The tail drag is probably the worst skateboarding “trick” in history. If it even is a trick. Basically, you’re stopping your skateboard by slamming your tail down. That’ll rip up your tail and cause razor tail if you do it enough. This sharpening of your tail’s edge turns your board into a lethal weapon, ready to slice shins. 185f5j
On top of that, there’s a lot that can go wrong with a tail drag. When you lift your front foot, the skateboard’s nose comes up with it. If you don’t commit to the trick, your nose falls down and your front wheels become a fulcrum of death, catapulting you forward and into the ground.
That’s how I bodied myself, many times. It’s just lucky I’ve never broken an arm. Still, I’ll attempt the tail drag again, and again, until I get it.
Why?
You didn’t realize this RPG blog was going to take a skateboarding turn, but don’t worry, we’ll get back to rolling dice.
To me, skateboarding is about technical skill. It’s fun, too, sure, but the act of skateboarding is all in the physics. Similarly, you might say TTRPGs are about telling stories collaboratively. So learning to tail drag, as I see it, is the first step to better board control, which leads to unlocking the next level of skating.
Many skaters will disagree with me, because it really is a terrible trick, but I know myself and I know this is my personal battle. I have to fight it.
Maybe there was an aspect of the hobby you had to work hard at, even if your peers disagreed with you. Maybe you’re part of a group of power gamers, and you’re fighting hard to roleplay instead of roll-play. Maybe you’re trying to improve your mini painting skills, and your buddies all buy pre-painted minis.
Maybe this is about RPG fundamentals, and doing all you can to learn and put them into practice. What do you think?
This month we’re making Mars and Crafts, a game about mining Mars to build Martian defenses against the oncoming human invasion. Part of this will involve tentacles. Another part will involve lots and lots of digging in the red Martian dirt.
Every now and then, you’ll discover random junk, much like if you were beachcombing. This junk gives you machine parts (which can be used to build things) and also tells the game’s story. When is the game set, how do the aliens you play perceive humanity, what happens when you build war machines out of dirt and goo? That sort of thing.
It also needs to be funny, because life’s too short to forget about the lols. We’ll hit the space jokes pretty hard, and throw in plenty of references to popular media.
So let’s write some.
“Very funny, Scotty.” 45715u
You pick at the end of a piece of thread. As you pull, more thread rises from the Martian sand. Keep this up and you’ll unravel the whole thing.
You pick up a strange toy that resembles a human. Oddly, its head is far bigger than a real human’s head is purported to be, though its vacant stare implies it isn’t very clever. Maybe the humans worship dumb people who look smart?
You discover a gold and black spandex suit with a golden badge pinned to it. It looks like it might fit the human’s odd physiology.
You pick up a flat, shiny hexagon. Analysis reveals that it was part of a solar array. Anyway, it’ll look great hanging from your flying saucer’s rearview mirror.
Your UMT (Universal Mining Tool) detects something below the dust’s surface. You dig a little and uncover a polyhedral structure with numbers on it. Obviously, this is some kind of portent.
You find pile of magnetically attached needles. Your UMT detects a grass-like structure inside.
You pick up a tiny marble. It looks like it contains an entire galaxy within. Probably just a trick of the light.
You pick up two pie-pans that have been glued together.
You find a large black obalisk stuck in the sand. There are no markings on it, but if you vaporize it at least you’ll get more dirt and a single sproket.
You discover a glove of a prepubescent five-flanged tentaculared cepholopodian. Those guys never pick up their trash.
Looks like someone’s been playing EDM recently, dropped beats litter the place.
You recover what appears to be… a toaster.
Oh look, you’ve found a skull and gear symbol made of a metallic plastic. It seems ominously foreboding.
You pick up a paper cup. It says “Starbucks” in Earth-glyphs on the side, but you’re unsure where you can spend this space currency.
You pick up a bubblegum wrapper. It contains a joke, written in Earth-glyphs. Something about why the star wanted to take a vacation, because it needed some space. Earth humor, go figure!
You pick up a broken toy rocket. Its faded paint is red and white.
You find a newspaper clipping. The Earth-glyphs read ‘Oil Discovered on Mars. In unrelated news, America Plans Trip to Mars, Packs Oil Rig.’
Your Space Jokes Can Help 2s524u
Have some ideas of your own? Got some space jokes you’d love to share? Drop them into the comments with your name and I’ll add you to the game’s credits. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter too, because I’ll throw some news about the game up soonish.
I… really should write more posts. I’ve been meaning to, but blah blah sorry sob story… whatever. You’re not here about that, you’re here because of my clickbaity title, which means you probably care either about proving me wrong, the title hit a nerve, or you’re genuinely curious about my ominous predictions about the death of tabletop RPGs.
