Entropy City: Making a Wargame

When I actually started sitting down to work on this seriously I had myself a goal, to have the game in a testable state within the next 12 months, within 6 you could argue that I have achieved that, theres been a number of tests of the Core Mechanics now and the feedback I’ve gotten is solid, each time I see something that could be adjusted slightly but so far nothing is broken… yet.

Ash and  I had a game last night at the FLGS as part of our regular Friday night meet, first one I’ve been able to make recently due to some rather frustrating bike problems. He’d been waiting for someone to be ready to play Kill Team and I was waiting for the person I was playing with to finish their Marvel Champions game, neither of which happened ultimately but the theory was we were just going to have a go while we waited.

Its nerve racking taking someone through a game for the first time at the best of times, let alone something your personally involved in but he took it in and had positive things to say, he won the demo (because thats how you run these things haha)

I’m a big fan of the stress mechanics when it comes to the game it really does give the game a different feel that so far I’m quite proud of, having to balance that throughout the game knowing it will eventually make achieving things harder.

Testing of phase one is likely to continue through January before I impliment the differences between the factions and bike types to see where the flaws are there, this is where I expect I will need the most tweaking when it comes to balance and feel but that will come in time.

Keeping this so “secret”  hasnt entirely been an easy thing, given that when your working on something you find exciting its hard not to talk about it but until I had something I felt could genuinely BE something I didn’t want to say too much. A lot of the WIP documentation has been available to the Patreon for Getting Tabled, not because it was a promised goal or anything but because I felt our patreon members would be good people to question things given I know theyre all very experianced. But theyre not the only ones by any means, friends have had access (few have read it though which is fine) Lewis Clarke (formally of TTCombat game development) is reading the ruleset right now and will come back with some feedback some of which I expect will be “harsh” (his words not mine). So thats why I also joke about it being the worst kept secret but I am starting to feel like I have the makings of something my own now, its taking shape and I can see the pieces of what I wanted it to be slowly coming together, will the ruleset be finalised by the end of 2023? I doubt it but then I also dounted I’d be this far already. I don’t want to rush this I want it to be right. Especially when if this is to become a thing I have other pieces of the puzzle to work out as well, some of which are outside of my personal budget to achieve but would like to.

2023 should also be the year I try to learn how to use Blender.

Weapons: Whilst not all riders have weapons, those that do are not shy to use them. The aim in this game will be for all weapons to have their place in the game, ideally this will lead to a game that supports a wide range of player meta’s and a wide range of gameplay choices. Certain weapons have the ability to cause a rider to enter a dangerous state such as bleeding, stunned etc. Likewise there are also some weapons that have the ability to counteract protection. I have a bigger list but at this stage I am only showing the one I am using for phase 1 testing.

• Leadpipe: 1inch reach, TN 13, 3 stress, stun or sabotage. (Currently being used in phase one testing)

Traits: Traits are certain skills and abilities that will passively assist or hinder certain characters, these will be used to help vary the gameplay and give options for riders within teams, in theory most of these will be general enough to fit within any factions, inspiration here comes from a number of different places Malifaux & Bushido come to mind. None of these are being tested at this time and I have a lot more than just the 3 I am showing.

• Stealth (Melee/Ranged): This character cannot be the target of a melee/ranged attack when it was not within line of sight at the start of the activation. (intended to be one or the other depending on the character)
• Rage Filled: This character may never choose to fail a test, it must always continue until either it is successful or it busts.
• Strategist (x): X times per game, when performing a test this character rolls 3D10 instead of 2D10 and then discards one D10 of choice. The rest of the test then continues as normal.

The last thing I want to tease is the design as a proof of concept card I have been playing with, all very much WIP and just a representation. Its worth noting that a tonne of this uses assets through google, it includes assets that might have been advertised as free but are not, this is NOT a final design and a final design would OBVIOUSLY not be using anything stolen. This only applies to this image nothing else (as the rest I drew myself or had an AI create)

Further developments is that the game will ultimately become a 4×4 board instead of the initial 3×3 simply because 3×3 feels too small for the game to work the way I want it to. I’ve spent some time writing up terrain suggestionsm theres even some lose lore I have that will develop more as time goes on to help justify the existance of how the city ended up in this kind of state. The actual “rulebook” document is also formatted in a way to help make it look and feel as much like a rulebook as I can to help make it easier to read.

And now… is the point where I will finally edit this blog to become public again to hopefully draw more eyes to the project. I won’t be sharing EVERYTHING here thats being kept where its at for now but I do hope the blog will help draw interest from people