no one side has an overwhelming advantage. It's the same here, I think. You are both responsible for both armies, not just the part you slap down in your deployment zone. Like I said, it puts the responsibilities with the players, not with the game mechanics.

Expecting things to work outside of the box isn't wrong And I'm totally on board with you. But not everything needs to be. at the same time, some thing's require assembly. Things like kit cars to cake baking. And are bought for those exact reasons. So people enjoy all that tinkering and shuffling about with the rules - and the process of creation - I love my tourneys and pugs, but I also enjoy the creative buzz of doing it myself. Some people don't like buying pre made cakes in shops and enjoy cooking up their own. (Then again, One could argue those kits should be built of functional components- your cake should have decent ingredients :p) And in not the only one who enjoys that type of game.

And I still won't be buying aos! Those sigmarites remind me of the guards in Vivec in eldar scrolls 3: morrowind! No thanks.

 Peregrine wrote:

but maybe that is the intent.

Of course that's the intent. GW wanted to reboot WHFB, and they wanted to do it in a way that minimized development costs. AoS is pretty obviously a minimal-effort "game" where GW published the first draft without any playtesting or editing. It accomplishes their goal of minimizing costs, but that doesn't mean it's a good game.

Agreed.

 Peregrine wrote:

there are plenty custom rules/scenarios and mission makers out there.use them, or make up your own. be assertive and take control of your own gaming. at least thats how id push it.

I fail to see how "create your own game that is loosely based on AoS" is a reasonable idea.

Fair enough. And you're not wrong for wanting an organised play, right out of the box kind of game. But that is only one type of gaming. There is more than that out there.and there are more types of gsmees thsn just you, or I. Like I said, some people enjoy tinkering away and 'personalising' their games. They're not wrong. They have a very open ended (ie half finished!) game on their hands that is begging to be tinkered with. There are a lot of different directions to go. It's the whole 'ingredients of the cake' scenario. Now go and do it yourself.

There's another aspect to this.

We don't want to do the game designer's job, because we have our own jobs and lives beyond gaming and the hobby.

Hell, I'm already making my own game on the side, so that's me with a full time job, and every waking hour spent not at that job is spent working on my game. Where am I, or anyone supposed to find the time to tinker with someone else's half-baked rules when all I want to do is play in the limited time I have to play?

I wouldn't expect someone else to fix my own game designs on their own time, why would I want to do it on my valuable time?

That's why I think that trying to fix someone else's mistake is a bad idea. There are other games out there that are worth looking into, and trying those out will do more for the industry and community as a whole than trying to latch on even harder to GW. It spread the money out, creates more community, and starts introducing the idea that there is a wider universe of games to play.

The only reason why we've got this hot thread here talking about a game that will obviously fail is that it's GW's monolithic presence that has convinced us that we must only play the most popular game.

As for tinkering in general, sure do it. But we are talking about packaged games here for people who enjoy that element.

I've thought of a way to make Warhammer models compatible with the Age of Sigmar rules (assuming that's still a problem).

I'll just play the Age of Sigmar rules with Warhammer models, with my opponent doing the same.

Sacred feth! Suddenly I don't need to put all my Warhammer models on ebay at a thumping loss in a fit of petulant rage, and I'm a genius and an out-of-the-box thinker.

My answer to the defects in the rules is that they are free and you can't expect the same amount of quality and support for them. GW actually have done a fair bit of work to create the war scrolls for all existing WHFB armies, which obviously is intended to keep existing Fantasy players on board.

As far as collectors (who IMO are people for which completing a set is the objective, while a gamer is buying to create a specific army), GW can't know who buys a model and why, they only know how popular it is relative to others in the range. So the idea that collectors need to pay more to offset crappy rules driving players away is meaningless in terms of GW's marketing behaviour.

Part of me still thinks this is a big Frakk you to all the fans of Fantasy...

GW exploded years of fluff, characters, stories. Made hours painting, reading, assembling and buying stuff pratically worthless.

Many say " But your old models still exist, you can still play with them in AoS". Yes, as a lunatic that speaks to my models, dance, let my facil hair go nuts and pretend to ride in an imaginary horse.

It is fun. Once or twice. But these jokes get boring real fast. Just like in Munchkin( the game that inspired AoS), the 10th time you read the same funny rule made for making fun of an rpg/ nerd culture fact or facet, you just pass over it as quickly as possible.

There's no rules for constructing armies. Is just "play whatever you want". Games have rules. If something has no rules giving it boundaries, is not a game- it's child's play that the floor is on fire.

Many say " We can make some kind of balancing system- like using wounds". But most of us don't want to. We don't want to pay to finnish the design of a game.

I was supe hyped about AoS. I never played fantasy, so a game that had that fantasy feel, easier rules and awesome models it's what I wanted. But GW thought that, instead of giving us simpler rules, they should give almost no rules at all. it's like there's no middle ground: they either make overcomplicated and bloated monstrosities, or they make this garbage of a ruleset.

In one fell move, GW lost the rank and file battle system appeal, and also lost the ruleset appeal. They now can't compete with Mantic, or PP/CB/Wyrd.

