Saturday, August 18, 2012

Riot Squad Saturdays?

If you read my post from Thursday, you know that some years ago I started work on a tabletop wargame called Riot Squad. What I failed to mention in that post was the game was conceived as simply "Riot", in reaction to the Rodney King riots of 1992. Since then, we've seen the WTO Seattle protests (1999), the Italy G8 riots (2008), the recent riots-turned-revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, plus plenty of other protests and uprisings (Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, et al.) It seems that as long as there are people to stand up for what they believe, there will be factions that seek to "put them back in their place."

The last decade has also seen the revolution of print-on-demand solutions, and that means producing low-quantity/high-quality copies of the game are only a click away. So... what I've decided to do (based on a prodding comment from Black Vulmea Mike over at Really Bad Eggs), is use Saturdays (a day where my wife often sleeps in, and I am up early with nothing better than Law & Order re-runs to keep me company) to continue work on Riot Squad. I figure if S&T can crank out 1 a month, a dozen-or-so Saturdays should get me fairly close to complete.

Today's post--the outline of the game rules (the skeleton upon which the game's meat shall be built.) Again, as I mentioned Thursday, wargames don't exactly re-invent the rules of gaming, so here's my thinking (guided by the sample wargame from The Complete Book of Wargames).

I. COMPONENTS
A. Mapboard + Explanation
B. Counters + Explanation
C. Dice & Combat* Tables + Examples
II. HOW TO PLAY THE GAME
A. Setting Up the Game (assumes base scenario)
B. Sequence of Play
C. Zones of Control
D. Movement
E. Combat
IV. OPTIONAL RULES
III. EXAMPLES OF PLAY
III. ALTERNATE SCENARIOS

*In some cases, I use the term "combat" loosely (e.g., unarmed protestors in fascist countries) and, in some cases, quite literally (e.g., gang wars).

To be continued... next Saturday.

For image attribution information, click here.

2 comments:

  1. Jim Dunnigan made a game a while back called Up Against The Wall Motherf**ker. He mentions it briefly in both editions of his book The Complete Wargames handbook. I've also seen a game that modeled the Seattle riots in the 90's. Good luck, I'm going to watch your progress!

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