Today we delve into an older title: The cold war platoon level rules No End in Sight https://www.wargamevault.com/product/135451/No-End-in-Sight-Cold-war-and-modern-platoon-combat 

No End in Sight (NEIS for short) does not have a standard "declare that this guy is now on reaction fire" approach. Instead any soldier that is not pinned down is on the look out and can conduct reaction fire.

When a unit is moving across ground that is in sight of un-pinned enemies, it happens by way of the Rush move. 

Let me illustrate using state of the art combat simulation graphics

We have here three Blue soldiers behind some bushes, who would dearly like to get over behind the corner of that building. 

The empty ground between the two locations is being observed by two Reds though. 

Its 3" to reach cover. So we roll 1D6 for each soldier Rushing and that is how far they can go.

Better for some than for others!

The 5s make it all the way across. The guy rolling a 2 however moves the 2 inches he rolled, then becomes pinned down and must roll to see if he got hit. 

The first two updates have happened though they are in a fairly similar vein:

Dreams of Dragons and FiveCore skirmish owners will both find a separate file in their drivethru/wargame vault library with the new version.

These will look a bit rough: All images have been removed (to be replaced later) and formatting is a bit harsh. For FiveCore I had to convert it from the original file format, which makes formatting a pain to work with, but I'm getting through it.

What will happen over the next number of weeks is that I will both be working through the original texts to clarify wordings and weak explanations plus catch any bugs I spot, but I will also start updating the rules to account for general experience. This is particularly with an eye towards improving things, making the games flow better and take a critical look to which options enhance the game versus make it more cluttered (particularly for Dreams of Dragons). 

Once things are taking shape you will also start seeing new material appearing though it may be a bit before I can get to that point. 

For Fivecore, I will also be taking a look at some of the old material that used to be available and seeing what can be brought into the main rules versus what stuff was superceded by the third edition rulebook.

Dreams of Dragons is currently not offered for sale, but will be made available again, once I am happier with the state of the game. 

If you have been on the fence about Fivecore, this is also a great time to jump in so you can help shape the future of the game. 

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/144009/FiveCore-3rd-edition-Skirmish-Gaming-Evolved 

After all, there must be a reason it has a near perfect rating on Wargame Vault :)

If you are a Fivecore player and want to support these endeavours, please consider contributing on Patreon. 

As part of the "Mark 3 Weasel" plans, I am looking at updating a range of older titles from the back catalogue.

This includes things like No End in Sight, Fivecore skirmish, Trench Hammer and more.

These updates will focus on both adding a few new features, fixing some awkward wordings and generally cleaning up the text. Some games will probably see changes that might qualify as a new edition, others will be mostly polish.

There are two big challenges up front. The first is to get the documents into the format I currently work with (Apple Pages). I originally used LibreOffice for most things, but it seems that most implementations do not have the option to output to Pages and Pages doesn't play that nice with .odt files. However, I realised if you export to the Microsoft office format, then you can carry things over.

Its not perfect, in particular document styles tend to be a right mess, but it is workable.

For a few titles however, the original documents appear to have been lost so there I have to basically try to extract the text from the PDF copies. This is considerably more work, but is at least doable.

Part of this process will include stripping out old images, since they are well overdue for replacement and a facelift. 

So the hope is that I can get these up and running over the next few months and then start having them scheduled in for regular updates. 

Id like to do all this as a free upgrade, but nothing truly is free right? So if you want to help support this process, please consider swinging by patreon.com/nordicweasel and throwing in a few bucks a month. 

Today we are going to look at Clash on the Fringe and specifically how combat resolution works. 

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/425983/Clash-on-the-Fringe-Revised-Edition 

All references are to the revised edition but the original should work more or less the same.

Let us take a squad of 6 soldiers. They are decently armed with assault rifles (range 8"/25", Penetration 1, 1"x3" and a squad automatic weapon (SAW) (Range 4"/35", Penetration 1, 2"x4" and the Heavy and Suppression traits).

Our soldiers are typical Regulars (Discipline 5, Morale 5, Training 5) and are shooting up some opposing infantry. The enemy is wearing light armor (giving them Speed 5 and Survival 5).

