Technology Meets Tabletop Gaming In The Lands Of Ruin Kickstarter
February 24, 2016 by deltagamegirl22
I'm all for holding a beautiful, hardbound rule book in hand, but there is definitely something to say for streamlining. The fellas at 6th Extinction Games have put together a rather interesting, pretty fantastic looking tabletop game that embraces technology to make a less cumbersome game play experience.
Their Kickstarter, Lands of Ruin: Hybrid Tabletop Gaming As It Should Be if live right now and looks to offer some really cool benefits to the table.
Lands of Ruin is a 28mm post apocalyptic game for two or more players that promises to offer gamers an immersive experience by combining aspects of MMO's & RPG's into their game by use of a tablet or device.
The best way this is noted is by the integration of the rules at your fingertips. This allows you a quick way to jump in and get playing and really enjoy the game, without feeling like you can't play until you read the 200 page rule book or it's not fun when you have to dig into the rule book constantly to confirm whether you are doing something right. (a perfect tie in to the conversation on XLBS this weekend!)
The Command Console app will do a lot of the calculating of bonuses and such for you, but still allow you the hands on and social aspect of tabletop gaming that we all know and love. You measure your moves, you physically move your minis, and you roll your dice. The app just pretties it up for you.
You get eye catching, colorful art for your characters so you can easily see what their abilities are and where their health is at. The app also provides an overview of the map and the location of the minis in play- at least the ones you can see.
The game offers a nice little bonus of keeping characters intended to be stealthy hidden. If you're sniper is hidden away in a building, your opponent will now know it initially until something happens for them to be discovered.
To keep the game even more interactive, Lands of Ruin adds a level of complexity with the IA controlled NPC's of diseased/undead. In a post apocalyptic world there are the those who have survived and are trying to thrive, and there are the others.
These AI miniatures are controlled by the Command Console and will bend and change the activities in the game whether you like it or not, so it's not just you and the other guys you need to worry about.
I'm very anxious to have a look at this one up close. I'll confess that my last experience with a hybrid game left me a little underwhelmed in both the overall look of the figures and how the technology piece made me feel disconnected from the game- but this one has me reconsidering. I like the art direction for the game and minis, and they look like proper tabletop miniatures.
The app piece looks interesting enough and I appreciate the fact that it doesn't do everything for you. It keeps you involved enough to feel like you're still in control of the game. And if you can't finish a game?
The app stores your game progress for you to pick it up another time - also a very handy aspect when life gets in the way of your gaming.
How do you feel about embracing the technology offered in the Lands of Ruin?
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Thank you for the nice article, Dawn!
For any questions just add them below. I’m more than happy to answer any 🙂
This actually sounds like one of the better combinations of tech and tabletop. A properly interactive digital rulebook is always handy.
And the AI controlled NPCs being sorted digitally and without the hassle of a deck of cards is an excellent idea. I can imagine it being a really quick way to set the difficulty of your game.
Thanks @irredeemable! NPCs are something that we have big plans for. We implemented Rotters (=zombies) as the first proof-of-concept type as they are relatively simple.. i.e. they’re attracted by noise and once they’re close by they just attack. Pretty simple.. The next iteration will be mutated monsters (failed military experiments escaped to the wastelands) These creatures track blood and warm bodies. The app will still be able to handle them but the feel of these monsters must be different than just basically brainless Rotters. The next step after that is, and this is what I’m really excited about, is the… Read more »
OK, I will start asking probing questions. Now Exilis was a flop, as was Golem Arcana (I was rather vocal in my critique of that game), because either the tech made the minis redundant, or in the case of Golem Arcana, the app was solving dated games design – sure if you are running a battletech hybrid with tons of modifiers flying round then of course an app to manage it will make life better, but you are then just solving dated games design. Now to me there are better games that use apps. Leaders: A Combined Game, mixes Risk… Read more »
Hey @doctorether, Thank you for your probing questions 🙂 I’m more than happy to respond! Keep the questions coming! That’s something that was very important to us from the beginning. GA, and EI both suffer from the same symptom, as you mention, there’s no reason to have the tabletop part. It doesn’t add anything. For us, from the very beginning we wanted to create Lands of Ruin as tabletop first app second. i.e. we didn’t want to create technology for technology’s sake. We wanted to keep all the features that make tabletop gaming great on the tabletop. Miniatures, line of… Read more »
