Switch Theme:

Game Designers: What did you work on today?  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
»
Author Message
Advert


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.




Made in us
Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba




The Great State of New Jersey

 Easy E wrote:


Got Castles in the Sky V2 to look over and edit a bit. I am excited because it was green lit to be 80 pages! That will make it the largest of the Blue Books ever! Claim to fame..... or something.



Three thoughts/questions:

1. I thought the blue book series were fixed to 64 pages per book?
2. I thought you were on like v4.5 of Castles in the Sky?
3. Isn't the game due out in June? I would have thought things would be fairly locked-in this close to release.

CoALabaer wrote:
Wargamers hate two things: the state of the game and change.
 
   
Made in us
Battlefield Tourist




MN (Currently in WY)

1. Yes. That is why I was so surprised. The editor's themselves drove for the change.

2. Yes, but we cut out content to hit the word count. The cut material was going to go online, and still probably will!

3. Yes! After putting in the brand-new photos, brand-new artwork, and all the rules, they did not like the end result I guess. The deadlines are starting to loom and I have a lot or work to do!

Do not worry, I WILL hit deadline.

Support Blood and Spectacles Publishing:
https://www.patreon.com/Bloodandspectaclespublishing 
   
Made in us
Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba




The Great State of New Jersey

You better, feels like every time I blink the deadline gets pushed another 6 months, wasn't it initially scheduled for release in like February/March of last year?

BUT ALSO, why not try to push for one of those hardcover deals like Gamma Wolves got?

CoALabaer wrote:
Wargamers hate two things: the state of the game and change.
 
   
Made in us
Battlefield Tourist




MN (Currently in WY)

I think they always planned 2022, and I initially thought it was Nov 2022! Therefore, they pushed it up.

Well, if it sells well ..... who knows!


Support Blood and Spectacles Publishing:
https://www.patreon.com/Bloodandspectaclespublishing 
   
Made in us
Battlefield Tourist




MN (Currently in WY)

I have been painting up Korean War aircraft after finishing the edits to Castles in the Sky. I was excited to see that I could add the Ottoman Fleet back into the book!

Support Blood and Spectacles Publishing:
https://www.patreon.com/Bloodandspectaclespublishing 
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran




Seattle, WA USA

Got the color sketch for my cover art from my contracted artist, and super excited about its direction. Probably get the finished full version in a couple weeks, which should kick me in the butt to get going on more layout and playtesting, etc.
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran




Seattle, WA USA

Got the final cover art from my artist for my WIP solo/co-op horror skirmish game, and wow. Hopefully after the Adepticon crunch of getting some stuff painted, etc., I'll come back and crank through some remaining scenario playtesting and start layout.
   
Made in us
Battlefield Tourist




MN (Currently in WY)

I would love to see it! Super exciting!

If you want to share, I can PM you my email.

Support Blood and Spectacles Publishing:
https://www.patreon.com/Bloodandspectaclespublishing 
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran




Seattle, WA USA

 Easy E wrote:
I would love to see it! Super exciting!

If you want to share, I can PM you my email.
I suppose I can share it here. I mean, I should be doing more to try to build up hype and marketing, which I'm terrible at.

Here's the elevator pitch (which I'd love feedback on too):
Strange horrors stalk intrepid characters in this co-operative miniatures game set in a Lovecraftian era. Players work together to escape hordes of zombies, stop cultists’ dark rituals, discover the secret behind mysterious abductions, along with many other terrifying encounters. Players can weave together epic stories using the campaign system, which allows characters to grow their skills, but may also risk losing their minds.


And the cover, pre-title markup, etc.
[Thumb - Irrlicht Cover Art.jpeg]

   
Made in us
Battlefield Tourist




MN (Currently in WY)

Very nice cover art! It pays to have professionals do it. You may also want to consider having a professional do the title lay-out as well. I have seen a few articles about how a strong, professional cover design can boost sales; especially for indie books.


