Less on rules more about fun

There are two ways to go about creating a miniature skirmish game.

One is to provide a rulebook with tonnes of background, and a ruleset filled with detail to make sure every possible scenario on a battlefield is worked out in the detail.

Such efforts have lots of merit, but they are not easily picked up and played.

And sometime quick and light fills the bill better.

So there are games which keep the basic rules rather straight forward, and let you get into the game.

Across the Dead Earth fits the latter category wonderfully.

A Post Apocalyptic Skirmish Wargame: Three generations on from the Last War, pockets of humanity roam the ghost towns and ruins of civilisation, looting and fighting for profit, glory and their very lives Across the Dead Earth. Assemble your gang of deadly warriors and embark on campaigns to upgrade your characters and their equipment from game to game, building a persistent and truly personalized Gang, honed to your style of play, destroying your enemies as you go and carving out your survival Across the Dead Earth, detailed the back cover of the rulebook.

In this case, the man behind the game, Rich Chappell has kept everything pared down and ready to go.

The rulebook comes in at under 90-pages, and that means you get into the game quick.

Yet, there is a lot of potential in those 90-pages.

To start there are basic rules, but more importantly campaign rules as well.

The latter is always a bonus as you get to play your ‘gang’ over a series of gaming sessions, and watch them gain skills and abilities. A gang played well over a longer period of time becomes a lot more interesting and personal to the gamer than just a generic quick encounter gang.

The same ‘hit the ground running’ idea of the slim rulebook carries into the miniatures from Across the Dead Earth. Each one is a single cast piece, including the base. It was a rare pleasure to open up a ‘gang’ of minis and not have to reach for the exacto knife and glue to put them together.

It is clear Chappell wants people playing the game, understanding he can always add layers in the future as the game grows.

In correspondence with Chappell, I learned that like most designers, he grew up with an interest in games, which makes me wonder why my son has not yet created a game, hmmmm.

“I have enjoyed playing miniatures games ever since I was 11 years old and I had often written my own rules for games,” he said. “I enjoyed this set in particular so I decided to try and write it in a way others could use and enjoy as well. A publisher did approach me with interest early on, but they eventually passed, although encouraged me to continue with the project. Until that point I had never considered that we might design and manufacture the miniatures for the game – that came about when my brother encouraged me further and joined me to form Dead Earth Games. We looked into it and thought we could at the very least give it a shot.”

Chappell built the game with the ideas of table play coming first, and the post apocalyptic world added later.

“The basic mechanics came first,” he said. “They evolved from a system I had played with friends in other settings. The first version was called The Rifles and was set in the Napoleonic wars, but unlike most other Napoleonic wargames used only a handful of figures and each represented real characters rather than just soldiers. It was inspired much more by fiction than history.

“I wanted to broaden the possibilities in terms of weapons, classes and characters, and so decided I needed a completely fictional world to set the new version in. It was a comic book series, The Last Man, I think that first got me thinking about setting the game post-apocalypse.”

Of course creating a world, even one of fantasy has its hurdles.

“The greatest challenge was, and continues to be, thinking of every possibility that the imaginations of gamers all over the world can think of,” said Chappell. “I get questions all the time because, even though we play tested the game extensively, someone will always think of something we didn’t account for.

“There’s a supplement coming soon which provides background and rules for setting the game in North America, adds vehicle rules and the rules for the zombie like ‘Sollus’,” said Chappell. “Alongside this will be a collection of short fiction. After that we have some more gangs coming out and I am beginning to think about a further supplement. We’ve just released our first e-zine which is downloadable for free from our store page, and there will be campaign supplements coming! Check it out at www.deadearth.co.uk