I guess the critter is out of the bag about the game I will be writing for, as we have received official permission to talk about the project development. (Fred Hicks talks about it in today’s blog entry.) The working title is War of Ashes RPG, although this may change; it will be a role-playing game based on the intellectual property from ZombieSmith, publisher of the miniatures game War of Ashes: Shieldwall, and implemented using Evil Hat Productions’ Fate Accelerated system.
Last night was an excellent, stunningly productive meeting — believe me, it’s usually my job as project manager to try to herd cats, and it was lovely to watch Evil Hat’s Sean Nittner skilfully do the herding. Good Lord, we started1 and ended on time, we had a discussion agenda and action items, and Sean sent meeting notes the same night. We established responsibilities, lines of communication, schedule, and basic process.2 This is new territory, getting all this without having to beg for it!
This was my first in-person view of ZombieSmith’s WoA miniatures, but you can have a look at some on their site (they’re even nicer live!) The hope is that we can come up with a game that will remain role-playing but will readily plug into the miniatures game. It’s not as easy as it sounds; if you’ve tried it this with Clan War/Legends of the Five Rings (AEG), Warhammer Fantasy Battles/Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (Games Workshop), Warhammer 40,000/Dark Heresy (Games Workshop/Fantasy Flight Games), BattleTech/BattleTech RPG (FASA), etc., you know how tricky it can be. This will be a role-playing game first and foremost, but we’ll try very hard to use Fate Accelerated’s flexibility to match the games as closely as possible.
I will be using this blog as a notebook of ideas, a sounding board, and I suspect, an overflow for all the stuff that won’t fit in a single book.
Notes:
1 Except for the fact that half of us literally missed Levar Burton’s visit to EndGame by seconds. While this picture was being taken, we were around the corner on the sidewalk, wondering: “Where are they? I thought they were right behind us?” Return.
2 The perverse part of me suggests that I should now answer only every fourth or fifth e-mail, starting each time with “I didn’t read all that, can you summarize for me?” Kind of like the jerks who refuse to tip because they were shorted on tips when they delivered pizza as teenagers. But no, I’m not one of them. Return.
Credits: Art ©ZombieSmith 2012-2013, used with permission.
The Reef 
Sounds interesting!