Miniature Games I Wish I'd Developed Further: Disney's Frostlanders

Starting with Field of Glory in 2008, and continuing with the excellent Bolt Action in 2012 Osprey Publishing has published a number of high quality rules for use with miniatures in a wide variety of genre. This multi-genre approach to miniature wargaming is best highlighted in the series of blue spined paperback digest books (Little Blue Books? LBB) they began publishing in 2012. This series started with the Dux Bellorum “Historical” Arthurian rules and has included a number of excellent games like In Her Majesty's Name, A Fistful of Kung Fu, or Black Ops: Tactical Espionage Wargaming.

Building on the success of the LBBs, they released the first edition of the Frostgrave fantasy miniature skirmish game in 2015. A couple of years later, they streamlined and clarified the rules with a second edition.

Like many of Osprey's offerings, Frostgrave has an easy to learn system that is highly flexible and moves quickly. The focus of the rules are on casual fun and not on tournament play. In some ways, this is a similar approach to the one that Games Workshop has with their smaller minigame offshoots of Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Age of Sigmar such as Space Marine Adventures or Blitz Bowl, only cheaper and more ecumenical with regards to which miniatures can be used.

Unlike Games Workshop’s current Brandon Sandersonesque epic fantasy game Age of Sigmar, Frostgrave is firmly entrenched in longstanding and traditional fantasy tropes. Frostgrave shares many thematic elements with Games Workshop's classic Mordheim game, but is much easier to learn is more focused on story than Mordheim was when it was first released. Though it has some advancement rules, again similar to Mordheim, in Frostgrave those advancements are limited to a few characters in your warband which minimizes bookkeeping from session to session. Frostgrave is so easy to learn that it inspired me to begin creating a derivative game that I can use to play with my 7 year old twin daughters History and Mystery. Inspired by James August Walls’s many Google+ posts about gaming with his family, I began designing a mashup of Disney Infinity and Skylanders to play with my twin daughters.

The game never quite got finished and I thought I would take it back up again. We still have a ton of Disney Infinity and Skylanders figures around the house and since both of those games are unsupported by their designers, I’d love to put those wonderful figures to good use. I even designed a couple of potential logos for use in my home game back in the day.

As easy as the rules for Frostgrave are to learn, they do have a couple of "fiddley-bits" that might have made things a little complex for playing with my daughters. For example, in the Frostgrave rules as written it is possible to hit an opponent and not injure them and most rolls in the game are contested rolls. By and large, I am not a fan of contested rolls. I understand their utility in competitive games, but I plan on running this game more like an RPG than a competitive wargame. So I want to move away from having contested rules as much as possible and use a Monte Cook and Numenera inspired mechanic where the players to all the rolling. Additionally, Osprey has not published a fan license that states what we as fans are and are not allowed to do with their rules, so I've decided to use a rules set inspired by the actual Frostgrave rules.

So here are the beginnings of the simple rules I came up with and which I want to get feedback on to expand. I’m happy to change themes later so that these can become the basis for something more, but I’d love to have all of you pitch in on the development with your thoughts.

1) All die rolls are made with a d12.

2) Turns follow the following pattern.
            a) Roll for Initiative.
            b) Hero Phase
            c) Ally Phase
            d) Villain Phase

3) Player Characters are rated in the following areas:

MOVEMENT -- Min (4)/Max(10)

MELEE -- Min(-2)/Max(+4)

RANGED -- Min(-2)/Max(+4)

RESISTANCE -- Min(0)/Max(5)

MENTAL RESISTANCE - Min(0)/Max(+4)

 HEALTH -- Min(8)/Max(20)

4) Villains are rated in the same statistics, but their numbers are 5 higher for all values 
     other than Health and serve as difficulty numbers the players must roll better than.
5) On a player's turn, the player may move and take 1 action. That action may be an
    attack, a power activation, or another movement action.
6) When a player attacks a Villain, the player rolls 1d12 and adds their relevant statistic
   (melee in hand to hand and ranged for ranged attacks). They then add their statistic to that value. If that value is greater than the Villain's equivalent statistic, the Villain has been hit.
7) On a successful hit, subtract a Villain's Resistance from the total and what remains is the amount of Health lost.
8) If a character is "prone" then it takes half of their movement to get up.
9) To activate a power, the player rolls 1d12 and compares it to the activation score of
     the power. If it is higher than the score, the power is activated.
10) When a Villain attacks a Hero or Ally, the Player rolls a Melee or Ranged test. If the roll is higher than the Villain's value in that area the attack misses.
11) Villain powers activate in the same manner as Player powers. This is one of the few
      rolls the Game Master will make.

