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The majority of my energy recently has been going into writing up a custom module for D&D. It's a good exercise in writing clear instructions whilst fitting as much story in as possible!

I must get back to the backburner at some point and maybe, just maybe, half-finish some of my games!

At a work exercise, we had to write directions for making coffee, then the instructor acted out the directions exactly as written.

That was an eye opening experience! Try it sometime.

 Valander wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

 The Warp Forge wrote:
Started making a small-scale TTWargame based around a D12 System for 40k in the style of DoWII but I'm enjoying the mechanics so much, I think I'm gonna make it into its own story and setting.

Glad to hear! Most designers start out trying to build a better 40K! Look at Andy Chambers! LOL

I've read several articles that have said a good way to start flexing your design muscles are to do tweaks on existing games. Sometimes it's easier to spot issues in other people's designs, and you're not as attached to stuff, so it's easier to toss and change mechanics up. One of the hardest, yet most important parts of game design is sometimes called "throwing out your babies."

More OT: I've not done any game design stuff lately. Been hunting down and gathering parts to build/update PC, partly in prep to get ZBrush so I can start learning digital sculpting to go along with my other plans...

Yeah, I'm already modding 5th edition but my D12 system is a whole different project. I'm thinking on making the setting for my own game more sci-fi Punk (Not Cyberpunk) Small-Scale Squad on Squad tabletop Wargame in a vein, tone and atmosphere similar to Rouge Trader back in 1st ed.

This weekend I did edits on the 1st Lay-outs of Wars of the Republic for Osprey. It was exciting to see which art they chose, and who provided miniature photos. It was nice seeing it as a "complete" package.

What's that? You want to pre-order it? Thanks! You can do that here....

https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/wars-of-the-republic-9781472844903/

Posted a WIP batrep for a space mecha game up on the blog today....

https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2021/05/battle-report-glittering-void-id-and.html

I went back and killed my babies on a War of the Worlds Survival Horror game today. It was a massacre, but the new version is much more thematic.

Edit: Also posted more Playtesting on Space Mecha games.....

https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2021/05/battle-report-glittering-void-targeted.html

You saved your babies to a separate document just in case they come in handy later, right?

This week I have been writing up the rules for my skirmish game so that I can playtest it. I have 2 different ideas for the turn structure so I'm writing up both so I can test both. I've been rewriting from scratch as my original notes became so cluttered, I could read halfway through a full set of rules before finding a note that just said "actually, no.", then finding the start of a new one!

Nurglitch wrote:
You saved your babies to a separate document just in case they come in handy later, right?

Standard practice! I have learned a lot better version control in the course of my career.

It's been consuming my time and attention for the last three months as I put it to bed and fought my way through to get it released on time!

At last, I can get back to design work again!

Today I've been working on an idea I've had for a game involving building doomsday weapons and holding the world to ransom. It's mainly card based, with some tokens for the board (possibly meeples, though I know people often dislike them!)

sculpted this dude that ive working for some weeks


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Finally got a buddy to come over and run through a playtest of the current WIP. Overall worked out well, and (as expected) identified some "babies to toss out," along with some possible tweak ideas, so I'll consider that a success.

Good work Valander! Getting your game on table is a huge milestone success.


I have been bitten by the RPG bug lately, so I sat down and wrote a 50K word RPG in about three weeks. It worked well so far with a few test runs, but next I will need a larger playtest.

I have also been bashing my head around the following:

1. Photos and artwork for a potential early 2022 release on the vault

2. Finished a playtest draft of a War of the Worlds survival horror game

3. Finishing models to support the release of Wars of the Republic from Osprey, which is available for pre-order on Amazon.

4. Whether making a free to play game is worth my time anymore

Mostly adding and noodling around in my concept folder to re-charge my brain before tackling some Campaign elements on a couple games.

 Easy E wrote:
Mostly adding and noodling around in my concept folder to re-charge my brain before tackling some Campaign elements on a couple games.

