Folks:

We just launched a new site with some web apps for running tabletop miniatures games, called “Application of Force”. The apps we have released so far are designed for solo and cooperative play – we had not planned to launch the site so soon, but we all got stuck at home by the pandemic.

These are apps which are used to play a tabletop miniatures game, introducing an AI component for the solo/coop play ones – they are not utilities for doing games with other systems.

The site has three games on it at the moment, which might be of interest:

– Viktoria! – this is a Victorian/Edwardian sci-fi game which can also be used for anything historical from the Franco-Prussian War through to the early days of WWI. It is a small-unit tactics game which can be played solo, cooperatively, or as a normal competitive game. You can add steam walkers and flying machines of various sorts, but it really focuses on ground combat. It uses a table-generation mechanism which has players rolling dice, rather than using random-number generation.

– The Other Side of the Hill – This one is a Napoleonic skirmish game designed to produce Sharpe’s Rifles-type games. It is strictly solo/coop play, but has features which let you roll dice or use random-number generation if you prefer.

– With the Colours in the Late War – this is a stupid-simple game designed to be played with traditional toy soldiers. It’s fun to do with kids, as it requires only a couple of dozen of the larger figures. It is solo/coop play, with players using a very simplistic set of rules using d6s by the handful in a series of connected small engagements.

We also have a multi-player dice-rolling app, so that you can run a game over Skype with a web-cam, and see each others’ virtual dice rolls to keep things honest.

We have been doing remote tabletop gaming, putting the table onto a wide-screen security camera and then using Skype to talk to each other and to screen-share the camera (and the game app). It actually works OK, and you really do get a chance to hang out with your gaming buddies, even if not actually face-to-face.

The monthly price is less than a cup of fancy coffee at Starbucks (if you can still go to Starbucks these days – I haven’t tried!)

We will be regularly releasing more games for different historical (and quasi-historical) subjects. We have plans to develop a networked 17th Century Colonial witch-hunting game called “Devil in the Wilderness” – we will probably do a Kickstarter for that.

If you are interested, you can sign up for free using the promo code “Quarantine2020” which is good through the start of May.

The site is at http://applicationofforce.com

Please check it out, and let me know what you think. We launched early, because of the pandemic, but we have big ideas, and are happy to listen to new ones.

Cheers,

A. Gregory