Greetings folks. 

The next weasel funder is on!

It is for Conspiracy 762:
If you want to get to the point:

“Army guys vs aliens and monsters”. 

There, thats what it is. Thats what you are getting.

You want to know more?

Okay, it is a set of rules aimed principally at easy pick up games, fun club nights and conventions games, as well as those afternoons where you want to do a quick game solo but you want to use some models you haven’t found a use for yet: 

That means straight forward mechanics and a pretty short rule book.

The idea is that if you have played games before, you probably have a decent chance of how to play already and can just get into the action after a turn or two. 

The bulk of the book will be characters and monsters.

There will be three weapons levels: World Wars, Modern and Scifi

A collection of army dudes, scientists, hero types (like the oddly resourceful physicist and the overly muscular action hero) to put in scenarios.

And a huge collection of aliens and monsters from zombies and vampires to xenos and EXTERMINATOR robots.
The plan is about 30 different critters so you can populate your scenarios with cool, fun things.

After that? Its up to you. This is intended as a “Mini” minis game, meaning a shorter book, maybe around 50 pages of which most of it would just be characters, units and creatures. 

Of course it could be expanded with more creatures later. I will also set up an open license so people can publish their own creatures and scenarios.

It is not intended to be a big campaign game, have army lists or any of that. Instead as I said, aimed specifically at pick up games, club and con games, fun scenarios etc. 

The way the process works is Weaselfunding: The book will cost (probably) 15 dollars and will be a PDF + the license I discussed. 

You can throw in any amount of money you like and when the book comes out, you get that discounted off the cost.
Anyone that donates 15 dollars or more gets the final book, even if it turns out to actually be more than that.

We will have a stretch goal of sorts: I said 30 creatures but I will track everyone throwing in extra money and for every 50 dollars extra, you get an extra monster in the book. 

A playable version of the rules with a handful of creatures should be available in the mid of November so you can start playing with the rules. 

If you want in, donate any amount you want to nordicweaselgames@icloud.com through Paypal, make sure to put Conspiracy 762 in the message. 

Discord:

Yes, there is a Nordic Weasel Discord group. Due to problems with spammers, we do not have or allow publicly posted links currently.

If you want to get invited, you can email me directly though if you have friends who are on there, they can also get an invite for you.

This is a great option to chat to other folks and you are welcome to ask rules questions.

Facebook:

I am not (and never have been) involved in running the Facebook communities. I do know the people who DO run them and they have my full trust, but they are intentionally fan communities and will always stay that way.

This is a much bigger community and is great for sharing photos and so on.

Website:

We ARE working on a proper, honest-to-goodness website that is almost done. Now that every company is moving away from websites and trying to things on social media, I suppose it was time. Stay tuned!

Social media:

The only social media I use is Bluesky and I really don't talk work a lot on there. If you want to say hi, please do however. 

Email:

The simplest and best way to get my attention is email. I try to reply to everything when I can, but things do slip through the crack. If you are wondering if I missed your email, feel free to write again a week later. I almost certainly just meant to get to it and then lost track. 

Will I come to your convention?

The problem here is almost always just time and being able to actually travel. Last year we had planned to go to a couple of events and life managed to just get in the way every single time with something happening that prevented us from going. So in theory, yes, but apparently the callous whims of the universe do not always agree! 

Will I guest on your podcast/do an interview?

Yup, happy to do so and have done so many times! Send me an email and let me know roughly what you would like to talk about. 

Exceptions will apply to drama/clickbait channels or culture warrior channels about how the womenfolk are ruining wargaming. 

Will you read my game?

I love to do so and I have provided detailed feedback to folks in the past. Realistically the ability to do can vary pretty tremendously. As long as you won't be upset at a modest response, I am happy to do so. 



Got a question about Starport Scum 2:

Yes, I have begun working on updating Starport Scum. It is a bit of a slow process because I realistically can only work on updating or writing one "new" thing at a time, so right now its getting Mystic Space to the "full version". Then I will probably be doing Company Commander and then Starport, but plans may change. 