Step 1 - Range

Our squad has been given an Engage order which allows them to shoot at the target. Some orders limit you to only shooting at close range, but in this case it does not. Each weapon has two ranges: The first is the Assault range, the second is the Aim range. 

Our targets are 12" away so it is at Aim range for both weapon types. 

Two quirks are worth noting: First a stationary fire can extend their Aim range by their Training score. Second weapons can shoot beyond their Aim range, to the edge of the table, but the fire is at a big penalty.

Step 2 - Areas of effect

Automatic weapons in Clash use a template. In this case the assault rifles place a template that is 1" wide and 3" deep, while the SAW is 2" wide and 4" deep. You get to roll to hit every target under the template. Don't bunch up!

For simplicity here, we assume the enemies are spread out in a skirmish line and each of our rifles only get to cover one target.

Step 3 - Roll to hit

To hit anything roll a D10 and get equal or below our Training score (5 in this case). Modifiers apply for ranges and cover and a few other things. We roll the dice and end up with 3 hits. 

Step 4 - Heads down?

Each hit die that is a natural 10 causes the target to go Heads Down (meaning they are taking cover and trying not to die).

Step 5 - Survival

For each hit, we roll the D10 again and add the Penetration of the weapon. if we get above the Survival score of the target, they are gone. If it is equal or below, they go Heads Down. (having bullets deflect off your armour is rather disconcerting). 

What is the benefit of the SAW? Well, for one it has a larger area of effect, but it also has the Suppression trait which means 9s and 10s cause Heads Down status, so not only is it a deadly weapon if the enemy is bunched up, it also is quite effective at forcing them to the ground.

So in conclusion

This is just a quick overview of how combat works with basic infantry. Of course all kinds of specific details apply to grenades and when shooting at vehicles etc. 

Greetings gamers. 

As I have alluded to, Nordic Weasel Games is entering what somewhat dramatically could be called the third era with a range of projects being planned.

These include both updates of older titles (including Company Command, No End in Sight and Usurper) and picking back up some projects that have been sitting for sometime (like Five Klicks and Leipzig).

Some of these updates will be a bit more work since they were originally done in OpenOffice format which is not the easiest thing to transition over to Pages which I use now, so they will be a bit more work.

It also includes a lot of exciting and brand new projects like post-post-apocalypse-scifi, more historical warfare, a journaling game, spaceships and more. I would also like NWG to revisit roleplaying games in the coming year or two.

In addition to all of this, I would also like to change the usual approach away from selling expansions and towards more regular updates.

Imagine if we do a new game and instead of having to buy expansions to get new scenarios, units etc. the game just got updated every so often with new stuff so there is always something fun to check in on. Additionally it would just be fitted right into the rulebook (or scenario book or whatever it comes with). 

Other changes will include more open access to games much earlier in the development process and creating a more formal playtester program, which has already begun.

All of this takes time and time is money (or so I am reminded when it’s time to pay my mortgage each month). 

The answer to all this is Patreon. 

So that is where you come in. If you would like to be part of this journey, please consider supporting me at https://www.patreon.com/nordicweasel 

In addition to helping all of this come together, at 5 dollars a month you get 2 or more playable game items each month including new and preview material for Parsecs and Leagues and snapshots of upcoming titles. 

At 10 dollars a month, you also get freebies every so often. This has included things like copies of Rogue Hammer but going forward it will also include snapshots of other titles that are getting regular updates. 

If this is not in the cards, a dollar a month will still help quite a lot. 

You can also subscribe for a year, which will give you a small discount and frees both of us from having to worry about it. 

There are tiers above 10 dollars for folks who want to go above and beyond. Currently there are not rewards tied to that, but I will think of some things. 

There are three goals I would like to hit. 

The first is a consistent 1000 dollars a month. We are incredibly close to that. 

The second would be reaching 1500 dollars. If we can get to this point, I will up the freebie snapshots of rule sets to be more frequent: Every other month for 5 dollar supporters, every month for 10 dollar supporters.

If we could blow it out of the water at 2000 dollars, I can commit that the process going forward for anything published through NWG will rely on live updates and no items sold separately unless they are truly massive (like doing a brand new campaign setting for a game). 

Basically this is the stage where I can do what I feel could be really cool: Where players are invested into a game that just keeps getting better and even if you take a break for a while, once you come back there would be a bunch of cool new things to play with.

