I’ve never designed a commercial game before and my layman’s view of game design is that once you have made the ‘perfect’ rule set you need to simplify it in order to make it playable and then simplify it once again to make it commercial. The easiest way for Mongoose to proceed would be to pursue the skirmish idea with the themed gangs/judges etc.
Personally, however, I think that Dredd is different in that the focus is law enforcement and cannot think of any other game where that is the case. Because of that Dredd lends itself to role-playing but makes a miniatures game quite difficult to accomplish – how do you gamerize that Dredd story when he single handedly busts a 3 perp bank raid? You can do it but the game would be pretty short and one sided. This brings me back to what the game needs to cover. We all agree it needs to make the Judges playable as a faction and enable the full MC1 variety of oddballs and freaks to be played. Role-playing should be kept to a minimum (this is a miniatures game) and the battles need to be scalable letting both players have access to the full range of miniatures and weaponry.
The idea suggested here would be that the Judge player plays a team of judges and the gang player any one of the various gang factions suggested above. Dependant on what gang the non-Judge player chooses the campaign revolves around a particular goal, with the gang player earning credits (for example money, or goods to be smuggled or parts of a bomb) and the Judge player earning investigation credits enabling him to bust the gang.
If the gang player is of a sadistic, megalomaniac ilk and chooses Total War then the aim of the game would be for him to create and explode a nuke and the judges would need to stop them. Total War would need to raise finance to purchase the relevant bits of the bomb and would need to resort to bullying the local gang off its patch or to the occasional bank raid. Once they have the relevant funds they can purchase the bomb parts, smuggle them into the city and eventually be able to plant the bomb in a relevant target.
The Judges will be tasked with the everyday job of keeping law and order as well as ensuring that the bomb doesn’t go off.
Each campaign turn the Judge player allocates his judges into one of 3 categories – Patrol, Investigation and Support. The gang player, dependant on their faction will assign their members to various tasks – maybe putting 6 of them on the protection racket (to earn creds), 4 of them assigned to rob a business (to earn creds/ get a bomb part) and 3 of them to spread dissent on the local Juves/Citidef etc (to distract the judges)
Its important to remember that the Judges, by the nature of law enforcement, will be reactive - the game for them will focus on their trying to get ahead of the curve by getting enough leads/evidence to take the initative (so a good reason to have enough Psi and Tec judges)
Each campaign turn the Judge player has a chance to interrupt the gangs player – for example a Judge on Patrol might be able to interrupt the protection rackets operation. He can then call on any Judges who are in Support mode to help him – they arrive at random times during the combat. Judges in Investigation mode are able to get investigation credits by interrogating captured perps, forensic examination of the crime scene and the like.
The 2 players could interact in a number of ways, for example:
Scenario 1: Total war make a play on another gangs turf. The Judge player plays a generic gang and a battle is fought. Total War win – money from protection rackets etc goes into their coffers. Judge player wins – Total War are set back a notch and probably suffer casualties.
Scenario 2: The Total War player conducts a bank raid. The Judge player plays the security forces and if any Judges are in Support Mode they can be called in.
Scenario 3: The Judge player having picked up enough investigation credits has a breakthrough and identifies a Total War supplier, maybe the Cursed Earth mutant gang they are using to smuggle bomb parts in - Judge player fights against the Mutant gang.
Scenario 4: A random action (modified by any dissent Total War has managed to spread) forces the Judges to bust a Juve gang. Gives the Total War player a chance to inflict some damage without risking his own resources.
Scenario 5: Total War have built up enough dissent credits with the local Citidef and get them to initiate action against the neighbouring block – Block War with Block A + Total War on one side, Block B + Judges on another.
Total War is just an example but each gang would be able to have specific campaign objectives and that I think would really get the feel of Megacity 1 across to the players. It would also let Mongoose release gang specifc supplements suggested by others - i.e. you buy the game box with a generic gang and campaign and then you can buy more specifc gang boxes with character and campaign info (and miniatures?) included.
Personally, however, I think that Dredd is different in that the focus is law enforcement and cannot think of any other game where that is the case. Because of that Dredd lends itself to role-playing but makes a miniatures game quite difficult to accomplish – how do you gamerize that Dredd story when he single handedly busts a 3 perp bank raid? You can do it but the game would be pretty short and one sided. This brings me back to what the game needs to cover. We all agree it needs to make the Judges playable as a faction and enable the full MC1 variety of oddballs and freaks to be played. Role-playing should be kept to a minimum (this is a miniatures game) and the battles need to be scalable letting both players have access to the full range of miniatures and weaponry.
The idea suggested here would be that the Judge player plays a team of judges and the gang player any one of the various gang factions suggested above. Dependant on what gang the non-Judge player chooses the campaign revolves around a particular goal, with the gang player earning credits (for example money, or goods to be smuggled or parts of a bomb) and the Judge player earning investigation credits enabling him to bust the gang.
If the gang player is of a sadistic, megalomaniac ilk and chooses Total War then the aim of the game would be for him to create and explode a nuke and the judges would need to stop them. Total War would need to raise finance to purchase the relevant bits of the bomb and would need to resort to bullying the local gang off its patch or to the occasional bank raid. Once they have the relevant funds they can purchase the bomb parts, smuggle them into the city and eventually be able to plant the bomb in a relevant target.
The Judges will be tasked with the everyday job of keeping law and order as well as ensuring that the bomb doesn’t go off.
Each campaign turn the Judge player allocates his judges into one of 3 categories – Patrol, Investigation and Support. The gang player, dependant on their faction will assign their members to various tasks – maybe putting 6 of them on the protection racket (to earn creds), 4 of them assigned to rob a business (to earn creds/ get a bomb part) and 3 of them to spread dissent on the local Juves/Citidef etc (to distract the judges)
Its important to remember that the Judges, by the nature of law enforcement, will be reactive - the game for them will focus on their trying to get ahead of the curve by getting enough leads/evidence to take the initative (so a good reason to have enough Psi and Tec judges)
Each campaign turn the Judge player has a chance to interrupt the gangs player – for example a Judge on Patrol might be able to interrupt the protection rackets operation. He can then call on any Judges who are in Support mode to help him – they arrive at random times during the combat. Judges in Investigation mode are able to get investigation credits by interrogating captured perps, forensic examination of the crime scene and the like.
The 2 players could interact in a number of ways, for example:
Scenario 1: Total war make a play on another gangs turf. The Judge player plays a generic gang and a battle is fought. Total War win – money from protection rackets etc goes into their coffers. Judge player wins – Total War are set back a notch and probably suffer casualties.
Scenario 2: The Total War player conducts a bank raid. The Judge player plays the security forces and if any Judges are in Support Mode they can be called in.
Scenario 3: The Judge player having picked up enough investigation credits has a breakthrough and identifies a Total War supplier, maybe the Cursed Earth mutant gang they are using to smuggle bomb parts in - Judge player fights against the Mutant gang.
Scenario 4: A random action (modified by any dissent Total War has managed to spread) forces the Judges to bust a Juve gang. Gives the Total War player a chance to inflict some damage without risking his own resources.
Scenario 5: Total War have built up enough dissent credits with the local Citidef and get them to initiate action against the neighbouring block – Block War with Block A + Total War on one side, Block B + Judges on another.
Total War is just an example but each gang would be able to have specific campaign objectives and that I think would really get the feel of Megacity 1 across to the players. It would also let Mongoose release gang specifc supplements suggested by others - i.e. you buy the game box with a generic gang and campaign and then you can buy more specifc gang boxes with character and campaign info (and miniatures?) included.
