Friday 15 March 2013

Oldhammer Scenarios: Could we create our own McDeath, Orc's Drift or Lichemaster?



Would it be possible for the Oldhammer Community to create a Scenario Pack like this?

I am going to ask a question.

Some of you may say that it is far too early to do so, but I am going to ask it just the same.

What do we do after the Foundry Oldhammer Event this summer?

I suppose an immediate answer could be, depending on the success of the weekender, to plan another even for 2014 and such a notion would have my full support.

But I feel that there will be a real 'window of opportunity' to sieze after our weekender is done and dusted. After all, its our weekend and is for us but it will attract the attention of gamers and collectors outside of the Oldhammer Movement. This attention will need to be built upon if we are going to grow the community.

Erny, and a few other stallwarts of the Old School, have mentioned in the past that if we are going to to anything, we really need about producing new material for Warhammer Third Edition. Such a fan based approach has been very successful among other groups of fans and enthusiasts, the homebrew 'Warhammer Armies' project being, perhaps, the most successful. These passionate gamers have invested a great deal of time creating modern warhammer army books for long neglected areas of the Warhammer game; most notably books for Araby, Estalia and Nippon. They have even gone as far as to comissioning their own art for these books, so that they match the feel of 7th and 8th edition publications.

I propose we do the same.

Throughout the Third Edition era publications there are tantalising hints at what could have happened. There are mentions of un-released, or more likely never begun, supplements for Lustria and beyond. I am proposing that we begin work on designing, play testing and releasing, in a free and accessible manner, these 'missing' supplements in glorious Third Edition style.

This then raises the question; how do we do it? I have had a few thoughts about this and wish to share them with you.

Here goes...

1) Expand the detail of some of the lesser known lists in Warhammer Armies so that they can be fielded as more detailed forces. This would include special rules, spells and magical items. Even new units. We could produce a shield and banner design page and perhaps a selection of painted miniatures (with a mugshot of the collector to boot!)

This would certainly be the easiest thing to do.

2) Create a full scale article or series of articles, such as the Magnificant Svenn, that provides the gamer with a battle to collect forces for and a scenario to fight. Such a game could easiliy be accomodated within the existing ranges and the collections we already have.

3) Produce a full scale 'Scenario Pack' in the style of Orc's Drift or McDeath complete with a campaign of scenarios, background, maps, artwork and cardboard cut out buildings. This pack would attempt to expand the background of Warhammer Third Edition's game world by exploring a new part of the Warhammer World in the style of 1980s GW. So expect a lot of black and white illustrations, crazy characters, a strong emphahsis on narrative and GM led battles.

4) The same as 3, but we work togther to produce the models, scenery, wargames table and resources and take the game on 'The Road' - perhaps running it as a demonstration event, or better still, a participation game at one of the major wargaming shows around, further expanding the Oldhammer Ethos and having a jolly good laugh at the same time!

If you are anything like me, you are going to be thinking about option 3 and 4, aren't you?

I'll be back a little later to explain to you what I think would make a good Scenario Pack but in the meantime...

Thoughts and opinions about this please!

Who would be up for it?


10 comments:

  1. I would be in for the win. I don't have much else to offer beyond some writing skills and a basic grasp of games design, but hopefully they would help.

    I have spent decades wondering about 'Treacher's Island' which was promised but never realised. Some sort of campaign pack would be amazing.

    "If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to her."

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  2. There's also the option of re-presenting the 3rd Ed. rules (as they are) in a more easily digested format. This might include footnotes where rules are missing and the provision of "suggested good ideas" as suggested by the community. This might ease the learning curve of Oldhammer for new people coming into the hobby.

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  3. This is very intriguing...particularly following on the idea discussed on the Forum about a full fledged 3rd ed Chaos Dwarfs List...which I would love to be involved in the production of.

    Perhaps a list of reasonable topics is a good place to start?

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  4. I would be all over offering my services to a road show may be starting with Salute next year. I am a decent painter and used to make architectural models for a living. I dare say I could contribute in no small way! I was wondering when someone was going to mention taking Oldhammer to a show and presenting it in a promoting sense. Love it.

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  5. I'd definitely be interested in helping out putting something like this together. Might I suggest that the campaign pack be the focus of the next oldhammer day. A weekend oldhammer campaign with two, three or four 'sides' made up of allies and specially produced army lists. The highlight battle of the campaign could be multi-table or even lots of table pushed together for a massive stramash. I took part in quite a few WAB (which was based on Warhammer) campaigns at WHW and got a good idea of what worked and what didn't as well as how to keep everybody interested and excited.

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  6. Terrific idea, I have a little experience doing typesetting and layouts and would be happy to help in any way that I can. One nagging question that comes to mind—would we have to deal with any sort of legalese to publish new releases for WFB3? I can't imagine GW would be pleased with an independent "retro-clone" of 1980's Warhammer...

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    1. I don't think that writing a scenario for Warhammer is going to get us into any hot water. GW encourage you to do so... If we were stupid enough to start charging people then perhaps. But Oldhammer is a community. We support each other. None of us are here to make money, just friends and happy wargaming memories.

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  7. I'm currently writing, painting miniatures and building scenery for a follow up to the Magnificent Sven scenario that will ultimately interweave the Rigg's Shrine scenario and the Kremlo scenario into one big bundle of Lustrian goodness if that counts!

    Completely original material would be fun too. Producing our own Oldhammer miniatures - even more fun - if financially crippling?

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  8. Thantsants; producing miniatures would the ultimate goal I think! Who's that chap who commissioned his own chaos dwarf minis? He obviously paid for the master sculpt and them went about getting them cast. He's got a blog. With a well written excerpt, some taster artwork and a few current nicely painted minis from 80s Citadel; I wonder how a pitch on Kickstarter would fair!..

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