This is my official plea for help
I've finally admitted to myself that I've hit a bit of a wall, and trying to do waaaaay too much myself, and seeing some of the great ideas others are sharing here has finally inspired me to quit jerking around with the backlog I've accumulated and instead reach out to see if there's anyone interested in collaborating on some game design projects I've had lingering in varying stages of "almost done" to "barely started"
Depending on the project, this is sort of a combination of "second set of eyes" all the way down to "here's an idea, and how could this actually be realized"
1. REBOOTING THE ORIGINAL WARFIGHTER SERIES OF GAMESNOT related to DVG's games of the same name, but actually pre-date them by at least 5 years. It's modern platoon-level combat, but *not* WW3 in '85. It's actually modern in the 2000s, with the exception of one game that was Africa in the 60s, sort of.
Rules are written, with a variety of optional ones to use by scenario. 3 games were published, and a 4th on the drawing board and play tested. (They were reviewed at Armchair General, Wargamer.com, and were the cover story of an issue of Paper Wars) The rules need a serious cleanup and there are probably scenarios that need some better balancing.
2. ANYMINISa 'generic' *very* lightweight minis game that was designed as a 'convention game' where you could grab a miniature figure and based on what's on the fig, you could quickly stat out the figures and play a quick skirmish game with 4-8 figures/player. The basic stat assessments are in place, as are the move/shoot/hit mechanics. What's needed are some balancing/playtesting as well the building out the details for the special abilities, particular for high-tech, magic, gadgets, etc. This one is almost more co-design than developing/playtesting.
3. AN UN-NAMED TILE-LAYING REALM-BUILDERuses some Carc-like mechanics to build the map, but the area-control mechanics are a little more robust. There's also special events, and variable scoring. I've got a pretty solid set of rules and the basic graphics put together, but need someone to really dig into it and tell me where the cracks are.
(truthfully, I probably have about 4-5 different variations on the realm-building theme, from all-card-based to all-dice-based to player mats that are populated by tiles drawn blind from a bag and you choose which side of the tile to put into play, but this is one I think has the most promise/is furthest along)
4. THE OLD "DESIGNING OUT LOUD" PROJECTI was trying this back at GrogNews about 10 years ago – it was an abstract-map wargame that built a heavy ISR component into the game in and players had some doctrinal constraints in which they were forced to operate, and knowing something about the opponent's doctrine, they were able to employ their recon assets to help ID enemy disposition and status. There were also requisite C2 actions on your own part where you couldn't just change your initial plan without paying a cost in your own command points, in which you'd eventually overwhelm your subordinates with too many changes. There was some blind movement/concealment and bluffing, and units had different ratings depending on the type of mission you were executing. Not unlike #2 above, this is "co-design" more than "playtesting" as the concepts are there, but not fleshed out enough to really play anything with it yet.
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Folks that might've seen stuff I'd written about over the years will notice that I've NOT mentioned Orange Crush at all. There's a possibility that an actual publisher is going to pick this one up and run with it, and if so, then there's a real development team to work on it. We'll know more about that after the holidays.
Also, as much as I *REALLY* want to reboot the C2E2 from waaaaaay back when, that's got the potential to be such a large project that I don't want to tackle that until I can get literally any one of these others out the door first.
IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED IN COLLABORATING WITH ME ON ANY OF THESE, PLEASE SEND UP A FLARE.
I've just gotten to the point where I look at everything in front of me and realize there's no chance I can get it all done myself anymore, or even close to done, and I'm wondering if anyone would be interested in pitching in and seeing what comes of it all. Note that it's entirely possible that you get into the design and think "holy crap, this is a mess and there's no good way to untangle it" and that's totally OK. Better to know that it needs to be cut adrift than hang onto it in varying states of "done".
I know this is already too long, so I'll just say 'thanks' for reading this far, and I'll look forward to whatever y'all have to offer
