Creating a Narrative Campaign Part 1: Dissecting Deception's Edge

Chad McMann was a founding member and regular participant in Nerd Night, the Chicago gaming club that separately spawned both 2ndCityWarzone and Hyacinth Games and his early 40K background pieces can be found in the earliest 2ndCityWarzone posts.

One of the key elements that differentiates Wreck-Age from other game systems is that it is intended to universally act as both an RPG and a skirmish level miniature wargame. We've been discussing ways to heighten this appeal and that led to the idea of supplements that contained all of the necessary elements to do either. Every module, packet, or whatever they eventually will be termed would come with all of the narrative, background, NPCs, adventure locations, etc that you would expect from a RPG supplement, and at the same time have all of the key encounters broken down into a scenario format more familiar to table top wargame players. The ultimate goal being that you could take or leave whatever you wanted so that you could play it out entirely table top style, or you could play it out entirely as a pen and paper RPG, or if you love both elements you could do a hybrid of the two. This will hopefully create crossover appeal for a variety of gamers and allow people to tailor their gaming experience to their own predilections.

If you've been to the Wreck-Age website you may have noticed there are 6 short stories for download for a mere $.49 each (or you can download them for free if you like). While we were gearing up for Adepticon it was discussed that it would be cool to put one or all of these short stories in an anthology for sale at the event. It never came together, but while discussing how to make such an anthology more enticing to gamers, it was suggested that we possibly include narrative scenarios and RPG material so that someone who read the story could then play out the events if they so chose.

Today I downloaded Deception's Edge by Chad McMann, a great little story that gives you some insight into how the faction known as Stitcher's function and maintain themselves. I've been well familiar with the Stitchmen for some time now and even I felt like I learned something from the story. It was a quick read, and I highly recommend taking the time to do so yourself.

As I read the story I took notes. Who would the major NPCs be? What are the key locations? How large were the forces involved and what were they equipped with? How many encounters took place that could be represented by scenarios and what would the goal of each scenario be?

Its actually a really exciting exercise. I don't want to give away the story right away, but I will say that the as you read along the narrative can be broken into four action sequences that would become scenarios. It is obvious that Newmark, Dr. Mordan, and Arthur would be the NPCs (possibly Larsen as well just because he's named), And the Stitchers appear to number about 10-14 including Golems. The Stakers would number about 20-30. I think for purposes of play-ability we'd keep the Stitchers to a maximum of 12 on the field and Stakers around 20-25.

With my framework in hand I'm now going to set about drafting up formatted scenarios and pulling text from the story to describe the principal NPCs.

Have you read Deception's Edge? What did you think?

-Nick

PS. If you're curious about how the game plays, why not download the Quick Start Rules for free?

Staker Outrider

I just finished this Staker Scout for Wreck-Age. It was nice to paint yesterday without any Adepticon deadlines looming over me. I've been working on a few articles about Adepticon and I collected all the info from the 40K Warzone Tournament after-survey. Expect all of that soon.
-Nick

Being Incorporated Into Wreck-Age Art

I've been quietly working on terrain for the 40K Warzone Tournament at Adepticon and haven't been blogging as much as I would like, but don't worry - its coming along. 

That's not what I've come to discuss today, however. Over the weekend I got myself wrapped up in an unexpected side project. I had seen the art for the upcoming Stakers Box Set for Wreck-Age and thought it was awesome. Not just the models, but the whole box. The borders they used and the landscape they dropped the photo of the miniatures onto - it looks fantastic. I suggested to the guys at Hyacinth Games that they box up their resin Storage Containers into a box set at a slight savings and do the same thing with the art. Anton responded, "That's a good idea, except we need three painted crates then!" I had just inadvertently volunteered myself for a very busy weekend. 

After some discussion I arranged to pick up a couple of Storage Container models on Saturday and then I engaged in a marathon painting session that lasted 6 straight hours that night and then I put in another 2 hours on Sunday. I brushed on the finishing touches (mostly sponging and weathering powders) while two thirds of Hyacinth Games were sitting in my living room eating popcorn. As soon as they were done we grabbed my girlfriend's camera and Anton shot a half dozen or so photos that were slight variations of this:

The original crate in the center took me around 20 hours to paint. I did two knock off's to match in approximately 4 hours each. I haven't painted that fast since my GW Buffalo manager days.

Now where things got really exciting for me is that today Anton e-mailed me an image that one of their artists whipped up using the storage containers I painted. I think the consensus was the art was too elaborate for the box set, but they're probably going to use it in the rule book. It came out awesome, and seeing my painted models incorporated into their art is kind of thrilling, so I wanted to share it. Here's the digital art by Kostas using my storage containers. Pretty freakin' cool!:  

Digital artistry by Kostas. Crates by me. So stoked!

Also, while I'm rambling about Wreck-Age I want to hype their upcoming Stakers box set: 

Soon to be released Stakers Box Set for Wreck-Age.

I didn't paint any of those models but I think it looks great and I'm really excited to see Hyacinth Games making progress!

Finally, I want to mention that Hyacinth Games are going a promotion where if you buy a Wreck-Age model this month, paint it, and send them photographic evidence - they will send you a free model as a reward for your efforts. Pretty cool. You can get the full details on the Wreck-Age Forum.

