Post by tavis on Apr 16, 2013 20:14:54 GMT -6
Today I launched the Kickstarter for Autarch's Domains at War, which is our most ambitious project yet. That's partially in terms of publishing complexity - it involves cardstock counters and poster maps and other unexplored territory - but even more so in design goals.
Our aim is to reverse-engineer a new Chainmail - not as a literal retro-clone, but as an attempt to make a wargame that is as organically related to the rules of retro-clone RPGs as Chainmail was to original D&D. I feel like the reason the "end game" made sense to players in 1974 is that they came to it with so much experience of Chainmail. For modern gamers to feel comfortable with campaigns that reach the scale of armies and sieges, there needs to be a wargame that lets these battles be played out using mechanics that are familiar from other contemporary wargames, and yielding results like what you'd get from playing it out 1:1 with my giant bag of twenty-sided dice.
I'm excited to be part of making that, but even more to be finally creating something we'd talked about on these boards back in '09 or so - an in-print version of the original outdoor hex map that was recommended equipment for OD&D! This one started with Rob Conley's cartography, was painted in watercolor by Chris Hagerty, and is being printed on vinyl so things like settlements and strongholds can be drawn in as necessary using wipe-erase marker. We first developed this for the Dwimmermount Kickstarter, that being one of the many campaigns set in this landscape, and it's now available as an add-on to the Domains at War Kickstarter. I'm already thinking about writing up the military situation in my White Sandbox campaign in Domains at War terms for use with this...
Our aim is to reverse-engineer a new Chainmail - not as a literal retro-clone, but as an attempt to make a wargame that is as organically related to the rules of retro-clone RPGs as Chainmail was to original D&D. I feel like the reason the "end game" made sense to players in 1974 is that they came to it with so much experience of Chainmail. For modern gamers to feel comfortable with campaigns that reach the scale of armies and sieges, there needs to be a wargame that lets these battles be played out using mechanics that are familiar from other contemporary wargames, and yielding results like what you'd get from playing it out 1:1 with my giant bag of twenty-sided dice.
I'm excited to be part of making that, but even more to be finally creating something we'd talked about on these boards back in '09 or so - an in-print version of the original outdoor hex map that was recommended equipment for OD&D! This one started with Rob Conley's cartography, was painted in watercolor by Chris Hagerty, and is being printed on vinyl so things like settlements and strongholds can be drawn in as necessary using wipe-erase marker. We first developed this for the Dwimmermount Kickstarter, that being one of the many campaigns set in this landscape, and it's now available as an add-on to the Domains at War Kickstarter. I'm already thinking about writing up the military situation in my White Sandbox campaign in Domains at War terms for use with this...
