A repost from the old blog, but updated a little bit.

If you have been with me for a long time (and if so, thank you!) you will notice that for a few years I have charged for early/beta versions of rules: Usually a dollar or two or putting it through Patreon (which is also paid for, if you think about it that way). 

I sometimes get asked why I do that. 

Reason 1: 

It is usually enough material to be a full game. Maybe not "full" in the "150 page rulebook" sense but full in the sense that you can play multiple games and have a good time. If I am providing that amount of stuff, a cup of coffee is a fair return. This also means that if the game doesn't end up going anywhere (which happens) there is enough to be worth having whether to play it as is or loot for ideas. 

If a draft is so rough that it isn't really viable as a game yet, it usually does not get released at all outside the critical "inner circle". 

Reason 2:

I've noticed that people just provide more and better feedback when there was a dollar or two on the line. I don't know if that is because people feel more invested or if they feel it makes the effort more worthwhile on my part. It could be both as well.

Over the years I have tried basically everything at least once and will continue to do so, but if you are wondering about why a beta version might cost a cup of fancy coffee, that is why.

These terms occasionally come up on the discord but I think they are useful to help figure out what people want in miniatures games. I don't know the origin of some of these.

30 days

A method to getting hobby things done or to engross yourself in a topic. You select a single topic and focus all of your hobby efforts on only that for 30 days. If your focus is "Stalingrad" for your ww2 collection you only buy, build, paint and play games related to Stalingrad for 30 days. Existing social commitments are exempt so you don't have to cancel your weekend Magic the Gathering game.

In "Epic 30 days" extend this to music, film and books as much as possible as well. 

Grog

Short for Grognard. An old school wargamer. Is often a bit stuffy and set in their ways but also tends to be less motivated by commercial hype. Note that grog is a state of mind and not actually correlated to age. 

Rank and flank

Typically a medieval or fantasy game where troops are arranged in ranks and files and move as blocks. Often associated with individual figure removal but does not require it. Examples: Warhammer Fantasy Battles. 

Skirmish

Nobody agrees on what this means. To me a game is a skirmish game if a single figure represents a single soldier and has at least semi-autonomous actions (moving and firing individually, even if it is part of a squad f.x.). Typically 30 or less figures. Examples: Chain of Command or Warhammer 40.000.

A derivative is Big Skirmish which is a skirmish or semi-skirmish game with 40+ figures. 

Social solo

Playing solo miniatures games but sharing them online, whether on a forum, social media network or Discord server. Allows social interaction around the games with people commenting on each others games, storylines and figures/terrain.

Out of the box

A game where by reading along in the book, it will produce forces and a ready to play scenario for you. Contrasted with games where you have to create your own scenarios or build armies. 

Originally devised to describe my own Five Parsecs From Home.

Warband

A game where each player has only a handful of figures, but they are carried over between battles with some sort of progression system. Examples include Necromunda, Gangs of Mega-City One or my own Five Leagues From the Borderlands.

That sounds rather ostentatious but this is really more of a "best practice" when playing miniatures games. It appears in some of the books but it is worth discussing here:

The Weasel rule of miniatures placement:

When positioning miniatures on the corner of buildings or at the edge of terrain features, always clarify verbally to the other player if the figure is intended to be AT the corner (and thus able to fire and be fired upon but counting as being in cover) or BEHIND the corner (and thus out of sight unless outflanked).

A simple act like that can save no end of confusion and irritation when you realize a turn later that you did not have the same impression of the state of the game and battlefield.

The Weasel rule of shot decision:

If you are unsure if a figure is visible or out of sight, assume it can be seen.

If you are unsure whether a figure is in cover or in the open, assume it is in cover.

These two stances are intended for use only in cases where it really is quite marginal. Being permissive in both cases tends to move the game along and tend to balance out. 

Squad Hammer

The Squad Hammer Core rules has been updated with two tweaks:

First monster attacks against buildings now do damage equal to Size rather than rolling. This cuts out a die roll and also just feels like it makes more sense to me.

Second standard Hit Points is now 8 (9 for Hardcore units). This is not a huge change but over the course of a battle it should result in units being slightly more resilient. This may require more testing but I am pretty happy with the initial feeling. Let me know.

Shoot People in Space

The special ability of the Swift species was referring to a deleted rule. It has been updated to actually work correctly.

As always rules updates are free and incorporated into the rulebook: Just go to your library page in the Wargame Vault library and download the book again.

I always enjoy reading about the influences different game designers bring to the table, so I thought I would discuss some of mine as well especially since I fit into the "middle age" of tabletop gamers: I didn't have the primordial inspirations of Grant's gaming books, airfix figures and reading Conan books but I still started gaming pre-internet. 

