"Why are Osprey rules so completely inconsistent?" Topic

Since Osprey began publishing rule sets a few years ago, I have been amazed at how completely inconsistent the stuff they publish is. One or two sets, with a particular nod to Dan Mersey, have been really good. Some have been mediocre, but others have been verging on utterly terrible. Two sets I bought recently appear to have been rushed out in a barely tested state and are so full of omissions nobody at the publisher appears to have checked the quality before publication.

I will now think long and hard before purchasing a set of Osprey rules due to this inconsistency. You just don't get this from other rule publishers who generally seem to care about the quality of their product.

I think when companies/individuals turn into "rules factories", the quality of the rules produced goes down significantly.

Which Osprey rules do you consider to be really good and which do you consider to be really bad?

When John Hill was publishing Across a Deadly Field, he had one day to look at the "Galley Proofs", not enough to have multiple people proof read it. They then fragmented the tables and scattered them through the book. The game is unplayable with the charts provided.

Kevin C, I've already highlighted Dan Mersey as good. I'm not prepared to be rude about anyone by naming and shaming what I feel are bad ones. I am not trying to be critical of authors here, if a set of rules submitted to Osprey is not of good quality then they should reject it. They don't seem to do that, so any old rubbish gets published and customers are the ones who end up out if pocket.

I paid full face price for rules that simply shouldn't have been published because I thought Osprey were a company whose brand I could trust. That clearly is not the case.

Northern Monkey, while I respect your position to remain mum on under-developed Osprey rules, your opinion (and that is all I ask) would provide a useful public service. We all having varying tastes in rules but if buyers do not speak up, this practice may continue.

Northern Monkey: It isnt rude rude to give you personal opinion on a set of rules. People do it here all the time. Like Jon Frietag said your info would help others make a more informed decision.

The thing is with anything like this, is that it's all just opinion, I'm sure that some of the rules you say are awful are some people's favourites. I have 3 (En garde, TMWWBKs and Dux bellorum) I think they're great, but no doubt some people think they're absolute dog toffee.

Well they contract out the rules creation right? I imagine that there is no overall rules person to keep anything consistent.

I agree with Northern Monkey – I have had the exact same discussion with others. I'm not going to mention which individual ones – because the problem lies with Osprey itself – poor editing and project control creating what may have been a good idea for a set of rules – but failing to develop it to a good commercial set. Even basic requirements like good tables, QRS and a logical clear layout seems beyond a lot of the rules.
I think the business model that produces these endless rulesets is what is wrong, not necessarily the individual author with a good idea.

I like the variety.

Always worth distinguishing taste and technical. It's not a bad rules set because I dislike it, however much I do. It IS a bad rules set if you have a hard time figuring out how to play the game.

I have the impression that if Osprey contracts with someone and that person delivers a complete set properly laid out with everything in the correct order, Osprey will see that it's printed at a moderate price with good graphics. But if the author delivers what amount to notes or a rough draft, they don't have a "rules editor" to make sure everything is present, clear and in proper order.
Naming names. As with Northern Monkey, I've been impressed by the Mersey products. I was less impressed with Rogue Stars. Partly that's a matter of size of game and mechanism. The Sfiligoi rules overall have a following, and many people seem to like this one. But I think if you came to this one, as I did, not familiar with the system--well, I don't think Osprey did it any favors in presentation. I had a similar feeling about World Aflame.
But I'll be buying TMWWBK at Cold Wars.

I have all the Meresy books and think they are very well done and complete. I agree with others impressions on Rouge stars. I wish Sfiligoi published these himself as it seamed like he had limitations on Rouge Stars that have lead it to not being what people expected from his products. I believe he even mentioned that he was constrained because of the page count and was not able to add more charts or a QRF. I think if there was some more time also he could have ironed out a few issues as there was a vast amount of clarifications needed on the rules once it came out. One of my biggest gripes with Rouge stars is that, yes the full page artwork is nice but, those pages could have been used for more rules explanations ans charts.

Have you ever read any number of their Men At Arms series?

One of their Roman army ones is all about how to build reconstruction armour for that period. >.<

Good point from miniMo – in my experience variable content quality has always been characteristic of Osprey products.

At least the newly released rules sets are inexpensive compared to other rules with lots of pictures.

My weekly group has tried many of these rules. Lion Rampant is by far the most popular. Dragon Rampant, The Men Who Would Be King, and In Her Majesty's Name are also popular.