And while I suspect we won’t hit it, if we somehow reached 3000, that would be the point where we could probably just make everything Pay What You Want up front or something. We can tackle that if it ever gets there.

So if you want to be part of the journey, this is your chance to do so. 

Once again, patreon.com/nordicweasel 

If you cannot do Patreon for some reason, but got inspired, you can also throw money into the hat through Paypal directly at nordicweaselgames@icloud.com 

Someone requested this, so a look at how you can do random units in History Dad.

Option 1- Random support units

This option works well if you start with a standard platoon and want to add a few extra units to back them up. 

This is a simple roll of a D6 twice with the units being quite open ended. Let's say I have a British infantry platoon as my core (an easy choice since that happens to be what I am painting right now).

I decide to roll up two random support units for a game. The first roll is a 3 and 5 resulting in a tank, tank destroyer or assault gun. The second roll is a pair of 6s giving me off map support.

Now the exact choice is up to me. I suggest in the book that you actually cycle your collection so the first time you roll a tank, pick whatever you might like. Then the next time you roll a tank in a future game, pick a different tank in your collection until you have gone through them all. In this case, the only thing I have at hand is a Sherman so a Sherman it is. Off map support should be scaled to the force in question. For a platoon, its probably just a couple 3" mortars. 

Option 2 - Random platoons

If you want to randomise the platoon itself, you can also do that. Lets say for this game, I want a random German foe. The first roll determines the number of squads and what strength they are at. There are three tables depending on manpower. Germans in 44 are probably short on manpower so we will use that table. I roll a 5 so they get 2 full squads and 1 reduced squad. 

If this was an attack/defend scenario the defender would roll twice and pick the lower roll while the attacker rolls twice and picks the higher. 

This can also be done with tank platoons which will tell you the class and number. On some results a platoon of rare or breakdown prone tanks must make do with one vehicle less. (For a sample roll, I get a 5 meaning heavy/infantry tanks. For Germans that presumably means its Tiger time. The platoon size roll gives me 3 vehicles, but since Tigers would certainly fit the rare moniker, they would only get 2).

We also want to randomise the quality and morale of the Germans. You can roll per squad. To keep it simple I just roll for the platoon. We are going to say these Germans are second rate troops but holding the line. A 6 and a 5 gives me Veteran squads with a 4+ Morale. 

That may sound funny if they were supposed to be second rate, but that is a measure of the overall formation they are part of. Pick through a battalion of Volksgrenadier and we can find a handful of squads that have plenty of veterans (or veteran NCOs more likely), just like an elite unit will have some inexperienced rookies. 

I get questions about whether I will do all kinds of things (Spaceships? Probably! Historical naval battles? Maybe! Giant robots? Probably no...wait I did do that one!)

So I thought i would take a moment to outline some things that I most likely will not do as a game topic.

These are generally things I either have no interest in personally or things that I have spent enough time on in the past to have "done my bit".

Of course never say never but if something is on this list, odds are it is not going to happen. And of course work for hire is a separate thing, at that point you are writing what the employer pays you to write.

Superheroes. 

Colonial warfare.

Insurgency warfare.

Steampunk.

"Weird war". (ww1 or ww2 with fantasy elements).

Most historical periods before circa the American Revolution, with the occasional exception.

Anything related to the OSR.

Anything with Romans.

Any more 40K-adjacent stuff.

Zombies.

NWG playtester program

Traditionally testing has been a pretty ad-hoc affair and has worked differently with each project, as my whims have suggested. This then is me formalising how playtesting will work going forward. 

Essentially I am establishing a group of Martens (if you don’t know what a marten is, it is a weasel-like critter, look them up, they are adorable. Also it is just a fun word).

What does a Marten do?

*You would get access to various projects I am working on. Some will be very early stages (and not yet playable), some are proofs of concept, some will be playable with basic features and some will be close to final development.

*Your activities can include reading feedback (looking for errors, unclear explanations etc.), “vibes” feedback (does this seem fun? Cool? Etc.) and playtest feedback (setting up and playing a game). 

You will then report to me regularly in email (or another) format with your thoughts and findings. 

*The ideal Marten is curious about new games, excited about new ideas and adaptable. 

Some caveats

*There is no guarantee that a project will come to completion.

