Entropy City: Making a Wargame

I started my wave by wave play testing development almost 2 years ago now, to start with the original test was pure and simple. I had a d10 blackjack mechanic but was it fun? Well thankfully the answer to that question was yes, Im not going to lie I kinda felt like I stumbled into some succes early on. Even the turning templates were originally created as a guess for what would work for the intended scale.

From there testing slowly introduced new stuff here and there constantly right up until around this time last year when I felt like I hit the wall. The issue I reached was I got to a point where until I went all the way things only felt half done in certain aspecs of the game.

I’ve always intended the game to introduce some form of stats beyond weapons target numbers and stuff, ideally Id love to add skills at some point as well, I even have some listed in the ruleset of ideas for the future. But it was time to work out WHAT the rider stats should be.

Strength: Assists your rider in recovering from a crash.

Dodge: Assists your rider dodging an incoming attack.

Protection: Essentially intended as a armour save, your biker gear maybe saving you from the incoming wound.

Max Stress: The maximum stress you rider can handle. Should you reach this any test requires 21 to pass. Forcing you to reduce your stress if youve been taking too many risks.

Wounds: How much damage can you take?

It took a while to put together a reason for everything, I always knew I wanted protection to be a thing and yes part of that is because I am a rider myself and Im someone who believes you should wear the gear.

Strength was a hard one because at first it started as an addition to an attack, but then that didnt work because maybe I didnt want to add that result so it becomes optional, it was just stupid… And then I realised it could be used elsewhere.

Its probably not even fair to call Max Stress and Wounds stats but I mean they are, theyre just used differently.

Adding these in to playtesting finally allows me to test how the game works as intended in my head, especially with those questions answered. Give each faction a base stat to test with and then work on their balance before moving to more individual stats for each rider.

I thought I would share the placeholder cards for the Komodo and Hades factions. More than happy to also share Mutiny and the RFPD cards at a later date but I dont currently have them finished. And the RFPD are completely untested on the table at this time..

Images on the cards are all placeholder and or miniatures from other worlds I have repurposed for the sake of playtesting.

I’ve given throught to adding a stat for riding skill, within the law its acknowledged that not everyone has spent a lot of time on bikes. And this in theory would assist with cornering or make it harder.. At this stage I havent implimented everyting as I am unsure if its a good idea or not. If I feel the need to up the difficulty of cornering then it may come into play then.