I've only done stats for a couple of characters, but I have a feeling that this will be fun. What are your thoughts?

All icons used in this post were made by Lorc. Available on http://game-icons.net

When Discussing Early RPGs and Wargames, Let's Not Forget the British Scene Part 1

Issues 6 and 7 of the 1956 British Model Soldier Society Bulletin

This is the first in a series of posts discussing the British Wargaming Scene and D&D. The second post can be read here.

The recently released Secret of Blackmoor documentary provides a lot of information about how the modern role playing game developed and how important the Minnesota Wargaming scene was in the creation of Dungeons & Dragons. Particular importance is given to the quasi-roleplaying events created by David Wesely around 1969 called Braunsteins. One way of describing these events is as a combination of postal Diplomacy, traditional Wargaming akin to Strategos, and childhood storytelling games. They were truly innovative and a direct antecedent to Dungeons & Dragons, especially with regard to the role playing of characters and the playing of campaigns that continued session after session.

The role that David Arneson and his gaming community played in the development of role playing games had too long been hidden in the shadows of Gary Gygax and it's fantastic to see a focus on the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons. In doing so, however, we risk losing sight of the fact that role playing games were a "perfect storm" of gaming influences coming together and that many of the things that were happening in the Minnesota Wargaming scene were happening elsewhere as well. In the case of the British Wargaming scene, they were happening in a way that also influenced the invention of Dungeons & Dragons and that provided a fertile field of consumers in the UK when the game finally came to the shores of Albion.

When it comes to Miniatures Wargaming, in both the US and the UK, there are a handful of names that loom large and are the wargaming equivalent of Gygax & Arneson: Tony Bath, Donald Featherstone, Jack Scruby, Charles Grant, Donald A. Wollheim, and Captain J.C. Sachs. Not to mention the influence of H.G. Wells, Robert Louis Stephenson, Peter Cushing, and "Cass and Bantock" on the hobby.

I mention all of these people because the British wargaming scene not to take away from the influence that David Arneson and his group had on Gygax and D&D, but to point to another group that had an influence on both Arneson and Gygax. The miniatures wargaming community in the mid-20th Century was small and gamers communicated with one another across the "pond." The fact that Gary Gygax had a letter published in Donald Featherstone's Wargaming Newsletter is proof that they were in communication with one another, or at least that the UK scene was an influence on Gygax's gaming. We also know that Gygax and Perrin's Chainmail rules were influenced by Tony Bath's 1956 and Phil Barker's 1966 rules for Ancient and Medieval Wargaming. The fact that Barker's rules were published in a 1966 copy of the Wargamer's Newsletter suggests that Gygax had been reading the magazine for some time prior to his published letter.

But let's take a step away from the direct influence and merely look at the development of wargaming in the UK. The original recreational wargamers, at least in published form, are H.G. Wells and Robert Louis Stephenson. Wells' rules were published, but they bear little mechanical resemblance to modern role playing and wargaming. Casualties in Wells' game were determined via the shooting of a toy cannon and not the roll of dice. If you want to check out the game and play it with its original rules, or with new ones, I recommend the recent Paper Boys edition.

There are a number of wargame rules that follow Wells, I think Charles Grant provides the best description of how wargaming in the UK engaging in many of the same types of play that would result in D&D and it is Grant who will be the focus of today's post. In the May 1955 British Model Soldier Society Bulletin, Charles Grant discuses the state of wargaming at the time in his article "The War Game -- Past, Present, and Future."

His account is highly personalized, but matches the development of the hobby. It began with "casualties being inflicted by means of a table top tennis ball," shifting to the British Model Soldier Society's rules when he was older and began to reenact Napoleonic campaigns. It's interesting to note that these rules also appear to use some form of projectile to determine casualties as Grant states, "these games were more or less based on the Society's rules, the exception being that, having regard to the quality of the troops engaged, no actual firing took place..." It is at this point that Grant begins to calculate losses.

