Entropy City: Making a Wargame

Of all of the games people have created why is there none that is purely just based around the motorcycle, I mean Motorcycle gangs exist, motorcycle movies exist, there’s enough races, enough video game concepts to draw idea’s from.

Actually on that note, why don’t motorbike’s in a game ever actually feel like a motorbike? Someone should do this, hell maybe one day I could do this…

That conversation started around 9 years ago, between me and a few friends evolving into my plans on how it could work. I mean why not use templates like in that new X-Wing game it would work well for a motorbike game right? And what if the police turns up as you know NPC’s to get in the way of your missions?

This is how the idea started, friends suggested that NPC police would never work, and then Frostgrave prove it could. Gaslands proves a fanbase could be there for this kind’ve idea even if their concept was different to my own it proved atleast to me I could be on to something.

Nine years later….?

Podcasting opened my eyes to a lot of what the industry had to offer, before that you guys all did, not to suck up or anything but the fact is I’ve been following you guys since the office above a certain store many many years ago, into the shed, Warren wearing a funny orange wig and I like many have played a LOT of games since then. But it wasnt until maybe 3 months ago that I actually decided to sit down and actually begin working on the idea that had been in my head for so long.

The problems I immediately knew I needed to face.

• Miniature limitations:
  • There just isnt a lot of motorbike miniatures that fit the “real world” aesthetic I wanted to aim for and, well I’m not a scupter, this would make creating a miniature agnostic ruleset harder.
    • Okay then, but thats a problem for later Jason, you need a game first.
• You’ve never created a game ruleset before
  • No but I’ve played many of them, hell I know what I enjoy in a game why not start there and then begin to find your own nieche.
• Yeah but you’re not a big name, you’ve got no big connections
  • Well does that really matter? This is about creating a game of my own not being famous. Concentrate on getting a ruleset that works first and THEN worry about the what if’s

First things first, yes those are my TERRIBLE drawings haha

So both of these are proof of concept images the first being for a group I am calling “Komodo” which is based on sportsbikes, definately an underground criminal organisation extremely losely based on several real life and fictional groups.

The second is a concept for a group I am calling Hades, which is the traditional bikers gang most people would think of, but definately not based on any real world groups at all I swear… *shifty eyes*

At this point if you include the law I have 4 factions, enough to test idea’s when I get that far and Ive stopped on purpose, to me I feel its important to get the GAME first before I get over excited about the fluff etc.

I really do not enjoy D6’s in games, yes I know Im weird but theres a reason and its because theyre evil horrible things that should all be destroyed…..

Okay maybe thats an exageration 😛

No look D6’s generally have never treated me well, its like I have a curse with them and its frequent enough and without enough witnesses that I know its not just in my head.. But in saying that as much as I understand that D6’s are common and popular theres just not enough variation there to me, Wild West Exodus showed me this and its a game I felt did a different die type well, Malifaux is another different concept and honestly maybe my favourite.

But as much as “everything has been done before” I wanted my own thing, D10’s was easy but it was going to pick up pizza where it hit me.

What if it was blackjack but with dice? Okay okay let me show you what I mean.

In this example lets just pretend the pink dice are attacking the purple dice.

Stress: How distracted is your current model, stress is to be added to the result of any test performed on the table, and must be managed to prevent busting.
[So if you roll 18 for example but also have 6 stress it would make your total 24 causing you to bust.]

Protection: A smart rider wears protection to prevent injury in the case of a crash, in the middle of a turf war that protection can play a dual role, after all hitting someone in the head is less effective if they’re wearing a helmet.
[In game this would raise the target number of the test by the protection stat, aim is for this to be 1-3 at this time.]

Busting: You have rolled over 21 during a test, this is a critical fail causing your miniature to crash out of the game.

Bike Speed: Did you know that a vehicle’s don’t always move the same speed? OMG right?!

• 8 inches, minimum of 4. Attacks as normal
• 12 inches, minimum of 8, lower attacks target number by 2
• 16 inches strict, minimum of 12,lower attacks target number by 3
  [This is all placeholder for the purpose of testing the concept. Instead of lowering the target number for attacks this may change to a penalty on the defenders sum.]

Turn & Templates
[All of the following distances and risks are placeholders that require testing. Template design itself is yet to take place.]

• 3inch
  • Low risk at Speed1, medium risk at Speed2, extreme risk at speed3
• 5inch
  • No risk at Speed1, low risk at Speed2, medium risk at speed 3
• 7inch
  • No risk at speed 1, low risk at speed 2, medium risk at speed 3

Each template is to be created making a 90 degree turn, the distance determining the angle the turn is made at, the difference between these are former templated is that these will have the distances actually marked on them for measurement, a player may choose only to make part of the turn should they wish to. A turn may be used at either the beginning of the movement or at the end of the movement but never half way or at both occasions, a player must plan ahead to avoid obstacles where possible.

Attack Type:

Game of Chicken: you make a deliberate near miss on the enemy bike to stress them out Winner of dual takes half stress (rounded down) . (15 success required) 1-7 stress from 15-21.

