At the end of the last chapter of my game design story, my starship game had been temporarily forgotten because of some neat new toys...
They were these cool little die cast metal tanks with rotating turrets, and they were the perfect size to use with a Battletech map. The only problem was a lack of a game to use these new toys with. But my tank toy owning friend and I were hotshot kid designers! We'd whip something up and start playing in no time.
Yeah, right.
At first we started along a D&D sort of trail. Tanks had armor class, and we started dreaming up different weapon modifiers based on armor type. We thought about borrowing the rules for armor from Centurion (a system where the actual shape of the attacking blast matters). We thought of all kinds of complicated and detailed rules. Then we realized all that stuff was counterproductive for what we were doing.
Instead we decided that tanks rolled a 1d6 to hit. You counted the range to the target, and if the die roll was equal to or greater than the range, you hit. After you hit, each tank had an armor rating depending on what side you hit it on. If you hit the front, it was a 4. If you hit the back it was a 2. You rolled another d6 and if the number rolled was equal to or greater than the armor rating, the target tank was destroyed.
For movement and line of sight rules, we appropriated the ones from Battletech. They were simple enough and served our needs well. The tanks had 4 movement points. There were also the turrets, which we treated as something like torso twists in Battletech, and the nature of the toys allowed us to point the turret to the hexside we wanted it to face.
The end result played simply and speedily. Hell, the fact it worked in play was a novelty to us. Having something which worked set us on the course to wanting more, and it wasn't long until we were noticing some of the tank toys looked cooler than others, and should therefore have better capabilities in the game.
The "command tanks" got one point better armor on all sides and could roll a d8 to hit and damage. It was the snowball which became an avalanche, because not too long after we had rules for helicopters, VTOLs, strafing jets, and infantry.
The final version of the game was a massive dicefest, and each game tended to go the same way: an air war followed by the dogfighting victor trouncing the other player in the ground battles. But it was fun. It was ours. And it was easy for us to add stuff to.
I had a falling out with my fellow tank game creator over unrelated issues. He took his toys and I never really associated with him again. However, it wasn't long before the idea we had deveoped caught my eye for my starship game. Maybe, since the tank game was so easy to handle and played so well, it was what I needed for a game of remote control starships blasting the crap out of each other.
So, I sat down with my Star Trek III: Starship Combat Roleplaying Game mapsheet and counters and began brainstorming again.
Tags: Design Homebrew Tanks Miniatures
