[SPEAKER_00]: brought to you by BedroomBattlefube.com.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the table top miniature movie podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome to the table top miniature hobby podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's Matthew with you here.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this episode is a re-roll from September twenty twenty one.

[SPEAKER_00]: This was one of the earliest conversations I had on the podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's had the the love it's deserved right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, back to there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I really did get a lot from it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's with Robbie Jenkins of peace and to me guys.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's a games designer.

[SPEAKER_00]: A game writer.

[SPEAKER_00]: He created the Horizon Wars game series.

[SPEAKER_00]: and runs the precinct to me again use and game design podcasts seems to currently be on high it is, but I really good show and I certainly learned a lot from it when I was listening through his episode, you know, with that show, it was active and hopefully we see that coming back again in future.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, like I said, this is just a brilliant conversation, he's a very insightful, very eloquent guy, lots of great thoughts and I just found it extremely insightful to listen back.

[SPEAKER_00]: to it, so I'm sure you'll enjoy it as well, whether you had that first time around or whether this is your first time being newer to the show.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let's get into it, I kick things off by asking Roby.

[SPEAKER_00]: What factors are someone going from a player of games, you know, an enjoyer of games to someone who actually starts to write, design and create their own systems?

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what you had to say.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think I've had a real opportunity for my own podcast to speak to some great game designers.

[SPEAKER_01]: It names a little bit by familiar to your audience, people like Gap thought, Jake Thornton, you've probably heard of, and people that they may not have someone like Ivan Saurinson, who's the author of Five Pass X from Home, which is new.

[SPEAKER_01]: new release from Modifius Entertainment, although it's it's it's been kicking around for a while and You notice that they're tend to be some common themes amongst gamers who end up writing rules and one of those things one of those themes is we're not that great at playing the games In that we enjoy miniatures games and we love the experience of playing miniatures games, but we win Surprisingly infrequently perhaps because [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're more interested and invested in the mechanics of the process of the game than we are in trying to find the edges of the game to exploit for victory.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's something which I certainly noticed is that there is a tendency amongst game writers to themselves not be very good at playing.

[SPEAKER_01]: One notable exception, I should say is a LSEO Cavatorate who was an outstanding Warhammer player before he actually turned to the dark side and became a writer as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like so tell us a wee bit about the games that you're on for the games that you work on at the moment and have out there for sale to the public.

[SPEAKER_01]: I am best known for a game which has now become a small series of games, called Horizon Wars.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I wrote Horizon Wars back in, well, I kind of originally wrote Horizon Wars around twenty-ten, but it was a long process until it was formally published in the form now known as Horizon Wars by Osprey Games in twenty- sixteen.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you know that was a big deal for me getting picked up by a publisher and that did represent my sort of my credibility as a writer taking several steps forwards.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I definitely wasn't a life-changing experience in the sense that I could give up the day job and focus on writing rules by any means.

[SPEAKER_01]: That was to come later.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that [SPEAKER_01]: That came about less from the fact that I thought I could make a living than the fact that I had some, I had a fortunate combination of circumstances.

[SPEAKER_01]: I had stepped away from a full-time permanent role.

[SPEAKER_01]: I had started doing short-term contracts and consulting and then the pandemic came along and even before the pandemic started or well after it started but before lockdown first gripped the UK I had decided to take [SPEAKER_01]: time off from consulting to focus on writing and publishing rules to see how well I could do.

[SPEAKER_01]: And at that point I decided to release a set of rules that I have been working on for some time.

[SPEAKER_01]: which was a follow-up to Horizon Wars, called Horizon Wars Zero Dark.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now the original Horizon Wars rules was a basically a six-mill battle game.

[SPEAKER_01]: So a six-mill sci-fi, so it was Warmex and Tanks and Infantry and Aircraft and all in the sort of...

Warhammer players will be familiar with things like Epic Forty K.

Others might be familiar with battle tech.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was in that kind of genre and region that it was aiming.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I wrote a fairly lengthy, albeit somewhat off the cuff setting for that game.

[SPEAKER_01]: Primarily because I think I think Phil Smith or Osprey asked me to, or possibly I suggested that it might be a good idea and he agreed.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I wrote that quite horribly.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it was a reasonably interesting setting, and it had some interesting threads in it that I wanted to tug at in a bit more detail.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I wrote zero dark as a follow-up that is, there's broadly the same mechanics as horizon wars, but reapplied to a twenty-eight mill skirmish game.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that was a more special force, his focused skirmish game.

[SPEAKER_01]: With a little bit more focus, Horizon Wars had like a five hundred year timeline.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this was a focus in a like a twenty-five year window within that timeline, which explored some mysteries and questions that I had left intentionally unanswered in the original book.

[SPEAKER_01]: And to be honest, didn't actually particularly answer them, but it certainly gave those mysteries a bit more attention.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's that they're both both horizon was books, and they're all horizon was books I should say.

[SPEAKER_01]: are designed to be miniatures agnostic, as they say.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you should be able to use whatever miniatures you've got handy and throw them in.

[SPEAKER_01]: The settings are there to entertain and inform and guide players, but they're absolutely not carved in stone by any means and people can use those games to play their own settings or settings that are more familiar to them or ones that perhaps they love but don't have their own game or even ones that do have a game and you don't like it very much.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then this year I, so I published zero dark in, twenty, twenty.

[SPEAKER_01]: I followed that up with a supplement for zero dark towards the end of twenty, twenty, which is called Operation Nemesis.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then this year I published what's effectively the third horizon wars game, which is horizon wars infinite dark, which is a spaceship combat game.

[SPEAKER_01]: So again, similar mechanics, but reapplied to spaceship combat.

[SPEAKER_01]: And those are the my three main games at the moment, but there's some more stuff coming down the pipe, which we might get to talk about later.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: With the miniature agnostic games, as we call them, so you've created more old, you've created stories for the player to play in with their own miniatures.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some miniature agnostic games that are play, both got a song played in heroes and comes back a lot in both.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they take that approach of them, you know, come play in whatever world you want, whether that is a warhammer world or your own made up or older, whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you find that, in your experience, the more miniature optimistic games provide you with the loose outline of a universe or do they more do the thing of just, you know, have at it here's the rules, make the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's really depends on what you're pointing out when you ask the questions.

