Entropy City: Making a Wargame

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.