*I am not looking for “idea guys” and game design is not a voting booth. 

All suggestions will be considered, but in the end, I take the decisions on what goes in the book. In the event you want to contribute actively to writing a particular game, we would discuss that and set up a proper co-author situation with revenue splitting.

*You are not required to provide feedback on everything, though you are required to be active. Obviously this is not a job, but you should be able to spend a couple hours every week or two. 

*You need to be able to work with limited instructions. Unfinished games have many components in place, but you may have to work around missing features such as improvising a stat profile for a figure or creating a simple scenario.

*Even if you do not play a particular style of game (historical, scifi, fantasy) you should be able to at least provide reading feedback. You can playtest things you do not currently have suitable figures for as well.

*Please note that while this will include access to early Parsecs and Leagues material at times, much of the material will not be for those games.

*Most projects can be discussed freely, but some cannot. I will advise for each. 

Final notes

*Martens will be credited by name in any game they contributed feedback for. 

*You may keep all pre-release PDFs provided.

*If you provided feedback on at least 2 playtest games, you receive a complimentary PDF copy of the final game. 

*If you provided feedback in other ways, you receive 50% off the final PDF.  

So what do I do?

If you are interested, please email me at nordicweaselgames@icloud.com 

Often occupying the space between miniatures games and RPGs and as an avid player of both, I think there is a lot the two fields could learn from each other. 

At the risk of oversimplifying a little, I am going to list a few that I think are at least worth considering.

A: Write rules assuming the player will use them.

When faced with a rulebook that is perhaps less than stellar, the answer is often that the GM is expected to modify or even cut portions of the rules during play. I think RPG writing could benefit from a firm stance that the player is expected to use the rules as they were written and in their entirety. Not because this is a better way to play, but because it enforces some discipline on the writer. If the game is too complicated for a group of players to execute in play, then go back and make the changes you need until it can be played comfortably by the expected target group. 

I suspect there are two things at play here. First the presence of a GM to paper over problems has become a bit of a crutch to lean on and secondly a lot of RPG play does not engage the mechanics heavily. In a miniatures game, the mechanics are inescapable and each player must engage with them, which tends to ferret out problems rather quickly.

B: Separate rules and fluff text.

While some wargame books have plenty of purple prose, for the most part the actual rules aspect is clear and straight forward in the text. RPG books are fond of mixing narrative descriptions and mechanics in the same text block, making it hard to actually reference the rule at a glance or, even worse, making it difficult to understand exactly what the rule does.

C: Unique terminology

If a wargame set uses a term like Suppressed, it usually will only refer to a single specific status in the game. Either a unit is Suppressed because a rule has said it is, or it is not Suppressed.

While games with a lot of status effects tend to avoid this trap, it is not uncommon to find games using terminology either in an unclear fashion or using multiple terms to refer to the same thing. Is a wounded, injured and damaged character the same thing? Does a spell that heals injuries also heal wounds? Ideally these things are clear cut because the same term is always used (and is then not used anywhere else).

D: Take distance seriously.

Now I rarely use miniatures in RPGs myself, but when I do I often found the rules are incredibly vague in a way that just would not fly in a miniatures game rulebook. Can my character move through a space covered by another character? What happens if I move through a space occupied by a prone character? Can I move diagonally? Do characters block lines of fire? 

(As a separate note, more RPGs should, in my opinion, at least consider measurement over squares but that is a post for another night). 

I am sure I can think of more (such as having playtesters actually test the mechanics) but this will do for now. In the future, a few things miniatures gamers could learn from RPG players!

People enjoyed the last post I did, so let's talk about a different topic today: The costs that go into a book.

One of the most common questions I get is why I don't put more effort into high quality artwork or get professional layout done.

There are three reasons really, but let's look at the first one: The cost.

The numbers Mason, what do they mean?

Art is expensive. If you can get interior art for 30-40 dollars you are doing quite well and the costs only go up from there, depending on complexity. Let us say you want an illustration every 4 pages (which is sparse by most publishers standards) and are paying 50 dollars per illustration. 

Renegade Scout is 200 pages or so, so we need 50 drawings. That's 2500 dollars out of pocket. And to be clear, this is assuming you get a pretty decent deal on the art and with a more sparsely illustrated book than the industry tends to. The art budget for Five Parsecs From Home (a book almost everyone praised the visuals of) was about 8000 dollars. 