-Nick

Entering the Wreck-Age

Model's eye view of a Wreck-Age demo table. 

Today I finally got around to playing a demo of Wreck-Age, a table top skirmish game being developed by friends who only live 4 blocks away from my apartment here in Chicago. I had wanted to try out the game back at Adepticon but I had scheduled myself tightly with events and seminars and never had the time to watch more than a turn of some other intrigued hobbyist giving it a go.

Being that I'm a friend of Matt's, and he lives so close he offered to have me come by and get a Demo to check it out first hand. Now mind you, the couple of turns I saw at Adepticon seemed like a lot of guys just rolling around on the ground, but this didn't feel that way at all. Everything that took place felt quick and decisive.

To give you a sense of the narrative, we're in the 26th century and we're on a post-apocalyptic planet Earth. The table depicted the edge of a Staker settlement with a fence line in the center and a few buildings beyond. Scattered about were some trees and a stream but they were non-essential to what was taking place. We jumped right into the scenario. The Hy Planes Drifters, a designation for splintered tribes of nomadic bandits, were trying to bust their way into a Staker compound. Stakers are settlers who are trying to return to a sense of the normalcy of their civilized past.

She may be cute, but she rolls with a murderous tribe based on violent escaped criminals who will gladly enslave you if they don't kill you. But I guess some people are into that. 

I played as the Drifters and had 2 thugs with various guns and detonators that would trigger explosives carried by their 3 mistreated beasts of horrific burden, boars nicknamed Bacon Bombs.

The vegan in me felt dirty using animals as homing missiles, but its just a game and it is the apocalypse after all. If I'm playing despicable savages I might as well go all out, right?

Matt, my demonstrator, would defend the settlement with a line of 3 Stakers holding positions along the fences, and a lookout with a rifle atop a building. He tried to hit me with a bunch of rules figuring I'd want the full explanation but I stopped him and said, "just present my options as they become available and I'll learn as I go." My head is full of rules from a half dozen GW games and with all of the editions I've played its all a big mess in my head. No need for subtle nuances, lets just roll some dice and explore the narrative.

Matt, just tell me what to do, not the mechanics of doing it. ;) Oh , and this is some cool concept art from the Wreck-Age page.

We rolled to see who went first and I discovered that the system was a "I move a model, then you move a model" system. This is a big change from what I'm used to with GW and it was neat to see in action because I was engaged in the game from beginning to end.

I charged a boar forward, and a Staker shot at it, wounding it and slowing it down. Injuries actually have suppressive effects. My next two boars advanced and we shot at in turn with no injuries sustained. I moved one of my gunmen forward to get a better position and he managed to avoid return fire. My boars were in position to potentially blow up and take down the fences and the defenders behind them but I pressed the detonator and the old tech must have malfunctioned because none of the boars exploded.

We rolled for initiative for the 2nd round of the turn and each of our figures got to take additional actions. One of my boars jumped the fence and gored the crap out of a Staker, another got shot dead in his tracks, and the one that was wounded before fell short of clearing the fence and took more fire. This time though, when I pressed the detonator, my first boar was a dud, but the one in the middle blew up in action flick style with a 7" ball of fire and shrapnel, devastating the fences, obliterating my other boars, and pulping his defending Stakers.

Now all my Drifters had to do was flee the board to obtain reinforcements. The lookout with the rifle shot one of my guys in the back but my only remaining guy escaped unharmed to signal his marauding brothers in self serving destruction.

Perched on the roof of an out building she shot one of my remaining Drifters in the back.

I can't comment on the rules too much. It was a D6 system that used increasing and decreasing amounts of dice depending on your stats. If you have 3 Power you roll 3 dice when you use that stat. Your opponent rolls a relative number of dice based upon the relevant stat to counter with and unlike RISK where you use the raw numbers rolled, you need 4+ on each die to succeed unless there is a modifier of some sort. So most interactions between models rely on you hopefully rolling more 4+ rolls than your opponent. The important thing for the demo was that it was simple and quick. I'm not a mathematician so I don't know how balanced things are or how much sense they make beyond the simple abstraction of events. The important thing was that I rolled dice and I had fun. It was an engaging environment, my head was in the game the whole time because everything happened so fast, and cool crap happened.

This actually has me pumped to try my hand at getting some models painted and getting a proper game in to see how it plays outside the demo environment with someone telling me what to roll and what I can do. I can already think of all sorts of cool scenarios and story lines too. The factions are all pretty interesting and who doesn't like that Mad Max sort of vibe? Though, without vehicles it made me think more of The Road maybe?

Regardless, it was a fun diversion from GW games and played very differently. The models are true scale too and much less heroic in stature. Very cool.

Anyway, they are doing a Kickstarter and it only has 3 days left. They met their initial goals but I spent a long time talking to Matt and know they have a lot of cool ideas they'd like to explore. I know a lot of start up companies are around now, competing for a finite fan base and additionally a bunch of established companies are Kickstarting their projects simply because they can, but if you've got the spare capital and you want to see more variety in the table-top market, give them some love.

Meanwhile I'm going to paint up some of the cool models I've picked up so far so I can get that first real game in. -Nick

Wreck-Age Kickstarter