The Channel Campaign Update

So it’s almost here…currently in layout and I expect to see a proof of it very soon.

In the meantime, to wet your appetite’s, thought I’d post a small expert to show you the scope of what we’re trying to do with The Channel Campaign.

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THE CHANNEL CAMPAIGN

A scenario is a single engagement between forces; a single game played at the gaming table by a group of friends. James’ Fighting Leviathans: Excerpt From the 1910 Edition, Part Two PDF, starting on page 7, includes two scenarios that showcase this type of set game.

A campaign, as defined within this PDF, is a set of rules that allows players to interconnect multiple scenarios/games into a larger framework. This increases enjoyment of each individual game, as players must look beyond the current conflict and predict how their decisions might affect the larger war, while simultaneously immersing players deeper in the fictional universe.

The Channel Campaign is a combination of campaign rules and pre-determined forces that allows players to generate multiple games, while tracking the consequences of those games between British and French forces clashing across the thin strip of sea that separates these two world powers.

Scoring: Leviathans is a game of heroic characters clashing in epic conflicts for king and country. The scoring system for The Channel Campaign reflects this aesthetic. For example, a ship can decide to not engage an enemy ship if it finds itself on patrol in the same sector of the map…but that wouldn’t be very challenging, eh, chap?

PDFS REQUIRED TO PLAY

The following PDFs are required to use The Channel Campaign: Lieutenant’s Manual and James’ Fighting Leviathans: Excerpt From the 1910 Edition.

While not required for play, the British and French Printable Fleets make a great addition to turn the simple two-fold ship counters from the PDFs above into three-dimensional “boxes” that show all sides of each vessel. Both Printable Fleets PDFs also include a blank counter for each ship Type, which may help to cut down on the confusion of using multiple ships with the same name (see British Force and French Force, below).

CAMPAIGN MAP

The campaign map is a representation of the English Channel that separates Britain and France. As shown, the map is divided into sectors, with the British and French each having a single Base Sector (representing their respective bases of operation, Portsmouth and Le Havre), as well as four additional sectors they patrol. All the action of The Channel Campaign, outside of a regular Leviathans game, takes place on this map. Players should print out and use the full-size campaign map.

Playing Maps: Neither the campaign map nor any of its sectors correspond to a Leviathans playing map. Instead, each sector is a generic representation of an aerial space over which both sides contend. When combat occurs within a sector, the players determine the number of maps to use, regardless of the sector involved.

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See ya next duty shift!

Randall

Game Development Continued…

How robust is your game design?

There’s a lot of criteria people use when determining whether game design is robust? For this quick post, when I’m talking about “robust,” I mean how easy is it to expand with additional rules?

Do follow-on rules fit seamlessly and appear to a player as though they were meant to be a part of the game from the beginning? Or can the players easily discern where you tacked it into place and see the wire, spit and gum?

I’ve seen plenty of both over the years, as I’m sure most of you have.

Why am I bringing this up now? Well, the one benefit of the production issues for Leviathans is we continue to thoroughly kick it to make sure it’s as good as we can make it, and we’ve slowly uncovered what appears to be an issue…smaller ships are a tad too hard to destroy, while the biggest ships are at a bit too easy.

Now don’t go thinking the whole game is broken. It’s still solid…and it’s taken a while of playing in a lot of different ways to find this issue (forum members, along with the host of Gen Con demoes and a new team of volunteers, really provided the fantastic feedback to bring this into focus). So I’ve been discussing with a core set of playtesters some ways to address this, after which I’ll send to the full playtest list to see if the patch works.

However, working on the patch itself has been a fascinating exercise in finding how robust the system is. Because it’s a subtle set of tweaks. Can you make those tweaks and maintain all the current “look and roll dice” mechanics that help define the game? Or do you have to tear the game back down slightly and rebuild? Obviously I’ll do anything required to make a game better (even if part of me wants to yell “but it’s done!!!”) and if I have to tear the top end down slightly and re-build, I will…

…but the game designer in me is hoping that no rebuilding will be required. That instead the patch we’re zeroing in on will provide that seamless fit I described above, leaving everyone feeling as they’re tossing dice in a future game that the additional mechanic or two were always meant to be in the game. Because it means the system is as robust as I was trying to make it from the very beginning.

We’ll just have to wait and see….

See ya next duty shift!

Randall

More Exposure for Leviathans

I was interviewed 8 or 10 times at Gen Con…but by far this was the best interview related to Leviathans.

Click here for the BeastsofWar.com interview podcast.

Unlike most of the interviews that wanted to know everything that Catalyst is doing, BeastsofWar.com is dedicated to miniatures play, so the first segment of the interview I cover BattleTech and then I was able to really delve into Leviathans. For those that have been following my blogs since the site launched there’s very little in here you won’t already know…but for those just coming on board it’s a great pitch for all we’re trying to do with Leviathans.

And of course having more such high profile gaming sites like this covering Leviathans is fantastic. Thanks to Adam for playing a demo and for the interview!

Also, wanted to quickly give a shout out, again, to Laura Perry, Ben Clark, Robert DeHoff and the rest of those that demoed Leviathans like crazy at this year’s Gen Con (if you’ve not yet seen it, check out the full Catalyst Gen Con wrap-up details here).

Finally, thought I’d share one of my favorite moments of the entire show. It was late Saturday as I happen to turn around after speaking with someone in the sales area and I caught Laura running a demo for 5 people, 3 of which were boys that were easily 13 years or younger.

It was an arresting moment that I stared at for long minutes…

With so much talk over the years of our hobby being outmoded and dying against the backdrop of the cutting edge electronic gaming going on, seeing 3 boys of that age thoroughly engaged for almost an hour was brilliant. A brief glimpse at the hope of what I’ve been saying for a while…figure out how to get cool games (whether board games, RPGs, miniatures, and so on) in front of kids, and they’ll get sucked in.

The fact that it was Leviathans, of course, just made it all that much cooler!

See ya next duty shift!

Randall

Back From Gen Con, Coalling Underway

Out of the gate, wanted to apologize. Been long, long weeks since an update and I didn’t get The Channel Campaign released before heading to Gen Con. You’d think after all these years I’d know that the month of July is simply vaporized under an onslaught of the endless things needed to get a company to Gen Con in a normal year…much less in a year that’s been anything but normal.

However, with Gen Con out of the way and a nice slice of emails and updates mostly behind me, I’ve got some bandwidth finally on my plate to start posting regular updates here again. And most importantly, Catalyst has some band width to start concentrating on figuring out the final production issues on Leviathans and figuring out when we might get it out the door.

One of the best parts of Gen Con is that while it’s soul-wrenchingly tired-making…it’s also incredibly energizing. Not only did we run Leviathans demos in the booth (as we did last year) but we expanded and ran them in the miniatures hall as well. And we ran so many demos on the first day, Thursday, that we ran out and printed more maps and counters so we could demo two and even three games simultaneously. (I also did several webcast interviews and talked about Leviathans…once those have been posted, I’ll track them down and link them here.)

That type of energy and excitement is infectious and I’m jonesing to jump back into the development of The Channel Campaign and get that released via PDF in the next few weeks, while also finalizing some of the last of the rules for the Captain’s Manual, as we keep hammering on the production side.

So while it may have appeared the skies were calm and no columns of smoke were to be had for long weeks, count that as a rest-up between missions…looking forwarding to rolling some Breach Rolls myself in the near future.

See ya next duty shift!

Randall

What Prices Paid_Epilogue

by Jim Rapkins

The Black Swan

23 September 1909

The unnamed man moved quickly between the tables and chairs in the ramshackle bar, a well known hangout for the officers and crew of the French gany fleet. This job made very little sense, but the pay was good, and at the end of the day, a little more smuggling wouldn’t hurt anyone. Smoke hung in the air, assaulting his nostrils in a pleasant onslaught. It reminded him of his native Marseilles, though the people there were more friendly than these jumped-up sailors. That was true sailing, on the open ocean. He sat down at an unoccupied table and gestured to the serving girl for a cognac. The pay was very good.

Five or so minutes later, one of the officers moved past him, gesturing at the unoccupied chair opposite him. “Is this seat taken, monsieur?”

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Game Development Continued…

Developing rules can be so odd at times. While cool, innovative game mechanics often set a rules set apart, the difference between a game system played and one not played often can simply be how easy the rules were to learn and how easy they are to use.