Miniatures gaming

My first exposure to miniatures gaming as such was the Hero Quest and Space Crusade board games from MB. Hero Quest probably requires little introduction. Space Crusade was essentially the same concept but for Warhammer 40.000 (it even had a pretty good video game adaptation) and was released primarily in Europe it appears. 

When it came to "proper" miniatures gaming, the first real rules I ever played (other than little games I had devised myself, usually based on computer games I played) was the 4th edition of Warhammer but it was the 2nd edition of Warhammer 40.000 that really blew my mind. Pawing through the books as a teenager was pure and utter magic: It felt like a whole new world opening up. It's fair to say that we pretty much lived in that game world for several years. We would go on to binge-play many of the classic GW titles (Necromunda, Blood Bowl, Inquisitor and Epic 40.000). 

We would eventually expand into Warzone (2nd edition at the time) and from there the ball started rolling and the group sort of separated into two "factions": One that would only play the games they already knew and one that would play anything we could get our hands on. The internet was a big factor here when it arrived as we (usually I) could simply download games people had written from the internet. We played a ton of online free games: NetEpic, Slammer, Tactical Strike (which I think completely vanished) and I really going doing my own rules during that time. We also dabbled in Void and Vor during this time though neither succeeded in really becoming the next big thing.

If I was to pick out the sci-fi games that really influenced how I think about gaming, I think it'd look a lot like: 

Warhammer 40.000 2nd edition.

Warzone 2nd edition.

Necromunda (original).

Inquisitor.

Stargrunt 2nd edition.

5150 (original one book version)

As you can tell these are all skirmish oriented games and I think they all had a certain outlook on things, leaning towards the grittier end of things by and large. 

My introduction to historicals was a free game published by the Wartimes journal called 1916. I had gotten an early fascination for the first world war through reading All quiet on the Western front as an impressionable youth, along with the old Blue Byte computer game Historyline 1914-1918 and being able to actually play a WW1 game on the table was a big deal for me. 

The most played historical games for me must have been Crossfire and Nuts.

You will notice a general absence of fantasy games on that list. We generally played very little fantasy gaming at the time and it was generally reserved for RPG campaigns (though even there we had a preference towards contemporary or scifi settings). We did dabble in Mordheim for a while but few in my foundational groups collected any fantasy miniatures beyond the mandatory Blood Bowl team.

Next time, I will talk about my RPG inspirations. In the meanwhile, why don't you leave a post discussing your own early mini's games and what inspired you?

Patreon

First if I may direct your attention to Patreon for a second, https://www.patreon.com/nordicweasel

Starting in October, I am going to make older content available in general (likely through Discord and Facebook). I am not sure about the extent of the lag and some items won't be picked (generally if they have later been updated and are out of date). 

Down the road, Id like something like a 3 month lag between Patreon and general availability, but that may not be possible due to how much stuff there is. For now, I am going to go back to the beginning of the Five Parsecs Modiphius release and work forward a bit each month.

Musket to something

Secondly, I am still working on the "Rules formerly known as Musket to Rifle but now known as actually I am not sure yet". I suppose that doesn't abbreviate well. This is something that will benefit from continual updates to add more national information, scenarios, info on specific conflicts and so forth. 

I wanted to clarify that the game will not purely rely on points values. There will be campaign options (though more of a wargames campaign than a full adventure game) and a host of scenarios to play through as well. Of course people will also be free to just do whatever. 

That being said I did want to include the option: While I suspect few people will start their historical gaming here, it's important to me that the game becomes as friendly to beginners as possible. That means some small essays explaining various things, pointers to informational sources and catering to both points and scenarios. And of course a lot of people like points as a starting point to get a scenario together before adjusting based on the specific circumstances. 

Other factors

No news on expansions for Leagues and Parsecs yet. As far as I know they are still in layout. I did see the art for the new character species for Leagues: Bug people. It looks proper menacing too. 

"Musket to rifle" was always intended to be a working title. After much brainstorming two alternative titles have emerged: "Hearts & Bayonets" and "Height of Reason".

The first referring to the era of revolutions and high passions, the second to the popular view that people were living at the height of scientific and philosophical achievement. Let me know if you like one or the other better.

Progress on the rules is steady. After some consideration I have shifted them to a D10 instead of a D6. I usually resist using any other die unless I feel there's something specific to be gained but in this case, I felt the range was becoming a bit too tight for a D6. Additionally, this does make it easy to tell percentage odds at a glance which I like. 