Support Blood and Spectacles Publishing:
https://www.patreon.com/Bloodandspectaclespublishing 
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran




Seattle, WA USA

 Easy E wrote:
Very nice cover art! It pays to have professionals do it. You may also want to consider having a professional do the title lay-out as well. I have seen a few articles about how a strong, professional cover design can boost sales; especially for indie books.

Thanks! Luckily, I do have a friend who is a graphic designer, and I have taken some graphic design/pre-print classes in the past, so I'm not a complete noob on that front. But yes, cover art and layout is really important for boosting sales, especially at physical locations. Since this will likely be mostly POD (at least initially) that will be a little less of a factor, but not by much. Either way, any layouts I do will get eyeballed by some pro contacts I have.
   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User






That looks great! I'm excited to see the finished product. Lovecraftian horror is right down my alley.
   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User






I'm pretty excited about the final sized prototypes we printed. Things are really starting to come together. These will hopefully be in the hands of our studio painter within the week to test color schemes.
[Thumb - 20220214_144727-1.jpg]

   
Made in ua
Fresh-Faced New User




Hello. Today I made an order for one plot in a role-playing game. I have been doing cartography for a long time and today I made a sector map for the world of Warhammer 40k for the first time. I have a page on fiverr and I would like to have support for me. Thanks!
[Thumb - mawp wh40 k.png]

   
Made in us
Battlefield Tourist




MN (Currently in WY)

I put White Star/Red Star up on the Wargame Vault. Doing pretty well, so far a top seller after a couple of days. I do not expect that to last long!

If you are interested:
https://www.wargamevault.com/browse.php?keywords=blood+and+spectacles&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=

For reference, from start to finish White Star/Red Star took 2.5 years.

That is one big goal down for the year. Now, onto finishing touches on my Viking based wargame.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/02/22 21:18:46


Support Blood and Spectacles Publishing:
https://www.patreon.com/Bloodandspectaclespublishing 
   
Made in si
Foxy Wildborne







Agonizing over activation mechanics for a 40k full rewrite.

Posters on ignore list: 36

40k Potica Edition - 40k patch with reactions, suppression and all that good stuff. Feedback thread here.

Gangs of Nu Ork - Necromunda / Gorkamorka expansion supporting all faction. Feedback thread here
   
Made in us
Battlefield Tourist




MN (Currently in WY)

Welcome to the club.

We all start out trying to write a better 40K!

Support Blood and Spectacles Publishing:
https://www.patreon.com/Bloodandspectaclespublishing 
   
Made in us
Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba




The Great State of New Jersey

 Easy E wrote:
Welcome to the club.

We all start out trying to write a better 40K!


I am proud to say I have entirely skipped that phase of development lol. The first time I played a wargame other than 40k (which was very early in my wargaming career) I knew immediately that 40k was not only not the game for me, but also very limited in its approach to what a tabletop miniatures wargames is or could be.

Unfortunately, I've spent the last ~15 years chasing a dream and not finishing a single design concept lol.

CoALabaer wrote:
Wargamers hate two things: the state of the game and change.
 
   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User






More TTS playtesting! Fine tuning all of the small details and reworking the scenarios for more unique and interesting games.
[Thumb - PXL_20220220_040903990.jpg]

   
Made in us
Battlefield Tourist




MN (Currently in WY)

I have to say, I have not been spending much time lately on new stuff. My focus has been on the less sexy side of things with finalizing and trying to get stuff to market, advertising, and trying to build a big and stronger wargaming community locally.

Grinding type work, which is not much fun; and even less fun to talk about online!

Support Blood and Spectacles Publishing:
https://www.patreon.com/Bloodandspectaclespublishing 
   
Made in pl
Wicked Warp Spider





 Easy E wrote:
Welcome to the club.

We all start out trying to write a better 40K!


Indeed we do , and what is more - most of us succeedes Where we fail is having huge amounts of cash and 30 years of market presence.

Back to the topic, for a couple of months now, I’ve been meticulously converting my few years worth of notes into specific wordings and a rough draft on rulebook structure of a theme-less wargame „engine”. It has some unique features, the biggest of which is always rolling only two dice regardless of number of attacks to resolve.
   
