Space Hulk style 'adventure' game

[BobbieTheDamned]

Just thinking through doing a new style game.

Using the No Limits rule set with some slight modifications (mostly senario generation ones).

Basicly what I want to do is a 'assault' style game where one player plays his team attacking (or defending) against a continous horde style enemy (a la space hulk). Using the No Limits rules because they're good for generating new troops and have quite a nice action point system a bit like space hulk. I'm also thinking of doing a random terrain generation so neither player knows what terrain is comming next. There would always be some form of objective (or primary and sub-objectives) which I think would be a key bit of the game to get right.

Basicly I want an excuse to buy loads of random sci-fi minis. You could do Aliens Marines style teams or Space Marines or whatever the hell you wanted really versus zombie hordes or genestealers or Daleks.

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Sounds awesome and should give me an excuse to field lots of Zombies, Demons and Cyborgs ... DooM and Quake style!

Who are the 'No Limits' rules by?

What kind of environment are you thinking? An Enclosed Spacehulk/Dungeon of cramped twisting corridors or The Great Outdoors or Both?

Me and Mark played some Space Crusade a little while back and had a lot of fun and will probably start playing SpaceHulk when I've got some of my converted Genestealers painted up.

[BobbieTheDamned]

yeah that's the general idea you get a small group of hero's and hordes of monsters, Sci-fi dungeoning basicly.

I was thinking space hulk style twisting coridors (which are generated as you move up to the next section randomly so no one knows exactly what shape the terrain will be).

No Limits are by wargames unlimted. They're free to download and sound like they'd play quite a lot like a GW game.

[MortiS-the-Lost]

looks good! this has inspired me to addapt my Dungeon Generator to work with the Spacehulk floor tiles.

[BobbieTheDamned]

yeah that's pretty much what I was thinking of using lol. I think I've seen your dungeon generator havn't I?

I was thinking of something like you roll two dice one tells you what tile it is and the second tells you the contents. I was going to use D10s so you can weight the options. something like:

1-3 straight
4-5 turn (roll again 50% right 50% left)
6 T junction
7 X road
8 small room (with some options for other doors)
9 large room (dito options)
0 special room (re-roll if on turn 1 or 2, would include objective rooms, medbays, security stations and armouries)

The way I was going to run it was that you'd have the tile you're in, one connected to it then when you move into the connected section you generate the next one along. Bad guys would be both generated in new rooms and you'd get a random number to bring on from corridor edges. I'd probably have rules for locked doors to make things a little more interesting.

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Yea thats pretty much my Dice Based system, of which I think you have a copy. That's the system I use for pre-generating a dungeon layout, before a game. How ever I also have a card based system designed for in-game generation which is a lot faster to use.

For the Space Hulk tiles it will work this way (remember Space Hulk tiles have fixed connecting points unlike AHQ and WHQ tiles) :

You have deck of cards labeled with the various tile types and the number of blips you can place in that section

Here's a few examples of what cards might have on them (I will make some sample cards later)

9 Square Room with 3 connecting points, D6 blips
3 Square strait corridor, 1 blip
X – section, 1 blip
Dead end, no blips
3x8 Cargo Bay
5x5 large square room, 2D6 blips
Escape Pod (Unique Section)

Then you also have a stack of blip markers, which break down into:

Enemies (Aliens, Demons, Robots – whatever your fighting)
Closed Doors* (when a door blip is turned over the door blocks the nearest connecting point*)
Furnishings (Crates, Drums, ect)
Primany Objectives (Cyro-chambers, Computer Disks, salvage-tech whatever you after)
Secondy Objectives (Key cards*, Fuse Boxes – basically puzzle items)
Hazards (Booby traps, Gas leaks, exposed power cables – things that spice up the environment)  
Blanks (a false reading on your scanner - nothing)
 
*Key Cards are needed to open Closed Doors, any Key Card will open any Door but can only be used once
**this could lead to doors closing behind you and trapping you!

How it works:

1> Draw a card and place the indicated section.
Lets say the card says: 9 Square Room with 3 connecting points, D6 blips
the GM may place the section in any orientation they see hit

2> Place blips one to a square anywhere in the section
In this case D6, the GM will rolls a 3 and places 3 blips in the room

3> When a player's Miniature moves into the room Turn over blips and place the indicated pieces.
Lets say the blips turn out to be: A Zombie, a Drum and a Door
The door blip is moved to the nearest connecting point, in this case it turns out to be near the left connecting point so a door is placed there. (if a door happens to be in the middle the GM can place the door where ever they want)

4> Repeat for every connecting point in line of sight

other ideas:

+ Models with specialist tools (Laser cutters, Chainsaw-fists, ect) could be able to cut through Closed Doors by making an attack or some kind of special action

+ Barrels could explode when shot at (like in DooM and Doom II!)
 
