The Lonesome Death of Games Workshop

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Quirkworthy

First up, GW are not dying (a), nor do I wish them to be (b).

(a) The reports I hear suggest that while their business model may come in for some criticism, they are doing fine at the moment, thank you. Can they sustain this? Well that sort of business forecasting is not my speciality. Read their annual reports and decide for yourself.

(b) Regardless of whether I play their games, appreciate Finecast as a medium or believe in their business model, I actually think that GW as a whole does some good things for the tabletop gaming hobby. Chief among these is simply introducing people to the concept of gaming with model soldiers and raising the profile of this hobby (with a small h) in general.

Having said that, I was struck the other day, by a sense of a real change in the way the gaming industry feels about GW. Of course I haven’t spoken to everyone, but I do talk to lots of people from all sorts of positions and roles within gaming and it’s a sort of cumulative and gradual feeling that’s been growing over the last few years.

It’s about what would happen if GW imploded and disappeared.

GW is undeniably the big player in tabletop gaming. A decade ago, if they had disappeared then it would have been sackcloth and ashes all round. Disaster and calamity would have ben the order of the day. This was the flavour of discussions at the time: even people who did not like GW didn’t wish them away because of the collateral damage they imagined it would have done. Not so now.

Now I get the strong impression that after the initial surprise people would see GW’s demise as an opportunity rather than a problem.

This may seem like nothing worth noting to people who haven’t been involved in gaming for ages, and perhaps I’m playing catch up here. Maybe I’m the last to twig. Maybe not though. This, for me, is quite a big conceptual shift within the industry. Perhaps it’s a sign of it growing up and maturing. Possibly it’s just that there are now other big dogs snapping at GW’s heels. You can argue about how far behind they are, but what matters is that there are enough medium sized gaming entities that GW falling would create more openings to exploit than problems to resolve.

So why am I posting this? Well it’s not to bash GW. As I said, on reflection I think I’d rather they survived. I’m really just punting the thought out into the shark-infested waters of the internet because I thought it was interesting.

What do you guys think? Has the imagined impact of a dead GW changed?

Posted in Random Thoughts | 90 Comments

The Usual Flak

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Quirkworthy

Well it was always going to happen. Say I’m doing something and it’s (allegedly) simply a clone of Mordheim, BattleFleet Gothic, Epic, etc. I’m talking, of course, about the comments on TGN about me self-publishing. It’s a shame, really, that people don’t think further than copying GW because it shows up their lack of knowledge of the plethora of games available and the creative process in general. If I was going to copy a game (which would be dull and boring anyway, but if…) it wouldn’t be one of GWs. Most of GW’s designs are old and clunky – why would I copy that? Whilst you can still have fun playing them, they are hardly slick and well-honed. On the contrary, every time I talk to a 40K or Warhammer player they launch into a diatribe about how broken the whole thing is. Personally, I couldn’t say. All I can do is repeat what I’ve heard. I do know that I had lots of fun playing the games for many years in older editions, but the more I broadened my knowledge of what was out there the more I saw them as the old fashioned and somewhat inelegant and cumbersome beasts they are. I still like the backgrounds, I just think that the games bear little or no resemblance to them and do them a disservice.

Perhaps it’s just getting older, but I’ve got very little tolerance for slow and clunky games any more. I want things to be slick, clean and elegant. When I play a game I’d like to be thinking about my tactics and what the other players are up to, not trying to work out what the rules are actually trying to say. This, of course, is also what I aim for in my own games too.

As I have said before, copying other people’s work is just boring, so I don’t do it. However, looking at a genre and deciding that there isn’t something that really suits me in it is entirely different. In that case you’re intentionally NOT copying people as you think they’ve made mistakes. If you didn’t why not play their game? It’s already there. It would be so much easier. I’ve got way more ideas I want to work on than time to do them in, as does pretty much every creative person I know whether that be musicians, modellers, writers or whatever. Some people do copy other’s work, but within the industries I’ve worked in this is always seen as a demeaning and rubbish job, done simply for the cash (and generally because the people putting up the funding don’t want to take a risk).

Do I have a point today? Maybe.