Made in us
Ultramarine Chaplain with Hate to Spare






I thought of some things and then didn't write them down

But then I got to work on some actual level scripting and scenario design. Different project tho.

And They Shall Not Fit Through Doors!!!

Tyranid Army Progress -- With Classic Warriors!:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/743240.page#9671598 
   
Made in us
Battlefield Tourist




MN (Currently in WY)

I have been working on my Homer's Heroes: Bronze Age Bad Boys set, and adding Mythological elements to the base game.

Support Blood and Spectacles Publishing:
https://www.patreon.com/Bloodandspectaclespublishing 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut






I started working on a set of rules which can be used to adapt 40k to a 10mm scale rather than 1", so that the game can be played on a normal 6'x 4' board and there is plenty of space to manouver!

Hopefully it's gong to be a good little project!

12,300 points of Orks
9th W/D/L with Orks, 4/0/2
I am Thoruk, the Barbarian, Slayer of Ducks, and This is my blog!

I'm Selling Infinity, 40k, dystopian wars, UK based!

I also make designs for t-shirts and mugs and such on Redbubble! 
   
Made in gb
Lone Wolf Sentinel Pilot





Nottinghamshire, UK

Came up with a way to for damage to work in a sci-fi dungeon crawler I'm working on in my spare time. It looks like I'll be going with a 2-tier system (quick overview here mainly because I haven't actually written it down anywhere else yet):

Light wounds - apply a -1 penalty to an attribute of the player's choice (all player characters have 5 attributes). The number of light wounds they can sustain is equal to their Physique attribute - once this limit is reached all light wounds count as severe. If an attribute is reduced to 0 by light wounds, the character is dead/incapacitated.

Severe wounds - for each severe wound, the character loses 1 action point per activation (from a starting total of 3). These are inflicted as described above, by crits (10% chance), or by certain weapons. If the character is reduced to zero actions, they are dead/incapacitated.

Driven away from WH40K by rules bloat and the expense of keeping up, now interested in smaller model count games and anything with nifty mechanics. 
   
Made in us
Blood Angel Terminator with Lightning Claws






New Zealand

I began to write down the rules of my Angaran Chronicles TT Skirmish game (finally) in a Google Doc. It's all locked up in my, albeit thick, skull but it's good to finally have it in written form lol

"The best way to lie is to tell the truth." Attelus Kaltos.
My story! Secret War
After his organisation is hired to hunt down an influential gang leader on the Hive world, Omnartus. Attelus Kaltos is embroiled deeper into the complex world of the Assassin. This is the job which will change him, for better or for worse. Forevermore. Chapter 1.

The Angaran Chronicles: Hamar Noir. After coming back from a dangerous mission which left his friend and partner, the werewolf: Emilia in a coma. Anargrin is sent on another mission: to hunt down a rogue vampire. A rogue vampire with no consistent modus operandi and who is exceedingly good at hiding its tracks. So much so even the veteran Anargrin is forced into desperate speculation. But worst of all: drive him into desperate measures. Measures which drives Anargrin to wonder; does the ends, justify the means?

 
   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User




Working on my first Kickstarter campaign for the NUTS WW2 skirmish system from Two Hour Wargames -- been in process for several years now. It started off as one campaign book idea, but then I read about the British 5th Infantry Division -- called the "Globe Trotters" because they fought the Axis in 1940 as part of the BEF, was reconstituted and then say action in North Africa, India, the Liberation of Madagascar, the Sicily Campaign and then Anzio, and finally finished the War as part of Second Army's push into Germany in March-April 1945.

Wow! How come my wargames don't reflect that? Given that NUTS is a squad-to-platoon level game, why not add that element? Ed at THW said, sure, go for it, and that led to the creation of the "Your War!" Campaign system that links your Missions into a Campaign, and those Campaigns into other Campaigns that could even see your unit transferred to another Theatre of the War. So now I've written four Campaign books -- Western Front, Eastern Front, Desert War (which also includes the East Africa Campaign and how to conduct an LRDG campaign) and War Against Japan (which includes a lot of campaigns and scenarios for Burma and the PNG campaigns).