Campaigns are the hardest thing for me to grapple with. I know they're kind of a big part of a lot of modern skirmish games, but man, they just eat so much time in playtesting them thoroughly because of the wider variety of states you can wind up with. You have any tips for testing campaign rules? (That makes the assumption that all the rest of the mechanics are "done" whatever that means, and only really testing on the campaign growth and its affect on subsequent games.) Snowballing or rubber banding are the two hardest things for me to identify and deal with.

I am by NO means an expert, but here are a couple thoughts:

1. You must have catch-up mechanics to help avoid mis-matching

2. Use systems/processes that you know work as the baselines, i.e. steal from successful games

3. The campaign component is the PRIME place to tailor your game to a theme, period, or feel.

4. The core questions are; what happens to downed models, what do I get for surviving, and where does it all end?

Over the weekend I did a playtest on my old "platoon-level Steampunk wargame" for the first time since November 2019! In that time it has now morphed into a regimental-level Gunpowder Fantasy game (swords & sorcery + age of rifles, or as I put it to a friend, "if Bismarck was a warlock..."), as the system feels more realistic when the base unit is a Company instead of a section of troops, even if it is still only represented by a dozen 28mm models.

I made some rules adjustments on the fly, mostly debuffing certain abilities or weapons that felt too OP, and more properly clarifying the role of officers (who at the new formation level would be colonels instead of majors, which also feels more appropriate). Since moving house, I now finally have the space to play a game in a 6'x4' space instead of a 4'x4' space, and it really makes all the difference! Manoeuvre has become so much more tactical, weapon ranges feel right, and the area effect of an Officer (for the purposes of aiding activation and boosting Morale Value) can be the difference between holding on by the skin of your teeth or a whole flank collapsing as the units break and run.

In particular, I like how the "NCO's" function, attaching themselves to companies (though they will probably need a rename to suit the scale change). Doctors make damage bearable without making a company invulnerable, Song Majors can make an average Company the lynchpin of the battle-line without making the unit a tanky shooting-sink, and the Champion's 2 attacks in melee can give a unit the edge without making them irresistible on the charge (to be honest the Champion may be under-powered, more playtesting is needed).

It might not suit the playstyle of everyone, as it requires a little book-keeping at the beginning of every turn (working out each unit's MV and activating them in order, from highest to lowest), and players that don't like counters or trackers next to their units might want to have an off-table unit card, but the system itself, to me, is fairly watertight.

Next on the list is to upset that system by introducing unit profiles, which will allow for the introduction of fantasy racial traits for Elves, Dwarfs, Orcs and so on. Furthermore, I want to re-appraise the formations available to units - by increasing the scale of the game, a lot of individual model weapons, such as bayonets, have become largely irrelevant, meaning that, RAW, almost all of the formations are no longer of any use, or at least need re-writing to make them tactically viable. After a couple more playtests, I'd like to open the game up to a limited number of playtesters in an Open Alpha, to get feedback from other gamers and designers.

Apologies for the text-wall, but coming back to the system after 1.5 years and being able to relearn the core system quickly made me quite excited.

At the scale you are at, you may want to look at how Nappie and similar "Big Battalion" games use National Traits to adjust things rather than stat line mods.

I have been doing a bit of work on my skirmish wargame again, and have come up with a much better approach to close combat which better reflects the mechanics I've put together for shooting, so that it's not two entirely different mechanics to learn!

I'm now working on the finer points of how the units are presented (EG what stats they have, what order I want to present them in, and so on) so that I can make some trial units and do a playtest!

 Easy E wrote:
At the scale you are at, you may want to look at how Nappie and similar "Big Battalion" games use National Traits to adjust things rather than stat line mods.

Not to dominate the thread, but quickly: I had considered national traits, but I do believe that there should be a statline for units, and having a national trait is fine if your army is mono-racial, but you wanted to pull an Oathmark and have, say, a couple of Orc companies, and Elf company and the rest being Humans or Dwarves, then a single trait might not cut the mustard. The differences in statline would largely only be changing movement values, the MV value per model before training is factored in (Conscript, Regular and Guard training will confer additional MV to a Company), and perhaps a couple of race-specific abilities (Orcs being stronger on the charge, Elves being better disciplined and thus having a bonus to activation etc).

