"I'm the NWG guy. Ask me anything" Topic

So over the past half year, I've been diving into the whole wargaming rules thing as a business (FiveCore, No end in Sight and Five Men in Normandy) and managing to scrape out a part-time income from gaming stuff.

I think more people should do so and I think more designers should talk about what they do.

So in the style of reddit, ask me anything you want and I'll answer to the best of my ability, serious or goofy.

(and if I turn out not to actually be interesting at all, then don't ask and the thread will drift off the front page quietly without incident :) )

What other games inspired you/did you draw from to make FiveCore?

How are sales, and what has sold the best/worst?

What do you think of clear bases for 28mm figs?

What is the answer to the West Lothian question?

Sure. Here we go!

1) How big of a skirmish can you play with the game in a short evening (2-3 hours tops)? The game title (5 Men) implies very small…like some of the THW titles.

2) How does combat work in your game? How about a rundown please?

3) How does the command and control work? I find many games these days are too restrictive. How does yours work?

4) What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

That's all for now.

Thanks!

John

Kyote – I can provided you buy me two drinks first.

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NVDoyle –

"What other games inspired you/did you draw from to make FiveCore?"

Games? Chain Reaction, Laserburn, Rogue Trader. The RPG styled skirmish game where the focus is on the characters.

"How are sales, and what has sold the best/worst?"

Better than expected for sure. The core games have hit around 250 copies each if I remember right. The worst selling was the "tasks" supplement for FiveCore which has sold all of 10 copies or so.

It was a more explicitly RPG-styled affair and I think I over-estimated people's interest in that or I just did a bad job explaining why people might want it.

"What do you think of clear bases for 28mm figs?"

I've seen it around and it's super cool but I'd be concerned about it getting "fogged" by glue or getting paint on.
It does solve the whole "green bases while inside the bunker" problem.

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David Manley –
"What is the answer to the West Lothian question?"

Since all of England is rightfully viking territory, I find that it can be solved like most viking problems: By drinking and fighting. WHoever wakes up first can make the rules.

* * * * *

Who asked –

"game size"
Up to a squad without much fuss, there's mods for larger games but it gets a little chunky especially if you have a lot of characters with skills.
I put "5 men" in the title so people would know right away that it was a small level skirmish.
3 hours is a LONG game of Fivecore btw.

"combat"
Sure! (assuming here you are talking about FiveCore and not No End in Sight).

A basic rifle shot rolls two dice, one "Shock" and one "Kill" (use two different colours). You are looking for 1's and 6's.

On the shock die, a 1 causes the target to Flinch (dive for cover) while a 6 causes them to Bail, falling back and needing rally).
On the kill die, a 1 causes them to be knocked down and requiring recovery and a 6 puts them out of action.

So morale is built into the roll. Different weapons have different characteristics. Machine guns get more shock dice, some weapons lose dice when moving, skilled characters might get a re-roll, that sort of thing.

"Command and control"
The "zeitgeist" currently is to reduce control. I figure at some point, it'll reach a singularity and we'll start moving back the other way.

The C&C in FiveCore is in the unpredictable turn sequence.

Roll at the start of the turn. A 1 is a "Scurry". Move all your men, noone fires. Enemy may move in reaction.
A 6 is a "Fire fight". Shoot with all your men, noone moves. Enemy may shoot in reaction.

On any other roll (there's that 1's and 6's thing again), you pick 2 guys who may move and fire. (more in larger games)

So most of the time you are limited in how much you can do. The idea is like a movie basically. The camera zooms in on a particular guy and he can do a lot in a short amount of time.

"swallows"
Faster than you would expect. Never quite as fast as it wants to be.

Hi Nordic, couple of things 1. No End in Sight would like a real play by play to get the hang of it, and a couple of lists of troops/assets for us to see how its done.
2. When on the sci-fi version and will weapons be more 'fulsome' a la WH40Kish (part of the fun) I'm also going to try these for WW2 so any ideas?
Finally Solo any thoughts on unpredictable setup/play and reveals.
My questions are based on A, your rules work(and they do that simply and well) and I like the idea of less dice (no buckets of ;)
B. The core systems although simple create a set of rulers that can stretch in many directions and I'm sure you will do others , what can we look forward to (you relieving us of more of our lolly :+a)
C. Request, would you be interested in doing a Pulp/Colonial version.
Can see this last one being popular.
Cheers and thank for an interesting take on the age old question of Fun, playability and realism with rules especially to us soloists.

Zargon -

1: I'll see if I can get something up tonight, after I finish this thing I am working on.

2: The scifi will have quite a few gadgets. They'll be towards the "hard scifi" edge of things since I am aiming for a relatively near future but there'll be stuff like wasp grenades you can launch and detonate at predetermined points, drones, sentry guns and other nifties.

3: Pulp possibly. I've put bits and pieces in the supplements and it's been a thought. Colonial I probably won't (but never say never).

The period just never struck a chord with me.
I have been won over the thoughts of doing a medieval or fantasy thing though.

Weasel, can 5 Men be played with multi-players, each with 5 guys? I'm thinking 2 guys each with 5 vs. the more experienced player with 10 or something like that. I'm also thinking 5 Men in Rostov…

One guy said he had run a game where five players were each commanding their own squad, in a massive chaos of a game, so I'd say yes :)

THe main thing to be aware of is whether the players will split their activation rolls or each roll.

2 players each rolling separately against one player rolling once will get to activate more guys each turn.

Easy fix is to up the activations a little for the lone guy, to 3 or 4 per turn. Might make a fun introduction game actually.

At some future point, there will be some campaign supplements and an east front one will assuredly be one of them. Not near future though.

btw, if you lot have more general questions about writing games, design thoughts or well, anything, you're welcome to ask those too. It doesn't have to be product specific.