[SPEAKER_01]: So some games [SPEAKER_01]: provide most ministers' agnostic games provided at least the vaguest outline of a setting.

[SPEAKER_01]: A few open combat is a good example of some of the blades and heroes.

[SPEAKER_01]: may no effort to provide a setting for their game whatsoever.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think Horizon Wars does more than many minutes as agnostic games in terms of providing a setting.

[SPEAKER_01]: That wasn't like a commercial decision that I made directly.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was partly informed by the fact that [SPEAKER_01]: I am a many, many times failed author in terms of writing fiction.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I've got many, many stories in my head that I've tried to write and have failed over and over again.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this was like a substitute novel attempt for me to be able to write the setting without having to worry about writing an actual character and a person driven plot and stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: But there was also demands mildly.

[SPEAKER_01]: So people who were playing Horizon Wars and who were interested in seeing what I had done, you know, did come to me and say we'd love to see more of this world and go into more detail and find out more about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I for welfare and I'll do some more of that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it also I have found talking to people that [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people who play our games, they love reading stories, so even if they've got stories of their own, they want to play game set in the June universe, or in the honorenton universe, or whatever it might be.

[SPEAKER_01]: they still like reading other people's stories.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's the idea is it just gives somebody more to read.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you can pick up the book and you can have the rules but you can also enjoy the photographs and you can read the fiction and you get more out of your money than just a set of rules.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there's that thing as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of gamers where sometimes haven't complete freedom is too overwhelming.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that might be an issue where the games have mentioned, don't come but song and blades in heroes where it's almost like, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: do anything you want, and some people are like, I don't know what to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you're providing a bit of a direction, you know, there's this force, there's this force, there's attention here, here's the universe, you know, you've got a lot of freedom, but this is the, this is the, the, the just of it, if you like, and then that can maybe get the creative juices flowing people because they start to think, well, I've got these managers, you know, they sound a lot like these guys that you're talking about here, and [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a gankled star breach that does a very, very good job of that.

[SPEAKER_01]: In that star breach has a very, very light universe, but in the rules it describes the different factions that you can choose from and it's very easy to read those factions and see in the descriptions existing ranges of miniatures that people can expect to already have in their collections and go, [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, I can see that is going to be this set of miniatures.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's going to be this set of miniatures, even though the language is very careful not to imping on anybody's intellectual property, anybody who's got a reasonable miniatures collection from from any side by setting is going to go, oh yeah, I can see which mini's I'm going to use with that version.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's fine.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's [SPEAKER_00]: you know if we think of the classic pitch battle versus the scenario so if you're providing the story world it might be a lot easier to do that campaign where is again you know I've had games with focus in the past where we have just put a couple of war bands together and we've played and it's been fun but then you think well what now it's almost like putting the chase away you know it's done yes there was always a kite and that is [SPEAKER_01]: No way, it's not even sort of pitched battle versus scenario.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's that sense of participating in an ongoing narrative.

[SPEAKER_01]: Even if your game isn't going to have any influence on it, and obviously everybody loves it when they do have games that do have influence.

[SPEAKER_01]: And everybody starts messing with the algorithm.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it is nice to, you know, when you throw down and you're going, yes, this is a battle of [SPEAKER_01]: but necrons versus blood angels, if you want to go forticate.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, as players of those factions, that those factions have got history, they've got a narrative, this interaction that you're about to have is part of something bigger.

[SPEAKER_01]: Even though it's not going to influence it, even it's not not going to have any payback, it's still confers to its some quality of significance in what you're doing rather than just [SPEAKER_01]: I'm rolled ice and move to ice holders, you rolled ice and move to ice holders and then read the side one of us as well, which is very boring.

[SPEAKER_00]: As a rule, right up, how much of your actual writing takes place at the computer?

[SPEAKER_00]: How much of the, how much of the coming up with stuff, you know, is, is use setting putting words on paper or how much of that is happening in your everyday life?

[SPEAKER_01]: It's an interesting process and different writers have got different processes.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm currently trying to make a video series on YouTube.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm two episodes in with a third one, which I'll be probably doing early next week.

[SPEAKER_01]: Look at trying to look at the common factors of those processes that I think most designers share.

[SPEAKER_01]: I tend to start the design process with just a notebook.

[SPEAKER_01]: scribbling pictures and diagrams and calculations and noting down ideas.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then that notebook tends to move to the game table.

[SPEAKER_01]: where I'll put out either some counters or some miniatures, I'll roll some dice, turns and cards, whatever it might be to try and get a feel for how my early ideas actually work and feel as an experience.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I won't go too far down that level before I start turning to the laptop and start trying to write it down.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the reason for that is it's a funny thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I think every war game player has experienced this that you can have a really straightforward rule that you can understand.

[SPEAKER_01]: Once you see it on the tabletop, you can understand it immediately, you can grow it, you can apply it, you understand the internet out of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: But when you see it written down on the page, it can take two and a half pages to explain the rule.

[SPEAKER_01]: Even though in practice it's straightforward.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that is really important for the rules of writer because you may think I've got a really straightforward rule.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is brilliant.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is excellent.

[SPEAKER_01]: But when you start writing it, you have to start asking how easy is it to actually articulate this rule to my players on the page.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because that transfer of the table action into the rule book, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it has to be something that players can pick up and read, and as they're reading it, visualize how it takes place on the table.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if a player can't visualize that quite quickly, [SPEAKER_01]: It can really kill the success of the game.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I say that with personal experience, my Horizon Wars games have a distinctive mechanic, which is rolling a set of twelve sided dice and forming them into groups with each group having to meet or exceed a particular target.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now I've just explained that to you, and I'm sure you can visualize it.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I must have gone through a dozen different iterations of how to explain how that works to players.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought it was clear in the first book in Horizon Wars, but I had so many queries of people just saying, I can't quite visualize this.

[SPEAKER_01]: I can't quite see how it works.