That assumes the physiological differences between orcs, humans, elves, and dwarves are meaningfully different. I know its a longstanding fantasy trope that orcs are all significantly stronger, elves are significantly faster, etc. etc. etc. but tbh I think thats all kind of a load of bs.

chaos0xomega wrote:
That assumes the physiological differences between orcs, humans, elves, and dwarves are meaningfully different. I know its a longstanding fantasy trope that orcs are all significantly stronger, elves are significantly faster, etc. etc. etc. but tbh I think thats all kind of a load of bs.

Making all factions the same is a good way to make a game homogenous and dull. Even chess has it's reasons for picking white or black!

Whilst "Orcs are strong, elves are fast, dwarves are stoic" etc. is a cliché, it's also a good way to make the decisions made about army choice matter for reasons except aesthetic. I resent the idea that, for example, if an orc wielding a greatsword makes an atatck, it can be expected to be as effective as a gnome with a greatsword. One should be better at it than the other.

Physiologically, orcs are usually more predisposed for muscle than elves. That's meaningful, if they are trying to do the same thing - lift a heavy object.

Right, but you're assuming the differences are *meaningful*, i.e. noticeable.

To put it into 40k terms, if you stat a baseline human warrior at strength 3 and you believe that an orcs predisposition to greater strength means that they will be stronger than a human, then you are presumably stating the orc at strength 4. Is the average orc really 33% stronger than the average human as suggested by the stat difference? Or is it really more like 5-10% stronger, which is more realistic and believable? And if it is only 5-10% stronger, can you justify exaggerating that to 33% by giving them the extra point of strength? Does a 5-10% difference in capability actually matter enough to warrant or justify representation if you ruleset also has to account for other critters, like say a giant or a dragon, that have a legitimate claim to being several times stronger than an actual human? Does your system have the granularity to even detect a 5-10% capability difference while simultaneously scaling across a wide enough spectrum to account for the strength of something as insignificant as a common housecat or as powerful as a giant or a dragon, etc?

To say nothing of the fact that its silly to assume that a predisposition leads to homogeneity. Put me next to a body builder and see how similar we are strength wise. It makes sense to assume that despite a genetic predisposition towards strength or speed or whatever orcs aren't going to all be stronger and elves aren't going to all be faster, etc. Even within real world militaries you will find huge gaps in strength and capability between any two soldiers. In medieval times (i.e. the era of fantasy) before the advent of concepts like basic training, physical fitness standards, or exercise, these gaps were even more pronounced - the average soldier up until about 100-150 years ago wasn't any stronger, faster, tougher, etc. than your average civilian.

Also, you need to play a wider variety of games if you think games which lack racial stat differences or whatever results in homogenous and dull gameplay.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Right, but you're assuming the differences are *meaningful*, i.e. noticeable.

To put it into 40k terms, if you stat a baseline human warrior at strength 3 and you believe that an orcs predisposition to greater strength means that they will be stronger than a human, then you are presumably stating the orc at strength 4. Is the average orc really 33% stronger than the average human as suggested by the stat difference? Or is it really more like 5-10% stronger, which is more realistic and believable? And if it is only 5-10% stronger, can you justify exaggerating that to 33% by giving them the extra point of strength? Does a 5-10% difference in capability actually matter enough to warrant or justify representation if you ruleset also has to account for other critters, like say a giant or a dragon, that have a legitimate claim to being several times stronger than an actual human? Does your system have the granularity to even detect a 5-10% capability difference while simultaneously scaling across a wide enough spectrum to account for the strength of something as insignificant as a common housecat or as powerful as a giant or a dragon, etc?

