Welcome to Usurper.

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/494826/Usurper-2-Procedural-Fantasy-Roleplaying 

With the release of the 2nd edition of Usurper, I wanted to talk a bit about what the game is and what the rulebook includes.

Usurper is a fantasy roleplaying game, you know with the characters and the adventures and all that. It allows you to have exciting adventures in a fantasy world with strange gods and stranger dungeons, where lords battle for control and factions knife each other in the dark. 

The core of the game is the use of traits instead of skill values and stats. Your character is described by a series of traits such as being STRONG, LOYAL TO THE CAUSE or FORESTER.
When you try to do things in the game, your traits lets you roll twice and pick the best result or attempt an action that isn’t normally possible.

Actions are resolved on the “action/event table”. This is a D100 table providing the outcome of an action. This might mean your action succeeds, it may fail with a consequence occurring or your action may even be interrupted. Everything in the game is driven by this table and it helps spur interesting, unexpected and exciting moments in the game.
You pick the lock to the tower and not only do you succeed, but you make a discovery while doing so. Maybe you overhear the guards talk about how there’s a strange package being delivered by ship tomorrow night? 

Best of all this means gameplay is math free. Roll the dice and you know what happened. If you have a relevant trait, burn it and roll again then pick the outcome you prefer. Roll and move on.

The game includes explanations of how to handle things like group tests, difficult situations and more.
Character creation can be done by simply writing down the traits and convictions you would like or can be generated randomly with a small lifepath system that generates the character in stages of their life. 

NPCs are handled very simply and make it effortless for the GM to add new characters to a campaign. Unless they are a major villain or monster, all they need is a Demeanour (Surly), Motivation (Chase off any intruders) and any Exceptions that apply (can walk on water). Random tables provide additional details if you need a more in-depth NPC.

A world builder chapter provides tables to create your game world history, building exciting cities AND allow the game to progress within that world through random events and story development. There is also a system to reflect characters working to overcome an evil overlord or similar grand quest, rooted in the mechanics.

Rounding out things you get rules for learning magic from the gods, delving into dungeons, ruling a domain and leading an army into war. 

What I want to emphasise here is that the use of random tables is not just petty detail (though we do provide a lot of flavour as well). Instead the tables are created to try to push things towards creating story opportunities: A faction changes its leadership or the evil overlord decides to subvert your allies. Every die roll (we hope!) Drives the game towards something interesting happening.

The game became a bit of a hit with solo gamers, due to the wealth of random generation included and is imminently suitable to solo gaming, when combined with a traditional RPG oracle. It is however also quite playable as a conventional game with a group of players or with one player controlling multiple characters. 

This second edition has had its text cleaned up by the tireless work of Bill Hamilton and should be much easier to use. Almost every aspect has been touched up in some way and I think you will find this to be a much clearer expression of the game and its ideas.

This is also the launch of the game as a “living” rulebook. Updates and additional material will be made available periodically and supported by Patreon. This can include things like scenarios, variant rules, a more conventional spell casting system and more.

This will also allow us to take fan feedback and suggestions into account better. 

The initial release will not feature any art work or flavour text, but will be available at a slightly reduced price. Think of this as similar to a pre-order but you are getting the full game up front and can start playing right away.

Usurper can be purchased here

You can support our ongoing projects at patreon.com/nordicweasel  

You can grab it from https://modiphius.us/collections/five-leagues-from-the-borderlands/products/five-leagues-from-the-borderlands-expansion-2-paths-in-the-wilderness-pdf or from Wargame Vault. 

It covers a vast amount of new material to add to your games, including new origins, magic options, enemies and much more. A particular emphasis this time has been the world map and making that come alive more. 

I will have a post this weekend discussing some of the new material and generally the philosophy that went into it, so stay tuned. 

As a game creator you have to hold two thoughts in your head simultaneously:

A: Everyone says they hate new editions.

B: When yo u do a new edition, everyone gets really excited.

I am not convinced that "perpetual update" / "living rulebooks" are ultimately viable though I am intending to set out to prove that they can be (through Patreon, please consider swinging by!) and if you are aiming at print first and foremost, the option is not really open to you in any event.

