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Showing posts from 2016

Game Designer's Notebook: Playing a Campaign Part 2

My Breakers taking a beating in Act III: As Good as Dead. Over the last two months Hal and I have worked our way through completing the three Act Broken Contract campaign from the upcoming rulebook. It's been a great experience with a lot of great information gleaned and bits reworked to make it a better experience. Collected are a bunch of thoughts from Act II: Escape Route and Act III: As Good as Dead. -Nick There's obviously a huge difference in quality between these 2 tiles. The Constraints of Cost and Play Area Before we get into the scenarios themselves I want to talk about play area. Broken Contract was designed to be played on a very small area. Most of the games I've played have been played in anywhere from a 8" x 20" area to a 24" x 24" area. One of my long standing plans was to create a pack of 10 double sided game board tiles so that 24" x 24" was a pretty standard size. Over the summer I finally acquired 8" x 8

Game Designer's Notebook: Named Characters and Points

This is approximately 100 points of Black Squadron.  Points in Broken Contract have actually been a rather recent development, with the early playtesting done with a Character ratio of roughly 3/5 (three Black Squadron models for every five Breakers). The plan back then was to just indicate in each scenario how many Characters each side should take. All of the Characters released as part of the last Kickstarter were sent out into the world without any sort of point values because of this. In fact, the very first mention of points was in May of 2016. This means that everyone who owns the Character models that have been produced have to piece their way through the Character Creation rules I posted up in May to try and figure out how many points each named Character is worth. I figure I should rectify this until the FerrumSky Campaign Book is released some time in 2017. These are the points values for each Character without any of their equipment. Black Squadron Characters (Une

Broken Contract Faction Box Sale!

Black Squadron Faction Set Hello all! As we get closer to finishing up the Broken Contract Rulebook and jumping into FerrumSky Campaign Book next, I'd love to commission some new art. With that in mind, selling a few Faction Sets would go a long way toward reaching that goal. To that end, I've reduced the price on the Black Squadron Faction Box Set and the Breaker Faction Box Set from $35 to $29.75 on   breakerpress.storenvy.com The sale runs until Wednesday December 7th. All packages will ship with whatever cool bonus stuff I have laying around, so you'll be receiving more than just the 15% savings. :) Thanks in advance! -Nick

Game Designer's Notebook: Playing A Campaign Part 1

Sometimes you end up lying in the dirt. Last week, Hal and I started playing out our first Episode. In Broken Contract each individual game is called an Act, and three games are called an Episode. I feel like this sort of structure encourages campaign play by breaking it down into manageable bites. We started last week by creating crews and playing Act 1. Here are some thoughts on the design decisions that have gone into this process starting with what we did during Week 1. -Nick Anyone who's played any of the classic skirmish games knows, one of the greatest joys of skirmish gaming is creating your Crew (gang, team, or other cool "group" vernacular) and watching them evolve from game to game. One of the biggest frustrations though is seeing one player's Crew grow so rapidly that they dominate the campaign or league from day 1, and their spot never really gets challenged. Additionally, being wiped straight off the board isn't really much fun for either side

Broken Contract Update

Hard copy of the Broken Contract Rulebook. The Broken Contract Rulebook is getting very close to a completed state. Pictured above is a hard copy of the current incarnation with graphic design by Sam Alcarez. He's currently working on the 3rd draft and I'm still going over the 2nd draft looking for corrections and changes that need to be made. The new Critical Successes and Fumbles Chart. One of the key changes from the first draft to the second was the inclusion of this chart. If you've looked at or played older incarnations then you may know that most Actions and Interruptions had special rules for Critical Successes and Failures, triggered by rolling natural 6's or 1's. Some of these had their own mini charts under their entries in the Actions and Interruptions section of the book, and this resulted in a lot of page flipping. It also chewed up a lot of space with needless repetition throughout the section. This chapter went through a complete re-writ

