What would be the top 3 most important things you'd do if you could develop your own tabletop miniature game? What do you feel the companies currently leading the industry are doing wrong? Let's assume you have a very large budget and a goal to keep the game afloat and making money in the long term with a growing player base.
>>45864737
1. Fun
2. Flexibility and diverse array of options
3. My name is on it.
Cool board and shit that comes with it like miniatures. What you posted looks great. Mousetrap is great, as is The Game Of Life. If I buy a game and it has a flat board with some pictures printed on it, cardboard cut-outs for player pieces, and no actual 3-dimensional sculpted objects with it, I will be extremely disappointed, as I can make that bullshit by myself.
Simple yet decently unique gameplay is what makes a game memorable; too complicated and all the fun is sucked out of the game.
Make turns as fast as humanly possible, because I can't count the number of times a game - any game, tabletop or video or whatever - has been killed by someone taking too long during their turn.
Create a game wherein each unit has reasonable, readily available counters as well as strengths. I would want to do this and avoid making whatever new model that came out super overpowered. I feel like in doing this, I'd allow players to take units they like and units they like the asthetics of, rather than forcing them to buy my newest stuff or lose. Whatever models are most popular get updated more frequently and receive more options, unpopular ones less often. I would also try to build up fluff quite a bit. If the game got a lot of traction, I'd probably also try to reach out to some big game developers and allow them to use the brand for very little money provided they stuck to established lore for the most part.
>>45864840
1: Make one universal list of units, magic, upgrades, monsters and characters that are somewhat generic.
2: Everyone uses that same list, and faction or race is just a matter of what your miniatures look like.
3: Make the list free and update it regularly online.
This is basically the only way to get anything remotely balanced instead of a clusterfuck of army book update cycles and flavour of the month OPness.
Do you want to make an army of elves? Awesome, pick a lot of ranger and archer units, wizards and giants, and use elf and treant models.
Want to make an orc army? Awesome, pick light infantry, barbarians, a warlord and some heavy cavalry and use Orc and boar rider models.
Everyone can make whatever army they want, nerfing a unit doesn't penalize one army in particular since there is just one, and if the heavy cavalry needs nerfing it gets nerfed for everyone. If magic is too weak it gets buffed for everyone. You can churn out infinite miniatures for the game for people who are lore fags or want to make themed armies. When you make a new unit for the rules, you can release models for that unit with 5 different looks to fit whatever flavour the players want to use.
This would basically be my dream game anyway, I love the collecting and painting aspect of wargaming but come on, who doesn't like fair fights and balanced rules?
>>45865466
Oh, and also
4: Make it a reasonable fucking scale for the type of game it is. Is it a skirmish game? Great, use 28 mm miniatures, whatever. But don't fucking make a mass formation combat game in 28 mm, make it 15 or 6mm like real wargames that aren't retarded.
>campaign driven
>balanced
>fun
That's it desu
>>45865591
>Campaign Driven
>Balanced
It's more or less impossible to make the campaign part meaningful without it becoming imbalanced as the game progresses. What's the point of winning battles in a campaign if you don't get any benefit in the coming battles?
Campaigns are awesome, though, so I'd be the first to play, but it sounds like it would be difficult to realize.
>>45865466
What about special "faction" rules or force organization?
>>45865648
I think that immediately falls under potential faction imbalance.
The way I would do it would be to tie it in with characters/generals
Warlord A lets you take more heavy cavalry and wizard B lifts the limits on some unit but can't take another.
Otherwise you end up with the situation that I was trying to avoid to begin with, one faction ending up better and people who invested in another faction feeling fucked over.
My goals are basically game balance and letting people choose their army out of love and lorefaggotry rather than because it's really strong or plays a specific way. What if I want to play elves with heavy cavalry or orcs with elite units? Letting everyone pick from the same list and making different models for the same generic unit solves this.
>>45865746
And to clarify, the characters/generals/wizards would also be generic, so "Grand warlord" "Arch wizard" or "Genius General" could be a skeleton or a human or whatever you wanted to fit in with your army.
>>45865466
>>45865503
>>45865746
Have you started anything on this Anon? Because I really like the idea.
>>45865632
Winners get handicaps but more points for winning with a handicap?
>>45864737
1. Rule of cool
2. brutal heroics
3. customization
I'd like a asmmetric Street fight kind of game, lots of crumby guys fighting hard core law enforcement types. But not zombies, cus that has be done a billion times, and zombes with ranged weapons is dumb.
>>45865822
>Winners get handicaps
Literally what?
I could see the underdog getting points bonuses for fighting at a disadvantage, but what the hell kind of sense does it make to give the penalty and bonus to the player who's winning the campaign?