I enjoyed a game of Black Ops.(No I do not need to get started on another project)(But I want to!)

The others have not made it to the table more than once or twice.

I can tell you that Osprey does reject rules ideas – or rather back-track on concepts that have been given the green light. I proposed an idea for a game that was given the nod then later told that it wouldn't be proceeding due to unspecified 'publishing decisions'; a shame, as it's an entirely original subject that has never before been the subject of a dedicated game system. I should add that my role would have been to act as historical advisor and researcher, and the actual writing would have been contracted to an experienced game designer from the Osprey stable. Perhaps they decided in retrospect that this arrangement diverged too far from the now standardised fully formed submissions model.

Perhaps the format and page limit has something to do with it. Osprey probably wants a certain amount of illustrations in the books, so the amount of room for text is probably less than the author would have liked if he had their way.

On the Seven Seas and Fighting Sails are pretty bad.

I quite enjoy Honours of War and TMWWBK. Oddly enough, I did not like playing either of the Rampant rules, despite being really enthused after reading them.

I found Rogue Stars clunky. As others have said, it seemed a bit rushed and not thought out. Broken Legions, En Garde I could tolerate, but there are more interesting thing I could be playing. Wasn't too keen on World Aflame. Wanted to like Bolt Action, and gave it a couple of chances, but ended up selling it. And I rarely sell my rulebooks.

As for the hardback rules, really enjoyed Tomorrow's War, Force on Force and FoG:Napoleonic.

Haven't played the rest, although (sadly) own them all.

I'd be p***ed at anyone who said, "You shouldn't waste your money on some of these, but I won't tell you which one." Imagine if you said, "My car has really cheaply-made buttons, dials, and compartments inside, and a bunch of them broke. Oh, but I won't tell you what car I bought because that might hurt someone's feelings."

Yeah, . It's just the same as if you got ripped off by a bad trader, you tell everyone, and you won't name names.

There's not even a need to give names or blame anyone! Just give the titles and say that Osprey messed them up!

As a disclaimer, I own a good amount of the rulesets but have admittedly only played two and read through most of them. The two that I have played are Dux Bellorum and In Her Majesty's Name. DB is by far my favorite although I do enjoy IHMN. Having read through them, I see promise for Mersey's other rulesets and Honours of War. I was less than impressed with A World Aflame (which I really wanted to like) and Fighting Ships. I own Poseidon's Warriors but haven't read through it completely. Not sure if Frostgrave is published by Osprey but that is one heck of a ruleset too. Lots of fun.

Rogue Stars. Page count is something everyone has to live with. Focusing on essentials is why you'd normally use those pages on a character sheet and a turn flowchart rather than a locker contents table and a completely bonkers chart of environments. (So I'm either in a noxious atmosphere OR have dense terrain OR am on a ship? And if my mission is to explore a wrecked ship, my environment might be a farm? This really is the sort of thing an editor is supposed to prevent.)

The rules are playable,once you sort them out. Many people enjoy them. But the presentation is wretched, and THAT is what Osprey should have caught and fixed. They don't. Check with someone before buying.

I think I must have been lucky as I have several sets and are quite happy with them:
Dux Bellorum
Ronin
In Her Majesty's Name
Lion Rampant
Pikeman's Lament

That isn't to say there aren't aspects of them that I might tinker with but that goes for every set of rules I have bought.

McKinney. If my car was badly made, I would blame Ford or GM, not the man who designed the vehicle. That's precisely what I am doing now. See PJ ONeil's remarks about how one very well known and respected game designer was treated to understand why.

My complaint is with Osprey for their lack of consistency and care and I feel it would be disingenuous to blame individual authors when I have no idea how Osprey's layout team have influenced the end product.

I do not appreciate being called a jerk in that situation.

Osprey is only the publisher. It's not a "quality label" for any given set of rules. In the end, quality and playability of the ruleset is solely the credit (or failure) of the author.

As any publisher, I assume Osprey will publish stuff mostly with an eye on how many copies they will sell.

I think Phil nailed it. Osprey is a publisher. They print stuff to make $$. If their #1 goal was to satisfy us they'd most likely lose $$.

Just like Hollywood. They make movies to make $$, not to show us how historically authentic the vehicles and uniforms are.

Wolfhag

In a way if they keep publishing crap, or what becomes known as such, it is possible that they 'd start losing money and question why.On the other end politicians have been doing the same things that never worked for 40 years… And get reelected ( Keynes bull…) so efficiency is not a recipe for success.

