Weekender XLBS: Taking Prince of Persia To Salute & Recycling Game Mechanics
October 11, 2015 by dignity
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Happy Sunday!
I have been awake all night building my lovecraft monsters for a film project, so it’s nice to be up this early to catch the XLBS, great way to relax!
Happy sunday!
Hi, great show yesterday , looking forward to todays.
One question springs out , is PoP the marquee name that it once was , no game for a while , a old film ( now relativly).
Wouldnt something maybe a bit more modern and relevant be in vogue?
Considering the time of Salute , maybe supers game or a game like Battlefield/modern warfare/call of duty , small squad based urban conflict , that runs small squads against each other.
Nix the above. I just rewatched the first bit , and thr guys ideas are good….
Use a bookcase for the PoP board ? It has your levels and stack it agaist a wall in Excel?
I will shut up now
…too much coffee!
Well I feel partly responsible for today’s discussion due to bringing the subject of game mechanics up in that thread on the Warpath 2.0 demonstration, and I want to put in my tuppence worth on this – but I’m late for work now because I watched this! Great video as usual!
How about a stretched ‘U’ shape? Ten foot run,90 degree turn, four feet, 90 degree turn and then another ten foot run back. Then you could brace between the two long sides for stability.
Happy sunday! time to glue some KD:M monstrosities together and relax with BOW
just want to say Mishka is a bear in war and peace who is tied to a police officer (who wants to arrest the drunks for having a bear in their carriage) and they are both thrown in a river.
Happy Sunday!!!!! Indeed for me mouhahaha!!!!!! Thanks guyz that will sort me out for a couple of months painting.
huzzah, well done on the win.
The ArcWorlde rulebook starting arriving as of yesterday. It’s an A5 (or a bit bigger) 200 page hardback and having had it in my hands, I think it’s the perfect size for a rulebook. The usual size rulebook isn’t convenient for reading or using at the gaming table, and the usual small softback rulebooks are good for gaming but not as nice for reading or keeping on the bookshelf. This looks great, is easy to read, and easy to use at the gaming table. I’m a total convert for gaming mats. I’ve got four Deep Cut mats, the Relic Knights… Read more »
I think a new genre just got created – ‘Warrenstorical’
He’s not that old!
Warren’s idea is a bit left field but good ol’ Ronnie (Reagan, not Renton!) always did think he was in one of his cowboy movies. What the heck, M1 Abrams in the open will be a lot easier to pick off for my hind’s and T72’s. Roll on the boot camp!
Like @redben says, I’m also massively into gaming mats. I was very sceptical until I saw the mat for infinity by micro arts. So long as your buildings aren’t using a completely different colour pallete, they seem to settle right in.
The other thing I’ve been realising is that the more “scatter” stuff on the board, the more natural it looks. Stuff like lamp posts, rubble, dustbins and stuff like that. Without that stuff, it looks too artificial. Well, more artificial than it needs to be anyway.
Bought a Microarts gaming mat for Infinity – awesome bit of kit! Worth every penny. Happy sunday everyone!
Happy Sunday! great show guys!
HappySunday!
Thanks for picking some KS that I won’t be tempted by for a change 😉
Am I the only one who hears someone playing ‘Pong’ in the background on the soundtrack, particularly during the discussion of game mechanics?
I was hoping to bid for a place on the boot camp but it was sold out before I even saw it. In future where should be looking for boot camps to appear. I was watching events is that the wrong place?
Weekenders and Vlogs are usually the best places to hear Boot Camp announcements.
I heard the announcement but never saw anything for signing up
For the Prince of Persia boards, do they HAVE to be vertical? You could do an A frame like this: https://relaxshax.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/another-project-my-micro-scrap-wood-a-frame-garden-trellisdeck-house/ This has some additional benefits beyond being stable and sturdy. 1) You could use both sides as play surfaces or have the back as shelving for monster storage. 2) The levels on the play surface would angle in slightly the higher you go giving a bit more room for getting hands in and making access a bit easier than it would be in a vertical wall. 3) You would have all that negative space between the boards so that… Read more »
All game mechanics have parents as that’s how human creativity works. The ARO is the child of overwatch. You could trace all mechanics up through their family trees until they all converge on single-celled dice games in the Archean era.
As a non-Infinity player, I instantly thought on the Rogue Trader overwatch from the old Compilation book from 1991 as Warren explained it. It feels like the whole industry has just been one huge refining process since the 70’s, but I wonder if the loss in detail is a good thing? Comparing Laserburn to a modern game of Bolt Action, we’ve gone from a percentage based shooting system that takes into account a large number of factors, to everyone having a 4-in-6 chance of hitting modified by a narrow range of situational modifiers. The quest for quick and easy is… Read more »
The trend in minis game design is usually from complicated to achieving the same or a very similar result in a simpler way. Sometimes it can result in a loss of granularity, the combining of Cool and Leadership into one stat in 4th ed WFB is an example, but it many cases nothing is lost except the complexity, and in most of the rest the loss of granularity is more than off-set by the loss of complexity. In still other cases, the loss of complexity results in pointless mechanics. Age of Sigmar abandoned the comparative aspect of the ‘to hit’… Read more »
And just to build on the point about Cool and Leadership. The loss of granularity caused by combining them resulted in the widespread use of special rules like Immune to Fear designed to achieve the same effect.