To say nothing of the fact that its silly to assume that a predisposition leads to homogeneity. Put me next to a body builder and see how similar we are strength wise. It makes sense to assume that despite a genetic predisposition towards strength or speed or whatever orcs aren't going to all be stronger and elves aren't going to all be faster, etc. Even within real world militaries you will find huge gaps in strength and capability between any two soldiers. In medieval times (i.e. the era of fantasy) before the advent of concepts like basic training, physical fitness standards, or exercise, these gaps were even more pronounced - the average soldier up until about 100-150 years ago wasn't any stronger, faster, tougher, etc. than your average civilian.

Also, you need to play a wider variety of games if you think games which lack racial stat differences or whatever results in homogenous and dull gameplay.

I just think that if you have the option to use dwarves, orcs, elves or humans, then it becomes a less interesting decision if the decision doesn't also impact the gameplay.

With the 33% strength difference, you are assuming that the strength operates on a scale starting at 0 strength = doesn't even have muscles, is just a skeleton, cannot move. Strength 0 could be the equivalent of the strength of a child, which is t osay they can move themselves and light objects but basically nothing else. I wouldn't say a teenager (Strength 1) is infinitely stronger than a child, but that's what you'd get by assuming it's a multiplicable scale, and not a numeric representation of a range.

If you assume that the only creatures worth giving strength stats are those expected to be involved in fighting, IE the warriors; dwarf, orc, elf, then you might make the weakest warrior (a gnome) strength 1 and the strongest (Orc) strength 10. That doesn't mean the orc is 10x stronger than the gnome, it just means they are a lot stronger than them.

As for having a range sufficient for cats to dragons, that all depends on the nature of your game! I agree that if your game focuses on the broader scale of things, with "people" fighting legendary monsters, giants, ogres, and mice, then their comparative strength is largely irrelevant - take the you next to a body builder point. In a competition of lifting weights, you're (I assume) not matched, but in a competition for fighting an enraged rhino with scythes on its flanks, the difference in strength between you is largely irrelevant compared to the strength of your foe - in its eyes, you're equal! But if you're looking solely at people fighting people, any slight difference in strength could be relevant!

As for assuming genetic predisposition to a specific trait, that's entirely up to the writer, and we tend to assume every person in a wargame unit is average - you don't tend to single out each individual models strengths and weaknesses!

As for the concept that the average soldier isn't stronger than a peasant, and that they had no training - where are you getting that info from? It's possible to tell the skeletons of archers from swordsmen simply by how much bone structure there is around one shoulder due to the muscles built up to fire the bows. That's due to their regular training in using their weapons.

If anything, the gap between civilian and soldier these days is more pronounced because the civilians are spending all their time sitting around, watching TV, eating junk food and getting fat, instead of turning a grindstone by hand for 4+ hours a day just to make enough flour to feed the kids, whilst also having to work a farm or a smithy or any manner of hard, physical labour. The peasants of yesteryear could take the civilians of nowadays in a fight, no contest!

 some bloke wrote:

As for the concept that the average soldier isn't stronger than a peasant, and that they had no training - where are you getting that info from?

Its historically true (ironically if you go back far enough to the ancient period sport and physical training becomes more relevant again though still not to todays standards). For much of the past 1000-1500 or so years, up until relatively recently, being fit for service meant you had four limbs, two eyes, and no obvious physical ailments or mental debilitations. There was no requirement to run 1.5 miles in under 10 minutes or do 40 pushups and 60 situps. When you were drafted into service you weren't put on an exercise regimen to make you strong and fit enough to keep up on a march while lugging all your kit, etc. You were simply expected to do as you were told or suffer the consequences if you didn't have the physical capability to do so.

In many cases, if your role in a military formation required some special skill or physical capability, those skills and abilities were essentially pre-existing and identified when you were inducted based on simple tests (i.e. lift this stone, or carry that sheep over your back across this stone wall, etc.). I.E. If you were made to be a javelin thrower it was because your build at induction was conducive to being one. If you were a pikemen it was because your build was again conducive to being one. If you were an archer or a horseman it was because you already knew how to use a bow or ride a horse (and often you already had a horse available to ride). etc. etc. etc. Any training you received as part of a military force in those days (which varied from not a lot to quite a bit over time, place, and how special you were), were focused on developing skills, technique, and discipline i.e. drill, not on development of strength, stamina, or fitness.

