Want to Design Wargames? Rick Priestley Shows you How!

Rick Priestly and John Lambshead have a new book for everyone who has what it takes to make it in the game design business!

If you’re like me you’ve spent a LOT of time around your fellow gamers.  How many thousands of these conversations have you had:

“This game is stupid – I can’t believe the idiot designers did this!  I can make a game ten times as good with my eye’s closed!”

Normally 1 year later, your friend is still sitting in a folding chair at your local FLGS or gaming club bitching about the latest game he’s playing.  There is a reason for that.  It’s easy to pick apart and complain that a particular unit or rule is over or underpowered in a major game system. It’s quite a different thing to clean slate a tabletop ruleset that is both attractive, easy to learn, innovative, and can survive in the highly competitive tabletop miniatures industry.

Luckily a couple of guys including the father of the most successful tabletop wargame ever (Warhammer 40,000) are here to give you a helping hand.  I present:

Tabletop Wargames: A Designers’ and Writers’ Handbook $24.95 (Amazon)

“Unlike chess or backgammon, tabletop wargames have no single, accepted set of rules. Most wargamers at some point have had a go at writing their own rules and virtually all have modified commercially available sets to better suit their idea of the ideal game or to adapt favorite rules to a different historical period or setting. But many who try soon find that writing a coherent set of rules is harder than they thought, while tweaking one part of an existing set can often have unforeseen consequences for the game as a whole. Now, at last, help is at hand.

Veteran gamer and rules writer John Lambshead has teamed up with the legendary Rick Priestley, creator of Games Workshop’s phenomenally successful Warhammer system, to create this essential guide for any would-be wargame designer or tinkerer. Rick and John give excellent advice on deciding what you want from a wargame and balancing ‘realism’ (be it in a historical or a fantasy/sci-fi context) with playability. They discuss the relative merits of various mechanisms (cards, dice, tables) then discuss how to select and combine these to handle the various essential game elements of turn sequences, combat resolution, morale etc to create a rewarding and playable game that suits your tastes and requirements”

Product Details

Author: Larry Vela

Dad, Gamer, Publisher, Pilot, Texan. All games all the time since junior-high. I started BoLS Interactive in 2006. I’m a lifelong tabletop & RPG gaming enthusiast, and internet publisher working to entertain and inform my readers every day. I've been playing RPGs and Tabletop Games since the 1970s. I'm been playing and covering Warhammer and Warhammer 40K for over 35 years.