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chaos0xomega wrote:
No, operation, because there are 4 companies involved here - Dust Studio, Dust USA, and then whatever the hell the Italian and Polish companies are called. Theres a clear lack of
communication and coordination amongst the 4 companies involved, and that structure and distribution model is kinda just dumb to begin with and has its own inherent problems. I.E.. the whole operation was mismanaged.

italian = ammodrop, polish = warfactory.

They both do other products or games but idk if they did that before or after they became dust1947 offical web shops.
Mismanaged? idk, but unified and organised under one banner it was not, you would only find out about the 3 dealer shops if one visited the dust studio website.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Wasn't there also a dust up (no pun intended) with FFG?

My memory is that Dust abruptly left FFG for Battlefront but FFG was still able to sell their existing stock at a discount so no one was buying from Battlefront. I still have some unopened boxes from those sales.

This is what I vaguely recall. My recollection is also that Battlefront was caught off-guard by this, and was apparently unaware that FFG had a lot of unsold stock just sitting around gathering dust (no pun intended, btw). So they paid money to partner, but then couldn't get anything back from their investment so long as FFG still had product to dump on the market. The opinion from BF seemed to be that this important detail had never been mentioned to them before the partnership was formed.

So I suppose the important question here is - why'd Dust leave FFG to begin with?

Eumerin wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Wasn't there also a dust up (no pun intended) with FFG?

My memory is that Dust abruptly left FFG for Battlefront but FFG was still able to sell their existing stock at a discount so no one was buying from Battlefront. I still have some unopened boxes from those sales.

This is what I vaguely recall. My recollection is also that Battlefront was caught off-guard by this, and was apparently unaware that FFG had a lot of unsold stock just sitting around gathering dust (no pun intended, btw). So they paid money to partner, but then couldn't get anything back from their investment so long as FFG still had product to dump on the market. The opinion from BF seemed to be that this important detail had never been mentioned to them before the partnership was formed.

So I suppose the important question here is - why'd Dust leave FFG to begin with?

Ultimately DS left FFG because FFG pulled an FFG and was going to sit on their product too long without a steady stream of new releases in the pipeline.

People claim Paolo as being "hard to work with", but it sounded like in the FFG relationship it was the other way around. Paolo's original product was the big Dust Tactics coffin box. His plan as a creator was to create and support it board game style, with large high-value expansions, instead of hundreds of unit SKUs. FFG dictated he sell his products as more of a wargame product, separating everything out, and then FFG added their own rules Dust Warfare on top of all that, because they wanted to compete with GW and get into miniature wargaming. Paolo wasn't fond with the approach, but also stuck with FFGs plan because they paid the bills. I haven't found any interviews of Paolo taking shots at FFG while he was in the relationship, so he seemed to just stick it out

Regardless of what approach was better, it seemed FFG was controlling and changing thing much more than a normal publisher would. If I was a game creator, a publisher controlling my game to that degree would rub me the wrong way too.

If I was a game creator, a publisher controlling my game to that degree would rub me the wrong way too.

Welcome to the world of tabletop game publishing. Unless you're one of the very lucky few who self-publishes, this is the way the cookie crumbles. Most designers are lucky if the publisher even publishes the game with their theme intact, usually they take the mechanics, retheme it as needed to fill a space in the market or improve its marketability, etc. and then go. Once you sign that publishing contract, you're usually less an active developer and more of a passive participant in the publishing and selling of your own game.

I will say this -- if Paulo just starts a new game with a different company people are going to probably be pretty upset. Do any of you see that happening? Gregoire hinted on FB that something was going to surprise us.

 Shrapnelsmile wrote:
I will say this -- if Paulo just starts a new game with a different company people are going to probably be pretty upset. Do any of you see that happening? Gregoire hinted on FB that something was going to surprise us.

Paolo joins CMoN as they are probably looking for a game to fill their next Kickstarter . Between their connections to production in China and their work on board games I think it would be a decent fit.

 Theophony wrote:
Between their connections to production in China /.../ I think it would be a decent fit.

Those connections are worth less by the hour I'm afraid.

Where did he say something was going to surprise us? I know he dropped a hint that something was going on but it was more along the lines of "buckle up this rollercoaster is getting started".

Anyway, my read/guess is that Paolo is done with Dust, I think Gregoire and maybe some others are trying to get the rights to continue the game without him

 Shrapnelsmile wrote:
I will say this -- if Paulo just starts a new game with a different company people are going to probably be pretty upset. Do any of you see that happening? Gregoire hinted on FB that something was going to surprise us.

