Creating a wargame, through a wiki

[Michael Siciliano]

I've had this idea for a while, and I'm thinking about putting it into motion, but I want to get an idea of how many people would be interested;

A minatures-based wargame who's rules are entirely community-created, in wiki format.

Essentially it would be like Warhammer or Warmachine/Hordes, except you would never need to buy a rulebook, and the rules would be continually developed by players.

Each year I would put out a PDF version of the wiki, allowing people to download and print their hardcopy of the rules, including a listing of what has changed. New rules and changes would be 'official' at that time. The PDF would be intended to be put into a binder, so you would only need to update the pages that have changed.

Models would have guidelines for different types of unit, so players would be allowed to use any model that fits the requirements. My thinking is that would allow people a lot of leeway in fielding the models they like, but still allow for a reasonably standardized set of shapes, which makes writing rules for them possible.

I'm trying to write up the review process and create the core rules now.

What do people think? Is this the sort of thing that you'd expect people to be interested in? What problems do you foresee? Would you possibly play a game like that?

[DarkLink]

I think the only problem is time commitment For all the crap we give GW, it does take a massive amount of work to run a game and provide support and rules updates of any real quality.

So long as you, and maybe some volunteers, are willing to put in the time, go for it. The wiki format would allow an extra level of player feedback, though even that isn't as easy as it sound since not all player advice is a good thing.

Ultimately, if you want to make it work I bet you can get some good community support for it.

[inquisitorsog]

I think for an "open source" war game to be effective, you need someone filling the role that Linus Torvalds does for Linux (or at least used to play): That is, the final approver.

You also need to have some level of release management... one thing that is INSANELY annoying on some open source projects is how much they change from one nightly build to another (and what that does to your documents). If you tire of the "flavor of the month" meta shifts in 40k or other GW products, just wait til you have new rules popping up all of the time.

[Irdion]

It'd be interesting, certainly, but you'd need certain creative controls. For example, I'd recommend running it as a discussion board attached to a wiki. Only open up certain pages for editing during a time period, and only be certified authors. Make new applicants go through a certification process to demonstrate familiarity with the existing build, rather than making radical changes all of a sudden. As a big Elder Scrolls wiki organizer, I HEARTILY recommend some measure of creative control.

[DarkLink]

Right, I think a discussion board would be a more fruitful place to crowdsource rules, while a small core team can work on the wiki itself. Too many cooks spoil the pot. You have to build a bit of a framework for the actual game mechanics in order to give the crowd something to work with. Once you've got that, then you can start taking suggestions and criticisms from the group.