"One Ball to Rule them all (Rollerball rules)" Topic

Over the years I've gotten a lot of requests for my miniature rules for a certain violent future sport.

For a variety of reasons, I have finally decided to release my game for free under Creative Commons licensing. (Due to copyright reasons it is now called Rulerball … yes, there's an umlaut over the u… but it is still the violent future sport you know and love.)

As of 11/22, you can now download the complete game from my site ( japenet.net in the games section ) as a PDF containing the rules, track sections and playing pieces -- all of which can be printed out on a standard color printer.

Happy holidays all -- Hope you enjoy it!

Gonna check them out. Thanks.

Excellent!

Thank you for sharing the rules, info on designing and building a track, and on where to get the miniatures from.

I'd love to give it a try.

Best regards,

Rob

Thanks Jape77!

Just downloaded them. I got inspired a year or so ago by your site and gathered up stuff to make a track but it will be nice to check out your official rules.

PS. The plastic bikes from the original "Dark Future" set are roughly the same scale as the electronic football game men. This is what I bought although it was a trick to find enough bikes for 3 teams when each dark future set only had 4. Luckily most people didn't paint up their plastic bikes.

. The plastic bikes from the original "Dark Future" set are roughly the same scale as the electronic football game men.

Yeah, that makes sense -- wasn't Dark Future 20mm? That's about what we guessed your average electric football figure is. Give or take.

(I supposed I should have said 'I looked high and low OUTSIDE of GW for scale bikes w/ riders.' Sure I took a gander at the early blood bowl figures and various 40k bikes, but quickly decided I didn't want to deal with either lead or the price.)

btw, a while back I joked that it would be pretty easy to find all the same-scale skaters and bikes you need in Lego. Apparently a gamer I know is now looking into it, with the minifigs setup. Frankly I'd LOVE to see an Lego Rollerball stadium!

Heads ups! If you download my Rülerball game, be sure you have Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0 or higher to open it. Apparently if you open the PDF in other reader programs (like Apple's Preview), the colors come out all wonky.

Since Acrobat is free as well, its easy to get.

Thanks for that. Most appreciated.

I wonder whether you could do something using the Infinity miniatures from Corvus Belli? There are two styles of motorcycle in a couple of the factions, and plenty of body-armoured figures. You'd need to convert skaters and remove weaponry, which could be tricky.

Yes, thanks. Saw your post last night and immediately went over to your site to download it. Forgot to come back and give proper thanks. It's really a beautiful job. Your graphics capture the period perfectly, by which I mean mid-70s modernism/futurism.

This is beautiful – thank you.

Very nice sir. Well done.

Clean design and great finish.

Thank you. It was a real labor of love, and I'm glad to finally get it out there.

For those of you looking for figures, here are two recent posibilities in 40mm (or so) that would make for some fun kit-bashing:

Footballers for skaters:
link
auction

Bikers:
auction
auction

There are several cycles in this line of large motorbikes Hot Wheels put out last year that would be great on their own as is, in case you wanted to have different bikes for different teams. That 2nd link above would look great with a Tokyo squad!

one ball to rule them all? that was hitler's dream, i think.

Figure update -- swung by a couple toy stories tonight while getting supplies for Thanksgiving…

The Hot Wheels motorcycles mentioned above are indeed about the same scale as the Kaskey Kids football players -- however the bike and biker are a single piece of plastic, so you can't do much in the way of kitbashing or changing poses. Still, if the designs strike your fancy they could do the job.

Honestly though, with all the crazy movie/sports tie-ins McFarlane Toys has done over the years, I still can't believe they haven't yet done Rollerball… or even simply Jonathan E.

Bumping, because this is too cool to be on page 2 so soon. Excellent work, Jape!

ETA: FWIW, here's a link to the "official" electric football manufacturer. Teams are available separately, both painted and unpainted. Not sure how the scale works out.

miggle.com

For those still wanting to stick to lead, Hasslefree has some nice fantasy football figures that could be adopted to Rullerball

link

Of course, that would mean creating an all-female rollerball squad, but hey … it could happen

For those thinking of 28mm teams, I just came across a British miniature company that makes future motorcycles in that scale. Granted, they aren't quite the bikes from Rollerball, but used as is, or with some kit-bashing, they could be effective substitutes for those putting together squads with fantasy football figs.

link

Looks like it would work…and by the way, an all girl team would be well supported…but hopefully they would look like women and not men in drag :)

There is a Sci-Fi game called BattleBall that might have some figures that could be of interest.

Speaking of cool games like this,

These guys need a game.

link