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Greetings Fellow Designers,

Here is your chance to tell me what a pompous and arrogant jerk I am and that I have no idea what I am doing! Huzzah!

That leads me to today's offering for your review.... Turf Wars. This is designed to be a campaign-based skirmish game that revolves around gangster battles in the pulp era of the 1930's. It is intended to have a strong campaign element, with light RPG elements but those components have not been added in yet. All we have here at the moment is the basic/advanced rule mechanics and the gang building mechanisms. There will be more about automobiles, Turf, scenarios, etc. However, I haven't gotten that far yet. The intention is 50% of the game is managing your gang through the campaign and 50% is actually trying to win scenarios on the tabletop.

I wanted to do the following:
1. Make decisions have risk and reward
2. Decisions that matter
3. Easy and intuitive mechanics
4. Resource management
5. Ability for RPG elements

I did it by using the following mechanic choices...
1. Push your luck initiative
2. Limited actions with risk to try and "earn" more actions
3. Dice as a resource using Dice Pools
4. Deciding how to use certain results for best rsults
5. Actions for non-combat tasks broken down by physical/non-physical characteristics
6. Pinning mechanics

This borrows heavily from some of my previous game systems such as The Games: Blood and Spectacle (Gladiators) and Tournament: Pageantry and Pain {Knights) but puts a greater emphasis on shooting than those two could. There is also some cross-over with Combat! Starring Vic Murrow (WWII), but those are less obvious.

Anyway, enough talk! You can look at the core rules here and suggest to me what I need to re-word, re-think, streamline, or just need to do differently. Don't forget to tell me what an idiot I am!

Enjoy! I look forward to your feedback.

https://app.box.com/s/s5706cbvrvhozmxl0ray0mhaloajre27

First, great choice of theme. It's not a hugely done are like pseudo Tolkien fantasy or generic sci fi.

In the rules, I notice you start by saying something abut playing a hoplite battle. Typo?

I like the intro on scale. Great design notes. Not a fan of commit then measure. Most important rule is interesting, and will certainly be familiar to GW players, but I have always felt that if players cannot resolve such disputes on their own, they probably need to try something else.

Stats look okay. Seems kind of odd that CP and Brawn would be separate, at least for fisticuffs. Usually, a big bruiser can be counted on to be a rough customer in most noir fiction. And shooting is generally entirely reliant on who is being shot at- main characters don't tend to get hit; mooks get mowed down.

Terrain rules make sense. Not sure why you didn't just use the terms Concealment and Cover though.

Activation looks like it will snowball for the side doing well which can lead to death spirals. Take some early hits, then you flounder. Not sure if that is a design flaw or goal. The lone hero outnumbered by goons with his buddies down doesn't seem like he should be at a disadvantage to acting fast. Maybe make it a function of Brains with a penalty or bonus for downed friends and enemies?

Movement makes sense. Seems a bit odd that friendlies can't impenetrate. ZOCs as Action Zones makes sense except that it doesn't interact well with 90 degree LOS. How can you entangle something you can't see? Might want to expand LOS arc to a 180 arc and only lock front arc. Also 90 is more fiddly to determine than 180.

Dazed and Knocked Down seem to have a lot of overlap. Maybe simplify so Damage does 1 of 3 results- Dazed, Down, or Out. Dazed is stunned and can only move or take an action (not both) until pass recovery or forfeit an action to recover. Down is unable to move other than crawl and penalties until make a Recovery roll or forfeit a full activation to recover to Dazed. Any injury is a cumulative -1 to Tough (or maybe Cool...).

Morale seems pretty straight forward.

Brawl seems to take Blocked and Obscured into account. Is that a typo? Need a way to withdraw from melee.

Like the gear lists. Abstract costs seem okay for balancing, but for flavor maybe dollars?

Need to somehow bring in social challenges so that you can do something besides fight. Should probably be a factor in recruiting.

Also, I suggest having the law as a faction and a possible complication in street battles. Especially involving guns.

Great feedback. Some great call outs and food for thought. A sincere thank you!

Now the big question. Would you play it based on what you see here? (pending some suggested mods of course)

Hey mate, love the look of this, hits that necromunda vibe with a nice interwar gang theme. Gona have a playtest over the weekend and see what everyone thinks. Are you thinking of doing a campaign system and different gangs? could be fun having a campaign of bootleggers vs the cops.

Yes. I think it overall is a very solid entry. Easily on par with a lot of the commercial stuff out there and would be a good fit for those who want to do mobster gang warfare or even tilt a bit towards some Cthulhu/horror.

Looks good. I like the "Push your luck" initiative and dice resource pools.

ingtaer wrote:
Hey mate, love the look of this, hits that necromunda vibe with a nice interwar gang theme. Gona have a playtest over the weekend and see what everyone thinks. Are you thinking of doing a campaign system and different gangs? could be fun having a campaign of bootleggers vs the cops.

Yeah, phase two is a campaign system in the usual Specialist Games/Frostgrave style. I haven't really found a better model yet.

However, I still want to go back and take a closer look at some of the specific feedback I have been getting before the campaign stuff. The core mechanics have to be strong before I start messing with it too much.

Real Life has been keeping me away from this.