Guess I'll be waiting until the Age of Sigmar- 2nd edition to try and join this game.

 NoPoet wrote:
I
Sacred feth! Suddenly I don't need to put all my Warhammer models on ebay at a thumping loss in a fit of petulant rage, and I'm a genius and an out-of-the-box thinker.

Why don't I just use my sons Lego and transformers instead! Afterall they are more in keeping with the rules.

Most of my Warhammer went on Ebay a long time ago.

I love that people always assume if GW went under, someone else would pick it up so they would still have their game.

GW could choose to let the world burn and tank the whole thing.

Plenty of people wanted WotC to move Heroscape somewhere else to a company that would support it, like FFG. WotC choose to let it burn and we have no Heroscape.

GW could do the same or simply sell the IP for the black library and nothing else.

Time 2 Roll wrote:


GW could do the same or simply sell the IP for the black library and nothing else.

The other option is much more realistic. Kirby, and other employees, have shown an open disinterest in the customer base or the brand and its quality and they're ready to do anything for cash. Kirby most likely knows that what he's doing isn't leading anywhere good and thus plans very short-term. Him bailing out by selling the brand at a high price to end with tons of bonus cash is much more likely.

Time 2 Roll wrote:
I love that people always assume if GW went under, someone else would pick it up so they would still have their game.

GW could choose to let the world burn and tank the whole thing.

Plenty of people wanted WotC to move Heroscape somewhere else to a company that would support it, like FFG. WotC choose to let it burn and we have no Heroscape.

GW could do the same or simply sell the IP for the black library and nothing else.

Hasbro holds on to IP - even if they never, ever use it again.

Sometimes they will have a decade pass between incarnations of some IP - G.I. Joe went from being a foot tall and having a Kung-Fu Grip to being a much smaller action figure.

Some IP is never seen again.

The only IP that I can think of that Hasbro has let lapse were some that they acquired when they bought out Milton Bradley - HeroQuest being an example.

The Auld Grump - I would love to see some of the old Avalon Hill properties come back...

Time 2 Roll wrote:

GW could choose to let the world burn and tank the whole thing.

They just did.......

Deadnight wrote:
Why base it around a pick up game? That's not the type of game gw want to push. We play historicals et. at at mates house - and we discuss what kind of game/scenario we'd like ahead of time. We all get input and we all get our chance to run a game. Do we just slap down armies? No, we put down what makes sense and what's appropriate given the context of the scenario- again, discussed pre game. It's our responsibilit to ensure both sides get to act as participants and that no one side has an overwhelming advantage. It's the same here, I think. You are both responsible for both armies, not just the part you slap down in your deployment zone. Like I said, it puts the responsibilities with the players, not with the game mechanics.

This is how we play about 3/4 of our 40k games, actually. We find that 40k is much more enjoyable when it's relatively planned. We don't agree on every unit that's going to be fielded, but often, we'll design the scenario in advance, and sketch out our own guidelines for lists and deployment, and the battle forces are quite often asymmetric (points-wise) because one side or the other has positional or entrenchment advantages, or because one side is going to feature a disproportionate number of suboptimal units (eg we just want to field dreadnoughts), or a suboptimal faction/build vs very strong faction (eg first company terminators assault necron tombworld and must kill overlord), or a survive-the-swarm (essentially unlimited orks vs space marines at center of table; don't get tabled in 6 turns, T7 reinforcements arrive and Orks auto-lose).

It's a lot more varied than "You bring Ultramarines, I bring CWE, we set up terrain, roll on table and kill!". Sometimes the points can be as disproportionate as 3:1, and the side with more points may still lose. Also, sometimes, we'll trade scenarios -- a pair of us will design something for another pair of friends, and we'll swap, so that we don't know what the scenario is ahead of time.

I understand the whole planned game philosophy really well. It works if you're willing to put the effort into it. However, unless every unit in an army is of relatively equivalent value, some kind of indication of their relative strengths is extremely helpful (especially if we've not played the unit before), and also gives us the ability to list-build, which is fun all by itself.

Well, as long as you guys are happy....

Games Workshop is a great company for managing to keep the hobby alive nowadays.

My group isn't big on pickup games.

We have some casual players in the KoW games - and they are doing okay. (My good lady started as a casual player.) Most of the armies are repurposed from Warhammer. (And most of the casual players are borrowing their armies from us crusty altacockers that have spares.)

Several of us have histories in game design or as TOs.

Having points makes it easier to create scenarios - even when the scenarios are asymmetric. (Because the dwarfs have been doing so well we are currently doing a Fall of the Dwarfs scenario - to have a clean start with the new edition in a few weeks. 2,000 points of dwarfs, 3,000 points of orcs and allies. Routed orc and ally units come back as reinforcements. Dwarf victory is determined by how long it takes for them to fall....)

Being aimed at casual play is not a good reason not to have a well balanced set of rules.

The Auld Grump

I've changed my opinion from the first page. It doesn't make me sad anymore. This whole "game" that GW has put out is a travesty. Half-assed rules, ridiculous new sculpts, obliteration of the old fluff in favor of generic garbage and fantasy space marines. It boggles my mind that anyone can defend it. Any positive achievements over GW's 30+ year history have just been called into question by their publishing of Age of Sigmarines.

