This weeks topic is an explanation of my tabletop game creation experiment.
Origins:
I've been playing tabletop games on and off for the better part of a decade. It all started with playing Wh40k at a cousins house using a set of small toys as proxys for the real deal. That christmas my brother and I got wh40k starter kits, 6 years later, almost a thousand dollars I sit on over 40 individually painted figures and some awesome memories. So yes, I love tabletop. In the past four years I have also started to branch out, starting with Battletech, then trying Heavy Gear, Warmachine, and then onto other types of tabletop like Steve Jacksons Frag and Nexus' Wings of War. Throughout these all I tried to think about what got me interested in each. I won't go through the list but throughout most of them it was aspects like: ease of play, quick play times, a fun theme, and fun/goofy mechanics.
Battletech only sticks out because I enjoyed as being a very long term Mechwarrior/Battletech lover, so I am able to look past it's fault to enjoy it but understand that a new player would have no real interest in learning to play this game. Battletech's game system offers an incredibly detailed combat model dealing with giant robot warfare which is great for fans but results in a clunky and extended play time. Frag however is fast, brutal, and fun that every gamer could get behind. Frag's system is also open enough to let players come up with their own content to enhance the system.
So where is this all going? it leads to MetroSiege, a tabletop wargame of my own design. Metrosiege has its roots in an attempt to create a tabletop wargame based on my comic universe, I started writing it roughly two years ago. At the time I was incredibly inspired by Battletech to write a wargame that could make giant robot combat faster but also remain nuanced. Needless to say the project ended a few months later with a half-baked rulebook that was never tested. Next attempt came early last year when I was tapped by some forum goers of a website I frequent to help write a tabletop game based on the ancient Earthsiege(1) franchise. I would write the rules, and another would make models. Again this ended in failure but was not over.
The Idea:
Around November of last year I swung around to trying to make a tabletop game again. The idea was to try and make a system that exhibited the core of most tabletop games but be straightforward so that anyone could play it (like Frag). Here were the core rules:
-models on a table
-Cards for powers and equipment
-dice for action checks
-moving models around
I'll post the original rule book from this on here at some point, it was a simple take game where players made their own tanks made of 2d cutouts and then were given 7 points to spend on 3 aspects: guns, armor, and engines. It was fun, but I felt too simple to keep alive, so back to the workshop.
This is where Earthsiege comes back in, I decided to use an existing video game to work off of. Part of it was the safety of existing gameplay structure, other spur was my love of the franchise itself. I own both Earthsiege 1 and 2, content to pick them up from time to time and explore the Mechwarrior(2) that might have been. Anyway, Earthsiege provided a framework to use and the tabletop system I explored in the Tank game provided the starting direction. Thus Earthsiege would be turned into a tabletop wargame, where players commanded groups of mecha units, fighting for control of earth.
The Implementation:
I wanted to emulate some of the best aspects of the old video game in the tabletop game as well. I created a basic stat-line for a mech that all mechs would go off of. Points cost, Speed, Energy, Shields, Armor, Weapons. These stats would dictate the behavior of any mech, and Earthsiege provided mechs to choose from. Shields and Armor were the health of any unit, the dynamic is, shields were able to be replenished but armor was worn away. A player had to get through the shields to get to the armor, units were destroyed when the armor was gone and enough cards taken from a Damage Deck. Mechs would also have space for weapons.
Taking cues from Frag with concern to player cards and tokens, I chose to make tokens for Energy, Shields, Armor, and weapons. Likewise these would be placed on or adjacent to a card that gave info for each unit.
A = Weapon token
B = Energy Tokens
C = Shield Tokens
D = Armor Tokens
E = The 2d cutout of the unit to use on the table
F = The unit card
This was my first draft a unit card, for a sense of scale the card is 6"x6" with the tokens being 1"x1".
I showcased it to my friend as a playtester and we set about making a few more. After determining that it was a fun and good way to go for unit management I made more official cards for existing Earthsiege units.
Using the lineart from the game itself, the unit cards were quick and easy to make. From here on, it was simply testing and tweaking weapon and unit stats. Here is the rundown of the turn for all players:
1) Initiative
2) Actions
3)Resolution
A simple core of three main phases to each turn. Opposing sides roll off 2D6 (6-sided die) and add together, whoever gets the highest gets to move their first unit, first. Players then take turns performing actions with units: mostly moving and shooting. Finally, damage is resolved at the end, along with energy counts etc. The first play test was great - we resolved 1v1 in about 20 minutes.
As I printed more unit cards out, we had to rewrite and tweak some stats for weapons. A perfect example was the laser weapons, we could not figure out why a player would take lasers over cannons. We had to figure out a reason for the weapons existence - in this case lasers get +1 damage to armor. And this ocurred across the weapons table, each weapon had to have a unique element that made them attractive but at the same time a flaw.
MetroSiege:
Now this is the most recent development. After talking it over with my testing partner, I decided to break away from the Earthisege story core. That is, keep the engine of the car the same, but change the paint job and interior. MetroSiege is the new face of the system, and is largely inspired by Earthsige. It's a work-in-progress now with me as an artist trying to come up with new mech looks, weapons and story. But now that it is my own property I can market it to new people easier and perhaps make it even more compelling as a universe.
Heres the link to download and try:
References:
(2)earthsiege was released at the same time MechWarrior 2 was in 1995, a direct competitor. For a few interesting reasons, Earthsiege never took off like MechWarrior 2 did, a shame because Earthsiege offered a much more military-focused simulation that MechWarrior.