I wanted to just chat a bit about some of some of the motivations for a new edition, since I think from the players perspective it can be a bit opaque. (also it is not a given that a new edition costs money. When we went from Renegade Scout 1e to 2e, it was a free upgrade for example).

First you may want to significantly change a core mechanic. My gut feeling is usually that within an edition, it is okay to change up things but it should remain roughly along the same lines and principles. To use an example tweaking how often morale tests are taken or how the modifiers work is not something people will have an issue with. But changing from "break tests" to a multi-tiered morale stage system will be a pretty dramatic departure within an edition. 

My guess here is that when people know it is a new edition they are reading, they are more likely to take bigger changes in stride and give them a try, since it is a clean slate to an extent. 

Second it may be time to just pull the book apart and put it back together. A lot of wargame books have somewhat haphazard organisation and being able to go back through, reorder everything, pull in some new ideas and material and so on can be a really helpful thing. 

When doing this sort of thing within an edition, you risk bothering people who are used to looking up things in the current book ("Okay the morale rules are next to the picture of the guy with the sword"). Once again, when you signal that it is a new edition people will tend to accept that it is time to relearn a bit.

Third the game might just need an overhaul mechanically. A lot of good games will have numerous things the designer would do differently today, has changed their mind about or which just turned out to have a problem that wasn't predicted. I suppose this is another sort of maintenance update where the general approach of the game remains the same (unlike case 1 above) but you go in and root around the fine tuning of all the pieces. 

Now all of these can co-exist and most new editions feature elements of all three.

Finally there is the one nobody likes to admit but a new edition will sell copies. Updating core game rules does not ever correlate to increased sales in my experience. There is likely an indirect effect in that an updated game will stay on its players minds, but the effect is likely fairly small. Meanwhile a new book will show up on the front page of Wargame Vault and gets you a nice pile of cash immediately. It also gets a bit of talk going on the forums and message boards where gamers congregate. 

I want to see if this can be replaced through Patreon, but time will tell on that front. 

Sound off in the comments what you think.

This comes up occasionally, usually in the guise of people who want to assert they are not game designers but merely an amateur in the field. 

So then: What makes someone a game designer? 

If it is a case of simple making a game, then that's a pretty easy answer but I've talked to people who have made games and don't consider themselves game designers? 

When I started out, I don't know if I really did. I usually appended something like "beginning" or "aspiring". At some point along the way, I embraced the term but I don't know that I could say at what point or why. Maybe it was simply that it was something other people said?

So I want to turn it over to the audience: What is it to you? At what point are you a game designer? And at what point are you no longer a "beginner" or "aspiring to be" or "amateur"? 

No End in Sight is one of the earliest titles of the NWG catalogue. It was a result of trying to do a couple of things:

First there was very little in the way of platoon level cold war gaming available. Most of the games at the time were aimed at much larger battles, but I had little interest in those. My main interest has always been the platoon level, where things get personal. 

Second at the time the attitude on the forums online seemed to be that cold war gaming was mostly about turkey shoots where NATO tanks shot up legions of Soviet armour and then everyone got to knock off for tea and biscuits. 

However reading memoirs and books discussing Vietnam, Afghanistan and other conflicts made it seem clear to me that at the individual level, regardless of who is winning or losing in the grand strategic sense, it was going to be messy, grimy and nasty. I wanted a game to reflect that.

So then No End in Sight is something a bit different: Things like soldiers being pinned down, rushing across open gaps without suppressing the enemy first is a gamble as reaction fire is always a threat, the stress builds on your squad leaders as you push them, wounded soldiers have to be contended with. It's a very gritty and messy experience and yet you can run a full mechanised platoon pretty easily and on a small table. 

As a reviewer said "I recently bought No End in Sight, and I think the game better models the central problem of modern infantry combat--crossing that "deadly ground" in the face of enemy opposition---than any other game I've played"

I am slowly going through the book to update it, so this is a perfect time to check out the rules as the updated version will be available to you at no cost. 

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/135451/No-End-in-Sight-Cold-war-and-modern-platoon-combat

Since Patrons often trip people up, here is a brief overview of everything you need regarding patrons. This is also available in the FAQ on Discord, but I am getting it nicely done up by the overlords as well.