Paolo starting a new game with a different company is literally how we got Dust in the first place.

The most suprising thing Paulo could do is not start another thing with a diffrent company.

The most surprising thing he could do is not mess it up.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
The most surprising thing he could do is not mess it up.

Hey now, let's keep a smidge of realism in our fantasies.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
The most surprising thing he could do is not mess it up.

Hey now, let's keep a smidge of realism in our fantasies.

Would that technically make it a Weird Weird World War II game?

 lord_blackfang wrote:
The most surprising thing he could do is not mess it up.

How about release a non-Weird War 2 game?

like a weird WW1 game?

Eastern Front in WW1 is a theme not used at all and having big battles in the Carpathian and Transylvania makes the perfect scenery for a weird skirmish game that can fit the niche

Eumerin wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
The most surprising thing he could do is not mess it up.

How about release a non-Weird War 2 game?

You mean like AT-43?

Seriously i do not understand his obsession with gorillas or zombies, But it works in DUST in a wolfenstein sort of way.

The problem would be market, there were what 2 weird war II games out there? what genre could he drop into that isn't already saturated by other companies?

 kodos wrote:
like a weird WW1 game?

Eastern Front in WW1 is a theme not used at all and having big battles in the Carpathian and Transylvania makes the perfect scenery for a weird skirmish game that can fit the niche

The lack of mechs might be a problem. Tachankas and armoured trains just aren't the same.

 kodos wrote:
like a weird WW1 game?

Eastern Front in WW1 is a theme not used at all and having big battles in the Carpathian and Transylvania makes the perfect scenery for a weird skirmish game that can fit the niche

Anything that uses the Eastern Front needs to deal with things like the fact that the Russian Imperial Army could only afford rifles for one soldier in five (if that...).

Stylistically, when you drop back to World War I, the look get quite a bit different. WWI is a lot more "horrors of war", and a lot of the technology used was still in... unusual... shapes. For example, a tank in World War 2 might have been far inferior to a modern tank, but the basic tank design is still there. Tracks, and a central turret (with a few exceptions at the *very* start of the War; they didn't last long). You look at a Sherman tank, and you look at an Abrams, and you can see the resemblance even though they're decades apart. A tank in World War One is another matter entirely. An A7V doesn't have much in common with a Leopard 2, or a Panther. It's a pretty big change in the style department, and a game themed around Weird War One needs to take this into account.

If we're just tossing out ideas, how about Cold War Turns Hot-1953 (but with mechs and gorillas and Nazi remnant cults and UFOs).

I was referring to how a Weird WW2 game not botched by P. would be double-weird ... It was late at night.

Regarding weird ww1 I think the potential lies somewhere along the lines of Turnip28 and Sludge; a large skirmish/small squad game with an anachronistic mish-mash of weaponry and body armour, weird mutations and body horror, the wholesale slaughter literally opening the gates to hell in our plane ...

Cold war gone-hot is indeed another unexplored option; kinda what Wolfenstein did recently; diesel/atom-punk, mechs and vehicles with all the lovely 50s/60s design curves, experimemantal and wild urban cammo, laser rifles vs AK47s, b-movie horror tropes instead of just the usual nazi zombies ...

As soon as you start thinking about the implications from the historical perspective, you might as well just play a straight historic game I think.

 ScarletRose wrote:

 kodos wrote:
like a weird WW1 game?

Eastern Front in WW1 is a theme not used at all and having big battles in the Carpathian and Transylvania makes the perfect scenery for a weird skirmish game that can fit the niche

The lack of mechs might be a problem. Tachankas and armoured trains just aren't the same.

Odd - I don't remember there being mechs in World War 2 either, and yet he didn't seem to have an issue populating his Wierd World War 2 setting with them.

Anything that uses the Eastern Front needs to deal with things like the fact that the Russian Imperial Army could only afford rifles for one soldier in five (if that...).

This isn't accurate. There was a rifle shortage in the early days of the war, but Russia still had enough to equip about 2/3rds of its men (As of Dec. 1914 Russia had 6,553,000 men and 4,652,000 rifles). This is confirmed by a number of first hand accounts, for example General Alexei Brusilov: "In recent battles a third of the men had no rifles. These poor devils had to wait patiently until their comrades fell before their eyes and they could pick up weapons. The army is drowning in its own blood." The more pressing issue was probably the Russian Armys lack of medical professionals, 1 surgeon per 10,000 troops meant a lot of people died that would have otherwise survived had they been in a Western army.