Totally agree with all of this – I actually thought about this when Age of Sigmar came out. So now, you have the same roll to hit regardless of what you’re trying to hit. So a model has the same chance to hit a goblin as it would to hit a bloodthirster. Which makes no sense at all to me.
I’m actually getting annoyed with all these gamers who go “Wohoo! No more tables! It’s simplified!” as if this in itself is progress. To them I say, go and play SNAP! You’ll love it.
The static number to hit isn’t a problem in and of itself. You can model the variation by doing something like giving the targeted unit a static defence roll. So a goblin could have a 5+ or even 6+, which represents that whatever attacks do hit have more chance of doing damage. It’s much simpler than going through three sets of dice rolls, two of which are comparative. What AoS has done is retain both the ‘to hit’ and ‘to wound’ roll, but make both of them static numbers that aren’t affected by the unit they are hitting. From a… Read more »
I too was thinking that each new release of a game seems to be a further refinement and streamlined derivate of what when before. Personally I’m not sure that aiming for super streamlined rules is a good thing I want some.depth to my systems.. Do we think its a symptom of modern life?? People have less time to game, set aside to learn systems etc so we end up with streamlined rules??
We may be headed into territory where there are ‘games’ and ‘simulations’ (or potentially modes by the same writers)
It’s to do with the natural evolution of games design rather than a commentary on modern society. The natural tendency is to create more efficient ways of doing what has already been done.
I dunno, part of me thinks that we’re all pushed for time and have maybe a few hrs a week where we can get our army’s out and play. So naturally people want to get as many games in as possible, that and tournament play is also driving the trend in super fast rule sets. I don’t necessarily have an issue with streamlined stuff to a certain extent but I also need some meat on the bone so to speak else I get distracted by a mote of dust in the corner or the next shiny thing that glints at… Read more »
Did we have more time in the 90s, or did we want to play fewer games in the time we had? There are modern rule sets which are complex, such as Infinity and Malifaux, and they evolved out some of their complexity as they changed editions because the designers were able to figure out where the complexity was unnecessary. In Malifaux’s case, that’s a game with a handful of minis a side but which could easily take three hours to play, so it’s not necessarily about speeding things up.
Well in the 90s I was a teenager so I certainly did have more spare time than I do now but that’s life for you. Never played Malifux so no idea on anything about the game mechanics. I know infinity is complex but can have quick games too, I dunno maybe I’m just over thinking it. The warpath mechanics walkthrough the other day certainly seemed the right mix of simple game systems allowing tactical depth…which is ultimately a good benchmark to aim for Imo..
I remember in the late 80s/early 90s there was a role playing game which came out which had used statistical analysis to create the most accurate model/rules for combat to that date. But it played like a dog, so that was that.
A good combat system represents some key factors to an extent, but in a simple way that it’s also playable.
Infinity’s “roll high but under” dice mechanic is pre-dated by the VPS system of the Fading Suns rpg.
I’m familiar with Monsterhearts which is one of the games cited in the Masks trailer. That is very definitely a game of teenage angst. From the MH blurb – “When you play, you explore the terror and confusion that comes both with growing up and feeling like a monster.” I suspect Masks will probably cover similar territory for superheroes.
@warren one note on grafiti in the 80s. It was a thing you would only find in the west. All your pictures of grafiti from the wall are from the western side. if you got that close from the east you got shot.
pre 1988 there would have been little or no grafiti anywhere in eastern europe 🙂
33 minutes in the first matt is actually the swamp is it not?
Best xlbs in months imo !!! Happy sunday people 🙂
seeing those mushroom monsters and the prince of persia concept, how about making a ‘gritty reboot’ mario bros game?
Re new tech in tabletop gaming: I hate the idea of being able to touch a unit and get “tactical advice”. If I lose a game, I want it to be because my opponent beat me. Not because the game itself told him or her how to beat me. All this new tech sounds like some bright spark is trying to market tabletop games to video gamers by turning tabletop games into video games. What I love about tabletop gaming is the thought process. You have to be actively engaged. Whereas with video games, I found that I would “zone… Read more »
Great show as usual, loving the great dinosaur rush so much so i backed it. It reminds me a bit of Evolution by North Star Games which i also backed.
Happy Sunday!
I like the gaming mats. I really do. Easy to store is as you said their biggest asset.
Apart from that I cannot wait any more for Team Yankee.