+missions could be randomly generated with a chart like this

Mission Type D6

1-2 Destroy Objective (roll on Objective Type Table)
3-4 Find and Retrieve Objective (roll on Objective Type Table)
5-6 Get to the ... (randomly pick a unique room type and shuffle it into the card deck)


Objective Type D6

1 Cryo-Chamber
2 Computer Disks/Data Cores (containing plans for the Deathstar, Scientific Research, ect)  
3 Alien Artifacts (Crystal Skulls/Eggs/Arcane weapons/Gene Samples)
4 Captives (Prisoners/hostages/experimental animals)
5 Vital Supplies (Food/Water/Oxygen/Porn)
6 Power Cells (AA batteries/Fuel Rods/Microreactor-Cores)

[BobbieTheDamned]

yeah that's the type of thing I was going for. I was thinking that doors would be either generated open or closed and you wouldn't know if it was locked until you came up to it. You'd either have to use a keycard, smash or blow the door to bits or hack the door lock.

[MortiS-the-Lost]

my rules assume that every point where a room/corridor joins another section is a Doorway but only uses a marker to repesnt the door being closed - this speeds up game play because  
1-you don't have to generate each door you come to
2-their's less markers to place  
3-it avoids the difficulty of indicating wether a door is open/close locked/unlocked by just assuming if a door is closed it's locked

I also think that once a Xenomorph or whatever has opened a door it probably wouldn't bother closing it again, so the doors of an infested Starship/Space Station/Military Complex/Tecno-Dungeon (hmm that last one sounds like nightclub) would be either Open or still Locked (Slathering parsitic alien beasts are not renowed for being able to remember 6-digt door-lock codes)

[BobbieTheDamned]

I'd been imagining that they'd be star-trek swish doors that close behind you after the person has stepped through. Just gives another element of uncertainty IMHO but I guess it would add something else to keep track of.

[MarkRG]

All this sounds pretty cool, very space hulky crossed with abit of hero quest, cool. going back a few years i played a modern form of D a D where some how we ended up like a futuristic A team crossed with aliens. sounds corny but there was lots of blood and dead aliens and side plots id like to krak at that again any ideas on what game it was.

[Billiam Babble]

I am now really intrigued by this.  If you'll humour me, I may just have to have a go at drawing a couple of sections for this, it might be a while, but I'm always into "back burner" projects.
I haven't tried drawing any sci-fi (Space Hulk-ish) style environs, and I have a horrible feeling that computer art work would lend itself better than my quaint paint-by-numbers retro ink pen work (also thinking of Necromunda maps and Judge Dredd RPG scenarios in White Dwarf).
We're working with a square grid, right - and does the size of the squares matter?  I'm assuming you want something large enough figure bases and yet small enough to get a decent number of sections on a dining table.  (Of course we could just make it totally compatible with old Space Hulk sections/tiles - although matching up with the jigsaw connectors could be fiddly)
Any thoughts or requests?

[Billiam Babble]

MarkRG wrote

All this sounds pretty cool, very space hulky crossed with abit of hero quest, cool. going back a few years i played a modern form of D a D where some how we ended up like a futuristic A team crossed with aliens. sounds corny but there was lots of blood and dead aliens and side plots id like to krak at that again any ideas on what game it was.

Sounds like a very fun mashing of genres!  (All you need after that is some manga and steam-punk and I think you've just about covered all adventure films and gaming! *grin* )

[MortiS-the-Lost]

This is rather a back burner type project, so much so that nothing has really been done towards it apart from a bit of idle discussion. Also Rob hasn’t been seen on the forum very much lately.
However Mutt and Diddy have recently expressed an interest doing some sci-fi dungeon type games so I may pick it up again in the not too distant future (next Sunday AD, la-lalala).

Floor plans for sci-fi games would be most welcome and might even spark up some new interest in the project.
I think Rob intended the game to work on a 1” grid system and be somewhat like SpaceHulk with fixed exit points on each section, I’d avoid trying to replicate the die-cut jigsaw joints of the original SH tiles though as cutting them to fit is a real pain. (I never could get the tiles they used to have included in WD in the early 90’s to fit the die cut ones from the boxed game)

I think it’d be nice to have some urban sci-fi tiles like the Judge Dredd ‘City Block’ sets, for use with Necromunda and Urban War, ect.

As for requests? Some Space Hulk sections that have been ‘hived over’ by Tyranids would be awesome (think like the queen’s layer/nest in Aliens) with the sharp lines of the man made structures covered with organic shapes.