Actually, there might be some other reason why you’re here, so scratch that. I’m not omnipotent. I’m not even semi-potent. Most of the time, I’m just trying to be more than normal. What I’ve learned though, is that normalcy is seldom escapable, and that’s a good thing.
Most roleplayers like to live on the fringes. Most of us were goths when goths were a thing, or punks, or the emo kids, or drama students. We’re the kind of people who wilt in the sunlight, who can’t throw balls, who use words like ‘dimwitted’ and ‘Ludite’ to mock others and feel intellectually superior. I’m exaggerating and generalizing here, but in my experience, few of us ever thought ourselves normal.
For some of us, normal is a swearword. We’d never want to gain that label.
But then D&D 5e came along, and suddenly TTRPGs were immensely popular. And “normal” kids were playing them. For some of us, it felt like a betrayal. Like we’d lost our last refuge to the football jocks.
Of course, there’s a bright side to all this. TTRPGs are doing well, and more of us are getting to make a living producing content for our favorite collaborative games. Roleplaying is more accessible than ever before, and that’s worth celebrating.
But that doesn’t mean the grognards need to like it.
So, kids, if you ever hear an old-school gamer ranting about the death of RPGs, or about how Warhammer FRP 1e or Vampire the Masquerade is better than Dungeons & Dragons could ever be, just let it slide.
The hobby isn’t dying, but evolution can be painful.
It’s Mini Monday, where we inspire your roleplaying and tabletop gaming with miniature projects. This week we’re looking at some design polish as we finish our game, Dagger Lords. Our game is basically done, but it’s missing all the bells and whistles that’ll make it a complete, marketable game. In case you missed out on what we’ve done so far, you can find the complete episode list here:
We’re updating the public Dagger Lords game document as we go, so be sure to check in and see what we have so far. Don’t forget to leave a comment too, we love hearing from actual, living breathing humans.
Handling Scope Creep 736b3n
Our game is at that critical point where there’s the temptation to add features. Then some more features. Then a few more…
You see where this is going.
Ultimately, we need an idea of what “done” will look like, so we can evaluate the game against that idea.
So what does a complete miniatures skirmish wargame need? Here are some ideas, and it’s probably not a complete list:
Mechanics for activation, movement, combat, and shooting
Rules for terrain
Races/heritages (elves, goblins, dwarves, drow, humans, halflings, orcs, and so on.)
Mechanics for weapons
Equipment list (listing dice, miniatures, tape measures, terrain or maps, and other necessary gaming gear)
Magic system and spells
Powers
There are a bunch of “nice-to-haves” we might consider too:
Solo rules
Campaign rules
Missions
Rules for larger models
Setting lore, to further sell the idea of the campaign world
Hero profiles
Your own game might prioritize some elements over others, and you could certainly argue for moving things between the two lists. The point is that “done” is going to depend on your vision of the game, so a solid vision is important.
Once you have a plan, you’ll need to stick to it too, unless you have a very good reason for adding something. For me, solo gaming is important, it’s even a core part of our business, but we might have to exclude a solo system from Dagger Lords if we just can’t get it to work. Plans have to adapt, but you have to consider those changes carefully and understand their ramifications.
Rules With Flavour 2xo41
Rules by themselves are pretty boring, so another thing we’ll want to do is add some appealing flavour text to things like spells and powers.
Consider this power:
By itself, not very interesting. Here’s one idea:
The words we choose are what’ll sell the concept of the game, so we’re looking for short, evocative sentences for powers. The game can include longer-form fluff too, as you’ve probably seen in some of the games you’ve played.
Reusing Rules 6u4b2p
You might have bits you can reuse from other games you’ve worked on. For today’s post I added Breaking Eggs, a solo mission I’d written up for another game. It took a little bit of tweaking, but now it’s in Dagger Lords. Reusing rules is especially great for building out new prototypes.
Where to Next 124j4x
Game design is iterative, so even though Dagger Lords is complete, it’s not nearly done. In a way, the real work is just beginning. We do, however, have something to playtest, and that’s important.
When it is ready, a game like this would go from final draft to editing, then final manuscript, layout, and then a final proof. These may have different names, but essentially the game’s text is check, re-checked, and then checked again in various forms until you end up with a pretty document, all ready for printing.
Then there’s marketing and all the other business activities that go with selling a game, but that’s for another post.
Ultimately, it takes a lot of work to turn a game into a good one, and even more work to make it great. Dagger Lords, as we’ve got it now, is just the start of things, so I encourage you to take a look and watch how the game is growing.