Daniel Mersey's books are consistently good, IMO.

As above, Osprey rules are just same as all their other stuff, a real mix of good and bad. As noted, they are just the publisher, there isn't a Mr Osprey who ensures consistent quality.

Osprey is in the business of selling books. Good, bad, they don't care. Their interest ends when the sale is made. They don't HAVE to care about the quality or if the rules work.

Yes in a free market they end up doing so, or their sales will fall. That it is hard, and maybe don't have a qualified historical gamer that can have the time and ability to check in depth is another story.

Osprey is in the business of selling books. Good, bad, they don't care.

Anyone in the business of selling anything should care a lot about whether their product is good or bad, as consumers will be less likely to buy a bad product.
I'm sure Osprey have sold a lot more copies of their good rules than their bad ones.

They must be selling enough of the good ones to counter-balance mediocre sales of the mediocre rules and achieve adequate overall profits on the series. The company's been in business long enough to recognise a commercially successful product line.

Aren't some of the Osprey rule authors employed by them though? Like in house rules designers I guess?

The Frostgrave author Joe Mc(??) is an Osprey employee isn't he, and I kind of assumed that the others who write several books for them are too.

I don't know this for sure right, but that is what I had assumed. Any one in the know.

Presumably like any other business, some projects are because someone at the company thought it looked neat, others are "loss leaders" and some are expected to sell big, paying for the other two.

Hey guys, since I was mentioned by name (Joseph McCullough) I thought I might respond. I am in the unique position of being both an Osprey employee (though not in editorial) and being an author of an Osprey wargame. First, I'd just like to make it clear that I wrote Frostgrave completely as a Freelance author/designer. To date, Osprey has never developed any wargames in house. All of our wargames are written by either independent authors, or, occasionally, other companies.

We have always considered this one of the aspects that makes Osprey Wargames unique, that we are giving numerous, different game designers a chance to have their wargames published, with higher production values and with greater marketing and distribution reach than they would likely otherwise be able to achieve.

When you get down to it, wargaming is a hugely diverse hobby. Not every rules set or system is going to appeal to everyone, or even most wargamers. This doesn't necessarily make them bad – just less popular.

If you do have specific comments or criticisms that can help us improve our wargames, we would love to hear them. You can find our contact details on our website. We know there is always room for improvement, and we want to make these products the best we can.

My only request is please don't say that we are just making these games for the money. While it is true that we can't make games that aren't commercial viable, we do take pride in what we do. The entire Osprey Wargames Series was created because the editor wanted to do it. We love wargames. We love being a part of this community. If sometimes you think we fail, that is fair enough, but it isn't because we don't care.

Okay, carry on.

As you asked…

Get them properly edited and proof-read for grammatical and spelling errors by people who understand these things. Many of the typo-riddled, shoddily constructed texts in this series that have managed to reach publication should shame a publisher with any claim to professionalism.

Select/commission photos and illustrations that actually support and contribute to explaining the text, rather than just fill space that could be better used for conveying information.

Ensure that photos and illustrations don't contradict the text, and… please use figures that are based according to the prescribed system.

One thing that will make nailing down a rules publication difficult for Osprey is knowing exactly what went into said rules: research and play testing for example. A manuscript could come to Osprey with very few of the errors Henry Martini lists but may be a set rules that are mechanically unsound or contain rules that are at odds with the period represented (IIRC, Meeples and Miniatures review of Poseidon's Warriors suggests it suffers from some of this).

Honours of War … TOTALLY AWESOME from Osprey. SO THERE!!

NONE osprey only produces stuff of high quality.

People complaining about typos then grab a dictionary and play with that :) war is a stuff of warriors not poets.

Royal Marine IM WITH YOU BRO!!!!!!!!!

Joe5mc hi mr great job with the rules on Osprey i reserve my right to say what i really think about people complaining like any critics you know they are full of …. the creative process involving the development of a wargame is not a thing for everyone i have written many rulesets and i know the amount of time and effort that a ruleset take so thank you for your work :) the other day i have some dude complaining about a font :) and my rules are free cmon.

Joe5mc – Appreciate your insights and certainly didn't mean to imply you guys were publishing things purely for money :)

None of the rampant (lion or otherwise) faults I referred to are game-related; they all concern presentation and layout, which are solely the responsibilities of the publisher.