When you create your crew, they may know a number of Patrons. These are people you have done work for in the past.

In the first turn of the campaign, each known Patron will give you a job offer. This is a one time benefit to get you started. 

Normally to get a Patron job you have to take the "Find a Patron" action. Your number of known Patrons is added to the die roll for this action, so if you began the campaign with 2, you would add 2 to the roll. On a final roll of a 5 you get a job offer. This is from one of your existing known Patrons (if you have any). If the roll is a 6 or more you get an offer from an existing Patron and an offer from a new Patron. 

Patrons become known and add to future Find a Patron rolls if you accept their job and successfully complete it. 

The Patrons you begin the game with are also known automatically (You completed a job for them before the campaign started).

Once a Patron is known you can decline jobs from them without any risk. They remain known.

If you fail a job for a known Patron, they are removed from your known list ("We are concerned about your recent performance" / "we have decided to synergise with a different freelancer brand" / you blew up an orphanage for robot children).

You are allowed to accept multiple jobs at the same time, if the time limits permit. A job that isnt completed by the time limit is considered to have failed.

So a lot of arguing about AI and creative works is going on right now and a lot of it is not really all that constructive, since it seems people are often not arguing about the same things. 

I am not really here to delve into that debate. I am mostly a tech-sceptic in that I tend to assume that new technologies will end up being useful, but rarely as monumental as they are hyped up to be. And in any event there is zero reason for me to join the hype : If a new tech becomes a corner stone of our existence like the internet did, these days I am pretty content waiting for the idiot-version that actually works.

Is LLM / "AI" tech currently valuable to me as a game developer?

Well, I need to do basic internet tasks like quite a bit of email, I need to write game rules and I need to listen to heavy metal at obnoxious volumes.

Internet and email:

I answer a lot of rules questions by email. Can chat bots answer rules questions correctly? I tried a random question about patrons in Five Parsecs and it paraphrased an answer on Board Game Geek ...which itself got part of the answer wrong. 

A second test was for Rush movement in No End in Sight where it summarised the mechanic fairly accurately, then when I asked it how it got that information it corrected itself to say there is no tabletop game by that name. 

A third test was how many miniatures you need in Weasel Tech, which gave a non answer saying that you can use any miniatures you like. 

These are not scientific tests of course, but a 33% accuracy rate means I would have to go back and double check the answer instead of just taking the 10 seconds it would take to type out the right answer. And this is assuming this is not an obscure interaction where I'd have to double check the book anyways, because it is something that has literally never come up before. 

Writing game rules:

The problem here is that the LLMs basically write like a reddit idea-guy. It is often writing in very broad terms, but tends to omit the sort of detail that game rules require. A quick example asking Gemini to give me a ranged combat system for a ww2 game produces a broad overview but does not answer questions a gamer would ask, like how do I select the target, do units have to shoot at the same targets and so on. It also uses a lot of vague concepts like saying that there are modifiers but does not give exact values. The mechanics it suggested also seem to borrow from D&D and 40K quite a bit (which again fits a reddit idea-guy, not surprising since LLMs are trained on reddit posts).

Now you can continue asking questions but if I am writing this myself, I would already have answered those questions. 

This might be useful for someone who has no idea how a miniatures game works, but in that case pick up literally any rulebook or rip off Warhammer like we all did :)

You can test this for yourself pretty easily. Load up one of these systems and ask it to create you a game, then sit down to play it and see how long it takes to actually get something you can sit down to play without having to ask further questions. 

The system might have value as an idea generator. I've messed with asking it for RPG scenario ideas and some of them were not bad at all (And a few were legitimately funny), but that seems like it is just finding a way to avoid doing the fun part of writing a game. I am not sure why I would want to do that.

Conclusions?

I don't know man. I guess I am not really seeing the value for my particular niche. 

Sound off in the comments but keep it polite. I am ignoring the art portion since that is not something I am interested in. 

An area of particular interest to me is people who have an interest in miniatures gaming and might well be interested, but who are discouraged for this or that reason. So I wanted to talk a bit about some of those discussions and what my take is, possibly in a series of posts.