It’s Mini Monday, where we share miniature projects for your roleplaying and tabletop gaming. This week we’re rounding off our tabletop skirmish wargame with hero powers. We’ll also touch on playtesting one last time, because it’s important.Dagger Lords won’t feel like a complete skirmish game without some hero powers, so let’s look at building some today.
We’re updating the public Dagger Lords game document as we go, so be sure to check in and see what we have so far. Don’t forget to leave a comment too, because it gets lonely here in the lockdown.
Final Thoughts on Playtesting 2e645u
Before we jump into the mechanics we’ll be developing, let’s look at playtesting one more time, to get the bigger picture.
Throughout our project, we’ve created mini prototypes, which we’ve tested and iterated on. These small games help to pick out the fun and broken mechanics, which we can then keep or fix. It’s like getting to hold and feel your ideas, which does a lot for knowing if you’re on the right track.
One of the hardest aspects of game design, for a small studio or a hobbyist, is getting enough playtesting in. Now especially, with lockdowns and Covid still impacting the number of face-to-face games, it can be hard to get players in front of your work, especially when it’s new, buggy, and not connected to a well-known IP.
This is one reason why we made the Roll20, provide another way to reach fans across borders and time zones. Still, people only have so much time, and you can’t expect people, even good friends, to set aside a few hours to play.
Ultimately, you often need to try the game for yourself, as often as you can.
For Undersea Sourcebook series. Apart from that, we try to keep the lines of communication open between ourselves and the players that buy our books, so we can keep improving.
Why is any of this important?
Because making a good game matters, and the only way to ensure that a game is fun is to play it.
By the Power of…! 524n2r
A game just doesn’t feel complete without some showy powers to deploy against your opponent. Powers also give us an opportunity as designers to showcase the core mechanics and the theme of the game.
Here are a few examples:
Dagger Lords is about fantasy street gangs. Think Gangs of New York, but with goblins and dwarves. Powers that showcase the gang element might have names like Backstab, Cut Throat, For the Brotherhood, Betrayal, Brawl, Club to the Noggin, and so on.
We can tie these to the Reflex Point mechanic easily by making powers cost a number of Reflex Points, but we can also have powers that influence Reflex Points. Ambush, for example, might let you roll a die to steal Reflex Points at the beginning of the game.
Powers give us a good way to prototype racial/heritage abilities and class abilities, which we can later bake into the stat blocks for the various units that populate our game. We can also test weapons as powers, which gives us a lot of modularity.
Let’s jump into the prototype, where we’ll see some initial ideas for powers.
Dagger Lords — Prototype: Street War 2a6r21
The objective of this game is to destroy all of your opponent’s units.
Setup and Rounds 135w2
Each player controls 4 gangster miniatures, with the player representing the gang boss. A game has two players. Any miniatures can be used, and for these rules, only close combat weapons are considered because of powerful magic influencing the battlefield. Each mini has 2 Reflex Points, 2 Reflex, +2 Brawl, and 3 Hit Points.
Before the start of the game, each model can purchase a power from those listed below. A model must meet all requirements of the power to be able to use it:
The game is played in a number of rounds, and each round has three phases:
Initiative
Activation (Combat and Movement)
Top-Up
1. Initiative 3vj5s
Each player rolls 1d10 for their gang. Each miniature can spend 1 of their 2 Reflex Points to add +2 to the roll. Play proceeds in order from the player with the highest total to the player with the lowest total.
Dice off for ties.
2. Activation m2o4g
Each player then acts in initiative order and can activate their miniatures in any order they wish. At the start of the player’s activation, their models gain a number of Reflex Points equal to the following equation:
The minimum number of Activation Reflex Points a model gains is always 1.
To activate a miniature, you must spend a Reflex Point to make an attack, use a power, or move 6 inches.
To make an attack against an enemy model within 2 inches of your model, you roll 1D10 and add your Brawl modifier. The target rolls 1D10 and adds their Reflex modifier. You can each spend a Reflex Point before you roll to add +2 to your total roll. If you equal or beat the target’s score, you have scored a hit. The target loses 2 HP.
Any model can interrupt another model’s attack to attack instead by spending 1 Reflex Point. The order is decided in the order of declared interrupts, so it’s possible for a model to interrupt another model that is interrupting it, the player only has to declare their interrupt after the interrupting player does, and spend the required Reflex Points to do so.
3. Top Up 4w2g5
After all the models on both sides have activated, each model that isn’t destroyed regains 1 Hit Point and Reflex Points equal to their Reflex ability score. A model can never have more than their starting amount of these points.
Winning and Losing 91z14
A gang member is destroyed if they lose all their Hit Points. The winner is the first player to destroy all their enemy’s units, or who has destroyed the most enemy units when the time is up.
