Showing posts with label Game Design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Game Design. Show all posts
2:57 PM
First of all, I didn't realize that YOUR MOVE GAMES, the guys that make the excellent BATTLEGROUND: Fantasy Warfare had made a world war 2 era game. The game is called The Battle for Hill 218, and it looks to be a quick filler type thing, playable with cards, within 15 minutes or so. BGG Reference. Even cooler than that is that a fellow named Andrew Gross has made a Java version that can play solitaire OR hotseat on just about any platform. The Java version can be found at Andrew's home page.
Here's a screenshot (click for more detail):
Remember EAST FRONT TANK COMMANDER and LAST CRUSADE? It strikes me that both of those could be easily converted to similar applications.
Here's a screenshot (click for more detail):
Remember EAST FRONT TANK COMMANDER and LAST CRUSADE? It strikes me that both of those could be easily converted to similar applications.
7:28 AM
My Fall-In! 2007 Vacation!
(Belated, I know.. and as always, all commentary is my own)
(crack Events staff Pat Shields, Cleo Hanlon, and a somewhat blase Mike Hillsgrove)
I had a pretty good convention overall. I showed up a little early to work the con, and I schlepped a few things here and there, and fetched wood and carried water Thursday.
(Convention Director McWee and Gruppenfuhrer Mattes)
Friday, my friend Ed came down from central PA and we did a battlefield walk and had lunch, then I did the staff thing on the afternoon shift. I worked the Flea Market, briefly, and also spelling the guys at the front desk of the Vendor Area. More work than I thought it would be!
(Dan Muraski, the only flea market guy in HMGS history who got a VENDOR table to sell on)
There were tons of games put on at this convention and lots of activity, to judge by the impossibility of getting a parking spot in the lot. That's a GOOD thing.. I was struck by the influx of boardgaming in various nooks and crannies of the con, here and there, and sometimes right out on the main tables as bona fide events!
12:54 AM
Return to Lilliput, revised rules
After plugging up a few holes in the rules and working out a few inconsistencies, I ran Return to Lilliput again for TriaDCon on Sunday. I only had two players (running two pirates each). I made the map smaller and narrower, and increased the ratio of resources to pirates, and gave the Pirates' feet some more points.
After plugging up a few holes in the rules and working out a few inconsistencies, I ran Return to Lilliput again for TriaDCon on Sunday. I only had two players (running two pirates each). I made the map smaller and narrower, and increased the ratio of resources to pirates, and gave the Pirates' feet some more points.
10:19 PM
Return to Lilliput
(though I may have to rename it)
Hard to imagine it's been so long since I returned to the RETURN TO LILLIPUT game, but there it is.. one of the great things about the game camp I run in the Summer is that it really fires a cattle prod into me to get a job done to run it for my
So I borrowed the name and the notion, but rewrote it from the ground up, making these changes: 54mm figures representing pirates were the visitors to Lilliput this time. I also added a more defined (and simple) resource driven victory system that gave the players something to strive for-- breweries, wineries, bakeries, etc. Not only do they give victory points, but they have a large impact on the game's progress.
The Pirates start at one edge of the terrain (I used the wonderful European Hex Tile Set from Lost Battallion Games. It was the perfect scale and laid out quickly). Their objective was the Lilliputian fleet on the far side of the table, which they had planned to capture, raize and use to make a giant raft to carry them out into the tradewinds again. The Lilliputians have some objections to this scheme.
Along the march to the far side of the island, the Pirates encounter spontaneously generating Lilliputian Infantry, Militia, Cavalry, and Artillery, all represented by 6mm stands. The 6mm figures look much more Lilliputians when compared to 54mm figures. The Pirates were Airfix 1/32 pirates from a plastic soldier set.
Lilliputians (in the rules as written) were to spontaneously generate as a result of Pirates show up next to resources and towns. We pitched that idea rather quickly, and just set up a nice starting line next to the "beach", and when that was shattered, bring up replacements up the map from the far edge. It worked like a charm, and what's more important, it looked like it made sense. Obviously, the lilliputian army is what it is.. there are only so many stands and they get recycled when they get killed. And how they get killed!!!