I think what I’m talking around is that creative people would rather be creative than not. Expecting them to want to copy something is illogical and out of character. What creative people are generally trying to do is something better than what they’ve seen. They mostly look at a genre and think “nobody has really aced it here. I can do better”.

I’m also on (again) about the vast wealth of options that are out there. BGG lists 61,587 games today. Yes, you read that right, sixty thousand plus games. How many have you played or even heard of? What’s the odds that (a) GW did not do the first (or best) version of <insert whatever you like here>, and (b) there are games you would really enjoy that are just lurking out there waiting to be discovered?

Saying that a new game from me or anyone else is just a copy of X from GW is a tired and lazy comment and I really wish people would move on because frankly I’m a bit bored of it. Am I being naive? Probably. That’s what I always get told when I want things to be better – when I want people to think a bit more before they say silly things. Hey ho.

All of which actually reminds me of another thought I had about GW. I’ve kept you long enough though. I’ll write that up for tomorrow.

 

PS: apologies for being grumpy this morning. I’m having a series of  very annoying real world issues to deal with and you all know how that goes. I’ve now got to waste an hour writing another email explaining in words on one syllable (for the fifth time) a concept that a 6 year old could grasp. Compared to those cretins, the above complaint is trivial. 

Posted in Random Thoughts | 61 Comments

Eternal Battle Design Notes – Overall Structure

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Quirkworthy

The name of the new skirmish game is Eternal Battle.

This will be broken down into a number of separate books that fall into three types. At its heart is the Core Rules. These are the same for every period. Following on from this are a series of books on Settings. You need the Core Rules plus the appropriate Setting to play in a given period. In addition, there are a small number of Twists. These are not period specific and can be added to any Setting if you want to. This might be clearer in a diagram:

There will be one set of Core Rules, 2 or 3 Twists and as many Settings as people are interested in playing in.

 

Why This Structure?

There are 2 basic approaches to generic systems. In the first approach you have a single volume for each period and this includes the core rules as well as any period detail all mixed up together. I have chosen the other option which is to separate the core rules and the backgrounds.

The reason I have done this is to retain the clarity of separation. Very often what happens in the first model is that there is a degree of creep over the years of development so that each period’s rules drift away from each other and become not one common generic set, but a series of close cousins. As they are all in their own books, often with different layout styles and so on, it becomes awkward to find and remember what the subtle differences are between versions. This doesn’t matter if you only play one period, but the point of generic rules is that you can play more than that without having to learn a new set every time. I also think that it muddies the waters in terms of development and leads to flabby design. Separating the Core Rules and Settings physically means that I can concentrate on the proper function of each book.

 

Core Rules

These are a way to model humans fighting each other regardless of period or weaponry. People are people regardless of time and place, and the thin veneer of specific culture does not make as much difference to feelings and behaviours as might at first be thought. There are way more parallels than there are differences, which makes a common rule set possible.

A separate Core Rules book has to allow for any type of weapon or formation and address different fighting styles across history. However, it does not need to deal with the details of each.

Another big advantage of having a single volume of rules that is common to all periods is that any changes, corrections or updates that need to be made to the rules can be done entirely separately from the Settings, and only need opt be done once to cover all the bases.

Think of the Core Rules as Eternal Battle’s engine. It is into this power source that you plug each of the Settings.

 

Settings

Each Setting focuses on a single period of history (or fictional background). Some of these will be quite specific and others broader. Both are useful.

In practical terms, the separation of rules and background into their own books allows me to concentrate on steeping each Setting book in the essence of what makes that period different. Mechanically, the Core Rules are built with a set of “sockets” into which each Setting can plug in their period-specific details. When moving from one Setting to another, the concepts and rules behind each are identical, though the content varies. Once you know how to play one version, you know how to play them all. This means that you can very quickly move from Ancient Greece to the fields behind Omaha Beach and then into space or back to the Norse fjords. The rules become invisible and you can concentrate on the game.

The aim of a Setting is to provide character, background detail and specific period flavour so that a game of Eternal Battle tells a story that is appropriate to that time and place. Games in each Setting will play differently because the period-specific plug ins for the rules change the tactical options and victory conditions.