If you roll 21 and succeed you take no stress from the manoeuvre, on all other successes you take half, rolled down.
[So a 15 is 1 a 21 is 7. Also if the losing player takes 3 stress, you half that to 1.5, then roll down, and add 1 stress to your character used]

This attack can only be performed approaching the opposing bike from their front. Successful dual will allow a 2inch side movement at the completion of your movement, this can be taken in either direction left or right.
[This is to represent having swerved out of the way at the last moment but is optional.]

Attack Melee: To perform a melee attack at least half of your base must be beside the opponent and you must be within reach of chosen weapon. This will be an opposed test.

Defence Melee: when being attacked in melee you have 2 choices, dodge or attack. If you choose to react with an attack of your own then you may NOT attack next activation.
[Unless a skill says otherwise.]

Dodge still being worked on.

Attack as melee.

Surprise Melee: When attacked from behind defensive player immediately adds 3 stress and rolls for dodge only, unless a skill states otherwise.
[A surprise attack is only achieved from behind unless a skill allows it another way] 

Of all of the games people have created why is there none that is purely just based around the motorcycle, I mean Motorcycle gangs exist, motorcycle movies exist, there’s enough races, enough video game concepts to draw idea’s from.

Actually on that note, why don’t motorbike’s in a game ever actually feel like a motorbike? Someone should do this, hell maybe one day I could do this…

That conversation started around 9 years ago, between me and a few friends evolving into my plans on how it could work. I mean why not use templates like in that new X-Wing game it would work well for a motorbike game right? And what if the police turns up as you know NPC’s to get in the way of your missions?

This is how the idea started, friends suggested that NPC police would never work, and then Frostgrave prove it could. Gaslands proves a fanbase could be there for this kind’ve idea even if their concept was different to my own it proved atleast to me I could be on to something.

Podcasting opened my eyes to a lot of what the industry had to offer, before that you guys all did, not to suck up or anything but the fact is I’ve been following you guys since the office above a certain store many many years ago, into the shed, Warren wearing a funny orange wig and I like many have played a LOT of games since then. But it wasnt until maybe 3 months ago that I actually decided to sit down and actually begin working on the idea that had been in my head for so long.

• Miniature limitations:
  • There just isnt a lot of motorbike miniatures that fit the “real world” aesthetic I wanted to aim for and, well I’m not a scupter, this would make creating a miniature agnostic ruleset harder.
    • Okay then, but thats a problem for later Jason, you need a game first.
• You’ve never created a game ruleset before
  • No but I’ve played many of them, hell I know what I enjoy in a game why not start there and then begin to find your own nieche.
• Yeah but you’re not a big name, you’ve got no big connections
  • Well does that really matter? This is about creating a game of my own not being famous. Concentrate on getting a ruleset that works first and THEN worry about the what if’s

Well I’ve actually been working a lot on this recently, for a number of reasons. I’d like to have this game into a testable state within the next 11 months and I’ve got a couple of pieces come together in the last month that helped me answer a couple of questions I had in my head regarding the mechanics. The development of the rules themselves have actually begun but I am not ready to discuss them more openly at this time.

I am speaking about them more openly with real life friends, and supporters of the podcast I am a co-host of (as I felt it wouldnt be appropriate not to include them.)

Its certainly still not a game but its closer every week.

The table size is remaining at 3×3, thats where I would like it to be but it depends on how it plays obviously, the current plan is to have movement based around 12 inches as I want there to be some actual back and forth involved within the game as opposed to just meeting in the middle and stopping there until everyone falls over.

The other thing I have started doing is collecting some mini’s for testing at this point in time the base size is a 75x42mm oval, to be its aesthetically pleasing and fits the size of the 28mm mini’s I have collected so far.

Honestly I’ve been using this time as a bit of a palette cleanser whilst the motivation was there and whilst I know this is a somewhat limited update I do hope it shows that progress is being made. It might be a good month or so before I update again.

There are some big changes I can confirm though, the first of which might have already been obvious, the game itself has a working title.

Entropy City

I feel it describes the state of their world pretty well, the main groups do have names as well but Im going to keep those close to the chest for now. The name of the game actually comes from my own work, it has been used in several of my created roleplay worlds in different settings but this iteration feels the most accurate use of the name

First things first I want to make a correction on something I said in my original post, I said this had been in the works for 3 years but it’s atleast double that, this really has been a long term project I continued to get distracted away from. Maybe part of e wasn’t quite willing to bed honest about it for some reason I don’t know but this idea started pre-existence of Gaslands which in and of itself should give you an idea of its age.

Game lore is something that some people find absolutely crucial whilst others can take it out leave it and whilst I for into the first camp a lot of my story is still just a skeleton and that is a deliberate choice on my part as I wanted to hand the game right first. And then build the world around it so I’m allowing myself some flexibility.

The original concept was very very simple, cruiser bikes vs sports bikes vs dirt bikes vs law vs heh can I make scooters work?

But the longer I’ve been looking into this the more I’ve realised that realistically there needed to be more than just that to separate them in the lore. I also had to be smart in the way I did this because I cannot give the impression that I’ve based any of my factions on certain real life groups, which I haven’t..

