Project Foy - Cut Profile And Elevation

Now that we have the terrain outline transferred to our game board, we can begin to contour. There is really no right or wrong sequence to do this, but I tend to start with one corner and work my way around. Contouring involves both adding and taking away material in order to go from a flat board to something that looks more realistic. In the case of Project Foy, you will recall that I had pictures from the actual location. If your wife does not happen to be traveling to your game location, the Internet is also a great source for pictures. In either case, viewing the landscape gives you something to compare your finished product to. In almost all cases you are going to need to sacrifice on distances between landmarks or objects. The idea though is to end up with a reasonable representation of the orginal.

Here is an example of a coutoured board. This is not Project Foy, it is one of the sections from our D-Day game, but in any case the details are the same.

You can see from this picture that we use trimmed polystyrene chunks to build elevation. In this case, we also used some natural material (larger rocks) to add character to the board. This picture actually represents the second step of the contour process. Before the poly chunks are trimmed, we rough fit them in place to make sure the profile will be correct. This is a trial-and-error process. Don't be too concerned if you end up forming a piece a couple times. Once a good profile is acheived, the chunks are glued in place. We use "Liquid Nails" for this purpose. You will get best results if you allow the glue to dry over night before moving on.

The picture below is a good example of taking away material. This is from one of our Queen Anne's Revenge game boards. This will end up being the second dungeon level. In a later post, I will show you how we created basements for the buildings on Project Foy.

You can use just about any tool to cut your contour. A dry-wall saw is good for making rough, long cuts. Finer cuts can be made with a Japenese Ryoba saw (you can see one lying in the upper right corner). We use the type with teeth on two sides. This saw with fine or very fine teeth makes a very precise cut. When coarse steel wool is dragged across the poly board, it makes a nice random terrain pattern. This method can be used (after some experimentation) to make the type of natural column you see in the middle of this picture. We have also gone as low tech as a handsaw or butcher knife.

During this process you might end up covering some of your transfer lines, so be sure you recreate any important features at their final elevation. Our next step will be to rough finish the entire game board ....

Project Foy - Planning

In order to get started on a scenario, my preferred medium is a spiral bound graph paper notebook. It is perfect for concept drawings and the graph layout allows you to hold an accurate scale. My goal at this point is to get everything down in one place.

Before starting the terrain pieces, my first step is to determine the Order of Battle (or OrBat) for each army (or armies if more than 2). This is a listing of all the units for each side that are needed for the scenario and their associated vehicles and equipment. Again, the Rapid Fire books are great for this because they include a complete OrBat for each scenario. I usually separate the figures and the vehicles into separate OrBats. I can then easily determine which figures/vehicles I have and which need to be purchased.

The next step is to plan the terrain pieces. I start this process with a checklist. Here are the basic steps:

The first thing I do is create a scale drawing of the terrain design. The terrain design generally comes out of a scenario book. In this case, Project Foy will be played on a 6'x5' game table (4 sections each 2.5'x3'). Based on this size, each graph square on my drawing represents 2.9". It is not necessary to be absolutely precise in the scale drawing because you will want to make adjustments as you are transferring the design any way.

Here is the scale drawing:

From the drawing, I start identifying the co-ordinates of key points. You can see those notations on my drawing. You can identify corners of buildings, intersections of roads, and inflection points on terrain features or roads. Then it is simply a matter of plotting those same points on the game table. All of our boards start with a 2" polystyrene foamboard base. I added dotted lines to the drawing which represent the board edges. This helps to provide perspective as the design is being transferred.

Once I have enough key points plotted, Sharpie markers are used to fill in the design details. It is helpful to use different colors for different features. I use green for wooded areas, blue for water, red for structures, orange for roads, and brown for changes in elevation. At this point, your board design should look roughly the same as your scale drawing. I can rarely resist the temptation to playtest before starting the actual terrain work. This impatience actually serves a purpose. It is easy to spot places where you potentially want better cover or a smoother surface or more obstacles, or just plain something else. This is where you use your experience running games to tweak the final design.

I also note the elevation change for each brown area. We use a combination of 1" and 2" foam for the changes, but more about that in the next post .....

Project Foy

I am going to be starting a series of posts related to a new project the Battlefield Hobbies team is undertaking. At last year's Little Wars convention, Dave Himm from BfH introduced us to the newest Rapid Fire publication, Battle of the Bulge. We have used the Rapid Fire rule set for a number of our convention games and have always had positive feedback. It seemed to all that this would be a unique opportunity for a new set of games. We all voted on which scenarios we would like to build and the Christmas Day battle at Foy Notre-Dame Belgium won out.

Project Foy, as it is being referred to by us internally, will have it's inaugural run at Little Wars 2009. I will need to backtrack a little bit since the game board is approaching 50% completion, but I intend to walk through our game building process from start to finish.

The very, very start is usually a brainstorming session in a hotel lobby at the end of a long day of convention gaming. We try to plan out which conventions we will attend and games for each convention at least a year in advance. A lot of times these are just rough details. Once we all get back home, the creativity starts. Ideally, we are all working on different projects so that we have a variety of games to choose from for each convention. As much as possible, we try to follow the stated theme for each convention. NavCon for instance is naval wargaming, so we choose only nautical themed games.

Right now, Dave is working on a number of Victory at Sea scenarios. John is just putting the finishing touches on our second full fledged rule set, No Quarter Given. He is also developing a plan for packaging the rule set with all the necessary game materials and offering the result for sale. That leaves me to work on Project Foy.