Game Designers Notebook: Kickstarter Prep

Kickstarter build in progress. Building a Kickstarter is a complicated beast. In my time developing Broken Contract I've built several that I have never launched, and I have pulled the trigger on two. I learned a lot from both of those experiences, but there are so many variables at play that it is always hard to feel ready - even when you know you are more ready than you've ever been! With getting ready for the next Kickstarter I wanted to take some time to reflect on some of those lessons. Broken Contract - Deep Underground   Cancelled Kickstarter 09/2014 I can still remember how I felt going into that first Kickstarter. I had been working relentlessly on Broken Contract for a year. Most of that time was while I was on worker's compensation from an ACL tear on the job. I had a strong vision and what I thought at the time was a lot development put into art and sculpting. Most importantly, I had calculated what I needed to launch a boxed game and I had exhausted

Game Designers Notebook: Six Sided Dice and Design Philosophy

My first round of custom dice for Broken Contract. The -# dice are for Critical Fumbles and the 7/8 dice are for Critical Hits. I watch a lot of "how to play" videos on YouTube. I think it's important to know what's going on out there even if I don't have the opportunity to try every game available for myself, so this is a great way to stay up on the industry. One of my favorite sources for these videos is the "Let's Play!" series on Guerrilla Miniature Games YouTube channel . By demand, Ash did a video of a game of his own design that he's been developing called, Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse . It's a great looking game and the video is very entertaining. It just seems like it will be very fun to play. But a question came up in the comments: "Why D6?" Ash didn't answer that I saw, but I'm sure there will be those out there who will wonder the same thing about Broken Contract. I figured I would take the time to discus

Troublemakers Card Game and Skirmish Supremacy Podcast

Troublemakers prototype. It's been a busy summer and I've been jumping from project to project based on time, weather, and availability. I was working on a bunch of Broken Contract scenery projects and the custom boards for a few of the Kickstarter Backers but it just got too hot in the attic to work up there, so I moved on to the painted models for those same backers, and took up temporary painting residence in our living room. We've also had a lot of visitors and a few short trips of our own to go on. My partner, Lisa, and I, went out to Cincinnati, Ohio to visit our friend Jami. Jami requested we bring Broken Contract and Troublemakers with us because she wanted to try both of them. Troublemakers was a project that had been sitting for a while untouched so it was a little thrilling to crack it out and play it with fresh eyes. Our Harlow, illustrated by Blutt.  The Genesis of Troublemakers I lived in Chicago from 2006-2014. During my time there I would see
Act: From Nothing This group of FerrumSky miners has been plotting their escape for months, watching and waiting for their moment. Tonight is that night. Gambling, distracted security officers and a malfunctioning drone have created a golden opportunity to slip out of their barracks chamber. The only hitch is, the crew has already returned their tools for the night and are completely unarmed. Without tools or weapons this break attempt can only be made through their abilities and determination. Breaker Goal: Get off the board with as much equipment as possible, with as many Characters as possible. Try not to let your enemies become Critical or Dead. Black Squadron Goal: Sound the Alarm and Restrain as many Breakers as possible. Try not to let your enemies become Critical or Dead. Points: Breakers and Black Squadron 50. The Breakers may spend no points on Equipment other than required Equipment like the Gen-Mod Apparatus. They are starting the episode with nothin

Making Mine Scenery for Game Mats

Last year I ran a sixteen article series on Making Mine Scenery , but it revolved around fully modeled 8"x10" board sections. This idea pre-dated my decision to switch to 8"x8" board game tiles, similar to games like Zombicide. These newer game tiles were still based on my original designs, but going square just made them more flexible to use and easier to design. However, that isn't the only drive behind revisiting Making Mine Scenery.  A more recent incarnation of the board game tiles with their 3D equivalents. In the last year, roll out game mats have taken the wargaming world by storm. Yeah, they started to make an impact a few years ago, but now they are everywhere and they are incredibly varied. A lot of the early ones didn't make me go, "WOW!" But Guerrilla Miniature Games Widgets and Wonders series on Youtube and their weekly programming of battle reports using these mats has showed me it was time to present another way of