FRAG

[MortiS-the-Lost]

The concept of Frag is simple, I'm sure most of you reading this have played a death-match FPS like Quake 3 Arena or Unreal Tournament, if your a bit more retro (like me) you might have started playing DooM in Deathmatch (or Altdeath) mode over a parallel cable in the early 90's and later on Quake 1. Then again you might be some newbie who plays Team Fortress or Halo
... and if none of the above apply I'm sure you've at least heard of these games unless you've spent the last 20 years or so trapped in a small confined space being nibbled by rats.


^ Frag Gold Edition

Anyway Frag is a miniature board game of just that ... Death-Match FPS games, not being trapped in a small confined space being nibbled by rats ... there isn't a game about being trapped in a small confined space being nibbled by rats ... at least there won't be until I've written the basic rule-set


^Coming Summer 2011!

Yes Frag is the Death-Match FPS experience made into a miniatures game, you control a space-marine like character and run around a sci-fi dungeon environment trying to kill off the other players, while along the way picking up weapons and power-ups (called Gadgets in Frag) so you can more effectively kill off other players. Each time you kill someone you gain a 'Frag' and the one with the most 'Frags' at the end of the game wins. Also because this is a typical Steve Jackson Games game there are Special Cards you can play at any time to hinder your fellow players characters or to boost your own character (the sort of effects the special cards have would be the effects of cheats and hacks in a computer game), also true to Steve Jackson Games form there are lots of expansions for Frag which alter the way the game plays and add lots of extra Weapons, Gadgets and Special cards to it's decks.


^A Gadget Card, Special Card and Weapon Card

Frag is entirely D6 based and you'll need lots of D6s, especially once Gadgets and Special cards come into play, there is a lot of dice rolling!
Character generation is fairly strait forward, you have 7 points to distribute between your 3 attributes of Health, Accuracy and Speed, which then determine how much damage you can absorb, how many weapons you can carry and how many D6s you get to roll for movement, shooting, ect
For the most part the game rules are pretty simple and fast playing, you roll a number of D6s equal to your Speed to see how many squares you can move that turn (rather like HeroQuest) and to Shoot you roll a number of D6's equal to your Accuracy and try and roll over the number of squares between you and your target, then you roll some more D6s for your weapons Damage as determined by the kind of weapon your using and your target rolls a number of D6s equal to their current Health + any armour they are wearing, if your target rolls higher than you they are unharmed, if they roll lower then they take damage. Now this is the only bit where the rules get a little hard and you might want a calculator to hand: the attack roll is divided by the defence roll, (ignoring any remainder) and result is deducted from the target's Health points. Unless you have a maths-magician in your group (or a calculator) this whole dividing thing can kinda slow the game down. Unlike in many other games, in Frag you can 'split' your movement, continue moving after you've shot and even shoot and move again if you've got a second attack and enough movement.

Different weapons cause different amounts of damage and most have their own special rules too. Gadgets are basically power-ups and consist of armour upgrades, damage enhancers, targeters, medi-packs, ammo refills, ect. How do you get these? Well, the Frag board or Map (Level?) is marked with Weapon and Gadget symbols, when your character moves over them you roll a D6, on a 4 or above you get to draw a card from the associated deck.

There are also Teleporter squares which allow a miniature to instantly move to any other Teleporter, Acid Squares which damage characters that move into them (like the green sludge in DooM and Quake) and Grates which ... don't seem to do anything really. Oh and there are doors too, some of which are one-way which can get annoying if you don't think about your rout carefully.

As mentioned before Frag is game designed to have expansions, this also makes it an easy game to customise and adapt to your groups playing style with a few simple houserules, to use a FPS term is nice game to 'Mod' like the Quake and Half-Life series on the PC. For instance I made a set of tiles that can be blu-tac'd down to my SpaceHulk boards to we can play on a more versatile layout. (I'll include a PDF of the tiles at the end of this article so you can use them to play Frag on your own SpaceHulk or other Sci-fi floor plans). I've also got some ideas for adding a few new items like a Portal Gun and a Gravity Gun (yes I've been playing The Orange Box)

Although the basic version (the one my group has been playing) has only card stand-ups 'Frag Gold Edition' comes with 6 coloured plastic space-marine-ish miniatures and there is also a set of metal Frag miniatures available separately.


But one of the great things about Frag is that because the weapons and equipment your character uses are dependant on what Weapon  and Gadget Cards you have, the weapons and equipment shown on the miniatures has no effect on the way the game plays, so you can use any Sci-fi miniatures you like and not have to worry about what they are armed with. My group has played using Space Crusade miniatures and even WotC D20 StarWars miniatures.

I'll finish up with a PDF of the tiles I've made so you can turn any grid-based floor plans you have into maps you can play Frag on. You may notice I've included 12 Spawn Points, this is so if you have a large layout and/or a large number of players you can add extra Spawn Points and use a D8, D10 or D12 for your spawning rolls depending on how many you put down

[MortiS-the-Lost]

and also since all the pictures you've see so far have been ripped off the web here's some pictures of a few people from my group playing Frag using my 1st edition SpaceHulk floor plans and various miniatures. Thanks to Caledortallarn for introducing the rest of my group to Frag



^Frag being played on SpaceHulk boards with plastic Spacemarine miniatures at Triple Helix



^Frag being played with D20 Starwars miniatures. Yes Greedo shot first ... 3 times!

[Billiam Babble]

Nice review and playtest!  I had a few queries about Frag, and you pretty much answer all of them.  The premise has suddenly reminded me of Battlecars for some reason.  I was hoping that the play is really fast, otherwise why allow itself to so clearly emulate multiplayer FPSes?  Can that dividing formula be replaced by a matrix, perhaps?

Nibbled by Rats, :D
Genius.

[Marchomer]

Great great review as usual!
So (if I well understand):

I've got dice.
I've got some WH40K miniatures.
I may create my own rooms.
I may print my own cards.
I've got tiles too (thanks).
I may improve the rules.

So... I've already got FRAG!

[MortiS-the-Lost]

a PDF of the Frag Gold Edition rules can be downloaded from here:
http://www.sjgames.com/frag/frag_gold_rules.pdf

enjoy!

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Billiam Babble wrote

Can that dividing formula be replaced by a matrix, perhaps?

I suppose so, but it would have to be a pretty big chart to cover all eventualities. With weapons like the 'Portable Nuke'  and damage enhancing Gadgets and Special Cards in play, plus the fact that like in many SJG games everything stacks; players can be rolling something in the region of 20D6 (or even higher!) some turns or as low as 1D6 in others, I can't even begin to work out how many potential combination that would be.  I think we'd be talking about an A3 Excell spread-sheet full here