A good example of this is running. Until recently you basically only ever ran for survival (be it running from something or because you had to run long-distance to hunting grounds, etc. or because it was your job to be someone who ran (messengers and proto-professional athletes). It wasn't until the 1960s that running as a general form of physical exercise actually became a thing, so much so that you can find old newspaper clippings from the era of people writing about how strange it is that people are doing it, as well as incident blotters about people who were stopped by police because of how strange the behavior was considered to be. In the context of the military, running only became a part of basic military fitness training regimes in the late 19th century, starting with the founding of the british Army Gymnastics Staff in 1860, from which it spread and became more or less standard in modern military forces.

It's possible to tell the skeletons of archers from swordsmen simply by how much bone structure there is around one shoulder due to the muscles built up to fire the bows. That's due to their regular training in using their weapons.

Thats only really true of certain types of archers and bowmen, mainly english longbowmen - who trained, by law, from the time they were 7 years of age for the purposes of both hunting and defense. Thats an exception more than it is a rule in terms of the physical impact. In general, archery was a skill practiced by civilians rather than soldiers and warriors, both for competition and for the hunt, because training competent archers took more time than fedual and pre-feudal armies had available. I.E. - The military didn't train archers, it conscripted them. Competition and such training was encouraged by governments and the nobility however to ensure that there was a ready supply of skilled archers available for conscription into the military.

But all of that basically feeds into my central point, the average soldier of the time was no more or less physically fit than the average civilian - the civilian archers were doing the same training the military archers were doing, because they were the same people. More generally, while military troops did training the training wasn't focused on developing physical fitness or strength until the mid/late 19th century - it wasn't until the Crimean War and American Civil War that armies began to realize that the lack of general physical fitness was resulting in significant amounts of unnececssary casualties. While they may certainly have derived some indirect physical benefit from that training (yeah, learning to swing a sword around or march in formation with pike and shield will have some physical benefits), the majority of civilians in the agrarian pre-industiral era were largely engaged in physical labor and would have derived comparable physical benefit from simply trying to survive. Add to that that for the vast majority of regulars military training was not continuous - i.e. you were trained to a basic level of proficiency and then cut-loose to fulfill your function. You might undergo periodic refresher training or drills prior to a major battle or offensive, or if you were a feudal conscript being called back to service after the harvest, etc. to re-familiarize yourself with military drill, but constant training and practice during peacetime as it exists today was basically unheard of outside of maybe the Roman legions (and even then nowhere near to the same extent as today), and during wartime - once you were on the march - there wasn't really time for drill or training as the troops were responsible for hunting, foraging, cooking, cleaning, setting up and tearing down camp, etc. It was a full time job just surviving.

So I've just gotten home from a weeks holiday to Wales, packed with board games. Spent a whole day in Firestorm Games in Cardiff, which was the best gaming shop I've ever been in!

Come up with two new concepts for games, which I am trying to work out the exact mechanics for. They are both card games, so should be reasonably simple to make and (hopefully) publish!

Since I got home I've been hand-drawing cards for one of the games, to see if I can get the mechanics nailed down! If it works, it's got a wonderfully large design space to expand into, which could mean it can be pretty big to begin with (I always prefer games where you don't use every card in a game, so there's new things to come back to) and can be expanded in the future!

I have to keep telling myself not to do anything with the other one until this one is at least ready to playtest!

The joy of a new project!

I spent a day getting a Patreon all set-up. Next step is to plan for a roll-out.

Yesterday I finished making my prototype cards, so now I just need to play a couple of games with it and see if it works!

Meanwhile, time to start work on a different game...

 Easy E wrote:
The joy of a new project!

I spent a day getting a Patreon all set-up. Next step is to plan for a roll-out.

So it is Launched, but I have done nothing to promote it yet.

Have any of you launched a Patreon before, and do you have any ideas or theories on the best way to do it?

I would like a successful roll-out.