Field of Glory goes 2.0 !

[Delbruck]

JD McNeil, Chairman of Slitherine, said: "We are proud to again be leading the charge and continuing the Wargames Revolution. We launched the Field of Glory tabletop rules series in 2008, raising the bar and introducing the highest standards of quality and presentation which has now been largely emulated across the board, but all that is now history. We are continually encouraged to see how Wargamers embrace change to the hobby, so we listened to your feedback and the Revolution continues. The digital release of Field of Glory Ancients & Medieval v2.0 rules is testament to your opinions and needs. This is a community based market and we are proud to be at the forefront, providing the community with new and exciting ways to Wargame. For this initial version and to start the ball rolling we have been fairly conservative with the changes, but the new system will allow us to create and publish updates at predetermined times to suit the hobby”.

i suppose this announcment is as sincere as all such corporate statements. But after 10 days of negative comments there has been no reaction from Slitherine. And what happened to the original rules authors? They seem to have all disappeared, except for a breif appearance by RBS. I understand this year's Historicon FOG AM event was poorly attended. It seems we are experiencing the very rapid demise of FoG and the community that has supported it.

[ravenflight]

Look at the bright side of things: if FoG Ancient 2.0 is produced in non-printable digital format, all FoGA 1.0 rulebooks might be collectors items in, say, about 100 years time.

Like the 'Sports Memorabilia' book from Back to the Future... "It comes with a dust jacket".

[thefrenchjester]

Look at the bright side of things: if FoG Ancient 2.0 is produced in non-printable digital format, all FoGA 1.0 rulebooks might be collectors items in, say, about 100 years time.

I have the first Rulebook that came in France in 2008 and I think I bought the last one sent to France, full circle I could say, I'll be rich in only 100 years, my legendary patience will be rewarded
my collection of companion is complete, ready to enter in the History( perhaps by a small door , but it's a beginning );

sing after me : " look on the bright side of life !"

thefrenchjester " french FOG apostle "

[Jhykronos]

i suppose this announcment is as sincere as all such corporate statements. But after 10 days of negative comments there has been no reaction from Slitherine. And what happened to the original rules authors? They seem to have all disappeared, except for a breif appearance by RBS. I understand this year's Historicon FOG AM event was poorly attended. It seems we are experiencing the very rapid demise of FoG and the community that has supported it.

Well, there wasn't exactly a whole lot of official word from Slitherine in the months leading up to their announcement either. My guess is they are probably going to release the product they prepared and announced and see how people vote with their dollars (internet message boards, while vocal, really only represent a minority of the customer base).

Not the way I'd handle PR and communications, but I've said before the lack of information (or even spin) from them on their product is pretty baffling.

[zoltan]

Well JD has come out today and said Slitherine won't be at Britcon. So leave the rotten fruit and pillory at home. I guess a computer company has little to sell/promote at a miniatures event? So I was completely wrong when I said (twice) that Slitherine would be mad to let the Britcon marketing opportunity go by for v2.

[atatnet]

zoltan-i wish there is a "Like" button next to your post in this forum.

[MatteoPasi]

Well JD has come out today and said Slitherine won't be at Britcon. So leave the rotten fruit and pillory at home. I guess a computer company has little to sell/promote at a miniatures event? So I was completely wrong when I said (twice) that Slitherine would be mad to let the Britcon marketing opportunity go by for v2.

This is a cunning plan ........ Sliterine want Us to play FOGR instead of FOG 2.0

[philqw78]

This is a cunning plan ........ Sliterine want Us to play FOGR instead of FOG 2.0

Until they go to digital only.

[MatteoPasi]

I'm not afraid of this, I guess that FOG 2.0 debacle will teach them something before a FOGR 2.0 will be realised

[grahambriggs]

i suppose this announcment is as sincere as all such corporate statements. But after 10 days of negative comments there has been no reaction from Slitherine. And what happened to the original rules authors? They seem to have all disappeared, except for a breif appearance by RBS. I understand this year's Historicon FOG AM event was poorly attended. It seems we are experiencing the very rapid demise of FoG and the community that has supported it.

Well, a few responses to that:

1. 10 days. Ten days when Slitherine are probably focused on the computer games that make them money, rather than the tabletop game that seems not to. And let's say that they did immediately realise that they had made an error. Did you think that changing plans and announcing them (fully formed, or we'll pick holes in them) is instant?

2. No reaction. Slitherine may think that the relatively small proportion of the purchasers of FOG that post on this forum are not representative. They may feel that plenty of people will be happy to use a software version as they play at home. And they may think that people will happily take their laptops/ipads etc. to competitions. I think they're worng about the latter but when the obvious path to a physical book becomes difficult, it's easy to convince yourself that 'plan B' is viable, even if it isn't.

