Modularity and Board Games

[David Johansen]

There's a lot of board games that compartmentalize a portion of the rpg experience at the moment.

This may be because rpgs become too broad with the passage of time or perhaps because rpgs are expansive in nature.

In any event you can buy a space trading game, space exploration game, space empire game, space fighter combat game, space boarding action game, space mass battle game and so on.

Now suppose you produced an rpg that way.  As a series of interactable and interrelated board games.  The core could be a space version of advanced heroquest.  Future modules would add character types and scenarios for the other games that would serve as interactive plugins.  Scouts in the exploration game and so forth.

Now it occurs to me that Traveller actually did a fair bit of this in its inception but never quite recognized it as a way of developing the product line.

As a format I'd probably do booklets with an overleaf of colour counters by using legal sized sheets for the cover.  The booklets could be expanded to boxed sets with a blister or two of miniatures and an extra sheet or two of counters.

What do you guys think?

[arminius]

It sounds cool. I don't know Advanced Heroquest; however I think I've got a sense of what you're talking about. I doesn't sound quite like the normal idea of an RPG but to be successful perhaps it shouldn't be. About the only "RPGness" I would carry over would be the idea of continuity, such that characters could retain their "stuff" and their experience, and modifications to the main boards themselves would also be persistent.

[David Johansen]

Well, sort of, I fully intend it as a full rpg.

It's just with Galactic Adventures and Galaxies in Shadow, the goal has always been a complete game in a single book around a hundred pages.  Everything from orbital bombardment to mass combat to world and alien generation to intricate life paths.

It was largely a result of watching so many games come and go without supporting everything I wanted to be there.  Some even jumped to new editions without getting fully supported so I wanted to do an sf game that was a complete package.

What I'm talking about here is the idea of building a product line piece meal while making sure that the system is internally compatible.  Hopefully this would make the whole thing more digestable and accessible while allowing people to pick up the parts of the game that interest them.

I might do it with Galaxies in Shadow but I'm thinking it's too far down the line into hard core detail freak gaming for the tastes of most people.  The little superhero game I was working on earlier this year might serve.

[Casey777]

Sure. Learn the basics, but not cripple said basic set. Then expand as you go, if you want to. Worked rather well for Classic D&D (esp. BECMI and later RC) or Basic Set / Expert Set -> AD&D. BECMI was intentionally planned this way, the other bridges were not quite so well planned but still worked.

But these days you'd have the people complaining about the cost of the game and how the company is milking its customers instead of just releasing one big core game. Who'll then complain that the game is dying because there's not (enough) supplements coming out for it. Gamers are a picky-ass bunch sometimes.

[arminius]

Okay, I kinda see what you mean. Still, I think most of the modules should be playable with completely fun scenarios that use just the mechanics of that module. In short the space combat game might have character rules but you should be able to largely ignore them and just play combats. Mekton Zeta is kinda like this, for example. The other games might have quick & dirty rules for dealing with space combat where it might intersect their theme, but the text would say "If you want to play out space combats in detail, see XXX." However those games, too, should have enjoyable self-contained scenarios. I think at most one product should be needed to act as a "bridge" that connects all the games together into a full-on RPG.

[David Johansen]

Exactly!  Independantly playable but fully compatible board games with appendices that serves to bridge between them.

[StormBringer]

Check out the Lord of the Rings boardgame.  Even the basic game is modular, as you move from one set of tasks to another across several boards, and there are expansions.