At this stage the world is a split in the timeline, a few crucial moments that whalebone these organisations in real life just never went the way they were supposed to. Leaving these groups with more power to be in the open than within our world, and I want to make it clear in this world they would be gangs, it’s all shades of grey here there no real “I’m clearly the goodie twoshoes” in my head at all at this point, atleast not from wise.

The law faction could be used in a number of ways, first and foremost I want them to perform an npc role within the game itself, much like the monsters you find in games such as Frostgrave, Judgement and others mainly because I feel it’s missing something weight that threat. However I very much see a place in the game for a corrupted side of that force. Allow people to game in the gaps so to speak, come up with their own reasons etc.

Stereotypically there are a few different types of biker games we see portrayed in pop culture the Cruisers type being the most common bug I do intend to explore this properly.

As things develop further I will begin to share names and so fourth for the factions and gangs but for now I want to concentrate on the rules.

One of the big factors that really inspired this idea was the fact I am actually a rider, as my every day ride. I’m not in any gangs nor do I have a desire to be, thats a game mechanic but the bike feel is something I wanted to get right.

So what sort of factors did I feel were important to get that right.

The Feel of Danger:
If you’re riding a bike, you already know there are some inherent dangers involved, it doesn’t truly matter who’s fault they are they exist and thats the first thing about the game I felt was important. If you make a mistake or something goes awry there should be a chance your biker comes off. With that there is obviously the chance that this means theyre gone from the battle. Now of course you could just say that is what the Wounds are for but that didnt feel as authentic to me, if it was just wounds then they could just be walking.

This was the first problem I faced, extremely early on in this games life I had the idea to take templates (at the time this was inspired by X-Wing but obviously Gaslands has come out since then. But take them a step further, making allowance for acceleration some sharper turns would become risky, turn to quickly or too sharply and it could all go wrong.

If I want people to play a new game it needs to have something about it that plays differently, a point of difference and I felt this was the START of an important game mechanic. It would develop more as time went on.

Bikes vs Cars:

A car turns as you would expect in an arch all vehicles do, however a bike can be more manouvrable, a bike can swerve around objects much easier (though this can be a much more advanced technique, one exploited in incorrect times often). Does this need to appear on the game table well no but I could think of a fun way to represent it having happened.

Different bikes would have the ability to swerve, the slower your going the more you can move, placing the template down, in this case a straight, you have the abiluty to swerve to the left and right a total of lets say 3 inches to represent either avoiding something OR setting yourself up for your next turn/activation.
This idea in and of itself would obviously need testing to ensure it works the way I think it does.
Some bikes are more manouvreble than others helping create more diverse characters.

Tricks:

A simple one here, what if we had ramps for bikes to make jumps or what if light bikes had the ability to do stoppies and the likes, how would you factor in the danger, would you perhaps need to limit which characters had the skills for these?

Something I can see being implimented, maybe something to help better define one faction over another.

This is a concept I’ve been working on for a much longer time that I really should have, I put it aside and come back to it but I still feel its an idea with merit. Im going to try and do a better job of keeping this project updated, I do have more to discuss but I am going to save more for next time..

Do you like the idea of a tabletop game of motorcycle gangs against one another? Do you like the idea of a bike feeling like a bike on the tabletop, or does it sound complicated for the sake of being complicated? Let me know in the comments how you feel personally about what youve read.

As I said initially this project was a long term one, for a game I’ve been playing with for a number of years now, to reiterate the concept is to work off the idea of Biker Gangs like you see on TV and the movies (and IRL many decades ago sometimes still today). Kind of a what-if the commonality never went away.

Whilst most of the larger groups still exist today they dont in the force they once did. Anyway to help keep this moving I have used HeroForge to help create some basic concept ideas for the groups. Keeping in mind that with most of these the motorcycle is wrong but just fleshing out my ideas in 3D space.

As I’ve said before this is still very much early concept ideas for both the factions and their looks but I hope it help gives a visual as to the ideas I have in mind

This is a project still very much in its infancy despite the fact its already had about 3 years of thought, having been rather new to the world of Tabletop at the time of thought I kind’ve kept lot of it to myself.

Putting thoughts to the kinds of games on the market I’ve never seen any with a Biker vibe to it, thinking back to the 70’s and 80’s when Biker gangs were a huge deal and where games like Road Rash were all the rage (okay that’s 90’s but still). But I think a game that captures the ‘danger’ of riding a motorbike whilst trying to use a weapon could lead to a lot of skirmish fun.

The entire game could be built around the various gangs, perhaps even a game controlled Police element (if not an optional faction thats released later). Trying to keep the game focused very much on the bikes and leaving the on foot and car stuff to a minimum the idea fluff wise is an alternate timeline where these things only escalated. Think New York at its worst, Chicago when the Mafia was at its heights but its all centred around Biker Gangs.

I feel it could have a rather unique feel if I get it right. My only concern at this point is trying to avoid it feeling like Gaslands.

But watch this space for a very slow burn project.