With the unexpected arrival of the Deadzone beta, I’ve been a little sidetracked into answering the questions on that thread. This is fine – after all, that’s why the thread is up in the first place. However, it might make DS players think I’ve forgotten them entirely. Not so.
I’ve been sorting out some diagrams for LOS as this seems like an important issue to discuss in an article. Of course, it needs diagrams to do so properly, and they take a bit more fiddling about than me just sitting down and bashing out some nonsense on the keyboard 🙂
I’ve also got a half-written article for my Game Design Theory series that I’d like to finish off. This is about working as a designer rather than rules, so is a bit different from the others. Still, I hope it will be of some interest.
Once those posts are done I should probably do a round up of the DZR beta comments and feedback so far. That thread is full of interesting and valuable discussions, but is getting rather long 🙂
Quirkworthy 
Cool, thanks Jake. Very much looking forward to some more of your Dungeon Saga FAQ’s.
On another note, I had my first group game of DS today with all the “Official” DS gear. Four adults and a young fellow in his late teens (all work colleagues of mine except the teen who is the son of one of those guys). Everyone enjoyed the game immensely and are super keen for another session. One of the guys had never played miniature games before and was an instant convert after playing DS.
In very short detail, this is what we played – 5 Scenario game (We had a day for gaming and I knew we wouldn’t get all 10 Adventures from the Dwarf King’s Quest finished, and I really wanted to complete a full story arc, so I cut it down to 5 Scenarios with a different goal. I used your adventures for all Scenarios except for the 4th Scenario, which was my invention as I wanted it to be much shorter than Adventure 2 in the DKQ…essentially it was a single large room with Hoggar and some Zombies which the Heroes had to get past and open the door on the other side to be able to progress to the Elven Princesses tomb.
Goal – Release Elven Princess from her undead fate (The Banshee Elshara)
Scenario 1 = Adventure A: Journey From The West
Scenario 2 = Adventure B: Journey From The East
Scenario 3 = Adventure 1: Well Met!
Scenario 4 = See below
Scenario 5 = Adventure 3: Restless Guardian (the Banshee Elshara is the Elven Princess)
So much fun and I’m very happy with the game!
And I’m happy to hear that you’re having fun with it Danny. Also good to hear that you’re already mixing things up and adapting it to your needs 🙂
Maybe when a beta ruleset drops it might be helpful to split the faq by book section in different posts and then link them in the master faq post
I’ve had mixed success with that kind of approach. What seems to have worked best is keeping one central FAQ and then doing articles which discuss specific issues (when they’re big enough to warrant it), and link those back.
I don’t suppose anyone knows how to procure a copy of the DZ beta rules do they? I wouldn’t mind having a butchers at them.
I’ll put them on the FAQ page: https://quirkworthy.com/2015/12/03/deadzone-redux-beta-faq/
I hope you reply quickly, Jake. There are a lot of complaints being made in the Kickstarter page, namely the abscense of overwatch is bothering a good amount of players.
thank you
Overwatch isn’t something I expect to see back. Overwhelmingly, the comments I’ve heard so far from people who have played the new version is that they don’t miss it. Often they they say that they thought they would, but when they actually try playing then they don’t. Unless that changes, it won’t return.
ahh thank you for the reply. I will re-read the rules and see how it all plays out.
After three playlists, I have to say tat sorry, but I think the new version is a retrograde set and the groups I’m associated with are junking it. The blue water between DZ and other skirmish games was that it was a decent replica of modern close assault tactics. Now? Well, the ability to charge down a machine gunner and hit him with a stick that we saw in one game really disappointed. You get a more tactical game from Infinity with its opposed actions or even 40k. This is a real shame because we loved DZ1 and ran several campaigns using it. I don’t know. It feels like this was driven towards producing a tournament game rather than a role-playing or tactical game. I suppose the groups I play with are at the military end of the gaming spectrum but we were very happy with a system that reflected modern infantry squad tactics. Now, folk are going back to home brew adaptions of Necromunda.
Hi Mike, and thanks for your honesty. Personally I was quite pleased with the way in which DZ1 modelled modern small units stuff. At least, tried to nod in that direction. However, that clearly wasn’t what Mantic needed, hence the major reworking.
You can, of course, continue to play with the DZ1 rules. Nobody is coming round your house to take them away 🙂
For my own games I’m currently working on two different SF skirmish systems, and these (being for me rather than a client) have rather different approaches. So in effect I’ll be playing home-brew games too 🙂
If you need playtesters, let us know. I think the biggest gripe was that folk were looking to use their Veer myn in DZ 1 and that probably won’t be possible. Any suggestions on how to retrofit what comes out of the KS into DZ1? Btw. DZ1 is an awesome set of rules. THANK YOU
Hello 🙂
3 Games played with V1.4 and I’m very disappointed. 😦
I will not comment all points, it’s just a general feeling.
Ok there are some issues with V1 (which can be solved), but we have now a game without any flavour. It smells like any average SF skirmish games and the last patchs like “Firing for effect” seem to be makeshift job compare to the smart blaze away rule.
If I have not bought Deadzone, I will now not buy it after reading the rules.
Sorry Jake, this new one is not for me. Many people are very enthusiastic with DZR, I’m perhaps an old cranky. 🙂
There are a lot of differences between the two, which is what Mantic wanted. Personally, I think of them as almost completely different games, for somewhat different (but heavily overlapping) audiences.
I’m not a fan of the Firing for Effect thing either. Not my work though, so perhaps it’s me that’s being cranky 😉
Good to hear that is not your work. I do not have anything against the rule as I have only casually looked them over but found the name choice strange. That is not what that term means at all and there are terms or phrases that do specifically mean that.
I remember FFE form my Squad Leader playing days, and it does have a very specific meaning (certainly within the artillery, which was the SL usage).
That is the usage of the term I know of also (artillery not squad leader) , I think the term here would be neutralization fire.