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Weekender XLBS: Frankenstein Style Game Design!
October 19, 2014 by warzan
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Happy Sunday!!!!
As for the Frankengame, how about you mix up all your minis and each mini uses the rules from its respective game? So you get Wolsung vs Deadzone vs Kings of War vs DUST all shooting and moving their own ways. Total, chaotic fun!
that would be awesomely complex lol
Holy crap I won something.
Spoiler alert !
Gratz
I’ve always wanted to play a WW2 era campaign based on a risk board, say each army in Risk is worth a number of points (1000 or 500). When it comes to battles in risk, play them out on the tabletop. I’d use bolt action as the base game with single unit activation, but use the phase sequence from 40k, switching the shooting phase and the movement phase because that always made more sense to me, and works much better in practice. I’d also throw an extra die into the bolt action bag, one that when drawn ends the turn and all dice are returned to the bag to add a huge level of chaos.
Oohh I will have to try that!
Second XLBS in a row that’s cut out after 20 minutes because ‘my browser doesn’t support content’. grrrr
Franken-gaming sounds like my nightmare lol. Though we could always play Calvinball –
Ah Calvin and Hobbes, great cartoon.
Ah – the chair stress test? As a large chap myself I know the perils!
Warhammer store branding…might just work. As for their spread of brands, some rationalisation would be sensible. I reckon Warhammer for the games, forgeworld for the specialist products, Black Library & White Dwarf… all product ranges. Citadel still has a place for modelling products such as the paints; not for when they’re selling through shops but as a recognised brand through 3rd party retailers.
But does the new store branding then limit how they create a new game IP to replace LOTR?
Here in France it s fairly common to call miniatures games “warhammers” just like for older people nintendo is a generic name for gaming console.
Happy Sunday.
It’s been a while since the ‘inclusive’ discussion Warren initiated kicked off. This week – sexism…
A senior female executive leading a big player such as GW would be a great message to the world. Here’s a few statements to trigger matters:
– Joel (from Anvil) commented in the weekender about their depiction of females in mini form. He alluded to other manufacturer’s unrealistic (and dare I say mediterranean mysogenistic) depiction of female minis. Having just showed my new Op:Ice models to my daughter I felt slightly uncomfortable.
– There are lots of stories in the press of online female gamers getting a tough ride whenever they have an opinion on forums and being abused, trolled, threatened with sexual violence in the real world; hopefully that’s just online. Does anyone’s club/group have many female members? (article from Time magazine: http://time.com/3512896/gamergate-misogyny-men-anita-sarkeesian/ )
– To the best of my knowledge and memory, apart from Dawn etc contibuting from the states, you haven’t had a female guest on weekender or Backstage for a while?
Discuss !
GW Exec – I think would potentially be a good choice firstly on merit as she is apparently a very talented executive, secondly as I personally feel that the company in question and the industry at large could benefit from a change of perspective.
It’s the whole sexy vs sexist debate, no clear answers there, I suppose the question is… Is it enough for the industry to cover all the angles or does every manufacturer also have to do it in their own right as well?
A good question.
Correct we haven’t, have you anyone you would like to see and we’ll reach out?
A catch 22 – There are too few female gamers, so we scare off those who would be interested by being a boys club.
I think Warren alluded to something several shows back… two scenarios:
1)
“Pew-pew-pew.. you’re dead!”
“What you boys doing?”
“Playing toy soldiers”
“Oh… see-ya”
2)
“So having succeeded in overcoming your staunch defence, Warrenus Jonson finally …”
“What you boys doing?”
“Resolving the outcome of a complex narrative that’s been very evolving for a few weeks before begining a new storyline!”
“Oh – can I join in?”
Over simplistic I know, but I know several female gamers who love the D&D style game – minis are then only accessories to the story.
With my son away at Uni, will I be able to get my daughter into Infinity? I doubt it. Myth (When it finally arrives)? I stand a chance !
WarhammerJoey!
I love her to bits!
Without getting my freak on, ofcourse.
“There are lots of stories in the press of online female gamers getting a tough ride whenever they have an opinion on forums and being abused, trolled, threatened with sexual violence in the real world; hopefully that’s just online”
Lots of stories this past week in fact what with the #gamergate cesspool.
