Why you should spend your Sunday designing your own games.
Those of you who stopped by at our stand at Salute would have noticed that we were running demos. We had a cool little table set up, showing off some of Grantt’s home-made Frostgrave terrain (which got as much interest as the game itself!) and a bunch of customised tanks. Many of our visitors joined us for a game, which was awesome. It was great to see mates getting competitive as the battle developed, and father-and-son clashes in which youthful exuberance triumphed over experience.
The game was IRONCLAD: 2048, our very own post-apocalyptic rules set. Players take control of a squadron of Ironclads - tanks that have been rescued from the battlefield, renovated and sent back into the wasteland to rescue civilians, protect trade routes and take out bandits - and wage war with a plethora of weapons options. The Siege Gun is cumbersome but devastating, punching through armour easily. The autocannon is the perfect weapon with which to go hunting, with decent range, an improved fire rate and the ability to ignore cover. The FAC (Fast Attack Cannon) spits a multitude of dice at short range, forcing enemies to deal with it quickly or face its wrath.
The Siege Gun may be slow to position, but it HURTS.
We worked the game up from a speculative set of rules, starting with three fundamental principles: the three main gun options should each have a balanced role, guns should roll a number of dice commensurate to the weapon being fired, and Ironclads should fight like pugilists. They shouldn’t be removed from the table on turn one… instead they should trade bodyblows until one eventually falls. We weren’t precious about anything else.
After some rigorous playtesting, we managed to create the experience that we were seeking using a hybrid dice system. Damage, Heat and Panic, which the Ironclads could accrue to affect various aspects performance, became simply Duress, which increased when Ironclads took extra actions, or took damage. Panic became a simple status effect that could come into play whenever damage was suffered. Everything was pared down and made cleaner. The granular aspects of the rules, which merely added flavour whilst complicating the game, were cast aside.
Autocannons make for great run-and-gun weapons to hunt down prey.
We’ve been writing games for years, of course, so this wasn’t our first rodeo. But most of those games never saw play outside of our immediate group of friends. Also, getting something together for an event like Salute was a challenge. We got the core rules down to two sides of A4 and gave a free set of rules away with each purchase. Right now, we’re working on the full rules, with secondary weapons, crew abilities, factions and fluff. It’s a real thrill and hopefully it’ll hold together.
A Fast Attack Cannon is a terrifying prospect... don't let it get close!
Designing games is something many of us tabletop gamers have done. I’ve been monkeying around with skirmish rules sets since I was about 14, and have recently been making card games for my kids - they’re team-based, with each player drawing three cards and fighting a little battle using dice. Great for teaching mathematics, sportsmanship and logic. Building your own game teaches you a lot about gaming in general, too; you start to appreciate how much hard work goes into putting even the simplest of rules sets together.
Designing your own games for your kids has never been easier.
You also get a glimpse into why certain design decisions get made. When 40k 8th edition removed templates, it sped the game up but also allowed players to deploy their troops in a cinematic way rather than painstakingly spacing them out to avoid getting set on fire. Infinity has just updated some of its rules, in particular the Total Immunity skill, which now does exactly what you expect it to - you simply ignore the effects of special ammunition. Perfect.
Providing a streamlined experience doesn’t necessarily reduce depth. In fact, one of the things that designing games teaches us is that complexity and agency are not necessarily linked. Give players too many options and it becomes impossible to foresee what the opponent is going to do, making meaningful defensive action more difficult and the outcome more random; presenting players with fewer neater options, rather than a plethora of messy ones, means that players can actually weigh up the potential effectiveness of each action, and decide accordingly. So a tidier system promotes strategy. Counter-intuitive, perhaps, but also true.
Also, you discover how important it is to design intuitive mechanics. Once we were rolling a single D20 for the Siege Gun, and 2D12 for the Autocannon - representative of one shell spitting from the big gun, two from the lighter, quicker auto - it felt precisely like tank guns firing. The number of dice was equal to the number of shells, which I was really passionate about capturing. This did force us to be smarter about how to balance the guns, as we limited our options somewhat for thematic reasons. But as designers we should all relish this challenge. Solutions always present themselves, eventually.
Making your own games is, most importantly, a hell of a lot of fun.
I’m sure many of you have designed your own games, but if you haven’t, I’d recommend it. Gorgeous minis gathering dust because a game system has died out in your area? Repurpose them and write your own rules with your mates. Kids showing interest in your models? Write a simple, dynamic set of rules or modify existing ones so you can include them in your hobby. If you can make something quick, easy and fun, then you’ve got the foundation - potentially - for something grander that might be fit for public consumption. What we’ve noticed is how cool and open the community is to new ideas and projects, so people should never be afraid of sharing their ideas. And with social media and indie publishing making it easier than ever to present a project to the masses, there’s nothing holding you back.
So if you’re working on something, share it and let us know! We’re gonna keep beavering away on Ironclad, and a second project is already in the pipeline. All I can say right now is that it’s a terrifying, blood-pumping action game that is an absolute riot to play. And the more we test its boundaries, the better it’s getting… and the first playthrough was a blast, so we're starting from a solid foundation.
So please do share your own projects, and have a great Bank Holiday weekend!