The plan is to mostly tidy things up, bring most (but not all) of the expansion stuff into the main rules and then clean up the trait building system. My gut reaction right now is to replace the actual build system with a more open ended set of tools to help people make traits on the fly (which I suspect is that people were doing already). There will also be more examples of traits ready to use so you can pick things if you are feeling a little indecisive.

Updating old titles can sometimes run into additional issues because getting it from an old format and into Apple Pages can involve a few steps and each step mangles the formatting more. If I have lost the original document and only have a PDF, this gets much worse. So some hard work is needed on that front :)

If you have checked on your copy of Rogue Hammer or checked out Rogue Hammer Strike Leader, you will notice we have started adding fluff pages to each army. They are being done one at a time, but the plan is for each army to get about a page or so of fluff text. 

Strike Leader also has 2 extra pages of info covering what I am now calling the Rogue Universe. This is intended to be basically a sort of fan version of various scifi settings you are already familiar with, most notably Oldhammer 40K of course. These versions are not super serious, embracing that this really only needs to exist for the purpose of allowing miniatures battles. We do hope you enjoy them!

Someone asked me online if there might be Parsecs species in Rogue Hammer. Probably not entire army lists, but I think it'd be cool to have a "Unified Space Expeditionary Force" from a far away region of space, so people can get double/triple duty out of some of their units. Time will tell though!

A couple of quick questions answered for Strike Leader (SL):

Will every Rogue Hammer army list get a SL version?

Yes.

Will every Rogue Hammer unit be in SL?

That's the plan as a starting point. Now, there are a couple of cases where there are "variants" of a single unit in Rogue Hammer, to reflect different weapons load outs, like the Star Knight heavy weapons for example. In that case, I may pull them back together in Strike Leader. 

Will SL be split into two or three books like Rogue Hammer?

At some point yes, since the page count will be hard to manage down the road. It will work the same way as for Rogue Hammer where your download will just contain two PDFs: One for the rules and one for the army information.

Will every unit be provided for free?

That part I am not sure about yet. Since SL unit entries are larger, I don't think having an army book that is 600+ pages is going to work all that well. Also I want to do all of this, but I can't commit to what is essentially writing 20 Codex books for free, obviously :)

What I think will happen is that the core rules will have the basic version of each army with a handful of units for each army. so the game is fully playable in itself. Then once those are all done, I will probably do some sort of army books. Or maybe it will be booklets with a collection of themed units. I am not sure. We will see how it all goes.

Will there be more fluff text?

We have had a ton of fun creating the fluff pages. I am planning 1 per army for now. If there is any interest, I may do more down the road as well. 

Just one question today but it bears a bit more discussion.

A fan of the venerable (pre NWG in fact) Fast and Dirty inquired if there would ever be an updated version of the "unofficial" v5 rules.

The answer is complicated. Quick history lesson: The FAD rules came about around the time of the 15mm scifi boom and I think spread in part because they had the good fortune of arriving in their proper version, as that scene was blowing up 

Over time of course that turned inexorably towards Gruntz which was both less "military" but also easier to make units for and I moved on to other projects and mostly let FAD sit around. The  3rd and 4th editions (with the nice art work) had been big efforts that were pulled together as much by a gentleman who assisted with layout and rewrites. The 4th edition was also a "community edition" in that fans submitted their artwork for the project. Really quite special in hindsight. 

I had struggled for a while with what to do. I knew I wanted to do an updated version, but I also didn't know what to actually DO. Yahoo groups were dying, forums at the time were not really the way forward and I didn't really want to run a website. (as evidenced by still being very bad at all things internet to this day). To top it off, FAD was in a strange situation where it had relied so much on fan contributions that I didn't really think I could monetise it fairly. But I also didn't really understand what would need to be done to make the game open source.