[SPEAKER_01]: I need how please explain it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And, and likewise, there's, there's, I think, all the counter tests, where the other person, like your arm is saved or whatever, you roll dice against the other person's tests.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that, again, is slightly more complicated.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the number of times, I've had to say to people, no, no, I really do mean exactly matches.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not match or exceed.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the counter test has to be an exact match of one number against another number.

[SPEAKER_01]: and it people struggle to grow back just from reading it on the page.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a real struggle for rules writers, even when you think something is clear and well articulated, people will still come back and go, what did you mean this?

[SPEAKER_01]: And you're like, no, what?

[SPEAKER_01]: I meant what it said, that rules are either rules readers, they've always got the game they play in their heads when they're reading a game that they're learning.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when those two things are not the same, it leads to collisions.

[SPEAKER_00]: Something I'm curious about, I'm somebody who every time I pick up a new rule book, I'm always like, oh, I'm surprised.

[SPEAKER_00]: That never thought of that, that's really clever.

[SPEAKER_00]: But other, I don't have so many, other only so many game rule variations.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like, is there any point and more than a handful of miniature games?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, obviously I am biased because I think you should always buy new rule books because that's how I make a living.

[SPEAKER_01]: I certainly can't get enough new rule books.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I love having an excuse to buy a new rule book.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I do like to sit down and feel the game flow off the page in front of me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Even if I'm never going to get to play it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I've got a number of rule books on myself that I think it's very unlikely I'll never play.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't regret having them there.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm never going to get rid of them because they are satisfying to read.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is there a limit?

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, at one point I might have said yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, the limit is vast.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is huge that there are all kinds of possibilities that are yet to be explored.

[SPEAKER_01]: But surely I would have said it was finite.

[SPEAKER_01]: But increasingly that is not the case because we are [SPEAKER_01]: We are at the start of a process of moving towards what I refer to as hybrid games, which is where you have a tabletop programming experience that is supported by or enhanced by digital assets.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there have been a few attempts down the years to try and do this, and they've all failed pretty miserably, even ones that were actually very good games.

[SPEAKER_01]: But even though the current early attempts haven't succeeded, we are definitely going to be there.

[SPEAKER_01]: It might be ten years, it might be twenty years, I don't know how long it's going to take, but eventually [SPEAKER_01]: The idea of augmented reality environments are going to become normalized and within those effectively all that's rough.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the opportunities and options for randomization brings all of the options that current digital gains have onto the table top.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, just for example, I'm literally just before I sat down with you, I've just come away from playing a little bit of a new Skyrim playthrough that I'm enjoying.

[SPEAKER_01]: Skyrim's a great game.

[SPEAKER_01]: But anybody who plays Skyrim will know that the combination of the different skills, skill levels and skill trees, they're great in a digital game.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if you tried to apply those to a tabletop game and apply them to every character that you had on the table, you would get lost and overwhelmed.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's no way to manage that much information, which is why game designers have to [SPEAKER_01]: make things quite simple for tabletop games.

[SPEAKER_01]: But when we get to the point of having hybrid games where there is this digital tabletop hybrid, there'll be absolutely no reason why every miniature in your collection could have its own career path and be evolving and developing with every game that you play.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you'll be able to save its status at various levels.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you'll be able to sit down with somebody [SPEAKER_01]: who maybe help me playing as long as you, so you reset the status of your army back to the point that they were at, so you're playing it.

[SPEAKER_01]: a level playing field, and then you play somebody who's much more veteran, and you can put your army back up to its full state and play in that form.

[SPEAKER_01]: And all of that will be possible eventually, and ex-illist tried it, that's the end game, so like, ten years ago, and it failed on a number of levels, and it failed twice.

[SPEAKER_01]: They failed once, they got brought out, and the customers failed as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: But even though they weren't ready, even though people didn't have that level of technology in their lives of that time, to feel comfortable with that, eventually we're going to be there.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then there is no end to what designers are going to be able to do with tabletop games.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think the pros or something like that outweigh the cons?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I could argue that [SPEAKER_00]: we're already a bit overwhelmed with technology in our lives and this hobby is kind of one last past day and of analog where you can leave the phones at the door.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's definitely true and I think that will certainly be true for a generation of war gamers that might include us.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the next stage in digital technology, which we're already at, which we can see around us now, is the gradual disappearance of visible technology from our lives.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I now drive an electric car.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when I get in my car, it does a lot of stuff forming.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, my car has automatic line sensing.

[SPEAKER_01]: I can't, I'm not allowed to take my hands off the wheel, it'll tell me off if I try to do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it will adjust my steering if it thinks I'm crossing a line.

[SPEAKER_01]: It has an alarm, warning me of a collision.

[SPEAKER_01]: Even if I'm in standing traffic, it warns me when the car ahead of me is pulled away, in case I've been distracted.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so all that kind of stuff is becoming standardized.

[SPEAKER_01]: and we see the same thing now that you know I I've just made an appointment for another interview tomorrow and you know I got the email through [SPEAKER_01]: do I want to accept this appointment?

[SPEAKER_01]: I click yes, and that automatically updates my calendar, automatically updates my Google calendar, my outlook, outlook sets up an alert and alarm.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're seeing technology start to disappear from our peripheral vision.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we're not at the point where it's literally about to launch, but the direction is there.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think [SPEAKER_01]: maybe not this generation of young people, but the their children will just expect things to work.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they will just expect that when they turn on a device, all their logins will be automatic, that they won't, you know, it'll be biometric logins, or even it'll be a single biometric log in at the door, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you scan your IRS or you scan your fingerprint.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not only does it unlock the front door, but it logs you into every device on in the house.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is the direction that we're going.

[SPEAKER_01]: as I say, you know, as a game designer, I think that's incredibly exciting.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it means that all the best stuff about miniature games, all the creative side of things, the social side of things that, you know, creating your terrain, building your table, making your army, all of that will stay moderately analog, although I think, three deep renting obviously is going to transform how we actually get our hands on miniatures.

[SPEAKER_01]: But all of that will continue to be analog and traditional.

