Dissent dev blog #1

We're hard at work on the Dissent rules, along with some more models and terrain to go along with a "core set" kind of package, and thought this would be a good time to let you all know what we're up to with that.

What is Dissent? It's a miniatures-agnostic set of skirmish rules for playing out grimy medieval battles. The setting is designed around conflict within a city besieged by civil war (but could easily be moved to any location). There's no magic or monsters (yet), just bands of hardy folk fighting for gold and glory. 

These rules will be compatible with all of our CRUX engine skirmish games that are also in development (New Dominion, Streets of Plasma, Kingdoms of Hell, Nine Worlds, et cetera), but we want to start with something a little more limited in scope to really hammer out the dynamics. It's close! Our play tests in this setting have really helped up boil the engine down to essentials, and we're closer than ever to establishing a strong backbone for future releases, both RPG and wargame, using this system.

Some key features of Dissent and the core engine:

• High crunch in warband and character builds/tactics, giving you plenty of ways to adapt the rules to your miniatures and force concepts, especially as units advance through multiple battles.
• Quick combat resolution: a single roll matched against a single roll to determine outcome, with high lethality.
• Type-based gameplay, which extends to weapon damage (cutting, piercing, and smashing), meaning that every type of armor comes with strengths and weaknesses for one to exploit.
• Every weapon is different, and comes with it's own strategic value, and special skill traits will unlock additional options from equipment.
• Status-based injury, meaning that you don't track "hit points" or wound counters, and an injured character is impacted when damaged (not just fighting at full capacity until defeated).
• Story events that are generated by battle scenarios and exploration will alter your standing with the various factions important to the story (nobility, clergy, the guilds, et cetera). You can choose which faction you'll support throughout a campaign, and can turn on your former employers if it suits you. You can even build your force toward backing a specific faction, gaining benefits and alternate build strategies at creation for the possibility of penalties when betraying them during the game.
• Deep advancement, allowing units to grow and change for the better, or accrue permanent injuries that will challenge their strategy in future battles.
• Dynamic initiative structure that begins with a "rank-based" order, but allows units to interrupt actions out of their sequence.
• Fantasy setting, but with a mind toward the historical. We've been studying fighting forces and mercenary companies from the late Middle Ages to early Renaissance to impart a feeling of accuracy in the rules. As such, miniatures from fantasy or historical ranges will be right at home in warband construction.

These are a few of the thoughts on what we're cooking at the moment, but we'd like to get some further updates in as we get closer to a beta. The book is being illustrated by Arthur Cordeiro, and you can see a couple of the images in this post. The beta will be available to our Noble Knight level patrons once it's ready, and we may put together a playtest group for those who are interested in gathering around the bonfire to share their own war stories (as it were), especially since we're hopefully getting closer to a time where we can safely game together. We've missed it, and can't wait to start hosting games at our office again.

- Dutchmogul