Category: frag

FRAG Update

I’m still writing a miniatures game. In fact all of the actual rules are in place, I just need to finalize the vehicle rules and the stuff that’s going in the ‘expansion pack’. Everything after that is balance tweaks and points cost adjustments.
FRAG is a tabletop battle game that adapts 90s FPS games into a nominally 28mm (actually scale neutral) mass combat system where armies of combatants clash in huge engagements.

Let’s have a look at how the factions of FRAG have turned out:

The Lost Battalion – An army of dimension jumping bad asses founded by the damned survivors of a Hellish incursion. Elite troops, very mobile, devastating heavy weapons.

Hell – The baddies from Doom. More demons inspired by other sources will appear in the expansion. Large hordes, strong characters, lots of spells. Character have a lot of options with bionics, spells, and hellish upgrades.

The Sidhe – A non-human race of mystical adventurers and knightly orders, dedicated to fighting demons. Hard to pin down in melee and able to use a variety of sneaky gadgets (including a Tome of Power analogue).

The New Order – Regular humans that fight alongside super-science and necromancy. They come from an alternate reality where European fascists made a pact with “the endless dark”. Weak regular troops but powerful special options.Nazi zombies are DLC only, sorry.

Earth Defense Force – Earth is backwards and repressive compared to the newly independent colonies, but it outnumbers them millions to one. The EDF are the people in charge of keeping it safe. They need to carefully deploy heavy weapon teams to get the most out of their firepower.

SHAMAN – A rogue AI turned bio-mechanical horror. Mixture of System Shock / Quake 2 influence. Most SHAMAN troops have a chance to self-resurrect. Can take special packs of screaming Kamikaze.

Personalities – Various ‘hero’ characters for use with certain armies.
Various characters based on popular mods like High Noon Drifter and Project MSX, also Shadow Warrior, Duke Nukem 3D, DUSK, Chasm: The Rift, the Doom movie, Doom 4 and Id Software’s D&D campaign.

Currently working on
 – Vehicle Rules
 – Better scenario rules (optional rolling for mission types, not just extermination missions)
 – More equipment (weird rocket weapons for the New Order, better artillery and air strike rules for the EDF)
– More Personalities
– Indoors skirmish system (working prototype)

Stuff being considered
  – Whether to add more elite units to the Sidhe and SHAMAN lists
  – Mini-Factions and sub-factions like Kage Corp (corporate samurai!), the Church of the Old Blood (cultists!), the Colonial Union (the high tech space humans), and a skeleton themed Hell faction
 – Balance issues
 – Rules readability

FRAG Update – Faction Five

FRAG is a tabletop game about mass battles in a universe inspired by 90s FPS games. This update concerns a new faction, development of lore, and a small piece on future plans.

The EDF Are Back
After a short time on the cutting room floor, the Earth Defence Force made it back into FRAG. Development was interesting in that a lot of unique ideas were tried but ultimately taken out. Psychic powers, robot ninjas, freeze rays, an Imperial Guard-esque order system, all things that were taken away. Despite some cyberpunk influences, the EDF remain an army of Poor Bloody Infantry.

This brings the current factions up to five:
 – The Lost Battalion, MIA space marines too angry to die or be corrupted. Doom with some other influences. Their units include marines, drones, power armoured cyborgs and the blood-crazed Slayers.
 – Hell. Represents the standard Doom enemy roster although the cybernetic upgrades and Hell magic lists enable some extra stuff.
 – The Sidhe. An agile faction inspired by Raven Software’s games. Warriors, wizards, giant stone golems, and weapons that summon flesh-eating ghosts.
– The New Order. Evil humans from a universe where Germany, Italy, and Spain won the Second World War. A very varied army where squishy soldiers fight alongside mutants, cyborgs, and necromancers.
– The EDF. The basic humans. Slower, squishier, and less flashy than the Lost Battalion or the New Order, they’re Earth’s soldiers and police with some commando and armoured support. They can take a lot of support equipment and their elite soldiers can receive cybernetic augmentation.

Lore & Game Origins
This game started off as a passion project to keep my mind off work. I added some little story details for each army as I wrote their lists, but these were not intended to be taken seriously. Recently though, I’ve found bits of the story lines coming together nicely.