I started work on the "5th" edition (if you have a copy that looks a lot rougher and has minis photos, this is the 5e) just to experiment with various ideas I had at the time. Some were rather too derivative, some were good tweaks. But it never really went anywhere due to never solving the problems above. And since NWG was looking to take up a ton of my time and effort, as FiveCore blew up, FAD went to the shelf for a while. 

That seemed to solve itself when a gentleman emailed me and asked if I wanted to just sell them the game. They were wanting to update it a bit, put it online on their website and were willing to pay a bit for the privilege. I figured that solved my problem in that I wouldn't really have to figure it out and so the deal was done. In hindsight, for a relative pittance but I wasn't certain it was really worth much at all and in any event, I wasn't looking to do anything with it. 

Many years have passed now. I still get a couple emails every year with people saying they liked FAD or asking if there will ever be a new version. So I decided to look into things and try to contact the fine folks who had done their version. Except there does not seem to be any lights on any longer. Attempts to contact them has not resulted in any responses and there does not appear to be any sort of community existing online.

However, I did legitimately sell off the name. So I can't just make the same game again. I could of course create something descended from it and I have some notes to that extent, but then it raises the question of whether NWG really needs yet another scifi skirmish game? Well, you know me, that's never stopped me before but are old FAD fans looking for that or are they looking for the real FAD6, clunk and all?

It's a good question. When I have an answer, I will share it with you all.

The first round of our Reader Mail Bag. 

If you want your questions answered, please fill out the form at https://forms.gle/zfKgkUneQ3kiufPQ7 and I will answer each weekend:

Note that questions may be paraphrased or shortened a little bit.

Just wondering if you still get mail at the iCloud address.

Yes, I do! Unfortunately i am bad at email so I often end up losing an email that gets lost between a bunch of other things, but I try to go back and catch up on things. 

If you have the old Gmail address you can use that too, but I am trying to phase that out.

Who's your favorite Doctor?

That is really difficult. I am one of the newcomers who got on board with the new show, so Eccleston will always be my Doctor. For the classic show, probably First or Third. 

Is there a way for me to obtain a PDF copy of <Five Leagues From the Borderlands>?

Yes, if you contact Modiphius customer service with where you bought the book, they should be able to hook you up with a PDF copy. 

Are modern/ultra-modern games, like some sort of "Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare" style of miniatures game in plans for the future?

Let's call this one unlikely, mostly due to me not really playing much past WW2. Though our Cold War "No End in Sight" rules will handle it fine. 

How do close assaults actually work in No End in Sight?

Yes, that section could use a bit more clarity. Something for the next edition!

The attacker fires (and fights any hand to hand) as explained in the section. If there are surviving defenders, they are left in place. When that unit activates next, they are automatically in an assault and will fire as if they were the attackers with any figures within 3". 

In some cases you can have a unit be assaulted and take losses, leading to the target unit no longer being within 3" when it activates. In that case, they are free to do as they like.

This is not quite feeling exactly as it needs to, but for right now, it works fine. 

I have decided to do something new, which is to establish a Google Form you can fill out with questions you would like to be answered on the blog.

It can be found at https://forms.gle/zfKgkUneQ3kiufPQ7 

Questions can be about Nordic Weasel Games, game design questions, advice on miniatures gaming in general or about how to GM roleplaying games (I do have 35 years experience after all). You are also welcome to ask personal questions though the only things I know anything about is cats and heavy metal. 

Questions will be posted on the blog at regular intervals. A particularly interesting question may also be answered on the podcast. 

We figured this would be fun:

If you swing by https://forms.gle/HdtYV6xJPpjh3JW97 and fill it out, we will read out, rate and respond to your hot takes about miniatures gaming and the miniatures hobby on the podcast. 

The form should be anonymous, I tested it, so don't hold back what you REALLY think about basing your tanks. 

Depending on how many we get it will be either the next or next-next episode.