Slitherine

No hard copy, no sale. I can't afford the outlay for any new electronic gadgets. Besides, if your book falls off the table you pick it up and flip back to the right page. If your media device hits the floor, you could be done gaming for a while.

I'm not in a position to judge the business case, but time will tell about that. Nor is it 100% clear if there will or will not be a print version. Probably it's unlikely there will be the equivalent to v1 hardback, which I'm basing on the reluctance / refusal of the publisher to reprint revised army lists.

Anyway I was thinking of getting an iPad. This may be the push I needed. So I guess that brings the number of buyers to 5-6?

I do hope it works out for everyone.

hazelbark wrote:

philqw78 wrote:More details from the website

Well this is pretty close to the list of where the beta ended.

Nothing too remarkable here.

The reduced effectiveness of armour and the restrictions on TC commanding battlelines are some nice tweaks from the last v2 beta. Perhaps not remarkable but perhaps enough to make a difference for some historical matchups (i.e., "barbarians" vs Romans).

I think I like the V2 armor limitation ...
I forget but was the warband impact stuff left off the list. I did not like that.

Elephants with 3 impact dice are cool too. Just ask any Seleucid player.

There are enough changes to make V2 worth trying. But I love my Osprey-sized book. Grrrrrrrrrrr

Mike B

There is one wargames mag...Battle games I believe that have been using a similar approach. Last I heard they are moving away from a specialized app and going to .pdf due to customer requests. This is a big mistake not to include something compatible with Samsung/ google tablets.....And a smart phone version perhaps without all the graphics....? I can understand they may have had some problems with osprey....who I expect doesn't want to update any books at all.

...I have wondered if they were able to make any money off of some of the army books, and certainly could be concerned about lower sales of any second edition. and I expect that osprey's business model doesn't allow for a reworking of army lists and rules every few years. Do they even update any of their other publications in such a manner? We might be looking at this as the only reasonable option to get updated army lists ever...

I am ecstatic about Field of Glory going digital (although I have concerns about them not supporting all the major tablet manufacturers). There is an entire bookshelf in my apartment filled with old out-of-date rulebooks and army books. Being able to replace all that with a few files on a computer or tablet would be great (more room for miniatures!). And I won't have to painstakingly paste errata sections into my rulebooks anymore!

Also, I'm somewhat surprised at all the hateful posts in this thread about digital media. Do you want to get new players involved in this hobby or not? Younger people are growing up with smart phones and tablets. Printed media is going the way of the dinosaur, and wargamers and wargames publishers need to adapt. Games Workshop and Privateer Press have both started experimenting with digital media. Those are the games I typically see kids getting into. I fully expect in the next few years to see kids playing Warhammer 40k or Warmachine without any rulebooks or army books on the table at all. They'll have it all on their smart phones and tablets. Reading electronic screens may seem horrible to people of my generation, but kids who grow up doing it every day don't seem bothered by it at all. And I doubt those kids will react favorably when someone tries to get them into Ancients wargaming and they realize they have to cart a backpack full of out-of-date books around. I recently saw a "pen-and-paper" roleplaying session that consisted of a bunch of 20-year-olds, and was stunned to see that every single one of them had a laptop or tablet. There wasn't a rulebook in sight, it was all digital.

So while I sympathize with people who will have to buy an electronic device for this, I think it's a small price to pay for having someone to actually play wargames with after the current generation of crotchety old wargamers dies off. That being said, it would be nice if Slitherine would throw "the Old Guard" a bone and have a way for them to get a printed copy easily, even if it is just a printable pdf.

deich wrote:I
That being said, it would be nice if Slitherine would throw "the Old Guard" a bone and have a way for them to get a printed copy easily, even if it is just a printable pdf.

A good start re an 'Old Guard Bone' would be a set of printable QR sheets.

I cant help but believe that if it isn't possible to buy/print a hard copy some how the game wont exist for long enough to attract all the cool new kids and their shiny toys. The "old Guard" who wont play a game without a paper set of rules are probably the majority here in Australia and I suspect it is the same in the Europe and US.

I'm not, however, panicking yet. They haven't said you cant get a paper copy and I quite like the look of most of the changes. I find it odd there is no hint of a date in a release announcement.