To keep the conversation fair for those here and not on the KS page. @6th Extinction. My point about modifiers, comes really from a point of view of a) wargaming for 23+ years b) running plenty of rpgs over that time too c) being a games designer myself and d) being a computational chemist who creates models of chemical simulations – I model reality on various scales with different degrees of simplification – the question is always what is the added value? Basically my point is that the granularity of the rules have to serve a purpose, are transparent, and… Read more »
Hi @doctorether I also wanted to add some things relating to your great questions. Another thing the app allows us to do, is that in Lands of Ruin, you have truly hidden characters in play, as well as secret actions. This relates to what Juhani was saying as well. An example of a hidden character would be a sniper. The point of a sniper is that the opponent doesn’t know the sniper’s position, allowing for an ambush attack. With the Command Console app, the player with the sniper indicates the sniper’s position on his tablet, but places nothing on the… Read more »
For some reason BoW doesn’t allow me to reply to your comment below so I have to add this here.. @doctorether, Great. Totally agree with you about the transparency being important. If players don’t understand why things happen they cannot plan and therefore they’re actually not playing the game 🙂 Divisions and multiplication is used very rarely in Lands of Ruin. The only place anything is actually either is used is for figuring out how much the weight of a character’s equipment adds movement penalty. Otherwise all the calculations are simple and can be followed by players. Maybe a good… Read more »
Im in on the KS as i like that the app does all the mundane things during gameplay
@doctorether Yes, the app requires only an approximate position, rather than an exact position of characters. We agree that the environmental effects and modifiers should serve a purpose, and we try only to include things that we thoroughly test with our community of players. If we see that something is frustrating, or just redundant we remove it. What we try to do is simulate the realities of a battlefield in a way that isn’t always done very well, or is not possible, while keeping the game light, fast, and easy to learn. We avoid leaving things solely up to the… Read more »
I don’t think this would be for me, largely due to theme. However I would suggest some play demonstration videos – from comments above and the video the thing that stands out for me is how does having all these tracked abilities enhance the game play? Also do you have to move the models on the table and on the app? Plus it seems to hint at a sizable rpg/campaign element is that correct?
Best of luck with the campaign
@dags Great questions. Of course any game can’t be for everyone, and that’s to be expected. We have some gameplay videos on our YouTube channel. We’re kind of new to making these battle report videos, but we’re getting better. If you would like to see some specific aspect of gameplay in a future video, please let us know. We’re always happy to produce more content. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5NoLTyaUE8 You primarily move the minis on the table, and at the end of your turn, you just tap the approximate location of your characters. The app only needs to know which section of the… Read more »
Hey @dags, I’d like to add one thing to what Rick said in his response. “how does having all these tracked abilities enhance the game play?” In short, all this speedup the gameplay a lot. Our goal was to make the game “a after-work-game” i.e. you can come home, meet with your mate and play a round or two on a weeknight. All this without dumbing down the gameplay or the game itself. In it’s current a game lasts about 45 minutes to an hour. Being able to play a game in a short amount of time but still having… Read more »
Sounds interesting and the figures look good.
Thank you @zorg !
For the initial look of your game it falls into the post apocalypse field that I like. I will say that what seems different from the other predecessors games mentioned above is the models look nice as in you would collect them for the hobby side of gaming. The other two games just seem to make models just for the sake of getting something on the table.
As a hobbiest first I hope the quality of the models are worth getting into the game.
Thanks for the comment @manpug ! Yes, we’re miniature gamers as well and board-game quality isn’t good enough for our liking. While we’re new to this (as in miniature production) we work with experienced people. We just received the first pre-production run of our miniatures yesterday and sent them out to a lot of people to review. So hopefully you will be able to see independent opinions about them over the web and YouTube next week. I like the quality and the sculpts we made a lot but then again, I’m one of the creators of the game and just… Read more »
@manpug In addition to what Juhani said, I wanted to point out that our game is extremely narrative heavy, and story driven. If you like post apocalypse settings, you might enjoy reading our short stories and world history. We wanted our game to be rich, community influenced, and engaging. If you find time to read any of it, please let me know what you think. More will be released tomorrow. You can download our “Voices from the Waste” here: http://landsofruin.com/downloads.html It’s intentionally written in a fragmented and somewhat vague manner, as we want the story to unfold over time, with… Read more »