>>45865816
We are basically playing it with 6mm proxies. Me and some friends are a bunch of games design nerds who play way too much Epic Armageddon.
It would be fun to release it as a pdf rules set at some point because there are already soooo many generic fantasy miniatures to play with available from so many manufacturers in 6, 10 and 15mm scale.
The only thing we feel is missing from those ranges are fuckhuge stuff. The coolest thing about 6mm scale is that you can have minis like titans or superheavy tank companies, so we have made crazy fantasy units that we proxy.
Golem siege towers, floating fortresses, walking castles, dragons, gods, the works.
>>45865632
You could try and change up mechanics to make it a balancing act. Sure, when one side loses territory, they're weakened on that front, but they might gain mobility in exchange so they can hit at less well-defended points.
There's got to be a way to balance it, while also doling out satisfying rewards. I'd play it as a long-term campaign made of many smaller engagements. Three-battle mini campaigns that contribute to a larger one, playing them like Break-In/Objective/Break-Out matches with some variation like Break-In/Slog/Objective and protracted siege.
One can conceivable score more points by causing damage and casualties to their opponent, while ultimately failing their objectives, and each of these scores can be tracked concurrently and refer to various tables for outcomes. Really, a game system mean for campaigns should have an additional campaign book seconded to their core rulebook.
>>45865952
I guess the way I view it a real campaign system needs something that carries over from game to game, not just a series of specific scenarios, otherwise it's no different from just playing a string of games and tallying up who won the most times.
But yeah, other than that I think your suggestions are good.
What about a hex-map for campaigns? That way you don't have to worry about bonuses and stuff, just flanks, fronts, supply lines and objectives.
>>45866085
I think that campaigns should not be too concerned with balance. You play them because you like to watch a story unfold, and if you worry too much about balance the story becomes kind of stupid.
If you don't like unfair advantages and stuff like that, it's easier to just stick to one-off games.
I think the best way to do it is to include gameplay at the strategic level too. Give players points and maps to recruit armies and hold castles with and see what happens, rather than playing a game of no-warhammer and then giving the winner more stuff in game two.
>>45864737
1: Make sure the rules are solid before even thinking about miniatures.
Build it so that there's room to expand off of a simple core, but that core is focused on a very specific thing. Generic has been tried over and over. Do one thing and do it well.
The most consistently proven thing to work to keep players invested is limited amounts of customisation around a core theme. GW's games, Flames of war, bolt action, warmachine: all rely on the army list as the main form of keeping players active over time. So the game will need a way to give players a defined base of things to use to start with, and then let them tweak that over time.
2: Not a lot. They're leading for good reasons. Even GW.
It's the little guys that fuck up the most; trying to aim too high and fucking up on production, not even trying for market research, relying far too much on kickstarter without planning for a follow-up product, advertising, convention presence and the like, not playtesting enough, relying on players to make up their own fluff and forces (for non-historical games), messy rulebooks cluttered by too much miniatures porn, artwork and fluff.
OP I have taken your question to be about a self-contained TT miniatures game, rather than an expansive collection/hobby type of thing. So my answers are mainly about producing a one-box product. These points are still valid for a hobby style expandable game, but less critical. Anyway:
1) No pasted on theme. Make sure the mechanics are intrinsically linked to the theme. So many self-contained games are just dice rolls / collect resources / top trumping cards and the theme (zombies, probably) is just there to sell it with some cool horror art. Make the rules feel like they are reflecting things that would happen in your game world's "reality".
2) Don't over-stuff the initial box. Sounds counter-intuitive, but every player to a new game wants to have the thing unpacked, laid out in front of them, and getting into reading through the rules within one hour. Too many bits to assemble, too much "additional optional content to increase the game's longevity, but you don't need to worry about it for your first few games" is just annoying. Save it for the expansions.
3) Make sure your components are fit for purpose. If counters representing coins are being slung around all game, make them plastic. It's worth the added cost for the tactile benefits in game. Similarly, don't waste money on tokens and markers that will just sit there the whole game. Heavy duty cardstock is very nice. Special coatings/embossed/foil/holograms are never worth the cost.
>>45866017
Honestly, a campaign like that needs a drawn-up map with sectors representing various locations and what they might contribute to a team.
Planetfall is a good example, though others can work as well. A skirmish campaign might involve taking over parts of just one specific location, divvying up a city by districts and strategic points of interest. A wargame might divide a continent up by cities or even whole regions, chopping continents up into little bits. An armada-scale game set in space could divide whole planetary systems up into their individual planets and moons, or even trade in planetary spaces themselves.