Hoping for more details soon (including confirmation of a date and the ability to somehow get a copy on paper, clay tablet, carved in stone, etc)

Martin

deich wrote:I am ecstatic about Field of Glory going digital

You won't be so happy when nobody is playing it any more because of this decision !

I don't have and ipad/e-reader/smart phone so I can't use the rules at the table.
I only have a windows XP PC so I won't be able to download the rules at all.

This is a shame, because the changes as described so far will I think improve the game.
(Unfortunetly I will never know if the changes improve the game since I literally have NO WAY TO ACCESS THE RULES).

Is it April the 1st, because this has got to be a joke......

I still can't help thinking there is more to come re FOG2. Nobody in their right mind can think there is more money to be made off a product only available in some obscure digital form than in a printed form. Once available digitally I would be pretty sure someone will put up a copy for illegal download. This is what has happened to Flames of War and Pathfinder RPG. Surely print on demand is the answer. No possible loss for the publisher and guaranteed profit with every sale. As for all the young kids argument, playing 40k on ipads, sorry but GW love selling them a new rule book at £50+ every two years not to mention the regular release of new army lists.

As an iPad owner I found having the rules in electronically searchable form very useful during the Beta, and that was just with a PDF. A fully featured App would be my preferred format for V2.

But I can't believe it would be the only format.

Even if it is only made available in an electronic format the reality is that some people are going to simply retype the changes or copy paste print them. For a period of time we'll see lots of gamers around the tables with their first edition printed books and supplementary sheets of paper tucked/glued in or handwritten amendments. Comp organisers may even decide to issue v1 "in house" paper supplements that bear a passing resemblance to digital v2. Necessity is the mother of invention!

mbsparta wrote:I think I like the V2 armor limitation ...
Mike B

I struggle to think of many meaningful situations where it would kick in, other than when one player has SSw capability ? Or am I missing something?

I struggle to think of many meaningful situations where it would kick in, other than when one player has SSw capability

Steady Armoured Spear vs Protected Swordsmen springs to mind.

kevinj wrote:

I struggle to think of many meaningful situations where it would kick in, other than when one player has SSw capability

Steady Armoured Spear vs Protected Swordsmen springs to mind.

OK - so Spartans vs Galatians then, as I don't recall seeing many protected swordsmen in the dark ages and medieval periods

Does that mean that in practice this might more properly thought of as a "lets make warbands a bit better against some of their historical opponents" rule rather than a "lets make armour slightly less important" rule ?

Well how about all those protected longbow swordsmen and of course my jannisary bowmen.

Rob

As mentioned by someone above the reality is that printed books are dying. Physical book stores are dying. Wargames rules are a niche product and if you take in to account the reduce access to customers and demand for print versions, the minimum print runs you have to do mean the price per unit goes through the roof. You'd have to double the price to make any margin and then again you'd be reducing the market because of the price you'd need to charge. And this is just the main rules - the army books are far worse off as they sell smaller numbers than the core system.

In addition, by going digital we take away the stock issue. There are significant numbers of Army books in the system and warehouse. Many of which will never sell, but because they are there we can't reprint.

Because we cant reprint we cant change the points values.

By going digital we can afford to change the points values of units and all the army books. This is never going to be possible in a physical rules system and why previous rules systems with army books avoided changing points values.

I understand there is some concern about how this is all going to work but we have been evaluating this for 2 years and are sure this is the best way forwards.

Other formats may come at some point but on day 1 there will be PC, Mac and iPad editions of the system. All formats share the same content so if we update a file, its automatically downloaded to all devices on all formats. This means everyone is always in synch. If we want to we can do yearly updates to the base system and tweak any errors/issues in the army books.

We'll definitely be listening to what you guys think but we think you need a bit of time to digest all the info.

Also wanted to clarify 2 points on the reader. I think the info is out of date on their page
* 1024x768 is the recommended resolution not minimum. You can run in lower resolutions though you'll need to scroll up and down to view a full page.
* Win XP is not officially supported but in our tests it runs fine. We haven't had any issues on WinXP and if you do let us know and we'll sort you out. One of my systems is XP for example and it works fine for me.

It is undoubtedly the way forwards Iain, but many people have not reached such heights of technology, or their daughter will not allow them on HER IPad, so the book will need printing from PC for those people. If that can be done yippee!