Here's a blog post on the Desert War book: https://sbminisguy.wordpress.com/2022/09/23/nuts-kickstart-campaign-showcase-nuts-desert-war/

Anyways, thanks for letting me ramble -- hoping to get this out the door in January!
   
Made in us
Blood Angel Terminator with Lightning Claws






New Zealand

I finally finished painting my five main character minis for my novel Diesel Punk/Dark Fantasy series The Angaran Chronicles.

From left to right it's Jelcine, Emilia (and her in werewolf form), Anargrin, Raleas and Wilom.







By playing Space Station Zero it inspired me to think of a new initiative system before I had a D&D style initiative where before each round the players roll 2d10+Intuition stat for each unit in their control. The highest rolled unit didn't have to go first, they could hold their turn to interrupt an opponent's unit during the round. It was slow, and some players found it outright annoying, but I didn't want the basic TT Skirmish game roll. The new system is that at the beginning of each round the players roll a 1d10 to see who chooses a unit 1st or 2nd. Then the players roll for initiative between these two units to see which one goes first.

EG: I roll a ten, whereas my opponent rolls a 3, so I make him choose first. He chooses an eight-man mob of Jaroaite extremists with sub-machine guns in the middle of the table so I choose Wilom, hoping to throw a fireball into their midst to kill a couple and make them lose morale (making them only about to use a half-action) We both roll 2d10 and add intuition. Wilom has 2d10+7 whereas the mob are baseline humans but have used their Human Adaptability trait to decrease one stat by 2 (which they put on Intuition) so they roll 2d10+2. I roll a 17 total, but the mob rolls 18 so Wilom has to go 2nd. So after that, I have to choose a unit 1st and my opponent gets to choose 2nd and back and forth until I we run out of units. If one side runs out of units first the other player gets to just choose freely.

I have to playtest it yet, but it seems much better and faster than my old initiative system lol

"The best way to lie is to tell the truth." Attelus Kaltos.
My story! Secret War
After his organisation is hired to hunt down an influential gang leader on the Hive world, Omnartus. Attelus Kaltos is embroiled deeper into the complex world of the Assassin. This is the job which will change him, for better or for worse. Forevermore. Chapter 1.

The Angaran Chronicles: Hamar Noir. After coming back from a dangerous mission which left his friend and partner, the werewolf: Emilia in a coma. Anargrin is sent on another mission: to hunt down a rogue vampire. A rogue vampire with no consistent modus operandi and who is exceedingly good at hiding its tracks. So much so even the veteran Anargrin is forced into desperate speculation. But worst of all: drive him into desperate measures. Measures which drives Anargrin to wonder; does the ends, justify the means?

 
   
Made in us
Battlefield Tourist




MN (Currently in WY)

I am glad to see people forging ahead with projects! I personally do not have too much to show at the moment.

My last brush with COVID has left me a bit listless for a few.....

Support Blood and Spectacles Publishing:
https://www.patreon.com/Bloodandspectaclespublishing 
   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User




The NUTS! KS campaign full Preview Page is finally live!

This is been a focus project for several years, and now the full NUTS Kickstarter Campaign Preview Page is now live and ready for review. Scheduled for early January, this NUTS Kickarter Campaign introduces a major expansion of the NUTS tabletop WW2 miniatures skirmish system that's designed for Solo, Co-Op and Head-to-Head gaming.

The Campaign includes:
* The new “Your War” campaign that lets you track your Star’s progress across the entire War
* Four new campaign books covering all aspects of the War
* Stretch goals that include an update and expansion of the Hell Hath No Fury tank combat and campaign system, x12 new Battle Boards, a massive new self-contained NUTS! Weird War book with *every* genre of weirdness you can imagine, and a new NUTS Mission card deck.

Click here to check out the Preview Page -- and don't forget to click "Follow" to get Campaign updates and announcements: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1505930681/nuts-ww2-skirmish-combat-tabletop-system-your-war?ref=7pqtnk&token=b3724ae7
   
 
Forum Index » Game Design
Go to: