Time marches on and new beginnings herald changes. 

I have been in this business for about 10 years. During that time I have created a lot of games. Spinoffs, adaptations, original creations, it has been a lot. If you have been along for all that time, you have seen things develop and change, seen new ideas come along and seen experiments come and go. That is the nature of things.

With the cooperation with Modiphius has come fantastic opportunities to do cool new things. Being able to release a game like Five Parsecs Tactics was really cool. We have a lot lined up for the future and I hope you are all excited to see that.

However even though that work has taken up a lot of time, I have never stopped creating new things. I am a little more discerning these days and more ideas go in the bin than get completed, as I find they do not quite hold up or they end up not doing anything I am sufficiently excited about. All part of the process.

One thing I have always chafed against however is getting type-cast. Around the internet, I am mostly known as the "solo guy" these days and I certainly welcome that as I happen to think I am pretty good at that. But I do not just want to make solo games. 

I have also become associated with my particular brand of scrappy space opera science fiction (collectively known as Unified Space) but I do not just want to be the Unified Space guy either.

So it is time for a new beginning: 

With the new year, I am hoping to release not only a brand new game but one set in a brand new setting tentatively labelled Mystic Space. 

Mystic Space is an idea I have kicked around in my head for a long time now. A setting of glossy futuristic factions, big heroes, space magic and high tech. Something that draws from a completely different set of influences to what I have usually worked with. And hopefully something to allow the use of all manner of cool miniatures that often get overlooked. 

It is also intended to be a different game experience than what I have been doing for a while. It is not an adventure game or a game mastered game (though it could be both of those if people put their minds to it). It is a game of tactical action and fighting for objectives and selecting a faction that you like the sound of, the sort of thing that you play with a friend or at the club. Of course people can solo any game and I will try to make sure solo gamers are not left out, but this one, I want to do something different. 

It will not be a "build your own" toolkit, but a game with army lists and factions with special abilities and all that good stuff. 

Something for people who like games with big fun heroes with an identity in the game.

It is also intended to be a way to go back to the roots a little bit, but with the skills and tools I have available now. When a game PDF can be updated at no cost, then player feedback about weapons and points values can be taken into account easily. When a player can just reach out to the designer and ask, there never has to be any doubts about the intent behind a rule or how something is supposed to work.

I can't compete with the big glossy rulebooks from the big companies. But I can compete on caring about you and allowing you to become part of the process.

And heck, it'll be fun to create something brand new. Down the road, there will no doubt be other games in the Mystic Space setting and it is very possible older titles could end up with stats for both settings. 

Who knows? 

The future is bright. I hope to see you there.

I use "rip off" affectionately here, but when you write games, you will inevitably have the question of what games inspired a game you wrote. So I thought I would make the canonical list (as far as I remember it anyways). 

This is using a fairly narrow definition. Five Parsecs as a "vibe" is inspired by everything I like in scifi, so that doesn't really count, but Rogue Hammer is obviously meant to be Rogue Trader, so that counts. 

With rules, I am counting it if the idea for a rule or concept came directly from another game. 

The list is probably incomplete but I will expand it when I can.

Fast And Dirty

Morale checks on multiple dice came from White Wolf's RPG dice mechanic.

Suppression, wounded and confidence levels are in the game because they were in Stargrunt 2.

Five Men in Normandy

The campaign style was based pretty heavily on Necromunda.

Some of the feel of play was inspired by Nuts but I don't think any mechanic is specifically based on it.

Trench Storm

Somewhat based on Space Marine 2nd edition (and really NetEpic at the time)

LaserStorm

Heavily based on Space Marine 2nd edition and NetEpic.

Rogue Hammer

Inspired by Rogue Trader.

Renegade Scout

Mechanically based on Rogue Trader and 2nd edition 40K.

From Shako to Coalscuttle

4 stand units was inspired by a Neil Thomas game on 19th century warfare. 

Five Leagues From the Borderlands

Melee combat is heavily inspired by the roleplaying game Eon and the Inquisitor miniatures game. 

Squad Hammer

The idea of "flexible" hit roll numbers was inspired by writings on Matrix gaming methods.

War Story

The concept was based on Matrix gaming methods and Kriegspiel methods.  

MISCONCEPTIONS

These are questions or misconceptions I have gotten about where I got things from. I don't mind these but I thought it'd be fun to clarify things. This can also be updated over time.

The FAD morale check was taken from Chain Reaction.

Negative. FAD dates back to when I had just moved to the United States (though it hit the public around the same time as Chain Reaction) and as noted above was inspired by White Wolf RPGs.

FiveCore was inspired by Squad Leader

Negative. I did not actually play Squad Leader or ASL until I was a fair bit older and living in Oregon. 



Tonight we will chat about some indie games we have found cool in the past, as well as various other tabletop miniatures gaming topics. 

https://www.youtube.com/@axanax2534/streams at 21:15 (eastern time I think, just check in around that time).

We would love to have you check in and say hi in the chat.

I get some questions fairly frequently, so occasionally it is good to gather them up and put an answer down in print. Do people say "print" when it is digital? I feel like that isn't what we should call it. Anyways. 

As always the questions are paraphrased from actual questions. 

What is the difference between Clash on the Fringe and Renegade Scout? They are both supposed to be Rogue Trader inspired? What about Rogue Hammer? My head hurts!

If I am honest, Clash probably did not end up being all that RT inspired after all. SOme of the elements like the random tables are definitely from there and I tried to mirror the way the RT book was set up in the alien sections, but it really is just a modern scifi tactical game. I happen to think its a really good one too. I think mechanically the inspiration came heavier from things like Warzone, Stargrunt 2 and Void.

Renegade Scout was an attempt at proving two things:

First, there were a lot of attempts people had made to build a Rogue Trader retroclone but none had actually succeeded, so I wanted to show it could be done. Second, I always felt that the mechanics of RT and 2nd edition got a bad rep. I happen to think 40K 2nd edition was really quite good, so I wanted to sort of rehabilitate some of those approaches but in a modern way. Think of it as a "alternate 3rd edition" if you will.

Roguehammer is basically the reverse: Take the actual units (renamed of course) of Rogue Trader and pair them with new mechanics (in this case based off Squad Hammer). Plus I felt that the challenge of a game that would exist in between the single figure mechanics of 40K and the stand based combat of Space Marine / Epic would be interesting. 

Will there be more of these retro inspired games?

For now probably not. I have something in the RPG field I would like to do but I think the mini's retro pond has no more fish in it and a designer should be spending most of their time and effort on their own creations. 

What is the quick difference between Five Men in Normandy and Five Men at Kursk?

Kursk is more squad oriented (though it is still a man to man skirmish game) and has more chrome and detail. Normandy is simpler and faster and more "cinematic". 



So the final (?) list of armies/races/peoples for fantasy KPS will look like this:

Royal humans (this also doubles as the general human list for historical games)

City folk

Dwarfs

Martial elves

Small folk

Horde orcs

Ratters

Brute orcs

Gnolls

Barbarians

Devout 

Dark elves

Undead

Lizardfolk

Wood elves

Gnomes

That should be enough to cover most ranges of figures I can think of, and the ones that arent covered can be fit into one of the above. I may add one or two more but I am not sure.

We kicked off the inaugural episode of "The Bad Internet Friends". A hopefully twice a month stream where my buddy Canadian Dave (aka Ax Anax) and I will chat about various tabletop wargaming related topics. 

The starting episode is about sponsored content on wargamer social media and includes a bit of a rant I suppose, about the difficulty independent creators have in accessing any sort of promotion at all.

There may also be some discussion of human sacrifice and ponies but I assure you it is all in good taste. 

On the up again after getting the plague so things are slowly resuming some semblance of normality.

If you are one of the folks who donated to make FKPS a reality, hang on to the amount you donated. At some point I will need to gather all that up for the bit thank you list and so forth. But do not send me that YET since I will lose all the information without a question :)

Stay tuned for more information.

Got absolutely flattened by covid. Now on day 6 I am starting to be able to think thoughts beyond "guh" and "blergh" again, but it will definitely be a bit of a grind for a little bit. 

More news shortly as things get back to normal.

In todays game example, we look at Renegade Scout and how hidden troops work in the game (and why).

Renegade Scout inherits the option for troops to hide behind cover from its ancestors: A unit moving at the normal movement rate and ending its move within or right behind terrain can Shelter. This lets troops keep their heads down, but comes at the cost of not firing weapons or moving above the cautious movement rate. As a player you will need to prioritise when speed is of the essence compared to safety.

Sheltering troops can be fired on if you have a clear line of sight, for example by moving around the terrain they are hiding behind. 

Alternatively you can make a spotting check. This is a roll of 2D6 + the Observation score. Figures can shoot at any sheltering enemy within this range in inches. So if you roll a 7 with Observation 4, you can fire at sheltering troops within 11 inches. 

Units roll once but each figure applies its own Observation score, so it is possible that some firers will be able to shoot and others will not. Gun crews benefit from better fire control, so they always use the single best Observation score in the crew. 

Personality figures get a small advantage in that you have a -1 penalty to spot them. In the above example a Personality figure would have to be within 10 inches to be spotted. 

So what changed?

Compared to Rogue Trader and 40K 2e, Renegade Scout makes hidden troops a bit easier to attack. If you are at "firefight" ranges you can generally fire on them, making it an option more suited to middle range encounters. This also helps promote more aggressive play. 

A notable change is that in the original rules, once you were spotted the status was removed. In Renegade Scout this only happens if you are charged. Otherwise only the spotting figure is able to shoot. This was needed to balance out the higher chance of spotting and prevent defensive positions from being plastered with heavy weapon fire right away. 

I will be joining forces with friend of the show "Ax Anax" (https://www.youtube.com/@axanax2534 ) to do a twice a month tabletop gaming chat / voice hangout where we will talk about topics related to miniatures gaming (and independent minis gaming in particular) as well as just shooting the breeze about whatever comes to mind. More to follow once I know what a schedule will look like.

The idea is to do the hangouts live so people can listen in and post questions and comments, but you can also catch up after the fact on his youtube channel.