That’s it for today. Next time we’ll be polishing off the game, so give Dagger Lords a shot and, if you have any , be sure to let us know.
I turned the big Four Oh this month, and to celebrate we’re running a bunch of sales all month long.
On our store, you can use the coupon code “40for40” to get 40% off your cart’s total value at checkout. You can use the coupon as many times as you like, until the end of the month.
Want to be a sharp GM, known for running a great game? Of course you do!
A good NPC database is the perfect tool for busy GMs, and we’ve got a solution that’s cheap, analogue, and easy to use.
July’s RPG Blog Carnival 116q2k
This month’s RPG Blog Carnival is hosted by Of Dice and Dragons, and the theme is The Gamer’s Notebook. We’re looking at our own campaign notebooks, experimenting with ideas for tracking games, and sharing our personal thesis on shorthand for orcs. Here at your friendly Phoenix, we’re going back to one of our oldest products, one that I still use in my RPG sessions now: NPC Strategy Cards.
The Power in Your Palm 322gg
There are loads of useful apps for tracking your game, but I prefer analogue solutions, especially if I’m playing online and want to limit the number of tabs I have open. I often play on Roll20.net, which has a nice NPC database system, but I find it slow and cumbersome. Give me something physical instead.
Cards are my go-to. They’re stackable, sortable, easy to randomize, annotate, or group. You can also sling them at things, Gambit style.
The beautiful print on demand NPC Strategy Cards.
You might call me a Luddite. I’m fine with that. Don’t say I didn’t warn you when Skynet sends in the kill-drones. Card, at their worst, might give you a paper cut. That’s nothing Sarah Connor can’t handle with a band-aid.
You could use old business cards, cut up cereal boxes, or find blank cards at a stationery shop. I found, however, that writing on card sleeves damages them, so I don’t recommend that. The best method is probably to stick blank paper on old playing cards. Keep all the NPC cards you make and you’ll have a great database of characters at hand when you need them.
Our print on demand cards are laminated, so they take whiteboard markers well and are easy enough to clean. The PDF and cards are pay what you want, so you can get them as cheaply as you want, although your is greatly appreciated.
I turned the big Four Oh this month, and to celebrate we’re running many sales, all month long, with plenty of options for a sharp GM like you.
On our store, you can use the coupon code “40for40” to get 40% off your cart’s total value at checkout. You can use the coupon as many times as you like, until the end of the month.
It’s Mini Monday, where we share miniature projects for your roleplaying and tabletop gaming. This week we’re drawing our daggers and charging into combat! Blades out, everyone! Dagger Lords is a skirmish game, so expect lots of stabby stabbing.
We’re updating the public Dagger Lords game document as we go, so be sure to check in and see what we have so far. Don’t forget to leave a comment too, because it gets lonely here in the looney bin.
Sexy Simple Systems 41464o
Movement, activation, and combat are all systems. Many games that fall into the tabletop gaming hobby are made up of many different systems, often built around a core mechanic such as rolling dice or drawing cards. Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder use the core mechanic of rolling a d20 and adding modifiers to it. Combat, skills, and saves — all separate systems — all use this core mechanic.
As a game designer, you have to balance the number of systems well and reuse the core mechanic wherever you can, otherwise you risk creating a system that’s too complicated. Reusing systems is a great way to keep a game manageable, even as it grows. For example, if my combat system and my magic system are essentially the same, I can spend less time explaining it in the rules and players can jump into those rules with less cognitive effort.
This, by the way, is one reason why I hate objective cards in Warhammer 40,000. Give me a table and make me roll for it, please. And don’t ask me to roll dice in Magic: the Gathering.
Of course, each system covers a different aspect of the game and needs to be tailored to those specific needs. Our goal is to keep things as simple as we possibly can. This is the essence of all design: to find the simplest, most elegant solution to a given problem.
We’re covering hand-to-hand combat today, but you could extend these rules to cover shooting, magic, and other systems, with a little work.
Dice 2z726b
Choosing which dice to use has a big effect on our game’s mechanics. Die sizes impact the roll ranges, probability of a result, average rolls, and the totals we can expect from a die. For example, rolling 2d6 will give us a result of 7 much more often than a result of 12, while a roll of 1d12 has an equal chance of giving us a 6 or 12. Dice and dice probability is a huge topic that’s worth understanding, so do your own research if you’re serious about game design. We’ll just cover some basics needed for our own game of Dagger Lords.
Certain dice map neatly to percentages. A d10 gives you a range from 10%–100%, in tens. A d20 gives you a range from 5%–100%, going up in fives. Put another way, you have a 5% chance of rolling a nat 20 on a single d20. This gives us a useful benchmark. If we know that most champion boxers land 20% of their punches, then we can map this directly to the dice: hitting requires a 9 or more on a d10 (the probability of getting a 9 or 10 is 20%).