Happy to have Joey over, but I’m pretty sure she has her hands full these days 😉
There’s also Dice Bag Lady https://www.facebook.com/TheDiceBagLady
Wargamer Girl https://www.youtube.com/user/WarGamerGirl
and DizzyAngelDemon https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQIwEgkVk48WO2FwBbPZWVg.
What’s she doing? Besides working on Total War2?
Question is are GW interested in generating new IP or just in going along with the old on they have maybe add a WH10k or something
What’s this on the MYth delay.
Last news from megacon is that it cleared customs and is on it’s way to delivery would start monday.
Is there a new delay or was this the delay you where talking about?
We are probably talking about the same thing.
Right, thanks.
So? Warren you are suggesting a tabletop version of Calvinball? (Calvin and Hobbles fans will understand, but essentially each player changes the rules on the fly).
I am severely disappointed with GW rebranding, Black background with white letters and serif on top of that? it feels more like a newspaper than a wargaming store, good observation that they have burned their brands goodwill and now try to use the relatively untarnished and better known Warhammer brand forward, but also well spotted that it will end up the same if they do not change their tactics, of course this will only happen if they do not keep doing their legal work under the Games Workshop name, it is possible to do so and keep the media and peoples consciousness away form their product and have people merrily support them and their oppressive behavior to the industry because the brand is “warhammer” and not “Games Workshop”.
Getting that rant aside, I will be highly interested in seeing what your game design challenge will produce, I was severely disappointed with the submission window that was too short for me to enter, but am eager to see what the result was.
Calvinball, You’ve beat me to it.
I beat both of you to it 😉
So you did. Well great minds think alike.
My weekend is now complete thank you
Warren I am from Chiswick and I must say you said it wrong :p
Not that I’m bothered I just wanted a claim to fame 😉
Being from Chiswick is as about as epic as a claim to fame could be.
Ha ha! 🙂 Hey man ..I know people
Yeah Chiswick has a silent “W” however now with the store called Warhammer if that was a silent W it would be pronounced ‘Arhammer….. 🙂
Which would really confuse them in Manchester when the are doing DIY…hey ‘Ar Kid can you fetch us ‘Arhammer so I can bang dis nail in….
Does the re-branding mean they will be moving even more to only pushing Warhammer & 40K? We know they are more and more reluctant to support their smaller games. I’d like to see (and I know this will never happen!) Games Workshop using the advantage of their “bricks and mortar” stores to stock games from other manufacturers. Imagine going into a Games Workshop store and seeing Warhammer, 40K, Bolt Action, FoW and others. Surely that would bring more people in. It’s not unprecedented in the industry, we see Warlord stocking some Perry and Perry stocking Blitzkrieg. Once again I KNOW THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN!
That’s how Games Workshop started off with the one store in Hammersmith selling board games, jigsaws and citadel miniatures.
Yes, but that was long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away! Or not since I was at school 😉
One mechanic I’d throw into any Franken-Game? Three words: Sustained Fire Dice. One of the elements of 2nd Edition 40k & 1st Edition Necromunda that was immensly tense, especially in Necromunda where sustained fire weapons were hideously expensive and jamming could **** up your whole plan, and in 40k if you had Assault Cannon, where rolling three jams meant you exploded. Hilarious when paired with the old rules for the Cyclone Missile Launcher on a Wolf Guard as exploding could potentially mean your remaining payload (you only had twelve shots total originally) either all fired off in one humongous salvo, or detonated where you stood in spectacular fireball.
As for MYTH and EU backers: It is getting a bit of a joke now. Apparently the container should be this the shipping company by Monday, but then they will be coming down from this weekend at Essen, so who knows how long it’ll take for them to start shipping.