An integral mechanic of THIS Lilliput game was the drunkeness factor in the pirates. I gave each pirate three combat factors, some hit points assigned to their feet, and a Drunk Track. Being drunk impacts the Pirate's movement and combat. The drunker, the slower, but being drunk also impacts fighting.. drunk pirates fight in melee harder, but can't shoot hardly at all. Sober pirates shoot great but are so hungover they can't melee well. Also, drunk pirates ignore some hits.
The maiden voyage of the game went extremely well, as I had predicted. The kids loved it. I suspect there's just enough detail to appeal to both adults and kids.
Here's a slideshow:
 | Cool Slideshows! |
I'll definitely run this one again after a few tweaks. It needs a prettying up and to resolve some issues.
8:40 PM
Warping young minds, that's where...
Once again, I spent the week running a game camp at Saint Stevens and Saint Agnes School in Alexandria, VA. I was flattered to have many of the lads from last year return, and we had a great time running tabletop games. I tried to introduce the fellows to the concept that there is a hobby world outside of Games Workshop, and I think I succeeded. Here's the lineup this week:Monday: Saurian Safari (Dinosaurs and Darkest Africa figures)
Tuesday: Really Big Gladiators (54mm scale-- using Munera rules)
Wednesday: Le Grand Cirque Dinosaur Island! (VSF racing game, my design)
Thursday: Hell Comes to Frogtown (by request) a VSF small unit skirmish game done using Rules with No Name (see slideshow)
Friday: Return to Lilliput (my design) Lilliputians versus Pirates (see followup post)
Thank you, thank you, thank you, to Andy Turlington and Rich Low for lending me Saurian Safari stuff. We loved it.
Thanks, as well, to Tim and Thomas, my trusty Teaching Assistants. It was their dogged work that helped get the Lilliput game from a pie-in-the-sky notion to a real game that worked by Friday.
Here are some shots from the Hell Comes to Frogtown game. The game was a reprise of last year's scenario of the same name, which left a big impression on the lads. They demanded it again, and whom am I to refuse?
Once again, the, er.. historical scenario of Prussians, Cowboys, Zombies, Sharpshooters, and Cavalrymen played itself out. I'm not sure exactly what happened, as I let the TAs play and run the thing, but they assured me it was a game of portent and MANY weird events. Just as it should be. Thomas will be sending me a writeup which I will append here.
| Cool Slideshows! |
I am very grateful to Saint Stevens and Saint Agnes for giving me this opportunity each year, and I very much look forward to next year.
12:20 PM
(this idea comes from a discussion between Charles Vasey and Ian Wedge on the Miniatures section of Consimworld. I credit them with the original concept, which had me in stitches. We will likely run this at TriaDCon but I suspect the rules will have changed to make it a better convention game by then.)
Airfix Charades: A Proposal for Useless Figure Poses
Introduction: growing up in the hobby, most kids in Europe or North America who liked plastic soldiers became familiar with the products of the venerable (and now sadly defunct) Airfix plastic figure company. Airfix manufactured (primarily) HO or 1/72 scaled figures for collectors, toy soldier enthusiasts, and wargamers. For most of us, Airfix was that magical stepping stone into the hobby. There wasn’t any other figure company back in those early days, especially for poverty stricken children. Fortunately, the Airfix catalogue of figures was huge. Almost any period you can imagine was either represented or could be created with kit-bashing and even a mediocre paint job. I often wonder how many sets of the famous kepi-clad ACW UNION CAVALRY became Chasseurs D’Afrique, or Mexican Cacadores, or some other obscure regiment. Airfix figures were so versatile, so broad in application, and such great value for the money, that even to this day older hobbyists are both sentimental about the line and possessed of an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject matter.
Which is an appropriate segue to the titular subject of this article. There was ONE department where Airfix had somewhat spotty results in—poses. To be effective in either a diorama or wargame, a line of figures has to be cast actually doing the fighting. Airfix sculptors of the period differed widely on the application of some of their poses; most lines had a decent complement of soldiers doing the stand up “shooty things”; yet every box had its contingent of… let’s say “whimsically conceived” poses. These are poses that are extremely distinctive, highly original, generally specialized… and almost useless for wargaming. It is to those poses.. the crawling union infantrymen that could never be displayed in a line, the grenade throwers that look like they are performing aerobics, the legion of troops doing an overhead bayonet stab or clubbed musket butt, that this post is affectionately dedicated.
