Mission and vision
From WargameChess
Mission
Free and accessible
- All of the game's rules are posted here on the site free, so you can read them as long you have internet access. As the game's rules have a limited need for images, the site should require very little cellular data usage. Thanks to the collaborators at MediaWiki, this site should be stable and usable for both desktop and phone web browsers.
- If your internet access is limited, each rule page on the site here has a [printable version] button (the exact placement of which depends on which MediaWiki theme you are viewing the site through). We also offer well-formatted PDFs of the rules on our Patreon page (free to subscribers).
- Players are welcome to use miniatures from other tabletop games in Wargame Chess, though at its most basic form the game works with pieces that have been around for years and are available in most parts of the world. In fact, you may already own some, most, or all of what's required to play this game!
- Right now, the game's rules are only available in English, though we are hoping to offer it in other languages in the future. We are also looking at eventually offering our PDFs in type fonts that are easier to read for those with Dyslexia or other reading difficulties.
Designed to avoid rule bloat, scale creep, and power creep
- All of our factions were designed to fit on a single page of paper - as seen in the PDFs found on our Patreon (we are working on refining the [printable version] on this site so they too can fit on one page). So while there were many more piece options we wanted to fit in each faction, we cut the selection down to deliver a cohesive and concise gaming experience. These cut options may come to the game in a future expansion, in some form...
- At its completion, this game will feature 40 factions that are tested and designed for casual and competitive play (you can see the list of them here). While we do have plans for other game modules, and special factions designed by members of the internal testing group, these will have no influence or impact on the core game.
- Even though the faction expansions will release at different times, all 40 factions were written during the same stage of development. With all planned factions in the same design space, we were able to: observe the ways any particular one could interact with another; eliminating bad mechanics; improve existing ones; and adjust game rules to allow logical, interesting, and enjoyable interactions.
- As this game is free to play and enjoy, we have no monetary incentive to make newly released factions more powerful than established ones.
- Most of the game's factions were designed with a "top-down" approach - where the ideas and themes that make up their identity dictate what rules they have, and how they impact the game[1]. We largely used this method as it leads to games with interesting interactions that reward clever play, and make it less of a raw numbers competition.
Vision
Maintain an engaging gameplay experience
- Each faction expansion release will, no doubt, bring about changes in the established gameplay ecosystem. We test all 40 factions internally
- ↑ We do have a few factions that were designed the opposite way ("bottom-up", where mechanic ideas were built up to form the identity of a faction, even their lore).