>>45866157
>I think the best way to do it is to include gameplay at the strategic level too. Give players points and maps to recruit armies and hold castles with and see what happens, rather than playing a game of no-warhammer and then giving the winner more stuff in game two
Right, that's exactly what I was thinking. Generals wouldn't say "I've defeated the enemy at the battle of X, therefore I get a bonus at the battle of Y", they would say "I've captured the Town of Somethingorother, which allows our supply lines to continue, and we can now advance the 5th, 6th and 7th regiments".
>>45864737
1. Make good looking minis
2. Refer to step 1
3. Refer to step 2
Krosmaster has built a small empire out of the shittiest miniature game just by having decentish weeb looking minis. GW is entirely predicated on a shit game played with cool minis. Seriously, just fuck all the game design. Make good minis and that's ALL you need.
>>45864737
Little plastic-and-card furniture like in Heroquest.
simultaneous combat
>>45865632
balanced doesn't mean every fight is 50/50, it means there aren't forces or options that are objectively inferior to others to such a degree that they are almost never an option. It's balanced to have lost an earlier game and thus be at a disadvantage in a later one in the same way it is balanced that losing a unit makes the rest of the battle harder. However if choosing to equip my men with pikes is ALWAYS correct and equipping them with rifles is just never correct because the rules represent them as totally useless that is unbalance.
t.mutilators
t.chaos
>>45864737
>filename
I like the cut of your jib, OP.
>>45866454
Fool
>>45865648
Not him, but you could easily have universal character and unit upgrades that cost points to buy. If you want a special unit, you can add a few special rules to fit your fluff.
As for force organization, the percentage system worked fine as far as I am concerned.
>character driven
>variable model count
>little to no hard restrictions of unit types, but soft ones are fine
I like the idea of having characters that lead units of grunts, and rpg elements apply to the characters/units as a whole. YOu'd have a Warlord who's type or affiliations might make hiring certain unit commanders more costly, perhaps exorbitantly so in extreme cases, but over all it would be as lore unexplicit and customizable as possible.
>this thread
>>45864737
1. Excellent, detailed, and interesting minis.
2. Fair and balanced rules that allow for interesting jank as well.
3. A large range of units, options, and strategies.
The only time you should see someone with the same army as you, unit for unit, is if the both of you just bought a starter box.
>>45865466
>>45865503
>>45865746
This sounds fucking amazing, anon.
Perhaps even a point-but and/or customization system for warlords/leaders/generals themselves, to allow for more interesting army lists?I really want this idea but for sci-fi
>>45865466
>>45874950
I mean there's always Brikwars
>>45865466
It's almost like you've never heard of Dragon Rampant.
This sound sup the alley of a lot of you lot
>character driven
>100% unit customization
>any miniatures you want
>>45876057
>>45874108
Mix these two, watch me cum myself.
>>45874950
>Perhaps even a point-but and/or customization system for warlords/leaders/generals themselves, to allow for more interesting army lists?
Absolutely, as long as it sticks to the rule of "everyone can use it" I think you can go a little nuts with the options. Make gimmicky generals or wizards that force really weird unit compositions. If it turns out to be too good, you nerf it, and everyone adapts. This is why I feel one list and online updates is the way to go, rather than the whole "Well, I guess I'll just buy some space marines while I wait for my other army to get an update in two years and not suck ass" tranwreck.
>>45871113
I assumed that the balance entry on that anon's wishlist was more than just "I want the game to be basically fair and the army lists to not be terribly designed", because that feels like something you shouldn't have to specify.
>>45875823
I don't like the scale of engagement dragon rampant focuses on. It's too small to be very tactical and not focused enough to be interesting at the skirmish scale.
I heavily prefer 6 or 15mm wargaming though, so my lack of interest is not really Dragon Rampant's fault.
I do feel like Osprey's stuff is not particularly concerned with balance though. I was not impressed with Lion Rampant or Frostgrave
>>45875015
>>45864737
1. Fun
2. Solid and balanced rules
3. Aesthetically pleasing
4. Thats it. Get 1-3 right and you're good.
>>45865466
I'm pretty sure it would be a commercial failure though.
>>45879357
The thing is, if someone made the rules system, for say, 6, 10 or 15mm fantasy miniatures, there are already so many different ranges to choose from currently being manufactured for various systems that you could start playing it instantly without having to release any miniature lines of your own.
But yeah, when it comes to making money, one free rulebook for everything is a really bad way of doing it, I agree. On the other hand it's not very resource intensive to produce either.
Look at something like Netepic armageddon. It's a game that has regular rules updates, miniature releases and everything, purely driven by fans, so a game doesn't have to be a huge commercial success backed by a big company to live on.