Miniature gaming now has its own cult game—AIRFIX CHARADES.
To play, you will need a circle of friends with a somewhat encyclopedic knowledge of the Airfix line and some sort of reference work that will authenticate guesses. I suggest printing out the Airfix section of the TOY SOLDIER REVIEW page (http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Airfix.html) as it is somewhat authoritative.
At the proper convention, getting a circle of Airfix geeks together might be easier to do than you think. A flip chart might be a good addition, to record the guesses made. A referee, to ‘call’ someone on a bogus pose, should stand by with the reference materials (such as that printout from the plastic soldier review).
Airfix Charades can be played in teams or singly, there’s no particular driving reason to do either one. Lastly, add a lot of beer to the mix. Or don’t. The core of the game is to stand up on your hind legs (or sit, or crawl, as appropriate) and mimic the pose of a distinctive and memorable figure (in your judgment) from the Airfix line. It is important that the figure NOT be pointing, firing, reloading or otherwise doing something useful with his primary weapon (if it is a gunpowder weapon). If it is a non-gunpowder weapon, then the distinctions become a tad more subtle about what is “useful” to a wargamer and what is not. So the rule of thumb should be the stiffer and more unnatural the pose, the better. Of course, if the figure hails from one of the many non combat series produced by Airfix, such as astronauts, marching bands, Tarzan, etc., this will certainly count as “a pose not useful for wargaming”
How to Win the Game:
“Scoring” and “Winning” are rather elastic concepts here—the real value of this game is having people make fools of themselves by getting into the poses suggested by Airfix. However, given the inevitable clamor for structure inherent in wargaming, someone will want to know how to win. My suggestion for keep score is very simple. One might record the number of guesses per pose, with the lowest scoring team winning the round. Subtract 1 for a sitting down pose (they are harder) and 2 for a lying down or crawling pose (even harder). Answers must be given in the form of a description of the figure, and what box he is from. E.g., Crawling Union guy with his butt in the air, UNION INFANTRY set, If this scoring and winning method doesn’t work, make up your own. Otto is taking a look at the idea and will probably expand on it.
Airfix Charades: A Proposal for Useless Figure Poses
Introduction: growing up in the hobby, most kids in Europe or North America who liked plastic soldiers became familiar with the products of the venerable (and now sadly defunct) Airfix plastic figure company. Airfix manufactured (primarily) HO or 1/72 scaled figures for collectors, toy soldier enthusiasts, and wargamers. For most of us, Airfix was that magical stepping stone into the hobby. There wasn’t any other figure company back in those early days, especially for poverty stricken children. Fortunately, the Airfix catalogue of figures was huge. Almost any period you can imagine was either represented or could be created with kit-bashing and even a mediocre paint job. I often wonder how many sets of the famous kepi-clad ACW UNION CAVALRY became Chasseurs D’Afrique, or Mexican Cacadores, or some other obscure regiment. Airfix figures were so versatile, so broad in application, and such great value for the money, that even to this day older hobbyists are both sentimental about the line and possessed of an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject matter.
Which is an appropriate segue to the titular subject of this article. There was ONE department where Airfix had somewhat spotty results in—poses. To be effective in either a diorama or wargame, a line of figures has to be cast actually doing the fighting. Airfix sculptors of the period differed widely on the application of some of their poses; most lines had a decent complement of soldiers doing the stand up “shooty things”; yet every box had its contingent of… let’s say “whimsically conceived” poses. These are poses that are extremely distinctive, highly original, generally specialized… and almost useless for wargaming. It is to those poses.. the crawling union infantrymen that could never be displayed in a line, the grenade throwers that look like they are performing aerobics, the legion of troops doing an overhead bayonet stab or clubbed musket butt, that this post is affectionately dedicated.
Miniature gaming now has its own cult game—AIRFIX CHARADES.To play, you will need a circle of friends with a somewhat encyclopedic knowledge of the Airfix line and some sort of reference work that will authenticate guesses. I suggest printing out the Airfix section of the TOY SOLDIER REVIEW page (http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Airfix.html) as it is somewhat authoritative.
At the proper convention, getting a circle of Airfix geeks together might be easier to do than you think. A flip chart might be a good addition, to record the guesses made. A referee, to ‘call’ someone on a bogus pose, should stand by with the reference materials (such as that printout from the plastic soldier review).