Please note that this has nothing to do with persuading people who are not interested at all, it is aimed at an audience who are or might well be interested, but who are concerned about a specific issue. 

It is also not applicable to every possible situation in the universe, so let's be reasonable.

Lastly it is intended to address common arguments I see made, in the interest of accuracy. 

Anyways, the most common objection I see is that miniatures gaming is too expensive / an expensive hobby.

This I cannot agree with for the simple reason that I began miniatures gaming when I had almost no disposable income and did much of my most energetic gaming during periods where my income for miniatures was extremely limited.

When I lived in Portland, we played a ton of miniatures gaming, particularly Nuts, Crossfire and Stargrunt 2. In all three cases I supplied the miniatures for both sides. 

Here is what armies for all three games cost me (using todays prices, not 15 years ago): 

Stargrunt 2: We played in 15mm. The figures in question were a mish mash of stuff but several squads from GZG were used. 

For a platoon sized game, you need 3 squads for each side and the GZG 15mm figures come in packs of 8. Looking at their website right now, it looks like 3.6 pounds per pack of 8 so that is 28.8 pounds for two armies. You will probably want to grab an extra pack for each so you might have a mortar team or a few officers, so let's call it an even 36 pounds. 

Crossfire: Again played in 15mm. I based mine with 3 figures to a base. I ended up buying two of the Battlefront platoon packs since that was more than plenty figures to fill out two battalions for Crossfire. 

Looking online, it looks like prices are all over the place but 20 dollars for a platoon seems average. We will want a few extra bits like some machine gun teams and my choice at the time was to fill in extra stuff with Peter Pig minis, which are 6.75 per pack of 8 from Brookhurst hobbies in the US. If we say 2 platoon packs and 4 extra packs of Peter Pig, we come in at around 65 dollars.

Nuts: This is even easier because we played with 1/72 scale plastics (though if you built the armies above, odds are you would have enough left over to mount up a squad or two for skirmishing).

A box of 1/72 scale plastic figures will cost between 10 and 15 dollars at the good folks over at Michigan Toy Soldier Company, so for both sides (and with more figures than you would ever know what to do with) you are probably below 30 dollars.

Conclusion:

Now this is omitting terrain since I am assuming if you are highly price sensitive, you are going with paper and felt or DIY'ing from scraps, but if you want throw in another 100 dollars on top of this to get a fun table setup with some stuff. 

That puts you at somewhere around 30 dollars on the cheapest to below 200 dollars at the high end to get started. As noted this is for fielding TWO armies so it is a complete play set. If you are doing this with a friend, halve the expense and then spend the rest on buying yourself a starter paint set.

Is that expensive? Well, that depends on the person but I think we can agree that this is hardly insurmountable.

(and this is omitting that you can play miniatures games with paper minis, on a virtual tabletop or any number of other solutions, but I am focusing here on what people usually mean when they say miniatures game). 

But but but:

When I have had this discussion in the past the objection usually comes as some sort of "but I want to play Warhammer 40.000".

Sure. If the only game you want to play is an expensive game, then it is an expensive start. But then the discussion should be "is Warhammer 40.000 expensive?", not "is Miniatures gaming expensive?". 

Your turn:

Is miniatures gaming expensive? What does your other hobbies cost? Sound off in the comments if you like.

Today a bit of a quick look at the back catalogue, particularly because it is a game I am currently working to update. 

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

FiveCore was initially an attempt to make a generic version of the core engine from Five Men in Normandy but grew into its own game (and becoming bigger in size than its ancestor at that). 

FiveCore revolves around two specific ideas: The first is to reduce the use of dice modifiers. Instead you roll a handful of dice when attacking and look for 1s and 6s. They are divided into Shock and Kill dice, the former replacing the need for morale tests and the latter determining actual hits. The idea is that a single roll of the dice gives you all the information you need: Did we hit anybody? Is anybody running away now? Since results spill over, this works quite elegantly. If I roll a kill and a morale result, the guy I shot at is killed and his nearest buddy is now running away. 

The turn sequence is the other part that really catches peoples attention, and occasionally runs into objections. When it is your turn to play you roll a D6. A 2-5 means you activate normally. In the updated version this will be figures equal to the die roll. These can move and fight as you see fit. The enemy can perform reaction fire, which mostly produces Shock dice. 