Twists

There are a couple of things that really sit outside either Core Rules or Settings. Instead of applying to one period of history they could fit in many. I’ve called these Twists.

So far I’ve thought of 3: Zombies, Alien Invasions and Time Travel.

Time Travel obviously interacts with as many different times and places as you want it to, but needs a framework to make sense. Zombies and aliens are foes that could appear anywhen as well as anywhere, and so making them part of one specific setting is just too limiting. Why not have zombies in Napoleonic times? Why not Norse zombies? The same goes for alien invasions.

Posted in Eternal Battle, Quirkworthy Productions | 43 Comments

Quirkworthy Products – First Wave

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Quirkworthy

Following on from yesterday’s post about publishing some stuff myself, I said I’d talk in a bit more detail about the first wave of products.

It’s been hard to keep myself from going a bit crazy with the freedom to produce anything. However, by applying a little bit of steely will (and adding a generous sprinkling of common sense) I’ve decided to focus on three areas to start with.

  1. Game Design Theory.
  2. Board Games.
  3. Skirmish Games.

 

Game Design Theory

I’ve written quite a lot about this and have had lots of very interesting conversations with people about it on various threads both here on Quirkworthy and elsewhere. It’s a subject that I know a fair amount about and definitely have opinions on. Sometimes I’m even right 😉

So, I thought that it would be useful to collate all of the concepts that I’ve been discussing in a disparate and somewhat scattered manner and put them together in a single volume on Game Design Theory. This is being written from scratch, although it obviously touches on topics covered here. My aim is to provide a reference so that further discussions can build on the basics and use a common set of terminology as a reference point. It won’t stop me posting and discussing things on Quirkworthy, and I hope it will allow us to collectively move things onto a new and deeper level of debate. I realise that this will set me up as a target to disagree with too, but that’s part of the intention. By defining a standard point of reference folk can agree or disagree with something without having to define a datum each time.

 

Board Games

These are a little tricker to do as PDFs, but people manage it so why not me? “Print and Play” is a recognised subset of board gaming, and with the increasing simplicity of Print On Demand (and a couple of POD sites specialising in games) I see this as a very reasonable way to get things into print which have languished far too long unpublished.

To start with I’ll be rolling out a simple little Euro style family game. Others on the blocks include empire-building fantasy games, an abstract or two, more Euro games of various levels of complexity and much more. It’s a big list. As ever, artwork for nice boards is a large part of slowing these down. We’ll see what I can do about that.

 

Skirmish Games

To be more accurate, a skirmish game, singular.

For many years I’ve been tinkering with a skirmish system that would allow me to learn one set of rules and apply it to any period. It’s not my idea and has been attempted with varying degrees of success by a number of folk over the years. For me though, every attempt has failed in one regard or another. This is mainly a reflection of my very high expectations rather than a real failing of the other designs. However, if I was going to print anything of my own it was going to have to live up to a very difficult brief.

The core challenge is that the system is being asked to simultaneously be both generic and specific, and that’s obviously not easy. It has to be generic so that the game can be learned once. It has to be specific because each period needs a load of character (otherwise why bother differentiating?). I am a very theme-led designer and so capturing the essence of what makes WWII combat different from Aztec Flower Wars, ACW skirmishes, Bronze Age raids in the Aegean, Prohibition bank raids, let alone any SF or F options is very important to me.

Of course, anyone who is familiar with my designs knows that I like clean and simple mechanics that promote a great deal of choice and consideration. What I found time and again was that in order to include all the variables I wanted (for the specific part of the brief) I had to make the rules too complex to be clean and slick. Alternatively, I was almost learning a new game to do each period, which defeated the object. Other options were to try for a very minimal system and this tended to suffer from being too bland. Adding a handful of skills for each period doesn’t constitute enough character in my book (though it seems to be enough for some).

Anyway, like I said, I’ve got to be happy before it gets published, regardless of what’s “good enough”. Actually, that reminds me of a saying my grandfather had, which (translated from the broad Lancs) goes: anything that’s “good enough” isn’t. It’s a concept that I took very much to heart and to which I always try to work. If it’s “good enough” then you haven’t finished yet.