Airfix Charades can be played in teams or singly, there’s no particular driving reason to do either one. Lastly, add a lot of beer to the mix. Or don’t. The core of the game is to stand up on your hind legs (or sit, or crawl, as appropriate) and mimic the pose of a distinctive and memorable figure (in your judgment) from the Airfix line. It is important that the figure NOT be pointing, firing, reloading or otherwise doing something useful with his primary weapon (if it is a gunpowder weapon). If it is a non-gunpowder weapon, then the distinctions become a tad more subtle about what is “useful” to a wargamer and what is not. So the rule of thumb should be the stiffer and more unnatural the pose, the better. Of course, if the figure hails from one of the many non combat series produced by Airfix, such as astronauts, marching bands, Tarzan, etc., this will certainly count as “a pose not useful for wargaming”
How to Win the Game:
“Scoring” and “Winning” are rather elastic concepts here—the real value of this game is having people make fools of themselves by getting into the poses suggested by Airfix. However, given the inevitable clamor for structure inherent in wargaming, someone will want to know how to win. My suggestion for keep score is very simple. One might record the number of guesses per pose, with the lowest scoring team winning the round. Subtract 1 for a sitting down pose (they are harder) and 2 for a lying down or crawling pose (even harder). Answers must be given in the form of a description of the figure, and what box he is from. E.g., Crawling Union guy with his butt in the air, UNION INFANTRY set, If this scoring and winning method doesn’t work, make up your own. Otto is taking a look at the idea and will probably expand on it.
2:06 PM
Once Again..
The exceptionally talented staff of the ESCAPIST magazine weigh in with a subject dear to my heart, storytelling. Granted we are discussing a medium only tangentially interested to your humble narrator, that of game console games and MMORPGs, yet I do spend an inordinate amount of time in Second Life, after all, and if there ever was an example of meta-reality fiction, that's it.
Warren Spector, an extremely prolific and prolix designer that has worked for everyone from Steve Jackson Games to TSR to Dark Point Studios, weighs in with a nicely crafted start of a four part series about the promise of new technology in display, processing power and AI for the art and craft of storytelling.
Are we concentrating too much on the hardware and whizz bang at the cost of a solid AI? How can this assist in telling the game story?
Warren's article is not a trailblazer, we have seen discussion about these elements before, but it is rather well structured and it offers up some ideas.
Not long ago, I had a conversation with Doug Church, secret master of gaming, where he said something like this: A story is constructed of sentences, strung together in a coherent, dramatically significant order. Game "sentences" are the actions available to and selected by a player. The more sentences we allow players to construct (in other words, the deeper the pool of options we offer), the cooler and more numerous the story possibilities will be. To that extent, a robust world and character simulation - both made possible by next-gen hardware - will allow us to tell a better story. But there's a hitch: all the graphics power of the new platforms
We've made - and, thanks to the new hardware, will continue to make - great strides in the fidelity with which we can portray a world. Our characters will look even better. Our worlds will look and feel much more convincing than they ever have. And audiences will come to expect a certain level of believability in the worlds they explore. They will expect the world to look and behave the way the real world does. ("It looks real; it'll act real.")
All of that means AI - cornerstone of creating great characters and, therefore critical to great story games - becomes even more challenging. And here I'm just talking about the fundamentals of navigation and base level interaction. We've made great strides in AI over the last few years, but you'd hardly know it - the advances have come in the service of "just keeping up" with graphical and simulation enhancement.
-- THE ESCAPIST, issue 94, "Next Generation Storytelling", by Warren Spector.
I look forward to reading more in the series. Console gaming is not my cup of tea, by any means; but it is a surprisingly adept distant cousin to that ancient art of telling stories, and traces its roots to that circle of hunters, crouched around a fire at night, fearful of the wolves-- and telling each other stories to pass the time.
12:48 AM
Virtual Party Games
I had opportunity to run a game of RIPPER, my conversion of WEREWOLF for play in Virtual worlds, in Second Life on Saturday.
The game is played at a table in RL, so I figured what the hell, why not, let's recreate the experience. With the help of "Eva Bellambi" from SL, I set up a game area in a low-bandwidth part of SL. Eva, you will note, is one of our BPD maniacs, and doing rather well for a beginner.
