The place where it started was the combination of Opticamo and Akosha (funny how those are still there), because I never particularly felt that the scenarios really presented covert missions, which was what those elements excel at (at least, in theory).
Thing is, zombies aren't very concerned with sneaky, and fast aliens are faster than fast humans, so that left me with humans as the other side. With the rebellious Firebrand faction quite some ways off, the limited edition minis also not here yet, and not wanting to start from scratch, the clear option was other Vanguard.
The scenario pretty quickly developed a Goldeneye*-style "avoid the guards" situation, while I still wanted the player controlling the grunts to have some control and not just execute the AI.
*that would be the N64 version I grew up with, not any of these newfangled remakes or other FPS's
The rules came together pretty quickly, and then it just became a matter of testing balance. by far, the number of guards was the trickiest part. I tested this somewhere over a dozen times during fine tuning, then another few once I was set on the rules, to be sure they worked. (For the record, it's difficult but possible for Akosha to pull off a win.)
This takes place some time before Battle for Alabaster. It was obviously designed for Akosha, but I've tried it with other combinations and it worked pretty well with them, too.
My talented wife took some time off from her other writing (job/projects), to write the fiction for this, which turned out quite a bit less straightforward than I expected (not that I should have expected anything else), though predictably cool.
Oh, and, of course the graphics are all SMV's property except for my logo, and the scenario design is © me, while the writing is © Rachel Wirtz. I'm not using this for profit or any such thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment