Michael Hopcroft
Apr 20th, '10, 05:45 PM
A company called Pangenre (also a PDF RPG publisher) has put something on DriveThru that I did not expect but now want -- a complete grand strategy game of World War II (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=80549)that you download and assemble before play. This isn't a computer game -- it's a set of PDF files you print out and assemble to get your maps and counters.
There have been other board wargames published in this way (referred to as DTP) but I have yet to see one on this scale. There are four two-sided counter sheets and at least 27 8.5'x11" map pages that you assemble into maps of Europe, the Pacific Theater, and a strategic map of the world as a whole. It's about as big as (but simpler than) the legendary World in Flames, but with fewer counters (it's kind of hard not to have fewer counters than WiF).
The game comes with detailed assembly instructions, including the materials and equipment best suited for the task, but along with the $10 purchase prices comes a pretty heavy investment in materials to make the game playable.
My recent experience with board wargames is that they're too expensive for me to buy. A typical example, if there is such a thing these days, runs anywhere from sixty to a hundred dollars or, in special cases, even more. If it's any consolation, production values have improved substantially over when I collected them. But it's still as expensive a hobby as RPGs. I suspect the Pangenre people may be onto something here in terms of marketing -- dirt-cheap to buy the game, but the bulk of the expense of publication is borne directly by the end user.
There have been other board wargames published in this way (referred to as DTP) but I have yet to see one on this scale. There are four two-sided counter sheets and at least 27 8.5'x11" map pages that you assemble into maps of Europe, the Pacific Theater, and a strategic map of the world as a whole. It's about as big as (but simpler than) the legendary World in Flames, but with fewer counters (it's kind of hard not to have fewer counters than WiF).
The game comes with detailed assembly instructions, including the materials and equipment best suited for the task, but along with the $10 purchase prices comes a pretty heavy investment in materials to make the game playable.
My recent experience with board wargames is that they're too expensive for me to buy. A typical example, if there is such a thing these days, runs anywhere from sixty to a hundred dollars or, in special cases, even more. If it's any consolation, production values have improved substantially over when I collected them. But it's still as expensive a hobby as RPGs. I suspect the Pangenre people may be onto something here in terms of marketing -- dirt-cheap to buy the game, but the bulk of the expense of publication is borne directly by the end user.