Also check out the Kyromech stuff from http://www.scotiagrendel.com/ for Man vs Xenomorph gaming.

[Billiam Babble]

I doodled these last night (before seeing your post - I would've included more Alien-resin "hived-over" ideas).  

(sorry for large size - may reduce to thumbnail later)
Edit: direct link to photobucket file (feel free to delete copy from Nabble space)



I've looked at my old Space Hulk  set just now (cannibalised by a 40K player friend) and was really depressed at the high quality of the art work! Also it's in 3-D - I thought I was being clever and had assumed it was like all the other floor(-only) plans.    Nicely claustrophobic though - and it's a shame about it only having such small rooms.  Needs big rooms like EVA Hangars and Alien Egg Chambers. Interesting that Space Hulk is so industrial looking - not enough different styles for my liking.  Weren't the Space-Hulks originally Ork-salvaged from many sources?

Not wanting to get ahead of myself, but here's some random ideas if you wanted to get away from the industrial hard clunky tech look.

- White padding + tube + grating tech (Nostromo+Millenium Falcon)
- Antiseptic clean white, silver, curves with pulsing light lines (like Halo or Tron meets the Cloners in SW:EpII)
- Borg / tech incursions - sprawling tech (Matrix green ;) )
- Steam-punk retro tech - brass 'n' submarine - Space 1899 or a low tech species (Space Skaven?).
- Fleshy Bio-tech (sphincter portals, please don't make me play Prey again)
- Battered concrete bunker interior with navigation colour code lines (a la Black Mesa)
- Hollowed asteroid (caves + tech features)
- Space Horror - possesed ship - Event Horizon & Doom - blood and skulls mushed between the panels, shadowy corridors, endless shafts.
Along with, of course ...
- Giger-esque Alien remodifications!  
It's like the Tropics in here!

I can't remember if Space Hulk and similar games have some messy particle transporters - 2 in 6 chance of arriving inside out.  Marine jam. Yummy.

I'll keep thinking along the lines of the generic tiles:
Corridors, junctions, medium rooms.  Doors?
Larger "quest rooms" for egg chambers and major space ship features.

(Okay phone is ringing - must dash)

Further thoughts?

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Awesome, I look forward to seeing more sketches and of course the finished pieces!

The only thing I'd add to that list would be some 40k Gothic type technology to represent the inside of imperial ships like you see in John Blanche and Jez Goodwin illustrations, gothic arches in metal and stone, skulls, tangles of wires and tubes, a few purity seals thrown in for good measure

Doors would good, ones that can represent Open and Closed positions unlike the SH and SC doors, maybe an open and closed version of each door. Maybe you could do something in 3D box nets like your dungeon walls?

[Billiam Babble]

You definitely want to go down the 40K- Gothic styles route?  Not worried about future marketing copywrite issues? (not that I'm getting ahead of myself and plan to make a billion ... ;) ) Actually they would be a lot of fun to draw and provide lots of potential cross-over with my flag-stone plans (or just detail practice for me).

Very quick post.
Just needed to share these with you.

Corridors and rooms (ignore the botched store room)

<center>



Large area ...


</center>

This could be an egg chamber/ boss monster / tyranid hive area.  There are some features in the walls which may double as oviposters, xenomorph doors/portals (or hived over entrances for humans).  Also lots of camouflaged cocoons if it's a rescue mission.   Colours may be an issue - black and silver greys for Alien style, but a GW tyranid version may have pink, purple and blue.

Must dash.

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Excellent!

My favourites are the corridor with the slime across it (looks like some kind of secreted resin) and the large hive chamber …which is … just awesome!

When it comes to colouring the ‘hived over’ sections I’d go with dark greens and a few bone coloured bits for contrast. What ever you go with I’d strongly suggest avoiding the bright neon colours of the Advanced Space Crusade organic tiles.
For technological bits the grey, grey/blue and browns of the 1 st edition SH tiles works well

I noticed that like SH you’ve gone with 1 square wide corridors, which makes for interesting tactical situations (bottle necking, ect) but tends to cause players to split their forces (after all who wants to be trapped at the back all game waiting for your friends to die so you can get into the action) 1-square corridors seem to be the norm for Sci-fi games and yet 2-square corridors are the standard in Fantasy games, strange no?

Billiam Babble wrote

You definitely want to go down the 40K- Gothic styles route?  Not worried about future marketing copywrite issues?