And Warren, I’m afraid I have to correct you on one point there dude: Mercs (or MegaCon or whatever they are calling themselves now) have really not been very good at communicating with the backers during this fulfillment phase unless they really had to. First we were told they would delay production so as to avoid a larger tax-bill for the previous year. Then US backers received their base games back in April, but International backers were informed they would have to wait as it would make more sense financially to send all their rewards in one shipment, which was ironic as they’ve STILL had to split International (not EU) orders into two parcels due to the quantity of stuff in there. EU was supposed to have been at the distributors warehouse in Germany for several months now but it turns out several elements that we had been told were either there or en route had been shipped to the US instead so they had to send those separately. They were supposed to start shipping to the EU on the 29th of September but that came and went with no update barring a single post in the comments that was quickly bumped off of the front page. There were three weeks between the update that said “EU shipping still on schedule” and the most recent letting us know it should have cleared customs.
We backer all appreciate that they are busy, and they need to deal with emails for people missing items or their whole orders in addition to finishing off the US 2nd waves, but to not post an update until TWO WEEKS after a planned shipping date had passed is bloody diabolical. I like the folks from Mercs, I want them to succeed with this and MERCS (in all it’s forms- I backed Recon as well), but they are really going to have to work to improve their image amongst those who helped make MYTH reality.
Sorry, rant over. That’s been brewing for a while but venting helps 🙂
Why do you think,they changed their name to MegaCON 😉
lost of interesting topics today, the rebranding of GW im my opinion it might work, but unless they go back to the days of open trading allowing insider access for people like BoW and actually listening to there customers and the gaming community i don’t think it will matter what they rebrand they will just be flogging a dead horse so to speak.
A mash up of wargames actually sounds quite fun, you could do it for the skirmish games too In Her Majesty’s Name, Wolsung, Malifaux, Infinity and many more would be crazy fun lol.
Thanks again for a great weekender xlbs loving the shows 🙂
happy sunday, even if I am a bit late to the party….
Whatever the latest state of play with the Myth omnishambles, predictably they’ve not condescended to let us backers know.
Treat your customers like this, you lose customers. I’ll not be giving Megacon another penny ever again.
Great show again guys thanks.
I think the thing I would switch into other games without hesitation is the Bolt Action order dice mechanic. Apart from infinity, which is a bit too complex in its turn construction to do it and due to ARO’s doesn’t really need it, all the games I play, from 2nd edition 40k and above, would benefit from that sort of variation in turns.
On freestyle gaming/frankengaming – how about combining all of your favourite selections of wargaming rules with the general idea from Fluxx, and building the changes in game mechanics into the game mechanics?
Would be fantastically head-messing, but the look on your opponents face when you change the mechanics to suit yourself just before they make their glorious victory charge would be worth it :p
I am norwegian pledger on afterlife, and it looks awsome, the game and the fluff of it all. cant wait til get my go on this skirmish awsomnes, pledge £65
If you can’t find femal gamers for the show then maybe you could do a gamer wife’s episode. I think it would be great to get the better half perspective on the hobby.
Also, they alternating battle group mechanic from DzC would be a great addition to any large army game.
Great show guys a nice mix of different stories.
Once again, your coverage of various games have led me to invest in them: Deadzone’s unboxing, Slaughterball and, now, Afterlife.
As a thought on the re-branding of GW, could it be to sharpen the focus of public conception, eliminating the little old ladies stopping in the store looking for Monopoly, Candy Land, etc. for their grandkids, based on seeing a store with Games in their title?
P.S. I saw very much the winning caption on a t-shirt at a local (in the States) store weeks ago.
frankengame
the lotr turn maker system
the stat system from hero clix (skills and stats go down with damage)
the ability’s of 40k
the ar system and command points of infinity
defiantly the breach and clear rules
the infamy : the big smoke stat modifiers
and cos i feel a game needs atmosphere as well as rules the story set up malifax
on the gw front i like their branding and hope it works i’ve felt for some time the logo has felt out of date and is almost childish looking (which in the 90s was not a bad thing, but as the price has risen that’s no longer the case as children cant afford it) and to most isn’t recognised any more whereas a warhamer is.
The other thing I think they could look at but don’t think they will is a 10% credit back system, to combat on-line sellers and shops that sell at discount. I know they wont have a sale as they feel there product is worth it (strange analogy coming up) there like m&s if you will. m&s see themselves as high quality provider with a selection of higher quality products and feel that justify s the extra cost. The only times I can think of them having sales is when they have had to recoup from high financial risks or for an end of line product, the difference is that they don’t sell there products to Lidil for them to sell at a lower price. i think a store credit system what help combat it the cash still stays in gw and i would bet it would soon reduce the discount offered else where.
