What do you guys think would be a good setting for a skirmish warbands with a campaign system game a la Mordheim or...

>Also, what do you guys think it's best, complex mechanics or simple mechanics? I mean, I don't want too much bookkeeping, but I don't want to make a game like SoBH either, because I feel it lacks deepness in some ways.

Me and my friends modded the shit out of frostgrave, and I think that it's better to focus more on the core rules than to have a ton of exceptions and special rules that are tied to specific factions or miniatures, it's better to make the core system deep enough that the differences can be represented with stats and basic gameplay.

For instance, in what our game ended up as, you have a strength stat that together with your weapons damage stat decide how many dice you roll, and the color of dice (representing skill) decides what numbers are hits and what numbers are duds.

This lets us represent a human-strength person who's really good at fighting dirty by giving him better strength dice (used for stuff like grappling) but also someone who's shit at fighting but still dangerous because he's monstrously strong (more dice but worse dice) or a weapon that is better against armor (by using different dice for the armour rolls depending on weapon type used) and all kinds of shit like that, without having to make a section with a huge special rules list. Nobody needs to remember "armor piercing" they just need to look at the stats of armour or a weapon and see what dice to use.

If you want an example of the opposite, look at warhammer 40 000. The basic rules are really, really shallow, and as a result you have special rules for tons of weapons and abilities, because those abilities need more rules rather than using the stats and rules in the core game.

I think you're quite correct in all you pointed out. Mechanics should be easy to understand, but with enough complexity to have differentiation between factions WITHOUT using a lot of special rules.

That's where I think SoBH does wrong. Instead of having a "Movement" stat for example, they get like 3 or 4 special rules to mark different movement categories. Which makes no sense, given that you could have a number, which wouldn't make it more complicated, on the contrary, it would be LESS complicated.

Yeah, stuff like that is definitely focusing on the wrong part. Some games designers can be a little obsessed with keywords. You don't need a special category for troops with movements speed X, that's not helpful, just give them a movement stat. If the category comes with other special rules, just give them the minimum possible, it almost always works out better in the long run, because eventually you have keyworded everything, and then you need a separate rule for the ones that are exceptions to it and it just goes on and on.

That's why I don't like SoBH. Its seems really common now to focus on simple rules, so you can hold them up as a selling point, "Look how easy it is to learn and play!", but it ignores the abundance of special rules you need to know to play.

Mantic's games are also guilty of it, they tote out how everything is just a simple die roll, no charts or anything, but then there's 6 or 7 pages of various special rules to make up for the simplicity.

Don't get me wrong, I like special rules, but they should be special, not necessary.

I think a lot of designers look at stuff like Magic the Gathering, and they go "wow, they have all those keywords and it makes the cards look really clean" but they forget that the magic rulebook is longer than the one for golf. The reason they can have clean looking cards that are easy to understand, is that first you need to read the giant freaking rulebook, and that magic cards work WITH the rules rather than adding a lot of new rules.

So I think that you shouldn't be afraid to write a complex rules system, but try to focus on clean gameplay once you know the system.

If a player asks about a miniature and gets told "these are it's stats" and he understands what that means, that's great, but if the other guy needs to explain a whole new rule for it, that's bad.

A lot of this can be accomplished by trying to have a slight simulationist approach when designing a game. If you want a human, a halfling and an ogre to be different, it's better if you can do it by giving them different stats (strength, speed, size and so on) that interacts with the rules, rather than giving them a special rule each, like "small target" or "huge strength" etc. You don't need them if you have a stat for size and a stat for strength, and those stats have an influence when you play, for things like maybe jumping or being shot at.

MtG is the perfect example of both good design and bad design, because of how overly detailed and designed it is.

I think that if you just look at how the rules interact with the game, and ignore how the game actually plays, it's great. I mean, I don't think it's particularly fun any more, but I appreciate that it's essentially a game engine printed on paper. If you do X, Y happens, and you know this even without a card specifically having to tell you that it happens.

When worldgorger combo still worked, an age ago, you had 2 cards that interacted by putting the game in an endless loop that gave you infinity mana, but neither of the cards specifically mention any of that happening, it was just the result of how their individual text interacted with the rules of the game.

>Okay, if this card does this... And this card does this... Then together they... Whoa.

Yes, the problem with keywords and special rules is that they present exceptions, and they SHOULD be rare. Also, you should have around 20-30 special rules for ALL FACTIONS COMBINED, not 1 for every faction that does practically the same but with a minor difference.

Maybe having 3-6 per faction is OK, but not every model with a different rule.

Any more thoughts about interesting settings for games like these?

I know that they don't need really cool or strange settings, it's just that "warbands looting an abandoned/ruined/frozen city" is just getting old and overused.

Also bumping with warbands

>Which are the best of those themes for a game like this?

Mordheim has an element of this, though frankly I think it's a system you might have to improvise and build into the system.

