Reactor Progress 7/N

Through quite a bit of real life disruption, I actually feel like I'm really getting somewhere now. Which is just as well really, since I got myself a Salute table for 2020!

Yay, go me!

Starting with the biggest change (and yet the most to do) - a suitably imposing vault-tec style doorway. Bit of a bugger to cut out really, but also a lot of grief in the planning. I spent quite a bit of hemming and hawing time trying to make it functional, and conceiving how it could possible function in-world but ultimately the constraints of having some sort of walkway actually through the door and not nearly enough depth (piss poor planning etc) quashed those thoughts, so the door is glued.

So some oddments and curved sprues to gee it up, but still needs a lot of gubbinz to look convincing and a walkway that somehow looks like it might retract.

Salute 2019 - The Game - Execution

This will be a bit of a text-heavy post, sorry.

Play + Adaptation

Plans of course are famous for their integrity and robustness.

First change very quick off the bat, I had intended to use the old Unreal Tournament achievements - y'know "Wicked Sick" and "Ludicrous Kill" - as the score-tracker for the game. That was about eight or so levels but it was immediately apparent that first to three was about as realistic as could be expected. Why? Well the pace of the game is clearly driven by physical layout and I was overly optimistic about how rapidly players could or would progress around the board. Sometimes that was a matter of not having enough move "points", sometimes because players chose to chase pick-ups instead of opponents, sometimes because the weapons just didn't hit as hard as perhaps they needed to. Fundamentally the players just didn't spend enough time in sight of each other.

I think that might have even been fatal if it wasn't for how amazingly Teleports worked out. I knew they were going to be key to breaking up the map anyway so this was never an actual risk, but they served that purpose of short-circuiting the map and moreover a layer of decision making and strategy that really served players who could see it so much more than those who didn't. One player exploited a move into a 'port, out of another near a weapon pick up, back into the second and out a third to attack an opp at short range with their new shotgun. Brilliant stuff.

Fortunately scoring was something I could change without players noticing. The next problem was brought to my attention by the players, and I mean every single group as well.

Salute 2019 - The Game - More Design Notes

i.e. I forgot some interesting stuff.

Doors

The board itself was always intended for Space Hulk (best game ever created) which means of course it has lots of doors built in or at least into the rooms anyway - corridor doors are a tedious design problem to describe another time.

Salute 2019 - The Game - Production

Previously...

The 2017 game didn't meet my expectations for a lot of reasons (and why I didn't do anything in 2018), but it was illuminating - failure is the best teacher after all - and that framed everything I did for this year's effort. So, my self imposed rules for a convention game are:

1. Simple - punters will usually be learning your game for the first time. This is just a function of the broad church that is wargaming and the sheer number of rulesets out there. Even if it's an enormously widespread or utilitarian game like 40k or Pulp Alley, 50%+ won't have played it before, and as most games are sort of designed for an afternoon at a learner pace and it's unreasonable to lock a player on to your table for over an hour you have to be incredibly straightforward and obvious in your mechanics. No, even more than that. Really bare bones.
2. Unique - if the game doesn't have a USP, then you're not going to stand out enough for people to want to approach. You're askign them to spend a very finite resource (their Salute time) on you and not someone else. While the board and the minis carry the majority of this sell, being visual and all, the rules or at least the concept of the rules has to close that deal when people ask you what your game is.
3. Fast - for the same reason your game needs to play through quickly, either the whole thing or if you can possibly build a continuous game (one where players can join or leave at any time) then per player experience. It's just such a barrier to entry to have a game run for many hours and a real risk the game can't complete if it starts running into long turns.
4. Universal - I mean this both in the family friendly sense but also more simply that you want to appeal to as much of your walk-by audience as possible. Don't limit yourself with a concept that is too niche or alien or jarring. Familiar tropes like dungeon crawls helps, and so too would pop culture games - recent riffs on Back to the Future and Jurassic Park and Rogue One were inspired I think.
5. Engaging - once you have some players you can't be losing them. I've seen players give up and walk away from games before (not mine fortunately) and that's obviously quite damning. IGYG based games are pretty much a hard no. Anything with much downtime is a no. This goes to the rule of Fast as well, but the idea here is never be boring and to avoid feel-bad moments. To this end I've been trying to build games that execute player actions simultaneously or function as a co-op effort. The advaantages of a convention are a built in GM so you can exploit some things that don't make sense for a commercial ruleset.

Salute 2019 - The Day

2014 - contributed to a Salute game.

2016 - co-designed and contributed to a game on the Hasslefree table with the great guys at Random Platypus.

2017 - designed and built a game of my own on the Hasslefree table.

2019 - designed and built a game of my own on my table.

So this could be anywhere between my fourth and first Salute game, but for very many reasons it certainly feels like the start.

I'll go into the game itself (Third Person Shooter) and the build in future posts, but just to get started - and while it's fresh in the mind - I wanted to cover the event itself. I'm writing this as notes to myself, but also for the benefit of anyone who might like to run their own game one day. (I hope you're reading this!)