Wargames as Product

[Spinal Tap]

Are you still meaning to be sarcastic then?

No. Just a badly worded edit to go with my badly worded post.

I think I'll just shut up now.

[Tactalvanic]

i think its an interesting 5 minute read over my cup of tea, especially all the extra comments from LAF members.

If i feel like it I will flip over to the blog, similarly to others blogs, and read some more

Although its mainly the LAF feedback I am enjoying my tea with

At the end of the day, if the business model fits, and its making money and customers are happy, fair enough.

I prefer like many here a much broader range of stuff, but know full well i am not immune to this, either/any of the business models, I have enough boxes and books to prove that

But they make me happy so its ok 

[tikitang]

I have always hated the thing that the OP defines as 'Wargame as Product'.

I like buying individual items for gaming (e.g. a standalone set of rules, or some unique-looking miniatures from some obscure company), or even a self-contained packaged product, such as a stand-alone board game which is not destined to have two dozen expansions (I don't mind one or two, though), but the idea of buying into a system with endless new products coming down the line, or the expectation that one will buy the official components to get the complete package, fills me with horror!

Fantasy Flight Games are notorious for it and it really put me off them as a board game manufacturer.

[Silent Invader]

No. Just a badly worded edit to go with my badly worded post.

I think I'll just shut up now.

 

[ced1106]

> Wargame is Product

Osprey Games has a good following with this. I supposed miniature-agnostic rulesets are best for generic fantasy, as well as for rulesets that are designed to allow visually different models to use the same rules (eg. Frostgrave and Stargrave have no racial rules, so you can use a dwarf mini or elf mini as a Swordsman).

> A Hybrid Model

Again, going back to Frostgrave, North Star Miniatures has a line of mini's that you can use for Frostgrave, but the ruleset is still flexible enough that miniatures from other companies will work.

> Wargame as Product

BTW. In the RPG market (eg. D&D and Pathfinder), mini's are sold in blind boosters or sets for their boardgames, the latter falling under Wargame as Product (eg. Castle Ravenloft, Dungeon Command, Onslaught). Boardgames with miniatures, of course, are sold "as Product", since boardgamers usually want a "open the box and play" product.

[jon_1066]

This sort of post seems a reasonable discussion to have.

Any amateur considering an all encompassing wargame system is in cloud cuckoo land.  Like the board gamer trying to design the next Monopoly.

An amateur is naturally going to be caught between two stools.  If a period is generic enough then the market is flooded (oh great another set of Napoleonic rules) too specialist and there is no wider environment to build on.  If you are designing games then do it for yourself first and foremost.  If it goes anywhere then fair play but you can’t go into it with the expectation of getting rich and being the next GW.  It took GW about 20 years to end up at the point of write the theme tune, sing the theme tune, star in the show.

[NotifyGrout]

Unless the specific setting is exceptional, I prefer minis-agnostic games. There are simply too many choices out there to be tied to a specific model range just to play a given game.

One of the reasons I like the -grave games, besides the model-agnostic nature, is the way that supplements are actually optional components and not mandatory purchases. Is there some cool stuff in the supplement books? Yes. Are they all necessary to enjoy the game? Absolutely not.

If I have to buy new books every few months, and not just a revised edition every few years, then it's not worth my money, and I'd rather support creators who want to make good games that happen to sell, rather than product that sells that might be a good game. I've already had more fun with Space Weirdos than I have with games that have a much larger budget.