It is soon after his shift to Napoleonics that he began playing in games of another sort, and this is where we begin to see parallel developments in the UK hobby to what would eventually happen in Minnesota. Grant states that on one occasion, "a three-handed game was played [with] a certain amount of diplomatic prelude being necessary. Never were there such Machiavellian machinations...and when the three armies finally met in battle, each contestant was firmly convinced that he had at least one ally!" This description suggests that there were proto-roleplaying elements being inserted into Grant's gaming, thanks to Peter Young, and that it was only the very real Campaign of 1939 (the beginning of WWII) that provided the reason that "the protagonists had to go their separate ways." Grants descriptions in 1955, of his pre-1939 gaming, very much sound similar to that of Arneson's Braunsteins. Here are an example of how role playing campaign elements appeared to enter play, "On the historic occasion when one Hess parachuted on to my native soil (likely this actual event) I received notice from my enemy that a certain Murat had been picked up, having dropped from a balloon 'somewhere in Austria!'" Grant also discusses how his group changed the rules to classify wounded in a manner that added "verismililitude to one's bases and lines of communication."

Two things are made abundantly clear by these examples. First, that Grant and his fellow gamers were playing campaigns similar to what modern roleplayers or wargamers would understand. The fact that their "Campaign of 1805" resulted in very different combats from those in history, combined with the fantastic tale of Murat's balloon drop, suggest that the Grant games engaged in a level of roleplaying, even before they began to incorporate dice into play.

Grant goes on to mention the use of rules developed by "Captain Sachs," though those appear to still require the use of actual projectiles for casualties. It isn't until Grant encounters the "Bantock" rules, probably the Bantock-Cass rules Donald Featherstone mentions as being influential to Tony Bath, that Grant begins to favor wargames that use die to determine outcomes. Grant went on to become one of the major figures in wargaming and it's interesting to see how much "roleplay" existed in the hobby as a whole. We'll see more of that when I discuss Tony Bath's writings in the 1956 Bulletin and his famous Hyborian Campaign.

Before I move on though, I'd like to note again that Donald A. Wollheim was an active participant in the British Model Soldier Society. The reason I'm taking the time to highlight this is that Wollheim was a major US Fantasy and SF publisher and was (in)famous for bringing the first paperback printings of Lord of the Rings to the US with his "Ace" paperback versions.

What I find striking in all of this is the deep connections between wargaming and Fantasy as the hobby developed. From Bath's Hyborian campaign, inspired by Robert E. Howard's Conan, to Wollheim's membership in the BMSS, an active gaming community, the ties are there from the start and they span the Atlantic.

A New Edition of H.G. Wells' Classic LITTLE WARS is on the Way from Peter Dennis' Paperboys Line of Books

Peter Dennis is republishing H.G. Well's seminal LITTLE WARS rules as a part of his "Paperboys" line of game books. Like other books in the series, this includes pages and pages of wonderful illustrations meant to be copied and cut out to make armies of paper men. I own most of the books in the series, but have only done a little bit of construction using his English Civil War book.

It's a marvelous series.

This book contains a reprint of H.G. Well's book LITTLE WARS which is a cornerstone of the modern wargaming hobby. Whether you play Warhammer or Bolt Action, you owe a debt of gratitude to Wells. You can see some elements of modern game rules in Wells' simple rules set in a lot of places, but the resolution of combat isn't one of them. Wells' rules are based on the use of a pea shooting toy cannon.

This book looks fantastic and I cannot wait for mine to arrive via Amazon.

The H.G. Wells Inspired TRIPODS AND TRIPLANES by Ares Games Looks Like a Good Time

The Wings of Glory pre-painted miniatures wargame has been the go-to game for those who want a simple and visually appealing introduction to simulations of WW I dogfights. I first encountered the game when Fantasy Flight Games held the license to produce the game in the United States. The first edition of the game lacked the beautiful pre-painted biplane and triplane miniatures that followed, but the mechanics and components were sound and appealing. Now that my daughters are older, I'm planning on breaking out my relatively large (and far too neglected) collection of miniatures and movement cards to play the original game. My hope is that I will be able to use it as a gateway game for Richthofen's War.

One of the reasons my interest in the game was rekindled was Ares production of an H.G. Wells inspired version called Tripods & Triplanes which simulates the fictional combat between brave pilots and the sinister machines of an invading Martian army. This particular combination sparked my interest for two reasons. The first, and most obvious one, is that I've long been a fan of H.G. Wells and the War of the Worlds storyline is rich for simulation in games. Not to mention the fact that H.G. Wells is one of the founders of the miniatures gaming hobby. As significant as that reason was, it was the fact that this setting will partially save my daughters from having me interrupt game play in order to force them to watch my favorite WW I movies or from being required to listen to me guide them through several Google searches to learn about the historic aces who participated in the Great War. Don't get me wrong they'll still have to suffer through those "learning experiences," it's just that these experiences are less likely to interrupt game play now.