The book will have a full set of unit building with points values so you can do pick up games, but it is of course also suitable to scenario driven play. I am still kicking around how it will be released, whether it will be a subset of the game first to let people test it or whether to delay and do the entire book at once. I also need to figure out how to do ongoing support since there is so much I'd like to do for specific conflicts, additional scenarios and whatnot. Big questions. 

The standard game size will be doable with a box or two of 1/72 scale figures but you can of course use any figures you like. The rules scale down pretty well so if you have a couple units of 5-6 figures you can play out a little raid but the sweet spot is probably around 40-50 each. 

It does feel nice to get back into the historical gaming scene again as a break from all the space guns :)

Since I mentioned it, I thought I would share a couple of photos from this weekends playtest. This isn't a full battle report or anything, just a couple of photos to show off the test.

Absolutely nothing special. I did not have any Napoleonic figures painted so the lads are straight out of the box in a dashing bright red for the Austrians and maroon for the French light infantry. The kid took command of the French which led us to look up a few French words to proclaim as we played.

The encounter was a straight up meeting engagement between the two sides, 40 men and 2 officers on each side. 

Figures are Hat industry 1/72 plastics, terrain is "mousemat" terrain from Gamemat.eu

Initial deployment. Yes, I need a gaming suitable tablecloth. An Austrian grenadier seems to have had a bit too much to drink.

At the start of turn 3 I believe. The Austrians pushed forward hard on the flank, plunging into the swam while the French were slowly advancing, firing as they went.

After turn 4, the Austrians were broken (we had agreed that the game would end when 3 units on one side were at half effective strength or panicked. We resolved the lull just to see, which did allow the Austrians to reform somewhat so they could have continued the battle.

Each game turn a D6 is rolled and tallied up. Once it hits 20, at the end of that game turn a lull in the fighting happens. This allows both sides to rally panicked units, roll to restore a couple of casualties (dusting off the lazy sods) and potentially run low on ammunition.

These days I am a bit more guarded with what projects I am working on, since people get upset when something doesn't pan out or gets relegated to the "later" pile (and understandably so, I'm glad people get excited).

With that in mind, I feel this is far enough along that I can talk about it:

The next release will be Musket to Rifle: Wargame rules for "Big Skirmish" games (say 30-50 figures per side). 

The talking points are:

*Nominally covers from the American war of independence to (initially) 1914. I won't be able to provide details for everything in that range obviously but the aim is to have a core game that can be added to with research.

*Pretty workhorse game mechanics for two reasons: First, I wanted to do something a bit more conventional this time. Second, I wanted this to be as accessible as possible. So the aim is to have pretty conventional rules with a lot of fun added around it: All the campaign options, stuff for fun scenarios and GM'ing etc.

This also makes it easier for people to add their own house rules, units, scenarios and so forth and making it easier to convert scenarios from other sources. 

*The rules will scale down to playing with only a handful of figures and should do well with a lot more, if you want to set up a multi-player club game. 

*The game is aimed at being a "true skirmish" in the sense that your figures represent that number of troops acting in a skirmish environment, rather than trying to form square with 8 figures. 

*A whole bunch of scenarios will be included, some pretty pick-up game friendly, some requiring more specific forces.

*Speaking of pick-up games, a points system will be available. 

*Cater to both pretty realistic and more "colorful" play styles with a number of options. 

*Be fun to play. 

It should be solo'able but I haven't written that yet. 

I will be sharing some snippets of mechanics and test games later if all goes well. 

The plan right now is that I will do an alpha release. Once corrections and tweaks has come in, then a full version and people get a discount if they bought the alpha. We will see though.

I occasionally allude to this in rulebooks but a principle that I try to apply to my rules whenever possible is Absolute Timing:

This is an approach that tries to simplify rules interactions to discrete steps in order to avoid confusion or complex situations, even if it occasionally means emphasizing the game rules over the realism of the situation.

Absolute Timing means the following points. It should be noted that these are not absolute and may be deviated from when the situation really warrants it but they serve as a block for me to stop and ask if the deviation is really required for the game to work.

It is useful to help figure out how a complicated situation in a game is supposed to work.

It can also be helpful if you are creating house rules or scenarios for a NWG title.

* Actions are not queued up or declared in advance. The player selects and resolves one action before selecting and resolving the next.

Example: You do not have to declare the targets for 3 units at the start of the shooting phase.

* One action is fully resolved before the next action is declared.

Example: If you shoot at a unit and as a result they retreat, they may be out of range when the next action is declared.

Games with opportunity fire mechanics have an obvious exception to this with regards to movement.

* When an action is resolved, all figures are assumed to be in the exact positions they occupy on the table.

Example: When I figure an area effect weapon, it strikes the exact figures that the blast area covers at the moment I shoot it, even if a figure moved through the area earlier in the turn.