Hello Weasel,

1. Why did you decide to enter the business side of wargaming rules?

2. Would you do any thing differently if you knew then what you know now?

3. Conversely, what would you not change?

Been looking at Five Parsecs from Home. Can one use it two player or multi-player? [The solo aspect is my primary interest, but having the option to use it as a sci-fi skirmish game would be a good thing.]

Thank you for your time.

First a comment: I encourage everyone to pick up a copy of the Tasks supplement if you want to do RPG lite style games. Just let the player say "I want to do [x]" and then find the nearest task in the book. I am planning on letting characters particularly skilled in a task get a free re-roll on their specialty once a game and see how that works.

Now a question: How do you find the time to turn out so much content? It seems like I am buying something from you at least once a week.

Another note, with 6-12 figures, I like the alternative activation sequence where 2-5 lets you activate that many troops.

Thanks for all of your hard work, Ivan!

What is the price of sliced ham per portion?

Ancestral –

1: I had grown sick and tired of the corporate job I had, we had paid off most of our debts and maybe a tiny bit of mid-life crisis.

Essentially I have like three skills in life. I'm pretty good at teaching things to people, I'm pretty good at motivating people and I'm pretty good at writing rules (I think). I've done the first two, so it was time to do the last one.

2: Solicit more feedback for sure. I have to always fight the urge to one-man-show everything. It's not so much ego (well, maybe a little) as much as it's risk-management. If I do every bit, that means I can do it at my pace and I know where the risks and fault-points are.

But of course, one man can't do everything well. I've been experimenting with more ways to draw in people and respond to feedback.

3: What I wouldn't change is my low-risk strategy. I've talked to and seen a lot of people try to run a hobby related business and end up worse off than they were before.
I set as the goals immediately that it was going to be a zero dollars investment sort of deal: Creative commons artwork, PDF releases etc.
Nothing on the line so the worst that can happen is I don't make any money.

Of course, that's not much help for people who want to make a physical product, like miniatures, but take some good hard looks at what your risks are and what's the worst that could happen for you.

Five parsecs – You can play it with two players fine. Two gangs squabbling over the same area, take turns running the opposition for each other or just play unconnected battles.

The campaign IS geared maybe a little more towards solo play or "one player is the heroes, another is the bad guys" which is how we usually play.

Jozi – Appreciate the feedback. As far as time, it's my job now, along with taking care of my son after school, so we didn't have to pay for daycare any longer.

I tend to knock up 5 or 6 ideas on paper, work on them each a bit and after a while I realize that only 1 or 2 end up actually working.

The part that kills you, that kills most people, is that spot where you are 75% done adn you realize the last 25% is stuff that you need to do, but don't care about.

Covering most of the eventualities, what happens if a figure is half in a terrain feature and half on hte edge of table, what kind of questions do people always write about, etc.
For me, the thing I personally dislike the most is terrain rules, which of course, you need in a game. We just improvise it on our own gaming table so I never think about it.

For bigger games (10-12 guys/ladies), I tend to go with 3 activations though I've done 4 and it's worked. Using the dice roll is the most popular option though.

Sliced ham – At Fred Meyer's, between 1.49 and 1.89 per pound, from what I can tell.
Mmmmmm ham.

Thank you for the answers. Your replies to #2 & #3 are of particular interest.

Can we have a fantasy version of Fivecore and a zombie one and a set for gothic horror and…..

Krieg – Fantasy yes. Not anytime soon but it'll be the next project after "No stars in sight" and "union in despair" most likely.

Working on ideas for how to handle the melee combat and make it more interesting.

Zombies were in the "Heroes and Horrors". There /might/ be a full blown zombie campaign some day but I dunno if that's priority. I think the THW guys probably did that ground as well as you can.

1.How do you handle the problem of foreknowledge?

2. What "scale" do you prefer to work in. I do not mean figure size, but "scale of the game."

3. What is your opinion of "equity" and its importance in the game.

OSchmidt – I believe last we spoke, you gave me a hard time about definitions so I shall return that favour :-)

1:
Foreknowledge in the player sense?

My solution is primarily through random factors. Random events can trigger during a game, scenarios are often determined randomly and over the course of a campaign, quite a few things will happen that the player has no control over.

Since the player cannot predict what events will occur, they receive an element of uncertainty.
From my experience and personal observation, players often "forget" about the possibility of random occurrences until they occur, hence it almost always provides a shock when f.x. a figure turns out to be in a different position than they expected or a soldier unexpectedly panics.

2: From a purely personal perspective, I prefer "1 figure is 1 soldier". I've played games that did not do this (Crossfire being a favourite) and had a good time but in the end, my suspension of disbelief tends to be fairly low.

In the minds eye, a stand of 3 figures looks like 3 soldiers, not 40.

This in turn lends itself to smaller actions (Platoon and down in modern parlance). As I tend to enjoy games with specific, named characters that the player may attach significance to, that tends to push things down as well.

3:
You may need to define equity for me here.
Do you mean strict balance between players? If so, I don't tend to worry about it.
My experiences have been that players interested in more character-driven games tend to okay with a given encounter turning out uneven, since over the course of a campaign, it will balance itself out.

If you are writing a scenario, I think it's important that both (all) players have the ability to interact with the scenario in a fun way and have a chance of achieving something.
If you know the people you are writing for, this is easier. One player may relish the idea of playing an underdog force while another wants to race against a time limit.

If you meant something different, let me know.

Dear Weasel

1. Not what I really meant but your answer gives me your philosophy on this.

The other two are quite congruent with the question.

Thanks

Otto

I am content answering the wrong question but in a way that apparently still gave you the answer :-)

Kind regards.