3. The authors. Well, the obvious point is that this issue is not about the wording of the rules but the means of distribution so as authors they may not have that much relevance. And also they finished the beta process and writing months ago. As individuals? Well, FOGR and FOGN takes up a lot of time I would imagine. If i were a rules author I expect I'd be a little sad if i put lots of time into a new rule version and nobody played it.

[jdm]

Hi All
Firstly I would just like to thank you all for the feedback and comments on the forum, we do listen and its entirely appropriate to comment here, it’s what the forum is for, but I have to say there is a significant amount of misinformation, assumptions, rumor and incorrect comments about our intentions and the various platforms that we have been working on to upgrade the Tabletop FOG experience. So I will try and explain

Firstly, we are committed to FOG Tabletop rules, if this were not our intention we would simply announce as Games Workshop have done that they no longer support ancient wargames rules and they will no longer sell these. It’s as easy as that.

It’s worth revisiting what causes all of this and why we feel change in the process is necessary. We have listened to the frequent and numerous suggestions for rules changes and upgrades, we are pretty experienced in Tabletop wargaming so this is no surprise to us. No Rule set has ever been tested to the level of FOG ancients, yet after 3+ years of playing there is now a vast treasure trove of further improvements that can be made. It’s the very nature of Tabletop gaming and we more than most understand this. The dilemma is therefore not how to kill off FOG, but how to support it and we are talking the economics of Tabletop not video games here, so we have to be realistic. In the last analysis and despite our love of Tabletop this is our business.

When we looked at how we might best support the rules going forwards it became apparent that the traditional paper book method works really well for an initial release and we are fully committed to this, as I think is demonstrated by the launch of our new Napoleonic rule set, but how to support these rules going forwards is the big challenge. No one else has managed to solve this issue and remember our motivation is not connected to selling miniatures. For us this is a standalone product, so the economics have to be realistic. Warehousing, Printing, distribution and retail all add cost and so far as traditional book publishing goes you don’t need me to comment on the transitions that are taking place there. It’s hard enough to find outlets to sell the original books these days and wargames rules depend on iterations to survive, so a second version of the same product is for some hard to understand or sell.

So when agonizing over how best to support our “baby” we looked at a number of platforms and please bear in mind that each platform (e.g. ipad) has to be paid for and coded from scratch and then supported going forwards. Now if we were dealing with “Call of Duty” the economics of multiple platforms makes sense but we are not, so choices have to be made and I have to say that the touch screen, scrolling and indexing capabilities of the ipad are really suited to supporting players during games. The ability to instantly find a topic is second to none and enhances the whole game playing experience, but at present you only have my word for that and I fully understand the jury is still out. We also decided to add PC and MAC to the list of supported platforms as just about everyone on the planet now has access to these. So when one considers the cost of an army and the years of reuse in both an army and a rules set, is a potential one of cost to enhance the hours spent gaming really such a negative factor?

So where are we now? At present we are waiting on Apple approval to launch the ipad, normally no more than a couple of weeks. PC and MAC should also be ready by that time and all will be released simultaneously; at least that is our current plan.

However, we have also listened to what you have said and we are now investigating as quickly as we can a method of providing access to a “paper” version as well. We are committed to finding a solution to this and there are various alternatives that we are looking into to assess cost and time scales. We will advise further on this when we have the various responses to hand, but it is likely this will follow the release of the original platforms.

So in the last analysis the success or otherwise of all this is not just dependent on us, it needs your continuing support, but we do recognize that if we can’t deliver a quality wargames experience in our very specialist niche area then you will not continue to support the Rules.

Best Wishes
JDM

[philqw78]

However, we have also listened to what you have said and we are now investigating as quickly as we can a method of providing access to a “paper” version as well. We are committed to finding a solution to this and there are various alternatives that we are looking into to assess cost and time scales. We will advise further on this when we have the various responses to hand, but it is likely this will follow the release of the original platforms.

Hooray. I am sure that in a 'few' (who knows) years time paper can be dispensed with but the future is not now. Thank you JD.

[Niceas]

JDM, Thanks for the update.

[thefrenchjester]

Hi All
Firstly I would just like to thank you all for the feedback and comments on the forum, we do listen and its entirely appropriate to comment here, it’s what the forum is for, but I have to say there is a significant amount of misinformation, assumptions, rumor and incorrect comments about our intentions and the various platforms that we have been working on to upgrade the Tabletop FOG experience. So I will try and explain

Firstly, we are committed to FOG Tabletop rules, if this were not our intention we would simply announce as Games Workshop have done that they no longer support ancient wargames rules and they will no longer sell these. It’s as easy as that.