[SPEAKER_01]: To an extent, I mean, again, here I've forged, here I've forged already outsourcing, miniatures painting to a computer.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's not great, but it's only going to get better.

[SPEAKER_01]: But for those of us that want to paint, we'll still paint.

[SPEAKER_01]: For those of us that still want to make our terrain out of, out of polystyrene, as opposed to three deep printing it, so I'm showing Matt some of my polystyrene terrain.

[SPEAKER_01]: Rather than three deep printing it, we'll still be able to, and that will still be relevant and possible.

[SPEAKER_01]: more and more of the hobby is going to be digitized until it leaves only the fun stuff for us to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the hard work won't be there.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just to give another example, infinity to the game.

[SPEAKER_01]: Great, terrific game, which I love very much.

[SPEAKER_01]: But one of the biggest selling points of infinity to the game for enthusiasts is their infinity army app.

[SPEAKER_01]: which is a digital free army building software that looks fantastic, that is constantly updated with new information, new units, FAQs, and it is so easy to open up the app and build a three hundred point army in ten minutes based on whatever you've got in your box.

[SPEAKER_01]: You barely need to turn up to a tournament with a written army, even though [SPEAKER_01]: you do.

[SPEAKER_01]: But even Matt, you know, you write your army on the app, you can export that army and email it to the tournament organizer and job stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: All of that is being exported.

[SPEAKER_01]: And people, people respond well.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's making stuff easier and more fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, as long as when Skynet go rogue, we could still sit down and have a nice game of bloodball and the...

Yeah, yeah, and the girls.

[SPEAKER_01]: And to be, I mean, I'm old enough.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this was in white dwarf years ago, but back at the, I can't remember which elf war it was.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it might even have been the first one, or might have been the second one.

[SPEAKER_01]: But there was a photo in white dwarf of two soldiers playing Warhammer forty thousand with a whole load of rocks.

[SPEAKER_01]: you know, they're just collected rocks of different colors and written land raider on the big rock and go like that's my handwriting Marie, you know, the rock and that's my Marie and they do you know, they say yeah, yeah, when the post apocalypse arrives, we can still play Forty Kay with knuckle based rocks.

[SPEAKER_00]: What are some of the, what are some of your favorite game mechanics you've come across in your time?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I immediately have to go to straight back to infinity the game with the automatic reaction order.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a great mechanic, you familiar with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, never played it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's in many ways it's a very straightforward system, but it's one of these systems that [SPEAKER_01]: exactly spoke to what I was talking about before when they wrote it down people didn't understand and it wasn't until the beasts of war guys made a series of videos illustrating the mechanics that people went oh I understand the way it works is to achieve something it's very straightforward you have to roll equal to or under a target number on a detracting [SPEAKER_01]: straight forward.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you work out your target is fourteen side.

[SPEAKER_01]: So in order to hit that target, you have to roll fourteen or less on a D-twenty.

[SPEAKER_01]: Simple.

[SPEAKER_01]: But then your target gets to react to you, assuming it's a person with a gun, and they get to shoot back.

[SPEAKER_01]: And to shoot back, they also roll a D-twentee, and they also try to roll equal to or under a target number, that may be the same or different rules.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's say it's eleven to shoot back.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm looking to roll equal to or under eleven in reaction to your roll equal to or under fourteen.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now which one of us succeeds depends on which one of us rolls under our target number, but higher than the other person?

[SPEAKER_01]: So if I roll a ten, I roll equal to or under my reaction roll, that you've rolled a twelfth, you've rolled higher than me, and you've still rolled under your target number, so you win.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then they add on an extra little layer of complexity because they have critical hits.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, if you need to roll fourteen or higher to hit me, I need to roll eleven or higher to hit back.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now you roll a thirteen, which is good roll, but I roll an eleven.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now eleven is less than thirteen, but it is exactly the number I needed.

[SPEAKER_01]: Therefore, I get a crit, even though it's lower than you, and I beat your hit.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it summons up this image of, you know, two soldiers who were aware of each other across the battlefield, one has the initiative and they're moving to fire, but the other one is trying to beat them to the punch, and which one gets their shot down first.

[SPEAKER_01]: And generally speaking, the person who's got the initiative whose turn it is has the advantage, not always, but usually they have the advantage, but you can never be certain.

[SPEAKER_01]: that you're not going to get critted by your opponent.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that provides a really sort of tense, dramatic quality to any dice exchange and infinity the game that I think is it's greatest feature.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is not a perfect game.

[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't yet read their fourth edition rules, which I'm told have addressed some of the problems.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the third edition wasn't a perfect game, but it had a month's other things.

[SPEAKER_01]: It had that, which the game has always had.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the [SPEAKER_01]: the signature mechanic of infinity, and that's a really good one.

[SPEAKER_01]: I do love that mechanic.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is there another mechanic?

[SPEAKER_01]: Is there anything that I wish I'd written?

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there are other mechanics that I like, but I would never have written.

[SPEAKER_01]: A good example is Jake Thornton's work on Dead Zone.

[SPEAKER_01]: First edition.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, the third edition has just been announced.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm keeping me need to reach out to Jake to find out if he was involved in third edition.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the feature of Dead Zone is that [SPEAKER_01]: movement is done on the basis of a grid, quite a large grid.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not a case of you count squares like in Dungeons & Dragons or something.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's actually I'm moving from this quite large square to this quite large square.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's quite a large movement and you've got a lot of freedom as to where you end up positioned in that square, but it makes movement very, very quick, very intuitive leaves a lot of freedom for the player to interpret the context of the table top.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a very, very clever and interesting mechanic that I like.

[SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't have written it.

[SPEAKER_01]: because I try really hard to write games that don't need special stuff like especially gridded service.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's how I try and design.

[SPEAKER_01]: But nevertheless, I can see the elegance of what he achieved there.

[SPEAKER_01]: Anything else?

[SPEAKER_01]: Excellent.

[SPEAKER_01]: the way x-wing uses their dials to dictate who gets to go when and what maneuver they're going to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that is super clever as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's again, you know, it requires a special thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: It requires [SPEAKER_01]: peripheral items, which I would never write into a game.