On a 1 you "scurry". This means all of your characters can move, but cannot shoot. The enemy can then countermove if they saw you moving.

On a 6 a "firefight" breaks out. You are stuck in place but everybody gets to shoot, then the enemy gets to respond. 

The mechanic is meant to show how at times you do not have complete control over things. Sometimes you want to move, but the battle bogs down in a gun battle or your men spot an opening and you can finally get that exposed group back into cover. 

The game offers many more features including solo guidelines and material for campaign play. It is aimed at 20th century conflicts but some alien/magical abilities are included though this is not the strength of the system. Near-future stuff works fine though. 

Why not give it a look? 

Today's example is for Renegade Scout. 

I trust most will be familiar with how 40K combat works, so we can examine this by looking at how it differs though I will try to explain in details for those not familiar.

Step 1 - Firing basics

We have a squad of soldiers (standard Unity Grunts) firing at a rebel unit consisting of similar troops. 

For the purpose of combat we need to know that they have a Shooting Skill of 3 and a Defense of 3.

Being a high-tech sort of outfit, the squad has 4 soldiers with laser rifles and 1 soldier with an auto laser. They are all wearing Light armour with an Armour rating of 2. 

They are 10" from their rebel targets putting them within close range for both weapons (Laser rifles have a close range of 15", long range of 30" while the auto laser reaches to 20" and 40" respectively). Lasers do not have a hit modifier due to range. 

Laser rifles have the Rifle trait which increases their long range by 4" when stationary but that won't matter here.

Step 2 - Number of attacks

We get one attack die for each laser rifle. The auto laser receives Sustained Fire which gives us 3 attack dice. 

Step 3 - Roll to hit

As the rebels are skulking in some bushes they are in Light Cover which is the only hit modifier. This means our Shooting Skill is modified down to a 2, so we have to roll a 1 or 2 on 1D6 to hit.

Rolling the dice for the rifles we get a 1, 2, 4, 5 so 2 hits. The Auto Laser rolls a 1, 5, 6 so 1 hit. If we had rolled a pair of 6s the gun would also have jammed. 

Step 4 - Roll for damage

This is quick. Since the Impact of the rifles is the same as the Defense score (3 in both cases) a roll of 1-3 will inflict damage. We had 2 hits so I roll and get a 2 and a 3. Both hits inflict damage.

The Auto laser has a higher Impact value (4) so a 1-4 inflicts damage. A 3 means it is another damaging hit. 

Not that it does not matter how much higher the Impact is. It is always a 1-4.

Step 5 - Armour

The basic roll required is equal or below the Armour rating (a 2) to deflect the hit, but laser rifles have an AP rating of 1, meaning the Armour rating is reduced by 1. The dice come up 1 and 5 so one hit is deflected and the other is a casualty.

The Auto laser has an AP of 2 so it blows right through the Armour. 

Step 6 - Remove casualties

Easy enough here. The two targets closest to the attacker are removed as casualties. 

Step 7 - Test Morale

At the end of the Fire Combat Phase the rebels will have to test Morale since they lost a figure. This is a 2D6 roll with a roll equal or below the Leader Skill of the squad. 

Since we are not within 8" of the target, they become Pinned if they fail. If they had enemies within 8" they would instead Break on a failed test.

And that is it

It looks like a lot of steps when you break it down but each only takes a few seconds to carry out. 

Once in a while, I get questions about my background and other such information. 

I am Danish by birth but have lived half my life in Denmark and half in the United States. I am in my mid 40s. Our family is owned by three cats: Lancelot, Lawrence and Ludwig. We have had two previous cats: Scruffy and Mittens.

I have lived in 4 different states in the US. 

I originally went to college to become a school teacher, after moving I worked as a representative and later middle management in a call centre. Creating and selling game rules is my full time job and has been so for years.

The miniatures games I have played the most (in terms of substantially more hours than a lot of other games) have been Warhammer 40.000 2nd and 3rd edition, Warzone 2nd edition, Stargrunt 2, Necromunda 1st edition, Crossfire, Nuts 1st and 2nd edition, 5150 1st edition. 

