Month: October 2017

The Dark Ages Were In Fact A Thing

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Apparently this is something which is in contention? Like, I keep hearing people say that the Dark Ages definitely did exist, but I haven’t had any contact with the people who claim that they didn’t. I guess I’m not moving in the right insufferably stupid circles.

Anyway, the Dark Ages were indeed a thing, although the vague idea of the Dark Ages most people have in their head isn’t really an accurate picture of the time period. That’s neither surprising nor alarming. People generally speaking only have a vague overview of subjects not directly relevant to their work or whatever they studied in university, and it’s not like people can be reasonably expected to have in-depth knowledge of all fields.

In the interests of making this blog post long enough to actually maybe be interesting, though, let’s actually talk about the Dark Ages.

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Breadsword on Treasure Planet

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When I can, I like to link to other people’s content in place of producing my own, because that’s easier and I’m seriously regretting my decision to try and update this blog daily for a full year. Today, though, I’m linking to someone else’s content because it genuinely blew me away. Breadsword, a YouTuber with exactly two uploads, made this video on Treasure Planet and why it didn’t do well. Treasure Planet is a fantastically well-animated movie with tons of engaging characters based on a vivid reimagining of a classic children’s story, but despite having run myself dry on positive adjectives to describe it, it barely brought in half its production value and was fourth in the box office the week of its release. This video seeks to answer the question: Why did a great movie do so poorly?

Monkeys With Guns: Campaign Rules

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This is it for the Monkeys With Guns first draft. All that’s left after this is the outline for the Macaca Expanse campaign, which I don’t want to commit to filling in until I’ve got some more playtesting in (although I may just get impatient, make the campaign with my initial balance estimates, then hope for the best).

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Monkeys With Guns: Scenarios

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Thank God we’re back to paragraphs. WordPress doesn’t copy line breaks correctly, reformatting lists is a pain, paragraphs are much faster. All this reformatting has taken about 40-ish minutes. That’s not bad considering I’m queueing up over a week’s worth of posts at once, but it’s still about four times as long as it would’ve taken to format a similar wordcount in paragraphs.

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Creating A Troop In Monkeys With Guns: The Command Squad

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Each platoon has a command squad consisting of the CO, the XO, 1-4 specialist fireteams of two primates each, and 0-2 vehicles. Command squad primates are bought and (optionally) equipped just like standard squad primates, however they may additionally buy special talents. Different talents are available to the CO, XO, and to various types of specialist fireteams, and each group is mutually exclusive. A veteran fireteam can’t buy talents for a grenadier or tankbuster fireteam, nor can any of the three buy CO or XO talents, nor vice-versa.

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Creating A Troop In Monkeys With Guns: Armor And Accessories

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Armor

Armor increases the Armor stat, naturally. Its weight is not measured in absolute size, but rather in the relative terms of half, full, or double weight. A capuchin’s kevlar vest is much smaller and lighter for the same protection as compared to a gorilla’s. A half weight armor always takes up half an equipment slot, a full weight armor takes up a full equipment slot, and a double weight armor takes up two equipment slots.

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Creating A Troop In Monkeys With Guns: Ammo

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Ammo

Ammo can be loaded onto any weapon that can be reloaded unless otherwise specified (such as by the Explosive or Incendiary features). It provides a bonus or special feature to the weapon, which affects any attacks made with that weapon or damage dealt to primates or vehicles by that weapon. Only primates targeted by the RoF provided by a weapon with special ammo are affected by its special features (unless its special features just generally increase damage). Replacing the standard ammo of a weapon (by default, FMJ) with a new type does not weigh anything extra, however if the weapon ever runs out of ammo and is reloaded, it loses the special ammo feature unless spare ammo is brought along to reload it with. The spare ammo is gear of one size category less than the weapon it is loading, and can be used to reload the weapon with special ammo once, whereupon it is consumed. You can bring spare ammo of a different type from the ammo a weapon is actually loaded with, for example bringing incendiary ammo to reload a weapon after it runs out of high explosive ammo.

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Creating A Troop In Monkeys With Guns: Weapons

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Gear

By default, primates are equipped only with the weapons they come with, however additional weapons, armor, and other equipment can be purchased for them. All primates have two equipment slots and rarely get more. Gear of their same size takes up one equipment slot, gear of one size bigger takes up both equipment slots, and gear of two sizes bigger cannot be carried at all, but can be manned if it is braced against a terrain feature. Gear of one size category smaller takes up only half an equipment slot, while gear of two or more size categories smaller take up no equipment slots at all.

Weapons

Antipersonnel Cannon
Damage: 5
Rate of Fire: 2
Range: Long
Size: Huge
Cost: 12

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Creating A Troop In Monkeys With Guns: Prosimian Stats And Monkey Genetics

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Today’s post contains my first balance concern: Is there any army that even wants lemurs? Old and New Monkeys both have comparable primates available to them. I’m thinking maybe I should scale them back to something cost 8, that way they can be a bit more like the tarsiers, low cost options that free up scrap for use elsewhere.

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