[SPEAKER_01]: But when a company's got as much money as they have, you can afford to throw money at solving a problem.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so really interesting solutions have come out from that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Blood red skies and their way of indicating advantage and disadvantage using a custom base is another example.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's clever, but it requires the company to throw money at the problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: As a role writer, do you have a favorite mechanic of your own or is that like trying to choose a favorite kid?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, I am really, really pleased with that core horizon was mechanic that I mentioned before that role B-twels, role accounts test.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a mechanic that I really like and I'm very pleased with and I think it really suits the Horizon Wars game.

[SPEAKER_01]: That said, I am now starting to move away for various reasons.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm writing some games now that do not use that mechanic and it's a bit of a relief in many ways.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's really nice to go back to brass tax to try and work out something new and interesting and exciting.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you ever come across any mechanics that you feel a little bit overused?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you pack up a new game and you look at it and you think, not this again, is that a thing?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, these exist.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I do sex panel.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's not what I'm not a D six fan, but [SPEAKER_01]: Statistically speaking, the D-Six is incredibly restricted.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's very little you can do with it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So classic example, be familiar to most of your listeners, the Forty Kay approach.

[SPEAKER_01]: D-Six to hit D-Six to wound D-Six to site.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, that essentially, so let's say, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: four plus to hit, four plus to win.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, that's a one in four charts.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can't do a one in four charts on a D six.

[SPEAKER_01]: So to do a D six, you've got to roll the dice twice if you want to twenty five percent outcome.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas a twenty five percent outcome is a piece of cake on a D twenty or a D hundred or even a D eight can do a twenty five percent outcome.

[SPEAKER_01]: But you can't do it on a D six.

[SPEAKER_01]: You've got to roll the dice twice.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then [SPEAKER_01]: The other thing in that is it's a repetitive process.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you've got exactly the same mechanic to hit to wound to save.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's no real distinction in the experience.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you get that familiar experience.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, somebody leans over the table.

[SPEAKER_01]: They drop a handful of dice on the table.

[SPEAKER_01]: They pick out all the ones that didn't hit.

[SPEAKER_01]: They pick them up again.

[SPEAKER_01]: They roll them again.

[SPEAKER_01]: They pick out all the ones that didn't wound.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're opponent picks them up.

[SPEAKER_01]: Roll them again.

[SPEAKER_01]: Pick out all the ones that didn't save.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's how many wins you got.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, really?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I see that mechanic apply a lot in people who are looking to write their own games, who's only experience of games.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've put myself in this situation like twenty years ago, maybe twenty-five.

[SPEAKER_01]: that your own experience of playing games revolves around that mechanic and so that's the mechanic that you try and ride to game for because in your head that's how a war game works.

[SPEAKER_00]: There must be a very delicate balance between coming up with something fresh and unique and exciting versus not reinventing the wheel because presumably there are a lot of things in games that it's like, well, you might as well just have this or that movement.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that a good example of that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, do you know, it's a very range of movement.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and movement funny enough, that's going to be a large part of my next game design tutor.

[SPEAKER_01]: Video is going to be looking at what I call the peripheral core of game design.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the peripheral core is stuff that you can't, you can't have a wall game without it, but there's not a lot you can actually do to change it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And movement is the classic example of well [SPEAKER_01]: You've got to move a miniature from A to B.

What are your options?

[SPEAKER_01]: Either everybody has the same movement range or everybody has a different movement range that becomes a stat or you have a movement range that varies depending on the size of your face.

[SPEAKER_01]: At the end of the day, miniature X can move Y inches.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there's not a lot you can do that to make that more interesting.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there's stuff you can have them move quickly to give up the ability to shoot, and you can have them move slowly to gain some advantage and concealment.

[SPEAKER_01]: But at the end of the day, you're still just moving the piece of plastic or metal from point A to point B.

And there's not a lot that can be done.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's it.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are always people coming up with interesting ideas.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mentioned Jake and Dead Zone, a good example, interesting way of doing it.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's another game, which I've not played yet, but I'm not even bought the rules for yet, but one of my patrons brought it to my attention, which is called Rogue Planet.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Rogue Planet is play, it's a sci-fi game.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I've got, I've got the book, yeah, Brent Shbevy.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's played on a very small space.

[SPEAKER_01]: And basically any miniature when it moves can move as far as you like.

[SPEAKER_01]: that there is no restriction on movement, I think you have to end in cover.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's the only requirement because the idea of being that you don't stand in the open, that any activation involved what happens in the period between moving between this piece of cover and that piece of cover.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the further you move, the more might happen, but ultimately you can move as far as you like.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now I think that is a really good example of somebody looking at how it's always been done and saying, [SPEAKER_01]: Why do we have to do it that way?

[SPEAKER_01]: Isn't there a more interesting, more simple way to do it.

[SPEAKER_01]: It does a way with tape measures, measuring sticks, even the need for a movement stack.

[SPEAKER_01]: All go with one simple idea for a rule.

[SPEAKER_01]: Brilliant, a brilliant idea.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that's a, I'm glad it yet haven't bought it yet, but it's [SPEAKER_01]: a really good example of somebody going into the peripheral core and doing something different and imaginative.

[SPEAKER_01]: But generally speaking, all those things that sort of cluster around that, there's only so much to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: Going to put you in a couple of scenarios now.

[SPEAKER_00]: The one I'll start with, so your favorite game creators, one of your favorite games, they come to you and say it will be take our game and turn it into a solo game.

[SPEAKER_00]: So obviously it isn't a solo game already.

[SPEAKER_00]: What sort of things are you thinking about when you're tasked with that challenge?

[SPEAKER_01]: So what's sort of solo game do they want to have?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because you can have a solo game where it essentially recreates the PVP experience, but the other side is controlled by a decision tree.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it'll still, it would be exactly like playing against another player, slightly dumb or other player, but another player.

[SPEAKER_01]: Or you can have a solo game that uses the PvP mechanics that does something different with it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So for example, most miniature war games are symmetric games.