I think as long as you don’t put imperial eagles and space-marine chapter signs all over them you’ll be fine

Coincidently, GW are about to release a super limited edition new version of SpaceHulk at an ultra special marked up price nearing £60 to celebrate (cash in on) it’s 20 th birthday. Hooray!

I’ll finish up with a picture I found of a game of SpaceCrusade Me and Mark played last year using my 1 st edition SpaceHulk tiles instead of the rather limited SpaceCrusade Board

[Billiam Babble]

I keep meaning to post here but something always pops up.  My girlfriend is currently in hospital so every once in the while I get some graph paper doodling time in when I'm there with her on in the hospital canteen.  The bad news is I'm not getting much time actually at a computer, so not much colouring and scanning is occurring.

Is that only one set of floor pieces? - because it looks awfully large!

Uncoloured "chancery" statue room (needs redo-ing - the extra bit is to cover up those awful entrances)



40K gothic style corridors (bottom right is a stand-up door).



Very rough detail scribbles for 40K interiors



Unfinished standard sci-fi passage.


Very basic colour test on gothic style corridors.


Like, in Space Hulk, I'm beginning to think that doors should be additional dividers to board tiles - i.e. corridors and rooms are continuous - doors are counters on stand up pieces.  It's easier to draw in a 3-D sense (hard to explain).

Been checking out the new Space Hulk game here - sort of tempting ;)
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat180018a&prodId=prod210009a

Picked up a copy of White Dwarf and it doesn't acknowledge "Space Crusade" at all in it's retrospective on Space Hulk - bizarre!

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Sorry to hear about your Girlfriend dude, give her a ‘get well’ from all of us here at tLatD. We’ve missed you here on the forums (well I have)

The Sci-fi gothic pieces are great, I particularly like the robed statues at the corners.

The stand up door a good piece but will need to be 2 sided, I’d suggest making a mirror image of the door in Photoshop and attaching it upside down to the top of the door so it can be folded over into a 2 sided piece, I’m guessing that’s what you had in mind.

I’ve always preferred stand up door pieces when using a card dungeon, because it gives adds an extra visual que by giveing the board a psudo-3D element and also give more flexibility to the layout.

The Chancery is easily the best of this batch, could I be so bold as to request a fantasy version?

Billiam Babble wrote

Is that only one set of floor pieces? - because it looks awfully large!

 

The floor plans are from the 1st ed Boxed Game, plus both expansions (Deathwing and Genestealer) and a few pieces from the special missions that appeared in WD. The unusual shape of Mark’s coffee table meant we couldn’t quite cram all the pieces on so a few bits were left out. The doors are the Space Crusade doors which IMHO look nicer than the square SH ones.

Billiam Babble wrote

Picked up a copy of White Dwarf and it doesn't acknowledge "Space Crusade" at all in it's retrospective on Space Hulk - bizarre!

Mark pointed out the same thing to me the other day, I guess despite obvious similarities SC doesn’t really figure into the history of SH. SH 1st came out before SC and the rules and overall game-play are very different. Also it might have something to do with SC (like HQ and BattleMasters) being a joint venture with MB Games, which has made it a bit of copyright grey area. You’ll also note the WD barely acknowledges that Fantasy Flight are publishing games based on GW’s backgrounds. If I was to write an article on the history of SH I’d certainly mention SC in a side bar if not the main article ... then again I’d mention the SH computer games too.

PS. ++ Mark is now the proud (if £60 poorer) owner of SpaceHulk 3rd edition but hasn’t got round to playing any games as of this post. I’ll see if we can persuade him to write a review for us here.

[Billiam Babble]

Congratulations to Mark, because they appear to have sold out of Space Hulk sets online, and if it is a limited print run (which they claim) it may become very collectable, very fast. :)

I think any space plans need very strange doors - although you can't beat good old fashioned sliding or lifting blast doors, and I rather like idea of iris doors which appear in some games (cv. that scene in the vents in Alien and noise the scraping doors make).  I'm avoiding the blocky 3-D nets at the moment - too much planning ahead and maths-head required.  Flat stuff with stands and fold overs for the moment (perhaps sellotaping coins underneath for weight ;) )

I may just have to try drawing a statue room for my fantasy floor plans - I keep wondering if it's a good idea to draw medieval style pieces and then steam-punk them up, but it's probably easier to keep my tilesets separate.    

(P.S. Thanks for the regards/thoughts re. my partner, just to add a bit more drama I've had mild pig flu symptons last week, confined to quarters with my Tamiflu tabs -overkill perhaps-, so haven't been able to visit her, now very tired, but hurrah for more time off work!)

In the early Space Crusade games, were the scenarios/missions more like Heroquest, i.e. mapped rooms with pre-planned encounters controlled by a GM?