We’ve already got our Reflex Point mechanic and our initiative system, the latter of which includes rolling dice. Previous versions of that system used 2d6 for initiative rolls. Let’s change to ten-sided dice, across the game. This is an important decision because a game is a sum of its parts; the better those parts sync, the better the game will play.
Developing Hand-to-Hand Combat Rules 296p2e
Let’s break down combat into its component parts.
Core Mechanic 1r1a6c
I do like my d20 systems, it’s true, probably because I spend a lot of time developing rules for d20 games. Stealing from what you know is a good way to start out, so let’s steal from D&D. We can always modify things as we get further into development.
Our core mechanic, then, might look something like this:
Roll = 1d10 + Ability Score + Modifies – Penalties
Abilities x6351
We’ll need to decide on abilities next then. We could simply have a Brawl ability that works for attack and defence. We might want a more complicated system including Brawl, Dodge, Strength, Damage, Armor Penetration, Armor, and so on. Some of these will be tied to weapons, but they still describe the abilities of a single model.
Think of it as a continuum, from super simple on one side to extremely complex on the other. We need to find the best balance of complexity for the game we’re making. Part of this is about knowing your audience and the level of complexity that’s right for them. For a skirmish game, we might choose a level of granularity that’s more complex than a large wargame, which has hundreds of miniatures, and less complex than an RPG, which has a single character per player. If our players are teens, we can ramp up the complexity, while very young players might only handle three abilities, at most.
Tying things back to Reflex Points, we could have the following abilities:
Reflex: Determines your reaction speed and ability to dodge. Your starting Reflex Points are based off this ability. Reflex is 2 for our prototype.
Brawl: Your ability to fight in hand-to-hand combat, both with and without weapons. We’ll set this to +2 for now.
HP: How much damage you can take before you die.
Attacking 3u59c
To make an attack against an enemy model within 2 inches of your model, you roll 1D10 and add your Brawl modifier. The target rolls 1D10 and adds their Reflex modifier. You can each spend a Reflex Point before you roll to add +2 to the total roll. If you equal or beat the target’s score, you have scored a hit. The target loses 2 HP.
Dagger Lords — Prototype Game: Daggers Out ja2f
The objective of this game is to knock your opponent off a pillar. Neither you nor your opponent can move, all you can do is stab at them in an effort to knock them off their perch before they get you off yours.
Setup and Rounds 135w2
Each player controls 1 gangster miniature, with the player representing the gang boss. A game has two players. Any miniatures can be used, and for these rules, only close combat weapons are considered because of powerful magic influencing the battlefield. Each mini has 2 Reflex Points, 2 Reflex, +2 Brawl, and 3 Hit Points.
The game is played in a number of rounds, and each round has three phases:
Initiative
Activation (Combat)
Top-Up
1. Initiative 3vj5s
Each player rolls 1d10 for their gang. Each miniature can spend 1 of their 2 Reflex Points to add +2 to the roll. Play proceeds in order from the player with the highest total to the player with the lowest total.
Dice off for ties.
2. Activation m2o4g
Each player then acts in initiative order and can activate their miniature. At the start of the player’s activation, their model gains a number of Reflex Points equal to the following equation:
The minimum number of Activation Reflex Points a model gains is always 1.
To activate a miniature, you must spend a Reflex Point to make an attack.
To make an attack against an enemy model on the next pillar, you roll 1D10 and add your Brawl modifier. The target rolls 1D10 and adds their Reflex modifier. You can each spend a Reflex Point before you roll to add +2 to the total roll. If you equal or beat the target’s score, you have scored a hit. The target loses 2 HP.
Any model can interrupt another model’s attack to attack instead by spending 1 Reflex Point. The order is decided in the order of declared interrupts, so it’s possible for a model to interrupt another model that is interrupting it, the player only has to declare their interrupt after the interrupting player does, and spend the required Reflex Points to do so.
3. Top Up 4w2g5
After all the models have activated, each model that isn’t destroyed regains 1 Hit Point and up to 2 Reflex Points. A model can never have more than their starting amount of these points.
Winning and Losing 91z14
The first gang member to lose all 3 Hit Points falls off their pillar, and their opponent is the winner.
I turned the big Four Oh this month, and to celebrate we’re running a bunch of sales all month long.
On our store, you can use the coupon code “40for40” to get 40% off your cart’s total value at checkout. You can use the coupon as many times as you like, until the end of the month.
All the Rising Phoenix Games news, for July, is right here. And some news from June. And maybe May. What can I say, we’ve been busy.
Hello Heroes!