As for a female CEO i say bring it on it would be good to see one in this male dominated part of the world.
Re: Frankengaming, some rules I’d love to bring in would only work for certain scaled games. For a 28mm skirmish game like 40K or the equivalent, I’d love to use the Bolt Action activations. Especially if you mix it up with multiple factions and players all having their own dice in the bag.
For large scale games I’d like to use the Army card / army construction system from the original Epic. So instead of buying individual units, you bought formations. It make it feel more like you were commanding an army rather than a random group of guys, and it helped ensure some balance: elite units tended to be small, etc.
I also liked the original Epic orders system, with First Fire, Charge and Advance being very interesting options. Although later versions of Epic which I’ve played less or not at all actually look like they took the idea and developed it even more with more options, etc. Battlefleet Gothic also had a great mechanic in the way it used orders. Not so much the ‘leadership test to use an order’, but the orders themselves were very powerful.
Whatever the scale of the game, I’d like some sort of pinning mechanic. 40K doesn’t do morale very well, as whether you’re fearless or constantly running away, it never feels very satisfactory. I love the idea of using tactics and firepower to force people to keep their heads down and use supression to affect your enemy’s tactics.
Finally, I’d like some personality mechanic. I think this is what GW were trying to go for with Warlord Traits, but they don’t really work the way I’d like them to. Games like Black Powder and other historical games do much better at turning generic commanders into personalities, and having their quirks and traits affect their ability to command troops, etc.
Infinity with Bolt Action activation. Works well since you already have order markers for infinity that would then be put into a bag and drawn.
Have to agree with @dignity Black Library should stay as it is, can’t beat the reference to the eldar.
I’d like to see a game mixing different scales, so 10mm versus 28mm. SciFi version of Gulliver’s Travels kind of thing. That or Space Marines using the movement mechanic from X-wing…
Afterlife looks really interesting, some of the models that they have on the kickstarter look very good.
Hmmm for my Frankengame, a little simplistic, but I would say, 40k, with Bolt Action unit activations and FoW-style assaults (fights are resolved to the end, rather than dragging on turn after turn)
40k, MERCS, deadzone, and warzone
I posed this about price on another forum the day before watching this
“In Australia and $AUD (providing you order enough to score free shipping), any two squads of 5 of the Mk II-VI FW tac marines today costs $86.20, while a GW squad of 10 tac marines costs $65.
The FW Land Raider IIb is $126, the GW Land Raider $110
A FW Tau XV88-2 battlesuit costs $58.70, while a GW Tau XV88 Battlesuit costs $74
A GW Thunderfire cannon costs $94, direct only. Read that again. $94. That is $11 more than an entire Predator kit, $9 more than a Hunter/Stalker kit. I could buy a FW Iron Father and a Mantic Jotunn Heavy Hailstorm cannon to counts as a Thunderfire with Techmarine, get two better looking models, and still only pay $60. I could get the FW Rapier kit, get an extra spare Marine, still be getting nicer minis, and still only be spending $55”
Deadzone with bolt action activation
@warzan
Sorry for forgetting to comment on this but, “getting rid of the citadel brand”
I think you underestimate who Games Workshop really is, Games Workshop essentially started by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson making boards for boardgames and then importing D&D at some point they provided the funding to create Citadel miniatures in order to have a local manufacturer of models to sell along their imported RPG games, the manager of Citadel, Bryan Ansell, bought Games Workshop from Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson and refocused the company on selling the models they (Citadel) manufactured, Tom Kirby, his second in command and manager of Citadel bought out Games Workshop from him (some say quite aggressively) and put the company on stock market, the entire board of directors and the CEO, ectr ectr, are from Citadel, do you think they will kill their own brand that easily? if nothing else Kirby’s preambles indicate he is still in the mindset of been the head of Citadel and incapable of understanding what Games Workshop really is.
Finally broke down and pledged. Love the recon buggy.
I like the turn mechanic of Bolt Action – picking dice blind form a bag – might try that with FOW as it may apply the pressure instead of you go, I go mechanism lol