The staff over at Wargames Illustrated have put together a wonderful unboxing video of Tripods & Triplanes that shows how nice the components are. The reviewer commented that he wished it had included a playmat in addition to the terrain pieces. I agree that would have been nice, but I've still got my beautiful playmats for the base game.

I can't wait to play this game and I love the design of the Tripods.

JUDGE DREDD: HELTER SKELTER Looks Fantastic!!!

The folks over at Wargames Illustrated have produced an unboxing video for the upcoming Osprey Wargame Judge Dredd: Helter Skelter. We are very excited about this miniatures skirmish game. It's based on Martin Wallace's excellent Wildlands game engine which will likely make it a great introduction to the table top wargaming hobby.

Wildlands features beautifully sculpted miniatures that have a coat of wash on them to bring out the sculpting details enough that non-hobbyists can play the game straight out of the box. Using wash instead of pre-painting provides enough detail to make the game look beautiful while allowing experienced hobbyists to paint the figures to their own tastes.

If you'd like to get a glimpse of how the Wildlands system works, the fine people at Watch It Played have done an excellent tutorial on the rules.

We'll definitely be reviewing it when it's released.

Episode 161: Geekerati Returns with a New Format and an Interview with Dom Zook of Saving Throw Show

The Geekerati Podcast was founded in 2007 and streamed 160 episodes before going on hiatus in 2014. It was meant to be a brief hiatus as the Geekerati panelists coordinated their busy schedules, but it ended up lasting almost five years. With this episode Geekerati returns with new Bi-Weekly prerecorded episodes with new guests and new segments. We are proud to relaunch with an interview with our friend Dom Zook. Dom is the Executive Producer of Saving Throw Show a Role Playing Game Live Play streaming channel on Twitch. If you're a fan of Critical Role, or any other live play show, you should give Saving Throw Show a look.They are currently running a number of gaames online, but their Savage Worlds show launches its new season during the channel's Fundraising Marathon on June 21st!
 

This episode also sees the introduction of our first new segment, Something Old/Something New. This segment will be a regular review segment and will be joined by other segments including our Dungeon Master advice segment Dungeons & Dilemmas in the near future. Our current segment reviews the old Conan Roleplaying Game by TSR and Attack of the Necron, the first entry in Warped Galaxies the new YA Warhammer Adventures book series from Games Workshop. 

 If the discussion in Something Old/Something new piqued your interest in the system used by the TSR Conan Roleplaying Game, you will want to take a look at its Open Content successor ZeFRS and download the pdf rulebook.


This episode featured the following sound effects from Plate Mail Games: 1950s Space, Inside the Internet, and Space Battle. 

From the Archives (August 27, 2007) -- Interviewing James Lowder About HOBBY GAMES: THE 100 BEST

In 2007, Green Ronin Publishing released one of the best books on hobby gaming ever written. Their book, Hobby Games: The 100 Best, featured thoughtful articles highlighting some of the best games in the history of the gaming hobby written by some of the best game designers in the industry. Some of the games were well known and are played by thousands of gamers on a regular basis, others were rare games that influenced the creation of the games people play today. One thing is certain, the game became a Christmas Wish List for many gamers and started an internet meme where game hobbyists listed the games they own/play.

Your average consumer isn't a collector of games and doesn't have room in their house for 1000+ board/card/roleplaying/family games and resources like these two books allow for those consumers to purchase games based on the opinions of individuals who have a great deal of experience in designing and playing games.

In August of that year, I and my fellow Geekerati panelists had the honor of chatting with editor James Lowder about the book and added some of our own recommendations. You can listen to the episode here:

The list of games in this edition a wonderful selection of the popular and the rare and consumers cannot go wrong with any of the games on the list.

In case you are wondering, I have provided a copy of the games included in the new volume below. Those games that are in bold are games that I own and those games that are italicized are games that I have merely played. Some of the games I now own, like Apocalypse (aka The Warlord) and War & Peace, were purchased because of this book.