As you will have gathered by now, I think I’ve cracked it. I’ve got a simple system that models how humans work in battle and which replicates things I’ve read in first hand accounts of battle in every period. This is my reference point. Can the things I read happened actually happen in my game? For every skirmish game I can think of I can easily find a number of things that are not modelled well or at all. For specific skirmish systems set in a single environment the omissions may not matter. For a generic system to truly cover all the bases then everything matters.

So far what I’ve got seems to deal with Soviet wave assaults and the gunfight at the OK Corral; with revolts by helots, medieval peasants or downtrodden colonial lackeys; with every kind of battle across the spectrum of History to Hollywood. In short, I’m feeling rather pleased with it all 🙂

Posted in Quirkworthy Productions | 13 Comments

So What Next?

Posted on October 27, 2012 by Quirkworthy

Well DreadBall is rolling along nicely and all my other freelance work is under control. So what next?

I’ve mentioned self-publishing once or twice in passing, and this is something I’ve been considering for a long while. Now I’m all done considering and am busy trying to implement it.

What I mean by self-publishing is selling my game designs directly as PDFs, with an option for Print On Demand (POD) sites like Lulu to sort people out with hard copies if they want them.

This approach has a number of advantages both for me and for people who might want to play my games. For me it means:

  1. That I can publish what I like. I’ve got loads of games kicking about in various states of completeness, many of which have been abandoned because getting them published in a traditional format takes so much time, effort (and money) and I’d rather be doing something else. If I can publish them on Quirkworthy as PDFs then the problems are reduced to (a) can I get the game to work and (b) technical ones of organising the layout and art.
  2. I can publish games much faster. Traditional publishing is a slow process. Once I’ve had a bit of practice at this self-publishing lark I can see it being a very slick and brisk system. Also, the more I do, the more new ideas I have. Occasionally I worry that I won’t think of anything good after the current project, but it never turns out like that. Working through projects and getting them out of my head and into the world frees up thinking space for new things. That’s a good feeling. In practice I have always had way more ideas than I could get into print.
  3. I get to keep the IP. Creating Intellectual Property (IP) is one of the things I do, and it is irksome to see it taken in directions I don’t agree with. This doesn’t happen a lot as people tend to trust my judgement much of the time, but it can get compromised for various reasons. As freelance work basically involves selling the rights of what you create to your client there is nothing you can do about this. However, it would be nice to be able to say no at times and to have some more control about what happens to it and (more usually the issue) how it is developed.
  4. I will hopefully make a little cash. This is boring, but has to be done. The less of my brain that has to consider tedious rubbish like paying bills, the happier I am. Game design is difficult to make money at, doubly so without a large amount of initial investment and a fondness for running businesses (neither of which I have). I like designing and writing stuff, not dealing with stock levels and accounts. Self publishing allows me the maximum time doing what I like and am best at, and the least time possible dealing with stuff I find dull and tedious.

So all told it looks like a grand idea for me. What does it mean for you guys?

  1. You get more cool games to play. I’ll assume that you like at least one of my games if you’re reading this. As I have similar design sensibilities across my games, the chances are you’d like some or all of my other games too. Me publishing more games means more potential fun for you. Oh, and new shiny toys for gamers is always good 🙂
  2. You get games and supplements faster. Some of these new things will be tabletop games with miniatures, and I’m not intending to make model ranges for them. That’s a big time sink I would be better off avoiding on the whole. Instead I’m talking to a number of companies who already produce the appropriate models. By working in partnership with them I can focus on the bit I do and leave them to do the rest. This means that what I do gets done faster as there’s less of everything else to get in the way. Hence, supplements will appear quickly – something gamers often complain does not happen.
  3. Stuff will be better supported. It takes me a while to get round everything (as there’s only one of me), but I do try to support the games I design. I think that’s only right. The better this concept does financially, the more time I can spend working on it, including the support for each game. A kind of positive feedback loop.

So I think it should work for you too. Of course, we’ll have to see how it goes when it’s live, but I think it looks good on paper.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, this does not mean that I am abandoning any of my freelance projects. Not at all. I’m still working on all the ones you have heard about and several others that haven’t ben announced yet. I’ll just be using this new route to get a whole raft of cool game ideas out into the big wide world rather than have them languish unpublished in my notebooks.