It’s worth revisiting what causes all of this and why we feel change in the process is necessary. We have listened to the frequent and numerous suggestions for rules changes and upgrades, we are pretty experienced in Tabletop wargaming so this is no surprise to us. No Rule set has ever been tested to the level of FOG ancients, yet after 3+ years of playing there is now a vast treasure trove of further improvements that can be made. It’s the very nature of Tabletop gaming and we more than most understand this. The dilemma is therefore not how to kill off FOG, but how to support it and we are talking the economics of Tabletop not video games here, so we have to be realistic. In the last analysis and despite our love of Tabletop this is our business.

When we looked at how we might best support the rules going forwards it became apparent that the traditional paper book method works really well for an initial release and we are fully committed to this, as I think is demonstrated by the launch of our new Napoleonic rule set, but how to support these rules going forwards is the big challenge. No one else has managed to solve this issue and remember our motivation is not connected to selling miniatures. For us this is a standalone product, so the economics have to be realistic. Warehousing, Printing, distribution and retail all add cost and so far as traditional book publishing goes you don’t need me to comment on the transitions that are taking place there. It’s hard enough to find outlets to sell the original books these days and wargames rules depend on iterations to survive, so a second version of the same product is for some hard to understand or sell.

So when agonizing over how best to support our “baby” we looked at a number of platforms and please bear in mind that each platform (e.g. ipad) has to be paid for and coded from scratch and then supported going forwards. Now if we were dealing with “Call of Duty” the economics of multiple platforms makes sense but we are not, so choices have to be made and I have to say that the touch screen, scrolling and indexing capabilities of the ipad are really suited to supporting players during games. The ability to instantly find a topic is second to none and enhances the whole game playing experience, but at present you only have my word for that and I fully understand the jury is still out. We also decided to add PC and MAC to the list of supported platforms as just about everyone on the planet now has access to these. So when one considers the cost of an army and the years of reuse in both an army and a rules set, is a potential one of cost to enhance the hours spent gaming really such a negative factor?

So where are we now? At present we are waiting on Apple approval to launch the ipad, normally no more than a couple of weeks. PC and MAC should also be ready by that time and all will be released simultaneously; at least that is our current plan.

However, we have also listened to what you have said and we are now investigating as quickly as we can a method of providing access to a “paper” version as well. We are committed to finding a solution to this and there are various alternatives that we are looking into to assess cost and time scales. We will advise further on this when we have the various responses to hand, but it is likely this will follow the release of the original platforms.

So in the last analysis the success or otherwise of all this is not just dependent on us, it needs your continuing support, but we do recognize that if we can’t deliver a quality wargames experience in our very specialist niche area then you will not continue to support the Rules.

Best Wishes
JDM

Hi JD,

thanks a lot for the updated news, We will be happy to continue to support FOG Ancient and play with paper, scissors and rocks;-)
still have a couple of weeks to wait, I hope it will be released for Britcon, just to have a chat around the amendements with all the supporters of FOG at the World event and returning to what we like the most : painting and playing;-)

Best regards

thefrenchjester " the happy french FOG apostle "

[grahambriggs]

However, we have also listened to what you have said and we are now investigating as quickly as we can a method of providing access to a “paper” version as well. We are committed to finding a solution to this and there are various alternatives that we are looking into to assess cost and time scales. We will advise further on this when we have the various responses to hand, but it is likely this will follow the release of the original platforms.

Best Wishes
JDM

Many thanks Ian, good decision. Appreciate that this will be later than the soft version. Of course some of us will now buy both

[joeymiller]

Excellent news for all FoG Ancients players.
Thanks for the update JDM!
It is appreciated.

[Gandamar]

However, we have also listened to what you have said and we are now investigating as quickly as we can a method of providing access to a “paper” version as well. We are committed to finding a solution to this and there are various alternatives that we are looking into to assess cost and time scales. We will advise further on this when we have the various responses to hand, but it is likely this will follow the release of the original platforms.

Those are very good news, JD, thanks for the update!

Just one question. When you say 'access to a "paper" version', you mean something like 'a Print-on-Demand version purchasable from Slitherine or an external POD service', or more like 'a way to print the electronic version'? I'm good with both, but I would personally prefer the second one

[Strategos69]

Wise move. I hope that the new paper version keeps the standards of the old V1 and adds some novelties more than just a few wordings but anyway those are good news.

[bahdahbum]

yes but ....will follow ....means in a month or a year ....and do not say "soon"

PDF downlaodable, easy, cheap and 95 % of the regular players will buy it and be happy

[list_lurker]

Having seen RBS's proof reading iPad copy yesterday , it looked good. While I appreciate it's not finished I'd have hope it be be more 'enhanced' ... But for the rules I can see less opportunity .I hope the army lists have more 'widgets' ( army list creation would be a massive boon in IMHO ) if it had take I might be pusuaded to re-buy all the lists again (with the right price point)

Tier 10-15 is high, but I understand that the unit sales will never be that great. What about some sort of loyalty bonus?