I planned for a maximum of 15, I think we got ten to a dozen players. I facilitated the game reasonably well, I thought. I have run WEREWOLF in real time many times, and I love the game. The RIPPER variant is almost identically themed (thematically swapping out Jack the Ripper for a Werewolf, and the Great Detective for A Mystic) and it takes advantage of Second Life's utilities to exchange information back and forth and keep the voting in order.
Basically RIPPER plays identically to WEREWOLF but utiilizes chat technology to recreate some vital features of WERWOLF:
1) The Roles are randomly assigned via dice roll (in RL, by me). This will change now that I have found a SL die roller script.
2) The players get their Roles via a SL Notecard. They are pre-written by me. I have also given them the RULES in advance.
3) I narrate the evening turn. I declare:
++ RIPPER, SEND ME A VICTIM! (the two pluses are for people to see me in the din of conversation generated by chats)
The Ripper player then Sends me an IM (instant msg) with the Victims' name upon it.
I then say:
++ GREAT DETECTIVE, SEND ME A DEDUCTION! (The Great Detective/Seer character sends me his or her guess at who is the culprit. I IM back "Yes" or "No").
Then it is the Morning Turn... "Day breaks, a beautiful day for everyone except for... (VICTIM'S NAME!). At this point I send the person a little object I scripted that maintains a floating text, red for a murder victim, Gold for someone who has been dispatched by votes. They attach it to the avatar's chest. In this fashion it becomes VERY easy to follow who is dead and who is not.
I handled VOTING by IM as well, but it was a bit clumsy even with only 10 or so players. I had to count carefully. I believe there are some utilities that assist with voting in SL, I will seek them out.
The game proceeds normally until we hit a victory condition. In our games on Saturday, we had a villager victory and a Ripper victory. Not bad at all! The game was enthusiastically received by the players and many requests were made to run it again. I likely will in about a month or so.
I spoke with a "Zenmodo" character who is interested in scripting an animated spurting neck wound we could affix tot he players who have been murdered. Gory, but fascinating! Truly, Second Life has vast potential for moving some forms of parlor games to virtual space. This is merely a beginning.
4:58 PM
True Micro Design Art
I like postcard wargames. So much, in fact, I made one, available right here on this blog if you want it. I may make another.
Turns out the idea is catching on with people.. Last Stand on Mortain was a freebie offered up by the Against the Odds people. I've seen "Postcards from the Revolution" on Boardgamegeek. Now I hear there is another... MALAYA: V-MAIL POSTCARD GAME NUMBER ONE. It doesn't get any more "micro" than a game that you can mail to someone, with the rules on back and the counters too.
Product Blurb:
The Japanese invasion of Malaya was one of the most perfectly executed military plans in history. Can you, as the British commander, slow the Japanese advance sufficiently to disrupt the timetable for the capture of the East Indies? Or will the Japanese succeed in capturing Singapore in time to establish the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere?
This 5x8 inch postcard game includes 18 counters, complete rules which include the asymmetrical abilities of the Japanese and UK forces,and a 5x5 1/2 inch board.
MALAYA can be found on WARGAME DOWNLOADS.com, for free. Do the hobby a favor and mail it to some friends.
4:38 AM
A fascinating game mechanic
I had heard.. somewhere.. perhaps on Yog Radio, about a new indie-press roleplaying game called DREAD that features a solitary mechanic for resolving difficulties. You play Jenga. That's right, the block stacking game. Apparently (and I don't know for certain, I don't have the game), you assign a task a difficulty level and rate it by number of blocks. If you pull the blocks and the tower stays up, you pass the test. It seems cumbersome for something like combat, but it does sound as if it would create an almost palpable sense of . dread.
Finally! Something to DO with those old Jenga sets. I might incorporate something like it for non-combat actions, just for fun. Remember my spinning tops in the Sergeant Slaughter in Bun-Bun Land game? This sounds very similar to me!
12:52 AM
Hey Thomas!
If you want to navigate around in here, it's pretty easy.
On the left side, check out Blog Archive. Posts are sorted by year, month, and then by post. See?
But to get on to the SOMME PROJECT.
(note: Nigel Clarke, who owns World War I, found time to correct a couple of mistakes in the ensuing narrative. His corrections are marked in RED).
