Reply To: Is it time for some more critical analysis of rule sets

[elessar2590 18207xp 1]

I’d really like to see a lot more critical analysis but I 100% understand why the guys have to be careful.

“Wow this Warlord Game sucks it’s basically just a whole bunch of mechanics stuck together with Zero innovation”
“Hey how come Warlord won’t send us a review copy of their latest product?”

@piers “I’d like to see historical rules researched a little more properly and a little more respect paid to the historiography of a subject.”

Absolutely agree. One of the Roman rules in SPQR is “Testudo”. TESTUDO for a skirmish game! I know it’s not just them doing it but come on rules creators at least look it up on Wikipedia. It’s not even a Open Battlefield Formation let alone a Skirmish one.

I don’t think complexity is even a bad thing. I mean take DarkStar if @oriskany took the complexity out of DarkStar it would suck (I mean that in the nicest way possible Jim 🙂 )

I mean what if you removed the Complex Range Bands and replaced them with just “Short and Long Range” or if you told Jim “Yeah you know what having different types of ship is too complicated just have a generic ‘Light Cruiser’ or ‘Heavy Cruiser’ and we’ll plug Faction Special Rules into them to make it slightly different” or if the Damage Mechanic was changed and instead of rolling for where on the ship you hit and all weapons having fixed values dependent on range you hit where you wanted and did 1 or 2 d6 damage oh and we don’t like these Charts so can we get this down to just a few values rather than half a dozen 15×15 Charts?

Basically Complexity can really Add to something if it’s done for a purpose other than to just make your game different. I feel like a lot of companies out there like to market almost generic rules with unnecessary complexity just to try and stand out rather than adding complexity that actually adds to the game.

Take the Bolt Action Activation process. That was a very complex idea when it came out. Random Activation and you do your moving/shooting/fighting all in one phase? That was very complex compared to 40K and WH Fantasy at the time.

@phaidknott I think you’re on to something there. Fantasy and Sci-Fi Companies have to go out and FIND an audience while a lot of Historical Companies seem to be content with being FOUND BY an Audience. That’s something Warlord and TooFatLardies does very well, they market their products.

I don’t think barriers to entry are that big a deal. I mean the two biggest games on the market are 40K and AoS which both require a huge amount of cash to get started no matter what GW likes to tell everyone with their “Open Play”.

@limburger

“Could it be that historical rules tend to focus a bit too much on specific battles and therefor rarely create an eco-system that has a low barrier to entry ?”

I don’t think so. People don’t really tend to say “I want to get into Historical Wargaming” and leave it there.

If someone says “Yeah I really want to play some Sci-Fi” you can be pretty sure 40K is going to come up but Historical War gaming literally goes back as far as Humans do. So are you into Stone Age Skirmishes or do you want to Replay the Cold War on a global Scale? Most companies create an “Enigne” like Warlord did with Black Powder/Hail Caesar or Osprey did with their books and Bolt on Different Genres/periods to make it more widely appealing anyway.

“I also suspect that with the exception of Warlord/Battlefront there aren’t any companies out there that can operate at a scale that allows them to be known outside of their niche”

I very much disagree. I don’t think it’s about scale but proper marketing and a true passion. If you write rules for a period/style of playing that you don’t love/have a deep interest in you’re not going to get success with that game.

TooFatLardies is just a few guys writing rules yet they’re the Number 2 WWII Skirmish Wargame after Bolt Action. If you want to play Black Powder Skirmishes they’re easily the first choice people will hear about.

It’s all about marketing and getting your rules out to the customers through places like BoW or Facebook. Also supporting your rules after release plays a huge part and so many companies abandon their rules to move on to the next thing right away before the game ever gets a chance to develop a community. I mean look at Warlord. SPQR hadn’t even come out yet and they were already pushing Korea, instead of letting the game develop. It just feels like they’re churning out these things on an assembly line. I know people are impatient and always want the new shiny but if companies ever want to be able to breathe and create a really good game they need a community for it rather than this sort of “Drive By” way of publishing rules we see today.

I understand they’re different but there was easily enough of an overlap that it’s absolutely going to hurt SPQR. Even in my local group at least 5 people would have got into SPQR or something similar but when Korea got announced they decided they’d rather do that instead.