I hope it does hurt them. I hope that Kirby, Roundtree et al. have to contend with the fact that publishing this "game" significantly, if not fatally, wounded their company.

BlackwaterStudio wrote:
Games Workshop is a great company for managing to keep the hobby alive nowadays.

You're new, hi, take a little time to read around GW and their current state in relation to the rest of the wargaming hobby, see if you still feel the same.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 NoPoet wrote:
I
Sacred feth! Suddenly I don't need to put all my Warhammer models on ebay at a thumping loss in a fit of petulant rage, and I'm a genius and an out-of-the-box thinker.

Why don't I just use my sons Lego and transformers instead! Afterall they are more in keeping with the rules.

Most of my Warhammer went on Ebay a long time ago.

Because BrikWars is the Lego game, it even built on the concept of dumping out you Lego box and going for it. Just like AoS but you know BrikWars works at what it is meant to do.

You know, thinking about it some more I think that this is all a really chancy thing.

Everything seems to suggest it'll definitely be a short-term success, simply due to all the hype. At the same time it seems they've pissed off and alienated A LOT of people too.

So basically whether this is a real success that'll lead to more stuff or a flash in the pan seems to all ride on how they follow this up. The whole "make it up yourself" style has its audience (as some of the posts here show), but it seems to be a niche within a niche and most probably won't stick with it unless it's expanded in a way that makes it more structured. If they do and it's done well enough to get attention, it'll probably grow. Otherwise there won't actually be very far for this game to go, it'll probably grow old after a while and if it's expanded with more of the same, that could probably only last so long either.

But either way, they seem to be set for now. It's just a question of how long that will last.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

Time 2 Roll wrote:


The Auld Grump - I would love to see some of the old Avalon Hill properties come back...

I agree! I miss Avalon Hill. I still have a bunch of their games and intend to get back into playing them again through AHIKS.

 Vertrucio wrote:
There's another aspect to this.

We don't want to do the game designer's job, because we have our own jobs and lives beyond gaming and the hobby.

We?

So... You speak for everyone?

Not being snarky mate - you don't want to do the game designers job. And fair play. Neither do I, all the time. I also have a job, a life outside of gaming and lots of miles to run for my marathons. Friday gaming though - I can see the value of a half hour chat that preps the game... And for what it's worth, some people enjoy that tinkering, and building a game into something different each time.

 Vertrucio wrote:

Hell, I'm already making my own game on the side, so that's me with a full time job, and every waking hour spent not at that job is spent working on my game. Where am I, or anyone supposed to find the time to tinker with someone else's half-baked rules when all I want to do is play in the limited time I have to play?

I have a job, a life and lots of bits on the side too. The problem you face is that all your time goes to your game. Which is fair enough. I get it. When I'm doing the big miles before a marathon (you know - those 20mile ruls) for several months at a time, along with multiple long runs during the week, other things fall by the wayside. Gaming is one. It's a matter of juggling priorities. But don't confuse your priorities and commitments- especially regarding what you devote to your game- with the idea that neither you nor anyone else can find the time to tinker with a half baked set of rules.

To answer your question - take time out from your game. One evening away from it won't make it crash and burn. As for anyone else? Well, with our Friday night gaming - which is pretty laid back and far from 'out of the box' gaming, we just chat about it, and shoot some ideas to each other. Normally we play flames of war, but it's heavily house ruled and we've chucked and altered a bunch of stuff. We just chat about new ideas and implement them if they sound interesting. Aos is a really silly game (it's more like a drinking game than anything else...) but if I was told 'make it work for me and my group', well, that's how I'd go about doing it...

 Vertrucio wrote:

I wouldn't expect someone else to fix my own game designs on their own time, why would I want to do it on my valuable time?
.

And that's fair enough. But like I was saying earlier, maybe it's less about having a complete system, and more about a very basic framework, and you can do whatever you want with it? Fair enough - you want a complete system thst functions right out of the box, but not everyone wants or appreciates that rigidity....

And by the way, I'm not disagreeing with your pov. I feel the same. I'd rather have a decent set of rules to tinker with than the steaming pile of poo that is aos...

 Vertrucio wrote:

That's why I think that trying to fix someone else's mistake is a bad idea. There are other games out there that are worth looking into, and trying those out will do more for the industry and community as a whole than trying to latch on even harder to GW. It spread the money out, creates more community, and starts introducing the idea that there is a wider universe of games to play.

Agreed about other games point.

 Vertrucio wrote:

The only reason why we've got this hot thread here talking about a game that will obviously fail is that it's GW's monolithic presence that has convinced us that we must only play the most popular game.

Agreed. If this was a game by a new company, it would be laughed out,

 Vertrucio wrote:

As for tinkering in general, sure do it. But we are talking about packaged games here for people who enjoy that element.

I'm talking about both, actually. There are plenty of great packaged games out there. This isn't one of them. Approaching it from the perspective of playing it as a packaged game is silly; the only way of making it work is if you approach it from a diy perspective. In my mind, it's just different, I guess. It could be so much more though.