There’s some lore developing as I add little blurbs to each unit profile, involving an oppressive Earth, rebel space colonies, the rise and fall of different ruling castes of Hell, and the possibility that the New Order aren’t really from a ‘Nazi victory’ alt-Earth…

If any proper lore gets written, it won’t be from the perspective of the marines, but probably some kind of Mulder & Scully duo that pick through everyone else’s mess. Just to highlight the absolute absurdity of a world of 90s FPS tropes.

Future Plans & Cut Content
I’d like to finish up the faction list with a sixth faction I’m currently calling SHAMAN. A robot / cyborg faction with a strong Quake 2 / System Shock 2 vibes, currently named after the evil AI mentioned in Doom Community Chest 4′s rather fantastic Interstellar Sickness / Shaman’s Device maps.

SHAMAN will feature cyborgs resembling SS2′s hybrids / Quake 2′s light troopers, backed up by walking tanks, and some units will have a self-revive mechanic similar to the old “We’ll Be Back” save from Warhammer 40k.

After the cyborg faction is done, the game will enter a new phase of balancing, tweaking and polish.

There are expansion plans, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Maybe work will kick my ass and everything will get put on hold. Maybe nobody else will care about this pet project and I’ll shelve it to try other interests. Maybe I’ll actually be able to play test and publish this thing and it’ll all  work out great. Who knows?

Expansion plans are: unique personalities, vehicle rules, enhanced army options / variant army lists, and an expansion for interior close quarter combat.

Currently, this is envisioned as three supplements: one book with personalities and new units, another with armoured vehicles and advanced rules (air strikes, teleportation, etc), and a third book much later with rules for interior combats / sci-fi dungeon crawls much closer to the source material (as opposed to the large scale open battles currently represented).

Variant lists including Hell cultists, demonic sorcerers, and rebel humans are being considered, plus new equipment and abilities like wacky missile launchers and tunneling enemies. There’s a huge Lovecraft inspired army list mostly finished but cut from the main rules because it became too bloated. I’m currently not sure if the “Children of the Old Ones” will have their own stream-lined list in an expansion or if they’ll be chopped up and split between the other lists.

Maybe it’ll depend on where the lore takes me.

FRAG: Poor Bloody Infantry

I wrote part of a new army list for FRAG, the Earth Defence Force, but ended up shelving it.

Intended to represent the generic soldiers who are inevitably slaughtered before a game begins, they were meant for the sort of people who love playing the Imperial Guard in 40k. The poor bloody infantry, outmatched but determined that the superhuman invaders can piss right off.

At first I wrote some Duke3D inspired gimmick special weapons for them but decided that it didn’t really fit the theme of bloody minded cannon fodder. The second idea, having them plant lots of debuffs on enemies before going in for the kill, also proved to be too much paperwork that just didn’t gel with the fast and fluid nature of the rules. Finally, just giving them a generic equipment list so that anyone can use their generic sci-fi miniatures proved boring and conflicted with the fluff of the space marines (who get way cooler stuff).

Whilst I could have fixed these things, in the end I moved the EDF work into the “Cut Content” section of the rulebook where they’ll probably stay.

I love the idea of basic humans fighting back these superhuman opponents, but if you want basic soldiers struggling to move and fire heavy weapons, just take a New Order army full of basic soldiers.

FRAG: The New Order Lore

I wrote some new fluff for FRAG’s evil human faction.

The New Order
The accessible dimensions are strange and varied places. Rarely, Humans or human-like creatures may live in these dimensions but their societies are alien to the inhabitants of Earth. Colonial scientists believed that there simply were no ‘alternate Earths’. This changed after the discovery of the New Order during the Battle of New Angeles.

When they were first encountered the New Order were believed to be a militant cult taking advantage of Hell’s invasion. The truth was far more sinister. In reality the New Order were humans from an alternate Earth, newly arrived with the goal of subverting and eventually conquering the Earth government.

Little information about the New Order is known for sure. They are believed to come from a parallel Earth where the Second World War was won by an alternate incarnation of the Axis Powers called the European Triad. In this timeline the Triad achieved total dominance using mysterious technological and occult methods. Following on from their total victory over the Allies, the European Triad became the New Order and began to explore alternate dimensions through a mysterious technique involving “the Dark Sun”.