I know of some great sources for 28mm + scale French, German and English figures for the Somme Battle. Most people associate the British, not the French, with that battle (because of
First of all there's BRIGADE GAMES, run by my friend, Lon Weiss:
Here's the WORLD WAR ONE FRENCH that he had made
Lon is primarily a vendor, and he sells RENEGADE FIGURES. They make slightly bigger World War One figures for British, French, and Germans. They are gorgeous.
Last, I'm running a kind of private Intranet at hotspur.mobstop.com if you want to park those rules where you can get a playtest team to look at them.
I'd love to see your rules at some point!
1:12 PM
The Christmas game is not, and should NOT BE... Politically Correct...
I run the Christmas game for my game club TNGG, every December. Last December, I ran this:
http://mrnizz.blogspot.com/2005/12/aar-dark-secret-of-santa-town.html
I just discovered (to my own surprise and glee) two new groups of hassidic "men in black" agents for sale at Amazon Miniatures. Naturally I bought them-- I had to. I certainly hope than when I add them into this year's Christmas Scenario "The Battle of the (toy) Factories" as the "Purim Gang", people won't get too offended...
11:10 PM
A surprising wealth of information
Getting back to the game we are contemplating making out of buttons. I'm developing a serious liking for the Gangster theme. I thought there would be trouble finding imagery and information sufficient to generate 80 buttons (the first game will be limited to that). Boy was I wrong. An hours' idle googling has already generated about thirty names and that's just the New York Crime Families alone. Counting Chicago and the Great Midwest Crime spree, we might have enough for 200 buttons, and that's not an exaggeration. I've been using Serif Draw to make the button proofs and it's working out reasonably well. I had to distort a few images to make the crime boss pictures work out as a shape fill, but it's really not all that bad.
That's Lucky Luciano on the top right, and Albert Annastasio (in younger days) on the bottom right.
12:51 PM
Take Dat, you dwitty rat...
I've been contemplating doing a game design inspired by the Button Man idea that Cheapass has had some success with. This would be a freebie to be given out at the next TriaDCon. My initial concept was "We'll make a game, see, where everyone will have buttons made up in advance, and if you show up at TriaDCon 07 we'll give you this button and you can play each other, with the winner of the most button fights would get something nice."
The initial "theme" I cam up with was snipers.. World War I trenches or World War 2 or something. A discusion with Otto convinced me to change the idea to a more universal (less military) and more "fun" theme of Depression Era gang wars in the Great American Midwest, which makes a nice tie-in with the phrase "button man" (too bad we can't use it, alas..).
Otto suggested something more like the game of Cluedo than a wargame. You were given "hits" which read like "Rub out Liver Lips Louie in the BoardGame room", and you had to walk around finding that person and have a button fight with him or her. It sounded vague to me.. more like LARP than a wargame. I know these guys.. wargamers want to roll dice. So I tried designing something really far more complicated than it needed to be. I wanted to use six siders, which would be simple enough to grasp, and I wanted the buttons to have "Stats" in gangster-like qualities.. melee, shooting, intimidation are current choice. So I started wout with a range of 1 through 4 six sided dice being a range of "quality".. a 4D6 stat was the best you could get. Unfortunately that played merry hob with probability:
It's hard enough to figure a range of chances for success here and 4D6 made the curve so asymptotic that it was getting kind of ridiculous.
I seemed to be going off base again. Attendees aren't coming to the con to play just the button game, and if we have to hand out a sheaf of Combat Resolution Tables and such, the mechanics will seriously take away from dedicated gaming time, and nobody wants that, get me, dollface?A discussion with Dave Markley (the less shy Markley brother) suggested going back to basics. A simple I beat you you beat me roll off, but the guy with the better stat rating can roll more times, but one at a time. (roll once for a rating of one, twice for two, etc.). This can be trumped with an initiative table roll (see illustration) which will allow for a guy with a poor stat to get an action off before the attacker with a good stat rating.
There's also the idea of Rankings and Locations (some of this was suggested by Otto). We have Gunsels, Dons, Molls, and Capos, all of varying stats. We have Locations in the convention (Dining Hall, Boardgames, Dealers, Front Desk, Miniatures, Gazebo Room). The Player will be handed three things: A HIT card (reading like this: "A Don in the Gazebo Room"), A rules cheatsheet, and a button.