If board games with miniatures are included, Space Crusade, Hero Quest and Blood Bowl (3rd edition) makes the list as well.

I have played role playing games about as long as I can remember. My favourite games vary by mood but anything based on Chaosium's Basic Role Playing engine. If I had to pick one, let's say Runequest 3rd edition. I am a big fan of Swedish games like Eon and Hjältarnas Tid.

I am an avid fan of hex-and-counter wargames. If I had to pick a favourite game it would be The Great War in Europe Deluxe edition. 

My favourite films are Saving Private Ryan, Aliens and Pretty Woman.

My favourite television show is Doctor Who.

My favourite anime is either Trigun or Macross Frontier. 

My favourite authors are Michael Moorcock, Joe Haldeman, J.R.R. Tolkien and Sir Water Scott.

My favourite bands, if I had to pick, would be Bolt Thrower, Blind Guardian, At the Gates and Summoning. It is hard to nail it down to only a couple though.

The Squad Hammer Core book has just been updated to the ORC edition. 

This is both a regular update, adding in and clarifying a bunch of material in the rulebook (putting it just past 50 pages compared to the original 30ish) but it also puts the rules under the ORC license (originally created by Paizo).

This allows you to create your own derivative works using any material in the Squad Hammer rulebook. Derivative works must themselves use the ORC license though any product identity you create is not required to. Please follow the links in the rulebook for details. 

Squad Hammer has always been a game "for the people" and now that is as literal as it can be. 

If you are an existing player, all you have to do is download the new rulebook. It couldn't be easier. 

I suppose this is the first change to Fivecore skirmish, but the version just uploaded features the removal of the Squad Morale mechanic.

I'll be honest, it never quite fit right with me. First, I suspect that the normal combat rules and Shock dice already does everything that it needs to do, and secondly the "roll to lose the game" approach is not that great.

I'll also be double honest, when I have played I usually leave it out. 

This does not mean there will not be something to replace it, but I'll be having a think about it. It does mean a couple of table entries have to be redone, they are currently marked with XX so iuf you roll one of them, just reroll or make something up :)

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.

It's pretty rare for people to talk about how many copies they sell. I suspect that since tabletop games often sell fairly small numbers of copies, people might feel embarrassed. 

I've been around long enough to have had a lot of results, so lets share a couple:

FiveCore skirmish (3rd edition) has sold 1234 copies with another 1164 when we were in the bundle of holding. 

Thats pretty good in the indie sphere. Platinum seller on Wargame Vault, which less than 2% of titles achieve. 

Ballad of the longbow has sold 88 copies. Thats about what I expected for that game. 

And for comparison, Five Parsecs has sold over 10k copies in the current edition and sold about 3300 copies in the indie 2nd edition. 

So what's the upper limit in the "cheap looks and indie production" sphere? Well, I suppose 1k to 3k copies is about it for me, for now. Hopefully we will blow past that in the future. 

What is typical? That is difficult to say. Around 65% of products on Wargame Vault do not sell enough to reach Copper status (which I believe is 50 copies or so). RPGs do a bit better with 60% failing to hit that mark. 

In other words, the majority of items don't really sell anything significant. Of course this may be skewed by the fact that some items are not marketed to be sellers, but made available because the creator wanted to do so or they are so incredibly niche that they just don't really stand a commercial chance. 

What about itch.io?

I left Itch out because I don't use it currently. I have seen some writers say they get a decent amount of revenue from it and others say that it really doesn't account for much. I suspect it may depend on individual circumstances. 

How do you make money as a game writer? We've talked a bit about this in the past but today I wanted to talk about the three ways I get paid. Sorry, this isn't going to be that specific in terms of amounts. I make around the average wage in the state I live in (depending on what site you use to find that). 

First there is direct sales of PDFs. This is still all through Wargame Vault / Drivethru RPG and pays royalty per sale. You get a slight increase and a few other benefits if you are exclusive through them, as opposed to selling elsewhere.

I have not seen the benefit to scattering my efforts across additional platforms at this time, though I may in the future. 

This amount obviously fluctuates depending on releases, running a sale etc. Over time this does drop off if nothing is coming out, but most of the "long tail" is here as even a game that "isn't selling" any more will still get the occasional buy.