No matter the rules I’ve written for a host of different games (or the hundreds of games I’ve read and played over the years), I like rules that follow these thumbnail criteria (in no particular order):

1. Simple

2. Self-contained.

3. Standardized format.

4. Thorough.

5. Points to relevant material (if appropriate).

6. Plug and play.

7. Examples, examples, examples.

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What Prices Paid_Part 8

by Jim Rapkins

The Admiralty

23 July 1909

“Congratulations, Spence, I’ll be over there to congratulate you properly later on. Have some Bruichcladdich waiting for me.” Devon Cavendish replaced the receiver in the cradle, glad to be rid of the distraction. Of course Spencer was the new Prime Minister, the Opposition was in shambles, and Fisher had shot himself in the foot by refusing to offer up his protégé as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of public scrutiny. Asquith had been…persuaded…to remain on the sidelines, and Lloyd George…well, no one wanted a Welsh PM. But the election was won, and the Party well and truly in control.

Which brought his attention back to the matter at hand. He finished pouring the drinks the phone call had interrupted, placing them on the silver tray himself before turning to serve the three men seated in the small office. Large, brusque men who were ill suited to the small confines of the spartanly appointed room. All three wore the uniform of the Sky Fleet, though some wore it more easily than others. Cavendish again mentally berated the short-sightedness of the Admiralty that had left him with little choice other than to approach such men as this. At least in the Borderers, there had been men of class. He doubted these men even knew what Bruichcladdich was, let alone what it tasted like. They were impressed enough with the Glenfiddich he’d just poured each of them.

“What exactly are we here for, milord?”

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The Channel Campaign Concept

Months ago John Haward turned over a “The Channel Campaign” document, a companion to the Lieutenant’s Manual rules. I’m ashamed to admit it’s only recently that I’ve really been able to dig into it…

It’s an interesting combination of “campaign rules”, but wedded to the specific concept of the British and French fleets brinkmanship across the channel. Even better, the concept (I believe) has the legs to be tweaked and used across a variety of theaters around the world; if I remember right John told me he’s already got a larger, more aggressive concept for an African campaign.

While the printed document is bleeding red all over the place…most of it is actually more format related, with the majority of his concepts very strong and I think very doable. Course it needs to really be banged on and playtested…then again perhaps I’ll whip it into form and shape, let Matt do a nice layout of it and I’ll toss it out for an open playtest.

After all, while it was very useful to have the community bang on the Point System, on something like The Channel Campaign, even beyond the balance of the game mechanics, it would be very useful to have the community let me know what type of information (and presented in what form) they’d like to have in these “campaigns” to enhance their game playing experiences. In otherwords, was it fun and if it wasn’t, what about it needs to be tweaked to make it fun.

Yeah…liking that concept more and more.

See ya next duty shift!

Randall

Point System Open Alpha Test Closed

The Point System Open Alpha Test is closed.

I’d like to thank everyone that participated and made comments in the appropriate forum thread.

There’s a lot of great info in there and I’ve got some of my “best crew” already digging deeply into everyone’s comments. We’ll then try and find the most common themes/elements that have emerged as trouble spots and then we’ll take hammer and chisel and go to town and adjust as appropriate.

Once again, thanks to the growing community for your help in making the game the best it can be!

See ya next duty shift.

Randall

What Prices Paid_Part 7

by Jim Rapkins

Buckingham Palace

13 February 1909

“Goddamn it, John! What were you thinking?!”

Admiral John Jellicoe looked up sharply at his superior’s words. No sooner had the Skagerrak fleet arrived back in England, than he had been whisked off to London to face an inquiry at the Admiralty. That had been remarkably pro forma, with the questions aimed not so much at his handling of the so-called debacle, but Fisher’s role in the exercise. So having his mentor address him in such a way—especially in this place!—was a slight shock to the system.

“Ah, sir, I’m not certain I understand what you mean. You know what happened. The German fleet arrived in much more force than anticipated, and I made the decision to minimize any casualties.” Which was what you told me to do. He left the last unsaid, not sure how it would go down. The other man in the room took a deep puff from his pipe, the blue-grey smoke drifting listlessly towards the domed ceiling of the sitting room.

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