The player puts on the button and takes the hit card. If he/she is successful in a challenge, the victim of the hit surrenders their button and the victor goes back to the registration desk for a new hit card. If the victim isn't where the Hit card states he should be, the hit doesn't go down.
Finally, we have "Family" rating. We come up with faction names (maybe five or six of them). If there is a "family" member within a table of you, you can borrow that person's dice for the contest (this is summoning your goons to assist).
That's where we are at right now. IF A BUTTON MACHINE ISN'T TOO EXPENSIVE, we hope to have this available for TriaDCon 07 as "The Big Rub-Out: The Game of the Convention!"
Suggestions are always welcome!
Bahhhhhhh... too complicated!
12:51 PM
A freebie from Mister Nizz
One of the greatest old pen and pencil games I can think of is Richard Bartle's WAVING HANDS (1977) a game originally setup to play as a wizardly dueling game. Players BUILD spells with various hand gestures such as SNAP, WAVE, POINT, CLAP,etc. The combinations (both hands handled separately unless they are CLAPping) create spells. In the graphic to the left the BLUE wizard has just succesfully completed casting FEAR with one hand and is almost done with PARALYSIS with his other hand (check the combinations in the rules!).
The hard part is guessing what your opponent is going to do and making the correct accomodations on your end. For instance, if you see a FIREBALL combination building up it might be time to cast a PROTECTION FROM FIRE. I have played it many times-- the game itself (rules, etc.) is found HERE in its original text.
You can play the game semi-interactively with several other people as WARLOCKS on Ravenblack.net, or via email on the FIRETOP MOUNTAIN server. Both are a hoot.
I'm trying something different, by tinkering a little. I used Cyberboard to create a PBeM "gamebox" for Waving Hands that has a crucial difference from the original. The original Waving Hands takes place in "no space".. or a logcial construct where there is no distance between magic users and no relation to a physical plane of existance. That's certainly a workable, fun and interesting game. Just for grins, I added graphical representations to demonstrate the wizards and their summoned creatures fighting on a physical place (a dungeon, in this instance). This adds an element of MOVEMENT to the game that wasn't there before.
This gamebox provides all you'll need to play WAVING HANDS/WARLOCK/SPELLBINDER via cyberboard. A Gamebox, Scenario and "WizardlyDuel" starter Game File are included. There are also amended rules for Play By Email and movement (my changes are in blue) stored in an HTM file. THe original is also provided as a word document. I've played around with it and it's a hoot.
So here's the Gamebox File, enjoy yourselves.
9:53 AM
Do the bits drive the design, or does the design drive the bits?
Lately my buying habits (in both games and miniatures) have been highly erratic. I'm the kind of chap that reacts like a magpie with shiny objects at new and interesting figure lines. At a recent HISTORICON, I discovered John Jenkins Designs' CHINESE HOPPING VAMPIRES and a JADE MUMMY (click for more details).
Naturally I bought what I could.. they were too danged interesting to ignore.
Although the vendor (Age of Glory, from Maryland, who will be at TriaDCon) was down to his last two packs, he also carries TERRA COTTA ZOMBIES which I know I'm just going to have to get. I'm weak that way.
So what I have, I already have primed. Gazing further down the paint queue, I note the DWARVEN INVENTOR (I bought three of them) from Heresy Miniatures.
I have lots of onesies and twosies that are like this. I treasure them, because I think figures like the hopping vampires and terra cotta zombies and dwarven inventors and virtually ANYTHING from Eureka these days.
The problem is.. how do you use units that aren't meant to be "army builders"?
The games we play usually utilize giant formations of critters, even the fanatasy games. Unless I sell off a kidney, I'm not going to afford an army of these creatures. How to tie together things like terra cotta zmbies and dwarven inventors? Which leads to the even bigger question: Do I buy these things to make a game out of the bits, or have a design in my head that influences what bits I'm going to buy?
Right now, I can't think of a scenario for terra cotta zombies and hopping vampires, but By God, I KNOW I'm going to use them, somewhere. On the other hand, my Russo Polish War project has been very calculated. I need this many troops, I buy them and paint them or have them painted for me, with the intention of having a nice Red Army available at the end of the drill.
So I guess I take both approaches to the hobby..