The nice thing about the Rapid Fire books is that they fully detail their scenarios so you can dive right in to building. Research can be kept to a minimum. As chance would have it, my wife was travelling in Europe on business as we started the project and was only about 120km from Foy. I convinced her to drive up on a Saturday and take a bunch of pictures of the town and the surrounding countryside. She even brought back some misc. rocks and things so our Foy game board will have elements of the actual site!

Most of our game boards to this point have been created as 4'x8' sections. This makes the materials easy to find, but really limits us when transporting. Project Foy marks the first time we will try 2.5'x3' sections. This particular board will be 4 sections total (5'x6' in the end). I will spare you the messy process of cutting down full size materials to the smaller sections, so this is where the project really starts ......

Politics In Gaming

As I was browsing The Miniatures Page Convention message board, I came across a post announcing the formation of an HMGS - Deep South chapter. I am not going to cross post the link because after I was done reading it, I was disappointed in myself for wasting the better part of an hour in the excruciating detail of how politics within an organization can poison our gaming environment. In the end, shouldn't these organizations be more focused on what makes a good convention experience for the GM's and players?

From this perspective, I have found that in many cases the mid-size cons get it right. At the larger cons, it is easy to get lost in the shuffle. Smaller cons often do not have the bandwidth to provide the little extra details that make our experience memorable. Our group was recently lucky enough to participate in a great example of convention organization done right - RockCon 2008.

Right from the start, the organizers went out of their way to make us feel welcome. Upon check-in, the badges for all of our team members were ready and waiting, no big deal, all conventions do that - the added touch was that our badges were grouped together next to the general attendee preregs. We were pleasantly surprised to see that the organizers has taken the time to download our logo and display it on the badge. They also put our group name along the bottom of the badge where you normally see a registration type (Fri/Sat/Sun/Weekend). This sounds insignificant, but for a group trying to publicize themselves, it is a much appreciated touch.

After sitting down and looking over the table assignments we found that the organizers had went through the trouble of scheduling all our games for the weekend on only three sets of tables (essentially next to each other). This meant that we could set up in one area and we did not have to lug all of our supplies around the show floor. In fact, after I had been sitting there awhile, the Con Director stopped by and apologized for allowing another game to be scheduled on a set of tables that were adjacent to ours during one of our Saturday sessions! She had hoped to give us additional setup space but could simply not spare the tables.

As the weekend progressed, our games were going off fabulously. Even a game that was mistakenly put in the wrong slot in the PEL was efficiently rescheduled. The reschedule notice that was posted drew a full roster of players (14) for the game. The capper for us though was cake. We were in the middle of our main event on Saturday night when an announcement was made that birthday cake was available to celebrate the xxth anniversary of the Con. A short while later, and without prompting, the Con Director came over to us and asked what flavor cake we would like. She promptly delivered cake to our entire team!

So does it take cake to make a great convention environment? No - but it does take a convention staff that truly appreciates the players and GM's for without whom they would not be in business. A little "cake" goes a long way in this regard.

Rule Set Copyright

I have been doing some checking on copyright laws. The main points I found are:

Publication or registration in the Copyright Office is NOT required to secure copyright. Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is “created” when it is fixed in a copy for the first time. “Copies” are material objects from which a work can be read or visually perceived such as books, manuscripts, or videotape. A copyright is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author’s life plus an additional 70 years after the author’s death.

Publication is no longer the key to obtaining federal copyright as it was under the Copyright Act of 1909. However, publication remains important to copyright owners.
The 1976 Copyright Act defines publication as follows: “Publication” is the distribution of copies of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending.

The use of a copyright notice is no longer required under U. S. law, although it is often beneficial. The use of the copyright notice is the responsibility of the copyright owner and does not require advance permission from, or registration with, the Copyright Office.

The notice for visually perceptible copies should contain all the following three elements:
The symbol © (the letter C in a circle), or the word “Copyright,” or the abbreviation “Copr.”
The year of first publication of the work
The name of the owner of copyright in the work, or an abbreviation by which the name can be recognized, or a generally known alternative designation of the owner
The author or copyright owner may wish to place a copyright notice on any unpublished copies that leave his or her control.

Example: © 2008 John Doe
Example: Unpublished work © 2008 Jane Doe

There is no such thing as an “international copyright” that will automatically protect an author’s writings throughout the entire world. Protection against unauthorized use in a particular country depends, basically, on the national laws of that country.

In general, copyright registration is a legal formality intended to make a public record of the basic facts of a particular copyright. However, registration is not a condition of copyright protection. The copyright law provides several inducements or advantages to encourage copyright owners to make registration. Among these advantages are the following:

Registration establishes a public record of the copyright claim.
Before an infringement suit may be filed in court, registration is necessary for works of U. S. origin.
If made before or within five years of publication, registration will establish prima facie evidence in court of the validity of the copyright and of the facts stated in the certificate.If registration is made within three months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney’s fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions. Otherwise, only an award of actual damages and profits is available to the copyright owner.

Registration may be made at any time within the life of the copyright. Unlike the law before 1978, when a work has been registered in unpublished form, it is not necessary to make another registration when the work becomes published, although the copyright owner may register the published edition, if desired.

Mandatory Deposit requires the owner of copyright to deposit in the U.S. Copyright Office for the use of the Library of Congress two complete copies of the best edition within 3 months after a work is published. The registration process satisfies this requirement.

Full instructions for submitting a registration can be found at http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf

The cost is $35 per submission.

RockCon 2008 After Action Reports

I am interested in your After Action reports from RockCon 2008.

RockCon 2008

We have posted the pictures from our RockCon 2008 games at picasa.com

Check them out!