(If you want to make money writing, you need to establish a back catalogue by the way). 

We do fairly well on there, but for course sales figures can vary tremendously. Some items Ive done never cracked a couple hundred sales and some have accumulated in the low thousands. 

Second there is Patreon. I create stuff for Patreon and people get to take a look at it. This can be done in a number of ways and it is hard to estimate what is typical for game creators. This can be a bit of a hassle because it has its own obligations and you have to pay attention to it. On the other hand, it also allows doing some oddball things that you can't do elsewhere. Patreon I think works well for a bit of an exclusive club vibe, where people can get a look at things ahead of time. 

Patreon income is fairly static for me.

Lastly there is the overlords. I write things for them and they pay me in money. Really a rather convenient arrangement if you think about it. 

Not much to say here I suppose. This amount can vary but our contract sets out conditions for things. 

Are there other potential income streams I could pursue? There are. We are looking into doing some merch stuff, there's the long awaited POD options, there's branching out to more publishers particularly on the historical side and probably a bunch of stuff I can't even think of.

Some creators try to branch out into other media such as podcasts or Youtube. That probably is not in the cards for me but never say never. 

I hope this ramble helps clarify a bit of how you can earn a full time job creating games. Feel free to ask questions. 

The 1.15 update adds a new scenario to the rules and clarifies bad going a little bit.

I am working on ideas for the first expansion for History Dad, but I am trying to decide which way to go.

The original plan was to focus on a theme, such as a specific unit, campaign or battle and then do some material to fit that such as scenarios, a couple of unique units and so forth.

However I am wondering if maybe it would be better to just do a spread of different things in the expansion instead. (So perhaps there's a bit of Eastern Front and a bit of Normandy and so on). 

The former is more thematic of course and may get people interested in a new topic, but then, it may also discourage people who are not interested in that. With the latter option we can cover a wider range of stuff, but the risk of course is that it will be more thinly spread out.

A middle ground may be to have a smaller theme in the expansion (f.x. a section on Polish vehicles) and then accompany that with a variety of scenarios. 

Decisions decisions.

Jason has been busy at work updating LaserStorm to a 2nd edition, similar to the work he did on Clash on the Fringe revised edition. That means not only adding new features like solo tools and air units, but also a full colour rulebook with diagrams and lavish miniatures photography. 

If you are not familiar with LaserStorm, it is a set of combat rules for 6mm (as well as related scales) science fiction ground combat, allowing huge armies to be put on the table. Included are build systems (two of them in fact), a scenario generator, map based campaign rules and a host of ready to play units that can be used as is. 

The rules are available at https://www.wargamevault.com/product/476399/LaserStorm-2nd-edition 

One of the projects I have been working on, and which is closing a releasable state, is "Gothic Horror Skirmish". 

This is just a working title and I am not sure what the actual title will be.

You can probably guess what the topic is, though I should clarify that it will be more Edwardian than Victorian (though the weapon selections can work fine for 1880s/1890s settings too). The aim is a pre WW1 vibe with squads consisting of your pick of adventurers, soldiers, criminals and various classic horror monsters.

This will be primarily a squad versus squad game with a collection of scenarios. There will be rules for solo mechanics, but this is not a campaign or adventure type game, at least not at first. Rather this is the sort of thing for people who enjoy building and painting up squads of cool figures. You can still do that solo, but it is also going to be well suited for playing with a friend or in a small club setting where you might already have a bunch of figures sitting around that can be used. 

The plan is for the initial release to feature 6 character types, 8 monster types, 3 types of magic and 6 scenarios. 

I am not sure of the expected page count yet, but the plan is for the game to be on the slimmer side. Not everything has to be a massive tome after all. 

Over time the game will be expanded with more material. The thinking is small (and cheap) expansion packs with new creatures, spells and scenarios so you can have something new to play with every couple of months. 

I did an interview with Ash from Guerilla Miniature Games and you can check it out here:

and https://youtu.be/eW9DCu2KKY8?si=8VyOZBo0Mu7Boy-4 

We discussed a number of topics relating to creating games and working as a writer.