I’ll come back to this and what exactly I have in mind for the first wave tomorrow.

Exciting times!

Posted in Quirkworthy Productions | 15 Comments

Game Design Theory – Simple vs Complex

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Quirkworthy

There is a fair amount to discuss on this topic, but for today I just thought I’d share a quote I found while reading a book on something other than games. It’s quoted in Getting Things Done by David Allen (which is well worth a read, by the way). Anyway, it’s someone called Dee Hock who said:

“Simple, clear purpose & principles gives rise to complex and intelligent behaviour. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behaviours.”

He’s talking about this within the context of businesses, but I think it can be ported into games design. At least, to an extent. It’s like KISS for grown ups 😉

What do you guys think?

 

Posted in Game Design Theory | 15 Comments

Mantic Open Day Seminar Video

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Quirkworthy

For those of you that didn’t make the last Mantic Day here is a video of one of the seminars, filmed by some Spanish bloggers.

There is a short intro in Spanish, then the body of the seminar is in English. The sound isn’t great as it has picked up the noise form the room next door where the DreadBall demos were going on (rather loudly). I’m sure it wasn’t as noticeable on the day. Despite that you can still hear the comments from the speakers who are me in the centre with Ronnie Renton (of Mantic) on my right, and Tommie Soule (from Golem Painting) on my left.

It was a free form Q&A session and covers DreadBall, Dwarf King’s Hold, Project Pandora, Kings of War, Warpath, painting and Kickstarter campaigns among other things – in no particular order.

Posted in DreadBall - The Futuristic Sports Game, Dwarf King's Hold, Events, Kings of War, Project Pandora | Leave a comment

Bleh

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Quirkworthy

I think I underestimated quite how unwell I was. So unwell, in fact, that I didn’t sit at my computer at all for 3 days, which is almost unheard of for me. Not dying, you understand, but not well enough to think or type straight.

Back now though.

Some exciting stuff in the offing that I’ll get to in a while (postponed from last week). However, firstly I need to tidy up the loose ends a bit including the questions about Dwarf King’s Hold and Project Pandora that have been hanging about for way too long. Remember those? DreadBall isn’t the only thing I’ve designed. Actually, I have been wanting to redo their FAQs for a bit as I thought of a better way to do them, so it’s probably best to just do that.

All of which has to wait just a few hours more till I get back from Mantic HQ where I’m off right now. It’s just to check everything’s ticking over as it should and to see what cool stuff has come in since I was last there. You never know what you might find on people’s desks. Someone told me yesterday that the Wildcard master was in…

Posted in Random Thoughts | 7 Comments

Change of Season

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Quirkworthy

And here come the colds 😦

Feeling particularly grotty today, which is frustrating as I’m having a bit of  a creative phase and am filling notebook after notebook with ideas for new games and bits of games.

There’s lots going on for me in terms of game designing over the next few months and couple of years. I’m waiting a reply from Ronnie about what I should talk about publicly, and then I’ll let you know on the Mantic front. As well as that stuff I’ve got some other projects on the go with different companies which are still a little nebulous to talk about, but are intriguing from where I’m sitting. I’m also looking into self-publishing stuff, which I’ll expand on over the weekend. I’ve got some articles pondering that topic from a couple of angles. Not sure if it’s more than one post or one big ramble.

I also think I can do polls here, and thought I might ask a question or two of you guys.

Anyway, off to go and be ill elsewhere for an hour or three.

Catch you later.

Posted in Random Thoughts | 13 Comments

Perils of an Active Brain

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Quirkworthy

Well like I said, I was trying to clear the backlog of comments I needed to reply to. Unfortunately, I got waylaid by an idea for a new board game and spent most of my weekend tinkering with that instead. It needs a lot more polish if it’s going to work at all, and is a good illustration of why writing a brief at the start is a good idea. This one just stemmed from a random idea that just popped into my head, and hasn’t had a brief yet. Consequently it’s been flailing about, mutating from one thing to another as I put extra bits in and take other things out.

I think it’s going on the “interesting ideas to look at again sometime” pile. Get back to it in a decade.

 

Posted in Random Thoughts | 8 Comments