For example, a tank in World War 2 might have been far inferior to a modern tank, but the basic tank design is still there. Tracks, and a central turret (with a few exceptions at the *very* start of the War; they didn't last long). You look at a Sherman tank, and you look at an Abrams, and you can see the resemblance even though they're decades apart. A tank in World War One is another matter entirely. An A7V doesn't have much in common with a Leopard 2, or a Panther. It's a pretty big change in the style department, and a game themed around Weird War One needs to take this into account.

A bit of an an inaccuracy, the most common tank of World War 1 was the French Renault FT, which had tracks and a central turret. It was produced in greater numbers than all the other tanks of the war combined (and was used by several nations). The Char 2C was also in development during the war and prototype tests were done in 1917 and 1918, the collapse of the German army slowed down development by a few years, otherwise it would have likely been deployed in 1919. Given a hypothetical "DUST 1920", this (and other early interwar tanks with turrets) would be the most likely basis of design used in such a game.

Which is irrelevant anyway because its not like Dust 1947 walkers really resemble tanks all that much, Allied walkers aside the Axis, SSU, and IJN mechs don't have anything in common with tanks.

Going by two of the very first pre-war tank design (never made it because prior the war army command saw no need for armoured vehicles)






Adding in some Steam/Dieselpunk flair and you get you wired setting including vampires, werewolves, witches etc.

PS: and everyone was short on everything in WW1, Belgium being 100.000 Rifles short, were Austria-Hungary did not even ad enough field uniforms

Only one of those was actually a tank, the other is an armored car - plenty of those in WW1. Its actually somewhat interesting that they recognized the value of a primary turret in armored car design, but in tanks opted for casemated/sponsoned guns instead.

If I recall, Little Willie, so the original british tank prototype had a turret, but they switched to sponsons due to technical limitations/production issues if I recall.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Only one of those was actually a tank, the other is an armored car - plenty of those in WW1.

by modern standards, yes, by WW1 standards, armoured combat vehicles were all the same and that tracks being superior in terrain was not known yet
but this are pre-war designs made for combat and not re-fits or improvised cars to fill in the need
same were the non turret tanks designed during the war were made with trench warfare in mind and build as break thru vehicle

ignoring what was improvised during the war and going by pre-war designs, plenty enough to make a wired WW1 setting that get all kind of tanks, mechs, or other constructs that never made it in real life

 kodos wrote:
like a weird WW1 game?

Eastern Front in WW1 is a theme not used at all and having big battles in the Carpathian and Transylvania makes the perfect scenery for a weird skirmish game that can fit the niche

I vaguely remember having seen a Weird World War 1 tabletop (or maybe board?) game once.

The Germans were basically Wolfenstein/Hellboy Nazis for all aesthetic intents and purposes but the setting was apparently WW1 with supernatural creepies rather than WW2 with supernatural creepies.

The name completely escapes me though.

Tannhauser?

 Esmer wrote:

 kodos wrote:
like a weird WW1 game?

Eastern Front in WW1 is a theme not used at all and having big battles in the Carpathian and Transylvania makes the perfect scenery for a weird skirmish game that can fit the niche

I vaguely remember having seen a Weird World War 1 tabletop (or maybe board?) game once.

The Germans were basically Wolfenstein/Hellboy Nazis for all aesthetic intents and purposes but the setting was apparently WW1 with supernatural creepies rather than WW2 with supernatural creepies.

The name completely escapes me though.

Probably not the one you're thinking of but Shattered Crown is a WWW1 game. Publisher is a really cool guy too.
https://www.gaddisgaming.com/products/shattered-crown-rules

https://www.gaddisgaming.com/pages/shattered-crown

i am terrible, in archive notating,


i remember, when Masticore , that paolo parente made picture for,


was played


it was a card in popular ccg,



this card, was very controversial,


and, the biggest controversion was the picture itself,


and, it turned out that the biggest problem is that , this card is not in any fantasy army,

not elves, not dwarf, not goblin,


and, the picture was not explaining, what this card is,



and so on,



but, it was considered, "strong card"

True, but it began a series of cards: Manticore vs Masticore, and the damage dealing aspect and regeneration became something of a standard.

The largest issue I recall was the artwork, as people did not see how it could be an artifact.

At any rate, somebody mentioned AT-43, and if PP and CMON want to give it a swing I have Karmans, Oni, Cogs and Therians ready to shoot stuff.