"Solo Wargaming through the quarantine" Topic

Folks:

A lot of you are probably (like us) stuck at home with all the local game days and cons and club games cancelled. I like to paint, but it helps when I know the figures will get to see some action sooner rather than later.

If you are interested in solo games, we just did an early launch of a site we have been working on for a while, to give people an option: it's called "Application of Force". The idea is to use apps to run miniatures games – not quite like typical computer-assisted miniatures games, but a similar idea.

We released some games which have a "play against the machine" feature which makes them pretty useful for solo gaming. The app tells you when and where the enemy show up, so it adds an element of unpredictability to the game which most solo games don't have.

The site is at: applicationofforce.com

We are giving out a free promo code for a month because of the pandemic, so if you like what you see, you can use the code "Quarantine2020" which is good through May 1st.

Currently, the games are:

- "The Other Side of the Hill": a Napoleonic Peninsular War skirmish game where all the players play British and the computer tells you who and what you encounter.

- "Viktoria!": a game for doing Victorian sci-fi stuff, based around a small-unit system for European tactics circa 1900 (so, basically Franco-Prussian War until the WWI trench thing sets in). You can use steam walkers and stuff if you want, but it plays as an historical game, too.

- "With the Colours in the Late War": a traditional toy soldier game where the enemy is played by the computer.

All of these do solo/cooperative play.

Also:

- A multi-player die roller, for doing virtual games (so people can see what the other guy actually rolled). I know this one works, because the first time I used it I rolled 12 6-sided dice and seven of them were 1s, just like in real life!

We are planning to run some "virtual" games using web-cams to show the tabletop (that's why we developed the shared die-roller app). We will advertise that type of event on the site when we get it figured out.

We have a bunch of other stuff in the works, including a Highwayman game, a 17th century colonial America witch-hunting game, Active Armor WWII for operational-level games, a generic 19th Century battle game, a brigade-level Napoleonics game, a game for 1848 revolutions, etc. but decided to put out the solo stuff now. We'll add new games as we go.

Cheers,

A. Gregory

I looked at your site, and I get a bit of it, but there is a lot of plain text, and not much else. Do you have something to really illustrate what you are offering? Maybe even some battle reports that emphasize what your apps do?

And an app I've wanted: battle report note taker. I'd like an app that lets me take a picture and annotate it by speaking. Either one button for both, or maybe one big "take a picture" button and one "take a note" button. All would be logged in order with time stamps.

I could sorta do it with other apps, but only with switching modes, too much fiddling. And it would need to keep my phone on. (Maybe yours are computer apps rather than phone.)

Anyway, I'm curious.

andy

nd an app I've wanted: battle report note taker. I'd like an app that lets me take a picture and annotate it by speaking. Either one button for both, or maybe one big "take a picture" button and one "take a note" button. All would be logged in order with time stamps.

I may be crazy, but I think such a thing exists.. I remember seeing someone posting about this a while ago.

Andy:

We have focused on web apps which are used to run games, since we have been writing and using them for a long time (as computer-assisted games). I have thought about doing something to help create battle reports, but more from the "inside" of the system, where it could record what orders were given to what units and them give you some text to edit afterwards.

I will have to look into this – I am not sure how good the access to a device's phone and camera is from a web app, but it would be a fun thing.

What we are planning are some videos using Skype to show how the games can be run remotely (for obvious reasons). This will include voice, camera, screens, and sound, recorded using the built-in Skype features. We had not planned to release the site yet but when everybody started staying home, we thought we would put out what we had ready for solo-type play.

Cheers,

A. Gregory

Folks:

Above, Andy Skinner asked for some way to better understand what we are offering. While we are still working on some videos, we have just published a "demo game" which describes in detail how the game app is used to do the beginning of a simple scenario (a German invasion of Britain in 1900).

You can find the article here:

link

You may want to sign up for free using the code given above (Quarantine2020 with no spaces) so you can see everything, and even try it yourself.

We will put up videos and other material as we get the chance.

Cheers,

A. Gregory