[SPEAKER_01]: In principle, both players have the same points or resources or whatever the draw up on to generally speaking that forces are about the same size.

[SPEAKER_01]: But in a solo game, you have the opportunity to go asymmetric.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it can go either way, depending on what kind of a game you want to have.

[SPEAKER_01]: But you can have a solo game where an elite force is taking on a much larger force.

[SPEAKER_01]: for example.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then it makes more sense for a much larger force to behave in a more mechanistic decision tree style to an intuitive elite force.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it taps into the theme of the game.

[SPEAKER_01]: Alternatively, you could have some kind of solo game where the enemy isn't even present.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you're doing a sci-fi solo game, you could have a solo game where the enemy is like [SPEAKER_01]: Ah, I can't remember what he's called, what's the game is, the gameplay game is paranoia.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is it big brother?

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not big brother.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's big something.

[SPEAKER_01]: Big eye, brother eye.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's brother eye in paranoia.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just a role play game.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in that it's just, it's a big disembodied computer voice and actually it acts as the game master, so it's not your enemy, but you could easily have a solo minute just game.

[SPEAKER_01]: sci-fi miniatures game where the enemy is an artificial intelligence that has invested itself in your environment.

[SPEAKER_01]: So at every corner you don't know when a building may come to life and start shooting at you or burst into flames to attack you or collapse or something may shoot up from the subway.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you don't have a visible enemy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Your job as the solo game is just to survive, get from point A to point B and not get killed by the artificial intelligence.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the kind of question I would be asking is what experience do you want your players to have from a solar game?

[SPEAKER_01]: How narrative do you want it to be?

[SPEAKER_01]: How close do you just want it to be to the PVP experience?

[SPEAKER_01]: And most people when they start thinking about a solar game are trying to replicate the PVP experience, but with one person.

[SPEAKER_01]: And although you can do it, I think that ignores a lot of the potential of solar warming.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think Solo Wargaming has a lot of narrative exploitability.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, talking about stuff that hasn't been done in Wargaming yet, Solo Wargaming has a lot of room to exploit.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I say Solo, I'd love to see more people act clubs playing co-op.

[SPEAKER_01]: war gaming.

[SPEAKER_01]: That would do something I would love to see as more people sitting down at a table to play together and getting all of that social stuff that we get out of war gaming but not actually fighting each other but fighting together against a common foe of some sort.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's an interesting point on like who you're fighting because you're talking about opponents that it's probable that the game, you know, it's not the opponents aren't going to be as clever as an actual human.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're fighting zombies or genius dealers, the sort of things that are just going to come at you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Dennis, it's probably easier to buy in.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is a story of if the opponents are supposed to be highly trained soldiers, not just destructedly, turbulent of the, the need of the opponents.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not super realistic is it?

[SPEAKER_00]: So it could pull you out of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: But then I mean, there are things you can do with it and there are, I mean, when I've written solo games as I say, I try to keep the stuff that players need.

[SPEAKER_01]: as straightforward as possible stuff that you can find anywhere.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I tend to, currently, the solo games that I've written are built around using a deck of playing cards, which gives you a number which tells you which enemy is going to activate and then a suit which tells you what they're going to do, which is quite straightforward, but it is quite simplistic.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are other games that have got more money to throw at this kind of thing that can actually create a deck of cards [SPEAKER_01]: with each card having its own instructions on for who is going to do what under what circumstances.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you can have a different decision tree on every single card that creates a more intelligent response in your enemies, intelligent and unpredictable at the same time, which is the ultimate goal of solo play and having money to throw at creating a bespoke set of playing cards is [SPEAKER_01]: at the moment, the analog solution to the problem.

[SPEAKER_01]: But of course, we talked before about hybrid games.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the ultimate solution to a hybrid solo game has already been done by fancy flight games in their XCOM board game.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in the solo version of Imperial Assault, where you actually have an artificial intelligence [SPEAKER_01]: program that obviously can be far more sophisticated nuanced than the flick of a card and also more fun because it can have music and graphics and the sense of actually an intelligence making decisions behind the screen even when it's all done by algorithm.

[SPEAKER_00]: And your experience of the solo games you've encountered are the small scale individual miniatures.

[SPEAKER_00]: Could it be done on a mass fantasy rank and flank game like Warhammer Fantasy?

[SPEAKER_00]: Could that be done in a solo?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, no, it definitely could.

[SPEAKER_01]: It definitely could.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is one of these cases where I have to measure the difference between what I like doing as a war gameer and what I never let no other people enjoy doing.

[SPEAKER_01]: One of the drawbacks of doing a max fantasy battle game in a solo system is in a course that you have to move both armies and that's quite time consuming, which I would personally not find fun.

[SPEAKER_01]: But on the other hand, people do play for DK publics.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there are clearly people out there who were prepared to spend a lot of time moving a lot of units for not a lot of purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: So with that in mind, you could definitely do it if somebody were minded.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in fact, the game I mentioned before, ex-illus, had all the capacity to do that because they had a digital resolution system.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there would have been absolutely no reason why you couldn't have had two armies.

[SPEAKER_01]: setting them up on either side of the table, and then the resolution system that was designed to deal with PVP would just create decisions for the opposing side to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the technology already exists to do it, and it wouldn't be any more difficult than doing a skirmish game.

[SPEAKER_01]: The only reason I predominantly write skirmish type games is that I don't have the patience to move that many models.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're saying up and down the tidy in a way that you yourself as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: Double the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Quite.

[SPEAKER_00]: Another recent area for somebody, some of the commissions to write a game for a lot, and the brief they say, look, we'll want that to be tiny.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe two two managers, tiny plane space.

[SPEAKER_00]: Can that be done?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, definitely.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, I would direct you to, so I started the game design shoes.

[SPEAKER_01]: I said there were two episodes that are, but there is actually a sort of a pre-episode, which I really ought to go and add to the playlists, now I think about it, where I sat down with a chap called Tony Graham and Tony's one of my patrons.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's not a game designer, he's not involved in the industry in any way.