Wow, there’s a lot to be excited for. Personally, I’m very excited about Masters of the Universe: Revelation, coming to Netflix this month. Kevin Smith is an experienced storyteller, and I’m keen to see his take on this franchise that’s about as old as I am.
In RPG land, there always a lot going on, and this month is no exception. Let’s focus on our own slice of the hobby.
On the Blog 52l3x
We’re making a skirmish wargame, and you’re the designer! us as we take the game design journey, from Jump in with episode 1.
Episode 2 goes into deg the game’s overall structure and activation system. It includes a micro skirmish game that you can play, for free.
Episode 3 is all about movement, and we’ve got a few rules ideas I think will surprise you. The post includes a second prototype, so you can see how concepts are developed and try this young version of the game for yourself.
We’ve got some menacingly maniacal magical items to choose from. All of them give you an extra little something, but at a cost. I’m a big fan of risk and reward mechanics, they’re never boring.
Our newest D&D class is an alternative option for the bard called the Apothecary. This class is all about healing and buffing allies by supplementing cleric spells with healing abilities in the form of potion-like concoctions.
As a special offer, we’re giving away 10 copies of the PDF forfree, on condition that you’ll play the class during your next D&D session. Sound good? You can grab the book here.
40 for 40 Sale 85a38
I’m turning the big Four Oh this month, and to celebrate we’re running a bunch of sales all month long.
On our store, you can use the coupon code “40for40” to get 40% off your cart’s total value at checkout. You can use the coupon as many times as you like, until the end of the month.
It’s Mini Monday, where I share customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying and tabletop gaming. This week we’ll add movement to the skirmish minis game we’re building and we’ll try out a new prototype of the game. Our little game is coming along, we’ll be half finished with writing it up by the end of this article.
Now, let’s consider how far minis move in our game. We also need to think about everything that affects movement, like terrain, and also the types of movement we’ll allow in Dagger Lords.
Episode 1: Concept and Theme
Episode 2: Initiative and Turns Episode 3: Movement
Episode 4: Combat
Episode 5: Powers and Playtesting
Episode 6: Polishing the Game
We’re updating the public Dagger Lords game document as we go so that you can see the latest version of the game.
Actions and Free Activations lx64
Movement might cost something — such as an action or activation point — or be free. There might be penalties (another cost) attached to movement, such as in Warhammer 40K, where some weapons can’t be fired if the model moves. In Pathfinder 2e, you have to take actions like a Stride to move, leaving fewer actions for attacking or casting spells.
Essentially, these costs are saying that it’s important for the player to consider if they’ll move or not, adding a layer of tactical depth to the game.
We might decide that everyone gets to move, and there’s no cost for doing so, but let’s consider our theme. We’re making a game about fantasy gangs fighting on the streets. It might seem great to let everyone move around for free, but then we’ll never have exciting moments wondering if a character shouldn’t have spent that extra action point.
We already mentioned Reflex Points, so why not use them as action points? I’m hoping we can build a more fluid game here than, say, Warhammer 40K or Age of Sigmar, and Reflex Points might be an ideal way to do that. We’ll get back to this in a moment.
Movement 5t492w
“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. His hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see.”
— Muhammad Ali
How far a model moves affects the game’s pacing. Short movement distances slow the game down, while too much movement will have units zipping around the table faster than bullets. In my gaming experience, most tabletop miniatures games at 28mm scale average around 5 inches of movement per move. Double that for a run. Let’s go with 6 inches for a faster game. That’s the benchmark, and some units will be slower, others will be faster. We can always tweak this value later, but let’s not waste time figuring that out now, I want to play.
Running 214g2d
In our last version of the game, our first prototype, a model could move twice if they wanted to run. Let’s formalize this a bit more by nailing down how we want to use Reflex Points. In the prototype, you were effectively getting two free Reflex Points when your model’s turn happened. You could move, attack, or do either twice. What if you got a free Reflex Point when your turn happened, but you could still spend Reflex Points outside of your turn. However, your Reflex Points would do far more during your turn. Effectively, we’d be incentivizing saving your Reflex Points for your turn.
This sounds complicated though. I’m sure we can simplify it.
What if your turn multiplied your Reflex Points. You didn’t need to spend them during your turn even, you could wait to interrupt another player, but because your turn had happened, you got a big reward. To be safe, we could double your Reflex Points and subtract one.
Turn Reflex Reward = (Reflex Points x 2) – 1
Are we making it too complex again? Maybe, but this seems like a good time to stop and try things out.
