Dealing with option paralysis when planning out a new project?

[Ran The Cid]

For many years, I played all sorts of games.  Tournaments, house clubs, small games at home.  Now I'm down to one regular gaming mate and even those games are getting further apart.  Fortunately, I have two local gaming conventions (Adepticon and Little Wars) where its easy to get both a table and players.  It's sort of a high pressure way to do it, but the looming deadline of hosting a game at a convention is a powerful motivator to finish a project. 

[FriendlyNeighbourhoodNerd]

Thank you all for your replies, advice and suggestions again.

I've sat down, done some thinking, played a game of Five Men in Normandy with a few figures I've got, and I think I've decided on WWII for my next purchase/project.

Now to decide on a scale, however... torn between 28mm, 20mm and 15mm, I think up to a platoon-level game is what I'm after. I've enjoyed painting all 3 of these scales (however, I need to figure out how to make WWII minis not look like drab blobs in smaller scales - even my 1:72 guys are hard to distinguish in somewhat poor lighting, got any tips?).

Maybe 28mm for the individuality and the character of the figures, and the extra detail? But then again, my local store has a lot of 1:72 vehicles and soft plastic figures and stuff, so it's more readily available, and there's some gorgeous metal sculpts like AB for example... and then 15mm figures and vehicles are even cheaper, the terrain too (and kind of adorable in a weird way), and I can play bigger battles on the same area/more realistic ground scale/on a smaller area, and again there's some really nice sculpts in that scale too...

And then even within a specific scale there's the question of theatre (Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Pacific, North Africa/Mediterranean?) and period (early, mid or late war?) and nation as well

Ah well, we'll see. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[fred]

For WWII I’d pick 20mm or 15mm over 28mm. Especially if you want to include vehicles.

The size of 28mm stuff is big and with modern weapon ranges everything can look very much crammed on top of itself.

[has.been]

You have had a lot of good advice, & I agree with most if not all of it.

My tuppance (2 cents) worth:-
Write up a one paragraph reason/intro to a game of 5 Men in Normandy,
e.g. Noises were heard coming from that wood on your right. The Sergeant
sent Kowakski, Johnson & Smith over to investigate.
Play the game.
Write up an AAR (after action report) of the main/interesting bits. Keep it short,
half a page absolute maximum.

As has been already said, this will lead to the next game, & so on.
Keep doing this kind of thing until you tire of it. Then do something different.

Having a map (I find) helps a lot. We set a WW2 campaign on an Allied invasion
of Rhodes. Why Rhodes? The local newsagent was selling off old tourist maps & I
picked up several for a very low price. Also used the same maps for an Ancient campaign
 (ignored the Airfields though.  )

[Easy E]

For WWII, 20mm or 1:72 is a very popular scale for gaming. 

For games I would recommend:
- Battlegroup
- Chain of Command

[v_lazy_dragon]

I'd say 20mm, for platoon size games you get more mileage out of the standard size dining table and vehicles are much more widely available. If I was starting again I'd probably choose 20mm over 28mm as my 'one true scale'

[ced1106]

> Write up a one paragraph reason/intro to a game of 5 Men in Normandy,

Could even write a review, with the introduction explaining that you're writing it to decide on your project, so the focus will be why and how you are making your decision.

Scale, frex, has been mentioned, so you could list the pros and cons of each scale, and what your personal decision might be.

Likewise, list what you like and don't like for each front, from flavor and theme to game balance for scenarios.

I just play generic fantasy, where all your encounters are mysteriously suitable for your party level...