[SPEAKER_01]: But Tony was looking forward to going his own American.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was looking forward to going and doing a bit of a national tour in his RV as something of an American obsession.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he was really keen to be able to keep Minutes' war game while he was out there.

[SPEAKER_01]: But he only had these tiny tables that you're getting in an RV to play on.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he was trying to write a skirmish game that you could play on a piece of A for paper.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so here and I sat down and let me record it as we brainstormed our way through what a sci-fi skirmish game could look like, played on a piece of paper.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that is exactly what you asked.

[SPEAKER_01]: Was it possible?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and not only possible, but I mean, I'm not writing it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I just sort of helped him through it, but I'm really looking forward to seeing what he comes up with, because it sounds really interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and then again, you know, we talked about the technology, say the things, but just think off the cuff, you know, you might have an iPad, which might create a dungeon pile playing space for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you, you move, you move, you're managed you're up to the door.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when you get to that door, you're presented then with a random.

[SPEAKER_01]: That already exists.

[SPEAKER_01]: That already, you know, people, people are probably getting, they're getting massive flat screen TVs fitted in coffee tables, facing upwards.

[SPEAKER_01]: With touch sensitive LCD screens that they do exactly that and you can have random dungeon generators so that you or you can have a GM who creates a dungeon in advance and uploads it but as you move the miniatures it senses where the miniatures are and it just opens each door and shows you each room as you get to it.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's already exists, people play.

[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine they're explaining that to the wife and that gets delivered like what a new coffee table.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you're not allowed to put coffee on it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, there's a company not far from me, and you've shown called Geek and Sun.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's all they do is make this spoke gaming tables.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they've been all around the world displaying their tables, and they sell them all over the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're all all bespoke or handmade.

[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things they do is they make tables to fit these flat screens in.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there are people out there with the kind of money to drop on that stuff right now, playing in our hobby.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've not talked about games workshop in your own podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think you refer them as elephant in the room.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we can never ignore them for too long.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the Lenton Monolith.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to ask you a opinion on this.

[SPEAKER_00]: So like to myself, games workshop seemed like all there was out there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm talking back in the mid-nineties when I was a kid.

[SPEAKER_00]: I got white dwarf and I didn't know of any other games out there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Does the company actually have a bigger hold on the industry?

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, even though there are loads of different options on the market now, or has it gone the other way, do you think?

[SPEAKER_01]: I think proportionally in the market, it's got a smaller hold than it did back in the late eighties early nine kids.

[SPEAKER_01]: The thing at the back then, without the internet to guide us and make us feel like part of this international community of war gamers, there were huge communities.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, things look like in the state you've got historical, which is a massive war gaming event.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thousands of people come every year for, and I think it's, is it four days historic on something like that?

[SPEAKER_01]: and it's huge and you will not see a single games workshop miniature in the entire place because it's absolutely dedicated to historical war gaming and the historical war gaming community has what was vastly more dominant, particularly in the United States than the fantasy war gaming world was and it was only games workshop that really sort of brought war gaming into the mainstream [SPEAKER_01]: in the eighties and nineties, that, that grew the market.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's, I mean, it's a, with twenty-twenty hindsight, it was a brilliant marketing strategy.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to know how intentional it was.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whether, whether Brian Antswell really knew what he was doing is another question.

[SPEAKER_01]: But they, they created a market from nothing.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like they were trying to get historical war games to come and play fantasy war games.

[SPEAKER_01]: They saw that as a hard sell.

[SPEAKER_01]: So they created fantasy war gaming as a completely new market.

[SPEAKER_01]: They just been invented it from whole cloth and drew in people like you and me that went, woo yeah, fantastic.

[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I, I found the appeal of fantasy war gaming, irresistible.

[SPEAKER_01]: but I found the idea of historical war gaming incredibly dull.

[SPEAKER_01]: I had no interest.

[SPEAKER_01]: If somebody had said, oh, you like war gaming, come and play some, come and play the Battle of Hastings with me or come and play this section of Waterloo with me.

[SPEAKER_01]: I can know that boring.

[SPEAKER_01]: I won books and elves and magic and skeletons and space rooms with massive explosions and thunderhawks swooping across the table, even though they didn't exist as miniatures.

[SPEAKER_01]: That didn't mean there wasn't in my imagination.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what I wanted and the games workshop created that desire from nowhere.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so now where we are in the trade twenties.

[SPEAKER_01]: The current market for fantasy-size-size-size fiction war gaming is much, much bigger than it was, and games work shops percentage grasp of that is considerably smaller than it was, because originally they were the market, they were basically it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, their proportional grasp is smaller, not a lot smaller, but smaller.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it's a far, far bigger market.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a market that games workshop essentially invented from old clock.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't, I would have said it.

[SPEAKER_01]: If I talked to you when I was supposed to talk to you the first time, I would have gone, oh yeah, looking forward to trying the new guilty.

[SPEAKER_01]: I went to a local club the other day.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was going there to run a demo game of zero dark, which I did.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was great, had a really good time.

[SPEAKER_01]: but every other table in the club was against workshop game.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I arrived after everybody else who got started, they'd already started their games, it's at the tables, they were getting prepped.

[SPEAKER_01]: I started, I got my stuff out, I set up the game, I got rules out in the minute, just out, played everything out, reminded myself of the scenario, caught the guy I was going to do a demo for, we sat down and played through the demo, had a fantastic time, he really enjoyed it, I really enjoyed it.

[SPEAKER_01]: finished, shook his hand, bit him a good evening, reset the table, turned around, most of the other games were on turn two.

[SPEAKER_01]: And every other game was a forty-k-k.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry, it was a game to a short game.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there was two, four games of forty-k, one of age of sigma, one of Kiltine, one of aeronautic repairialis.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that was it.

[SPEAKER_01]: They might have been more forticated, I forget.

[SPEAKER_01]: None of them looked that fun.

[SPEAKER_01]: The people looked like they were having fun because they were sat down with their friends and they were Josh and one another and having a good time and they were being social and enjoying themselves.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the games themselves [SPEAKER_01]: didn't look fun.

[SPEAKER_01]: Even Kilti, which I was really interested to see Kilti happening.