But let us say we are aiming for that: 

We are going to get a drawing every 4 pages and then we'll get a nice piece of cover art, so 3000 dollars in total. 

Next up, we need professional editing and layout. Most editors charge per word and from some posts on rpg.net, in the RPG industry 3-4 cents per word is typical ("real" book editors charge more btw). 

Renegade Scout is about 62000 words. At 4 cents per word thats about another 2500 dollars, so our costs are now at 5500 dollars. 

I am not done however. Editing covers our text and depending on the editor can be simple proofing or include editing for content. But we also need the book laid out to be nice and beautiful. Lets say we get someone to do it for 4 dollars per page. Its a 200 page book, so another 800 dollars gets added. 

At this point we have a nice, glossy and professional looking PDF and we are out 6300 dollars. 

Important

At this point I should note that these rates (editing, layout, illustration) are all below, and sometimes FAR below, what those people would earn in the "real" publishing industry. Tabletop gaming just doesn't have the circulation to pay those rates. They are however rates I have been able to verify either personally or through discussions online. You can luck into a "friendship" rate of course, but my examples should be taken as a bottom level. 

Keep calm and type on

So what do I make from selling a copy of Renegade Scout? Well, it sells for 19.99 and I get 70% of that. So 13 USD and some change. Lets just say 13 since some copies are sold for a reduced amount during sales. 

How many have I sold? Just shy of 900 copies. That makes the book "Gold" on Wargame Vault, a level of sales that less than 5% of all items published on Wargame Vault reach.

In other words, I made about 11700 dollars on Renegade Scout in 6 years or about 2k a year. (Directly. Publishing the book also allowed me to sell supplements for it and brought more attention to other items I had done). Until we can do a new edition, odds are that the sales will continue trailing off so while RS will keep selling, it won't be doing any big numbers by now.

So our glossy book budget would eat half of what I can expect to make on this book. Bear in mind that this was a book with a pretty popular idea, released by someone with some name recognition and a fan base. As I noted, on Wargame Vault, 95% of books sell less than this level. 

Get the gains

But the point of the glossy book is that it will sell better, right? By spending that money, I could sell 5 times as many books and make far more money.

We can examine a pretty clear use case. Five Parsecs From Home. I sold about 3300 copies when it was an indie game and we have sold somewhere above 10.000 through Modiphius. So about triple the sales.

So that looks pretty rosy. Instead of 11k, I could make 35k on a game like Renegade Scout. Subtract our costs and we are looking at 28k or so.

But here are a few things to bear in mind: 

Five Parsecs was lavishly illustrated and laid out and cost a lot more than the examples I have given here. The artwork alone was 8000 dollars. I don't know what the costs for layout and editing were, but they are almost certainly much above the above figure.  It also had a number of advantages: It released at a point when interest in solo gaming was exploding, with an established audience and it was released with the full reach of Modiphius's distribution and customer base. We also hit at a time when "warband" gaming was getting big, but had not yet exploded. In other words, this is very much the best case scenario. 

If we are bit more cautious and say we can double the sales figures (a number people often tell me online), I am taking home about 22000 dollars in 6 years, with an upfront cost of about 6300 dollars. In the end, I come down to about 15-16k. An increase overall certainly, but not the dramatic increase that I am often assured by folks. More importantly, the 6300 dollars is all out of pocket before a single sale has been made.

You will notice that when you look at publishers like Toofatlardies that do quite well (Chain of Command having had multiple thousand copies printed) the books look very nice, but they tend to use miniatures photography instead of artwork, thus dramatically cutting the cost.

Concluding the conclusion conclusively

Now all of this is not to say it boils down this simply. Not everything might be equal investment wise. Perhaps a nice colour cover can increase sales by 25% on its own, whereas interior art may only increase it by 10%.

So if blowing 500 bucks on a great cover might earn me another 250 copies of Renegade Scout sold that might make it well worth it. 

There are also opportunity costs involved. Every person you add to a project means another point of failure and a cost in time dealing with them all. I will talk about that in a future post. 

I hope this meandering post sheds a bit of light on things. None of this means we won't experiment with things in the future, I just wanted to ground the discussion a bit more in actual numbers.