Draw a map, set up areas, features, theme, local enemies, enemy densities per sub-area, travel time or provisions needed to travel to different areas, and create a system for exploration and rewards for winning combat and achieving objectives. With that you can create a pretty amazing thematic game with some interested and invested players.

...

Its an amazing study piece for how a game works. Everything is clearly described on how it interacts for the most part. But it also shows how forethought needs to be a key part of designing rules. It also shows how the idea of designing things to be inherently weak is a bad idea and angers your buyers. I think the jank cards they put out and use the line "We designed it to be weak" is bad game design.

God, WHFB towards the end, where every fucking race had to have its own race-specific special rule.

I think the picking over ruins motivation is alright, since its the most open for narrative. If the rest of the setting is good and justifies it well, you can over-look it.

Yes, WHFB had a LOT of special rules.

But so does Infinity for example, and I don't think that game needs that actually. It's a shame, it's really great, and by having that many special rules it's becoming more and more obnoxious to play. New players find themselves lost in the maze that are special rules

>I know that they don't need really cool or strange settings, it's just that "warbands looting an abandoned/ruined/frozen city" is just getting old and overused.

The warbands are actually in some kind of strange fantasy valhalla where they rise from the dead each day to do glorious battle.

The warbands are caught in some kind of endless maze of lost cities where resources are scarce and every meeting of strangers end in violence.

A magical plague has devastated the kingdoms and warbands converge on places rumored to be full of abandoned riches, or a cure for the undead that now infest the dead cities and villages.

A terrible beast/band of villains/whatever has devastated your village, the warband is out for revenge!

The warband is one of many heavily armed street gangs that settle their differences in the parts of the city where the city guard don't dare go.

All warbands are rivals on a quest for the hand of the prince/princess, and even though it's mostly friendly competition, they're all there to win.

In a kingdom devastated by some great cataclysm, rival warbands of armed men fight for the scarce remaining resources and territories.

They're not very original, but you can put a lot of different spins on "dudes fighting in curiously empty cities"

I think that the more faction-specific rules your game has, the more you should have developed the core rules.

If there's no way to simulate something in the game without making a whole new rule for it, it should have been in the basic game. And also, if something can be simulated using the base rules, you shouldn't add a special exception for it just to make it slightly more unique, it's not necessary.

Just look at the warhammer 40 000 clusterfucks, even the base rules are full of weird inconsistencies from strange design choices, like how a Weapon A can blow up a tank, but barely harm a guy in armor, but the weapon who completely kills the guy in armor won't blow up the tank, and every single codex has a different idea for how to do the same things.

>This special weapon is better against thing X in a way that's completely different to a similar weapon in another book, woo!

>3-6 per faction is OK

Jesus, that sounds like a ton.

Just out of curiosity, what kind of faction-specific special rules do you imagine?

Fantasy kitchen sink if you're a variety whore.

Those are all good, some of them I had even thought myself.

The problem is, it's the same core premise.

I was thinking replacing the 'dudes in a city' altogether.

For example, explorers in a new continent, gladiators in a tournament (a sport, for example Blood Bowl, is a great idea, except it's usually too silly for me), dimension-travelers, etc.

Also, I'm not sure about making it fantasy-post-apocalyptic, fantasy based, or science fantasy.

The problem games is sometimes the lack of miniatures. I mean, I can design a game and upload it to wargamevault.com or whatever, but the lack of minis is gonna harm me a lot, unless it requires generic minis (like fantasy kitchen sink) or I can offer them for sale.

That's why kitchen sink is sometimes a good idea... but I don't like it too much

Bumping

You could build a setting with other players. Basically, you design a warband, give them a history and context of their existence within a basic setting framework, and allow your other players to do the same. Debate all your ideas, figure out what fits the setting best and what doesn't fit, and flesh it out as a collaborative effort. Art through adversity.

The campaign's central focus and setting can be as much a player-driven initiative as the campaign itself. Stuff doesn't have to be included in the setting until someone brings it up or you introduce it.

Of course, if you want faction differences, WyrdWars is a modified Mordheim system that can work well, though Frostgrave keeps everything generic enough so you can use most anything to represent the necessities.

Viking mercenaries fighting for various kings and lords.

"Dudes in city" is not easy to replace, since city terrain is the best way to make a game with so few miniatures interesting maneuver-wise. If they're all just in a forest or a field it's going to have a big impact on how well ranged weapons and zerg-tactics work.

When we play frostgrave I have to decide whether to split my guys up and go left or right, and what I choose is going to decide what they're going to be able to do this game, because there's going to be a huge wall or building block in the way in case they want to take the other path etc, and the shooting is more focused on covering streets than covering an entire side of the board.

The only theme that really comes close is fighting in a dungeon, with corridors and rooms etc, which can be pretty cool (you can just create a completely new layout every time by using black paper sheets and strips blu-tacked to the table to represent solid walls) but you're missing out on the 3d aspect of climbing and falling etc.