[SPEAKER_01]: I went over and I watched the plan, I went, I'm really not getting any sense of engagement with what I'm seeing on the tabletop.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's just [SPEAKER_01]: the classic encounters, this feels very dull.

[SPEAKER_01]: Where is the game that I, okay, I know I was playing my own games, I'm two to my own horn here, but either the game that we just played felt like it had purpose, felt like it had ups and downs and swings and he thought he was there and then suddenly this thing happened and he wasn't there and now his hero that he thought was gonna take the mission was down and could he rescue him and get off or did he have to just flee for the exit and hope for the best and leave his guy behind and you know, he had a sense of [SPEAKER_01]: Drama to it, but I just [SPEAKER_01]: didn't really see.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think there are Nordic or Imperialists came closest to having that sense of drama.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think I gave that game a fair.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I watched it for a while, but it was a four player game, and they had two enormous weeks of aircraft.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I think it was moving really slowly because they weren't super-of-a with the game, and they did have a lot of miniatures.

[SPEAKER_01]: So perhaps it didn't give its fair as to show on the table, but everything else I was looking at going, [SPEAKER_01]: Nothing here, really, really appeals.

[SPEAKER_01]: And even Necromander, I've got an Necromander gang half painted on my desk, get back to if you can't the Gene Steelers.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't feel any particular compulsion to play Forty Kay.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would rather go and play Starbridge if I was going to put those guys on the table.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I mean, we've talked about the manager agnostic systems out there, like if you love the universes that games what shop have created, you don't even need to use the rules, do you like the easiest?

[SPEAKER_00]: Was loads of games out there you could use?

[SPEAKER_01]: The one and I talked about this on my podcast recently, the one quality that games workshop has that puts it ahead of every other game in the market is ubiquity.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's the fact that I went to that club and everybody there was playing a games workshop, okay, and most of them were playing horse-y-k.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's the ability to know if I put in the hours and the time and the money and the sweat and the tears I need to paint this, fifteen hundred, two thousand-point metronomy, tower me, elder army, whatever it might have done a lot of things up.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I paint this army.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know, I can go to my local club and play somebody with it.

[SPEAKER_01]: On the other hand, if I could, OK, admittedly a lot less time than effort into building and painting this ten person infinity army.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's no guarantee that I'm going to be able to use that army because I don't know if anybody else at my club plays infinity and if they do play an infinity, I don't know if they want to play right now that they're playing something else.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the one thing the games workshop has in game design.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't want to down talk the quality of their setting or the quality of their miniatures or their customer service or their community engagement, all of which are top notch.

[SPEAKER_01]: But in terms of the quality of their game design, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, kill team represented a massive step forward for games to work shopping design terms.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was an attempt to create something legitimately innovative.

[SPEAKER_01]: But all they really seem to have done is ripped off some of the best other skirmish games out there and done nothing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing, nothing, nothing new.

[SPEAKER_01]: They haven't even done it as well as the people they ripped off.

[SPEAKER_01]: Which is very, very good.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I suppose, like you've seen as well, it might be a lifestyle thing for people.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like if I had a keyotics schedule that was, you know, one day was never on the same as another one.

[SPEAKER_00]: I could go online and get a game of forty-capital way any night at the week, but I found out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if I'm suddenly like anyone want to play Rogue Planet, I feel like well, I've never heard of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, come on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're kicking on for an hour, Robe, so I'm going to let you go.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've really enjoyed it, so I want to get you back on for more of this good stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've talked about your podcasts, so if the listener wants to check it out, they definitely should, because you've got, you bring us up to date with some news and analysis, but are really like your deep dive into the game mechanics and stuff, which we've had a small hint of in this episode.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we're like, they go about finding your show.

[SPEAKER_01]: I am, well, strictly my show is on podbeam.

[SPEAKER_01]: So if you go to precinctamagad.podbeam.com, you'll find my podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: We might take a look at your games as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I'm kind of ubiquitous social media-wise.

[SPEAKER_01]: So my games are sold through WargainVolt, which is WargainVolt.com, and you can just search for a precinct omega there and it'll take you to my page.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can link to that as well through my website, which is precinct omega.co.uk.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can also find me on all the usual social media places as Creasing Tomatoes.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Pinterest, I'm on Reddit.

[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, it's all out there.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if you want to have a look at the games that the place is walkingvalt.com, that is the place to find my games as well as [SPEAKER_01]: loads of other mini-chazagnostic games.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't fancy, you're pleased to make a game.

[SPEAKER_01]: You think they're a little bit pricey.

[SPEAKER_01]: Check out Rogue Planet, check out Planet- twenty-eight.

[SPEAKER_01]: Check out one of the other good Cyphyse-Germish games on there.

[SPEAKER_01]: You like solo games as a game called Hardwired, which is a solo Cypherpunk game, which is really cool.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, Stargrave?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, Stargrave is available through the War Game Vault if you like back from the game to West Brake.

[SPEAKER_01]: Five parts from home, now from the Dickies Entertainment.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is also on War Game Vault as well as all of Ivan Sorrett's other stuff, which is from Nordic Weedle.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, check out recently, Omega, please, but don't stock yourself there.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's this a treasure trove of excellent content.

[SPEAKER_00]: Indeed, like I say, yeah, all links in the show notes at BedroomBattlefield.com slash podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: Roby, thank you very much.

[SPEAKER_00]: Really appreciate your time.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's for tea tonight?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's kick-on for five now.

[SPEAKER_01]: So for fingers and chips tonight, I've got to go.

[SPEAKER_01]: Good.

[SPEAKER_00]: Good.

[SPEAKER_00]: A council tea.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm on the tuna pasta, but it's chickpea pasta, which is a little bit different.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're the same though.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're the same, but yeah, they're not the same.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, enjoy your fish fingers.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, we'll catch up again, something soon.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks very much for listening to this episode of the table top miniature hobby podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you enjoy the show then please do share it with someone else you think might enjoy it too and be sure to check out our discord community of like-minded hobbyists which you could find a bedroom battlefield.com forward slash discord.