The Dark War
Unlike all other dimensions visited, current information about the New Order’s home world suggests that it is a true ‘alternate Earth’. Investigators have yet to identify a point of divergence, but by the early 1940s the world had started to majorly diverge. An alternate version of the Axis Powers, composed of Germany, Italy, and Spain, uncovered a cache of ultra-technological weaponry and used it to conquer the world. The circumstances surrounding this discovery are shrouded in mystery, even to members of the New Order.

It’s possible that variations in the timeline may stretch much further back than initially believed, with alternate rulers and ancient orders of warlocks hinted at by captured New Order operatives, but the Earth Defence Force does not possess the technology needed to infiltrate the New Order’s home world yet.

Like Hell itself, time appears to flow differently in the New Order’s home dimension. In their universe, the year is believed to be some time in the mid to late 20th century.

Get Psyched
Members of the Lost Battalion first encountered the New Order during the Battle of New Angeles. The Order had attacked several Earth Defence Force positions, but was wiped out by a counter attack by the Lost Battalion’s marines. While the Lost had little interest in searching the ruined outpost, EDF investigators arriving after the battle were able to piece together some information about the inter-dimensional interlopers.

Since then, the Earth Defence Force and the New Order have clashed a few times. The current goal of the Order appears to be theft – they hope to steal the secrets of Earth’s interstellar flight and demonic research. They also have an interest in the mystical, and target arcane dimensions as well.

FRAG: The Elves Get Pissed

I’ve finished the first pass of the fourth army for FRAG – the Sidhe.The Sidhe (‘shee’) hail from a distant, magical dimension. After their world was annihilated by powerful arch-demons, the reminders of the Sidhe race turned their considerable might towards hunting demons and monsters across the cosmos. While ostensibly allies to the Earth Defence Force and the Lost Battalion, they remain mysterious and aloof.

More so than the Lost Battalion or the Forces of Hell, the Sidhe really rely on their characters to deliver their deadliest abilities. Most Sidhe pepper the enemy with amber wand fire; they depend on mages to deliver them to the right spot and increase their firepower, cardinals to support them defensively, and lords to rip the throats out of the biggest bads on the battlefield.

The Sidhe also have a few important differences to other armies. For one, they need to declare which artifacts they are using at the beginning of the turn (they have a lot). Secondly, many Sidhe are Slippery (they can leave close combat without triggering attacks). Careful planning, alongside the brute force expected from a FRAG army, will ensure they win the day.

FRAG: The Next Faction

Tried to do some work on the next update…. let’s call it the Sidhe update. They’re a new army for FRAG, my tabletop rulebook project. There’s not been much progress. Perhaps there’s been too much Real Life Work stuff on my mind.

When I started writing FRAG, I just wanted to make a simple but fun game about some of the cool stuff that’s gone on in the Doom / Id fan community. I also wanted people to be able to use pretty much whatever miniatures they liked – the fantasy list has a dual purpose of letting people use fantasy models as well as scratching that Heretic / Hexen itch.

Of course, it’s a bit tricky balancing that against armoured space marines shooting plasma guns at bulletproof demon-cyborgs in a simplified d6 system.

FRAG: New Faction

Currently writing rules for the “Not-Wolfenstein” SS Paranormal Division, now renamed to the New Order. They should play quite differently to the other lists. While running about firing heavy weapons is the standard in FRAG, these alt-history Nazis are (mostly) only human and have to carefully deploy weapon teams instead.

Mid-write I went looking for reference pics for the army list to help guide artists and play testers. I really shouldn’t have been surprised at what’s available for the SS Elite Guard. In the end I used screenshots from Return to Castle Wolfenstein but I’m pretty sure I’m on a watch list now.

FRAG: First Draft of New Rulebook

Below are screengrabs showing a first pass at my next rulebook FRAG. FRAG is a simple d6 based wargame where squads of FPS heroes fight hordes of monsters.  The artwork is just stuff found online and added to look pretty for my gaming group, so I’ll be looking for commissioned pieces of art closer to final release.

Current armies are: Space Marines, Hell, and the Old Ones. The Old One list is only half-done, and the list is already so huge it’ll probably end up pruned or split off.

Work on the system is ongoing. Future updates will add The Order (Heretic/Hexen) and the SS Paranormal Division. I also want to make a list of themed NPC-type characters who live on the worlds each faction visits, like cops/guards/WW2 GIs, etc.