Dagger Lords — Prototype Game: Paint the Town Red t35c
In this small tester game, the object is to paint your opponent’s minis before they paint yours. If you want higher stakes, turn the paintbrushes into vorpal daggers that send their victims to another plane. The point is that we’re concerned with moving and turn order here, combat is a super simple, one hit, one kill affair, so we can focus on the mechanics we need to test now.
Setup and Rounds 135w2
Each player controls 3 gangster miniatures, with the player representing the gang boss. A game can have up to six players. Any miniatures can be used, and for these rules, only close combat weapons are considered because of powerful magic influencing the battlefield. Each mini has 2 Reflex Points and 3 Hit Points.
The game is played in a number of rounds, and each round has three phases:
Initiative
Activation (Movement and Combat)
Top-Up
1. Initiative 3vj5s
Each player rolls 2D6 for their gang. Each miniature can spend 1 of their 2 Reflex Points to add +2 to the roll. Play proceeds in order from the player with the highest total to the player with the lowest total. The player with the highest score regains 2 Reflex Points to share among the models in their gang.
Dice off for ties.
2. Activation m2o4g
Each player then acts in initiative order and can activate their miniatures, one after the other. At the start of the player’s activation, each model in their gang gains a number of Reflex Points equal to the following equation:
The minimum number of Activation Reflex Points a model gains is always 1.
To activate a miniature, you must spend a Reflex Point and can do any of the following:
Move up to 6 inches
Make an attack
To make an attack against an enemy model within 2 inches of your model, you much roll a 4, 5, or 6 on 1D6 to hit. If your attack hits, remove the target from the game — they’ve been painted red.
Any model can interrupt another model’s movement to perform one action from the list above by spending 1 Reflex Point. The order is decided in the order of declared interrupts, so it’s possible for a model to interrupt another model that is interrupting its turn, the player only has to declare their interrupt after the interrupting player does, and spend the required Reflex Points to do so.
3. Top Up 4w2g5
After all the models have activated, each model that isn’t destroyed regains 1 Hit Point and up to 2 Reflex Points. A model can never have more than their starting amount of these points.
Winning and Losing 91z14
The last gang with any remaining models in it is the winner.
Image credit: Yuri_b
More Movement Rules 6z24v
We don’t want to get too big, but we need to be sure we cover enough situations to make the game complete. Following are a few more rules you can add to the prototype. Try coming up with your own rules to replace these, or cover instances I didn’t think about, then let us know what you came up with in the comments.
Jumping 256k46
A model can jump 1” up and 1” forward, once, for every 4 inches they move. Effectively this lets a model clear three 1” cubes if they run, for free.
Vaulting 2c1615
A model can vault over a 2” obstacle, once, for every 6 inches they move.
Flying 3c2i6p
Most use one of two methods for flying: minis can “hop” and must land at the end of each movement, or they have a height indicator, which might be constant or incremental.
Let’s think of our theme again though. We’re making a street-level skirmish game, so flying doesn’t make much sense. At most, we’d expect a few characters to drop from rooftops or fly magically for a short distance, but there’s no room for wings between tall buildings, and anyone flying would have to be low enough to avoid cables, so we’ll skip flying for now in our minis game.
Creeping 4y1j13
Since interrupting is a major mechanic, having a way to counter an interrupt becomes invaluable, and fun. Let’s add a creeping mechanic:
Creeping is a move action, requiring a Reflex Point, but you move half your movement, rounded up. If a model is creeping, it can’t be interrupted by a model that can’t draw a line of sight to it. Creeping must be declared at the start of the action.
Climbing 5n384s
Moving up an incline greater than 45 degrees reduces your movement to half its normal distance. In our prototype, this means models can climb 3 inches.
That’s it for this week’s go at building a minis game. to check out the game and let us know if you have any other ideas to improve on it.
Our newest D&D class is an alternative option for the bard: the Apothecary. This class is all about healing and buffing allies by supplementing cleric spells with healing abilities in the form of potion-like concoctions.
As a special offer, we’re giving away 10 copies of the PDF forfree, on condition that you’ll play the class during your next D&D session. Sound good? You can grab the book here.
It’s Mini Monday, where I share customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying and tabletop gaming. This week we’ll continue building a miniatures game by adding an initiative system and a turn order. When we’re done, we’ll make a simple prototype game so we can get playtesting!
Last Mini Monday we looked at a concept and theme for our little miniatures skirmish wargame, Dagger Lords. Now we’ll get started on an initiative system (woohoo, stealth pun) and the turn order. This is an important bit to get right because everything else we do will happen in the order this subsystem dictates.
Once we’ve got the activation mechanic worked out, we can put it into a simple prototype that we can test out. That’ll help us see if our rules are fun on their own, if they take too long, and if they’re intuitive enough. We also want to be sure our rules tap into our theme of fantasy crime lords fighting a turf war. That might sound like a big ask, but I think we can do it.
Episode 1: Concept and Theme Episode 2: Initiative and Turns
Episode 3: Movement
Episode 4: Combat
Episode 5: Powers and Playtesting
Episode 6: Polishing the Game
that, as we go, we’ll update a public document so that you can see the latest version of the game.
Design Goal 4o313s
I’d like our activation system to do a few things:
It should be fun
It should involve a wager, ing the “crime lords” theme
It should allow for up to six players taking turns, but without too much boring wait time
In the aforementioned video’s chat, a bunch of wargamers weighed in with some great activation systems from other games, including rolling against a target number to activate, pulling dice from a bag, or activating one unit per turn.
We can also look to games like Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop roleplaying games for ideas. Personally, I’m a big fan of systems that let players make choices about who goes when, such as Marvel Heroic Roleplay that lets the players decide when heroes and NPCs act. In those rules, whoever goes last picks who starts the next round, so it’s always in the PC’s favor to have one of their group end off the round. This gets especially interesting when there’s a chance of finishing off the enemies by going before them: miss, and the baddies are going to get in a lot of shots before you can do anything about it.
Dagger Lords Initiative System, Draft 1 48u1t
Here’s my proposal for both the initiative system and the structure of each round:
Each miniature gets between 1 and 3 Reflex Points, which are replenished at the end of the turn. Because the average is 2, we’ll assume all minis have 2 Reflex Points for now. We can specify the exact number for each model later in our design process.
A model can spend a Reflex Point to jump the initiative queue, but it’s a gamble.
A model can spend a Reflex Point to interrupt another miniature’s movement or attack.
A round consists of the following phases: Initiative, Activation (Movement and Combat), Top-Up
Dagger Lords — Prototype Game 1 4w3351
Let’s break these concepts down a little more by jumping into a prototype game.
Setup and Rounds 135w2
Each player controls 3 gangster miniatures, with the player representing the gang boss. A game can have up to six players. Any miniatures can be used, and for these rules, only close combat weapons are considered because of powerful magic influencing the battlefield. Each mini has 2 Reflex Points and 3 Hit Points.
The game is played in a number of rounds, and each round has three phases:
Initiative
Activation (Movement and Combat)
Top-Up
1. Initiative 3vj5s
Each player rolls 2D6 for their gang. Each miniature can spend 1 of their 2 Reflex Points to add +2 to the roll. Play proceeds in order from the highest to the lowest total. The player with the highest score regains 2 Reflex Points to share among the models in their gang.
Dice off for ties.
2. Activation m2o4g
Each mini then acts in initiative order and can do any two of the following:
Move up to 6 inches
Make an attack
To make an attack against an enemy model within 2 inches of your model, you much roll a 4, 5, or 6 on 1D6 to hit. If your attack hits, you must roll another 1D6 to deal damage. A roll of 4 or 5 deals 1 point of damage, and a roll of 6 deals 3 points of damage.
Any model can interrupt another model’s movement to perform one action from the list above by spending 1 Reflex Point. If two or more models from different teams wish to act at the same time, they dice off to see who goes first. The order is decided in the order of declared interrupts, so it’s possible for a model to interrupt another model that is interrupting its turn, the player only has to declare their interrupt after the interrupting player does.
3. Top Up 4w2g5
After all the models have activated, each model that isn’t destroyed regains 1 Hit Point and up to 2 Reflex Points. A model can never have more than their starting amount of these points.
Winning and Losing 91z14
The last team with any remaining models in it is the winner.
Some Final Thoughts 4r442
Reflex Points might be compared to actions in D&D, but they also let a player play when they want. Reflex Points are replenished at the end of the round, and no Reflex Points are carried over, so there’s plenty of motivation to use them. They’re our currency for the action economy, and there’s some risk involved in spending them, especially if you’re trying to go early.
We’ll be able to tie abilities to the Reflex Points later, which could get interesting. Imagine if ghouls can spend their RP to steal RP from other minis, or if wizards can cast a haste-like spell to grant their allies bonus RP.
Our prototype is very basic, and probably not tons of fun yet, but it does let us test out some ideas that’ll be at the core of our skirmish game. In fact, we already tested an earlier version of the initiative system and found it needed major tweaking. We want to get this core right, so it pays to test it out and tweak it before we continue. If you do play our little game, please drop your thoughts in the comments below. What worked, what didn’t, how do you think the initiative system could be improved?
You can check out what we have so far by clicking on the button, which will take you to the Dagger Lords working document.
Our game is basically done, but it’s missing all the bells and whistles that’ll make it a complete, marketable game. In case you missed out on what we’ve done so far, you can find the complete episode list here:
