Observations of the Fox

I'm determined to get a printed version of FUBAR ready before I go back to University, I'm also running a revised version of "Dead and FUBAR'd" at EttinCon at the end of the month. that means I need to start doing some layout work and it also means I need to finalise the text. The original version of FUBAR was deliberately experimental in it's page layout, and I feel the new version needs to be just as artistic, but perhaps a bit more user friendly. There are certain elements of the rules that people have indicated elusive over the years, so I'll have to make sure they are clearly explained with plenty of sidebars and play examples. Luckily that stuff is written up. The new version of the rules will probably blow out from 50 pages to 96, but that's mostly due to extra explanatory text and the inclusion of a setting. I did a series a few years ago where I looked at games I liked, then analysed them based on where certain game elements were place...

(I had written up a post here that's been lost to the aether, now I'll try to reconstruct it from memory) Nothing is created from a void, there is inspiration everywhere. There have been plenty of examples on the internet where game designers have failed to acknowledge the sources inspiring their work. I'd rather look at those inspirations, show people where ideas came from, perhaps to learn from other people's insight, maybe to show other game designers how they can draw similar inspiration, or maybe just because it's polite and the right thing to do. I can think of four distinct sources of inspiration that have blended together, there are probably a whole heap more, but these are the main ones. Firstly, I'm thinking of the combat system in Warhammer Fantasy Battle (or more specifically "Mordheim"). In this system, a combatant rolls a number of dice equal to their "attack" score, if fighting an opponent with equal skill ("We...