1. Bruce C. Shelley -- Acquire
2. Nicole Lindroos -- Amber Diceless
3. Ian Livingstone -- Amun-Re
4. Stewart Wieck -- Ars Magica
5. Thomas M. Reid -- Axis & Allies
6. Tracy Hickman  -- Battle Cry
7. Philip Reed -- BattleTech
8. Justin Achilli -- Blood Bowl
9. Mike Selinker -- Bohnanza
10. Tom Dalgliesh -- Britannia
11. Greg Stolze -- Button Men
12. Monte Cook -- Call of Cthulhu
13. Steven E. Schend -- Carcassonne
14. Jeff Tidball -- Car Wars
15. Bill Bridges -- Champions
16. Stan! -- Circus Maximus
17. Tom Jolly -- Citadels
18. Steven Savile -- Civilization
19. Bruno Faidutti -- Cosmic Encounter
20. Andrew Looney -- Cosmic Wimpout
21. Skip Williams -- Dawn Patrol
22. Alan R. Moon -- Descent
23. Larry Harris -- Diplomacy
24. Richard Garfield -- Dungeons & Dragons
25. William W. Connors -- Dynasty League Baseball
26. Christian T. Petersen -- El Grande
27. Alessio Cavatore -- Empires in Arms
28. Timothy Brown -- Empires of the Middle Ages
29. Allen Varney -- The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen
30. Phil Yates -- Fire and Fury
31. William Jones -- Flames of War
32. Rick Loomis -- Fluxx
33. John Kovalic -- Formula Dé
34. Anthony J. Gallela -- The Fury of Dracula
35. Jesse Scoble -- A Game of Thrones
36. Lou Zocchi -- Gettysburg
37. James Wallis -- Ghostbusters
38. James M. Ward -- The Great Khan Game
39. Gav Thorpe  -- Hammer of the Scots
40. Uli Blennemann -- Here I Stand
41. S. Craig Taylor, Jr. -- A House Divided
42. Scott Haring -- Illuminati
43. Dana Lombardy -- Johnny Reb
44. Darren Watts -- Junta
45. Greg Stafford -- Kingmaker
46. Lester Smith -- Kremlin
47. Wolfgang Baur -- Legend of the Five Rings
48. Marc W. Miller -- Lensman
49. Ted S. Raicer -- London’s Burning
50. Teeuwynn Woodruff -- Lord of the Rings
51. Mike Breault -- Machiavelli
52. Jordan Weisman -- Magic: The Gathering
53. Steve Kenson -- Marvel Super Heroes
54. Gary Gygax -- Metamorphosis Alpha
55. Greg Costikyan -- My Life with Master
56. John D. Rateliff -- Mythos
57. Chris “Gerry” Klug -- Napoleon’s Last Battles
58. John Scott Tynes -- Naval War
59. Erick Wujcik -- Ogre
60. Marc Gascoigne -- Once Upon a Time
61. Mike Bennighof -- PanzerBlitz
62. Steve Jackson -- Paranoia
63. Shannon Appelcline -- Pendragon
64. JD Wiker -- Pirate’s Cove
65. Richard H. Berg -- Plague!
66. Martin Wallace -- Power Grid
67. Tom Wham -- Puerto Rico
68. Joseph Miranda -- Renaissance of Infantry
69. James Ernest -- RoboRally
70. Jennell Jaquays -- RuneQuest
71. Richard Dansky -- The Settlers of Catan
72. Ken St. Andre -- Shadowfist
73. Steven S. Long -- Shadowrun
74. Peter Corless -- Shadows over Camelot
75. Dale Donovan -- Silent Death: The Next Millennium
76. Matt Forbeck -- Space Hulk
77. Ray Winninger -- Squad Leader
78. Lewis Pulsipher -- Stalingrad
79. Bruce Nesmith -- Star Fleet Battles
80. Steve Winter -- The Sword and the Flame
81. Jeff Grubb -- Tales of the Arabian Nights
82. Shane Lacy Hensley -- Talisman
83. Douglas Niles -- Terrible Swift Sword
84. Ed Greenwood -- Thurn and Taxis
85. Mike Fitzgerald -- Ticket to Ride
86. Thomas Lehmann -- Tigris & Euphrates
87. Warren Spector -- Tikal
88. David “Zeb” Cook -- Toon
89. Mike Pondsmith -- Traveller
90. Zev Shlasinger -- Twilight Struggle
91. Kenneth Hite -- Unknown Armies
92. Sandy Petersen -- Up Front
93. R. Hyrum Savage -- Vampire: The Eternal Struggle
94. George Vasilakos  -- Vampire: The Masquerade
95. Kevin Wilson -- Vinci
96. R.A. Salvatore -- War and Peace
97. Jack Emmert -- Warhammer 40,000
98. Chris Pramas -- The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
99. Steve Jackson -- The Warlord
100. John Wick -- Wiz-War

Which of these games do you own or have you played? Which games from the past decade should be added to the list?