SDE as a miniatures game

[foolsfolly]

I have shelves of terrain, and love the look of minis running around on a 3-dimensional landscape. As a stopgap while I work on my 3-d dungeon tiles, I'm looking at playing SDE tile free.

Put the tiles away, instead set up a 3'x3' table with terrain from some other fantasy miniature game. Hills, forests, ruins, whatever, but probably a little heavier then for most other games.

Game plays completely normal, except for the following -
Setup - Consul places the spawn points - anywhere on the board, but at least 6" from an edge, and 10" from any other spawn point. Heroes enter from any location on the board edge. Treasure chests are placed with same rules as Spawn points.

Movement, distances, and ranges are measured in inches instead of squares.

Adjacent becomes 'base-to-base'.

You may need special rules for your own terrain pieces, but the simple 'Difficult terrain, double movement costs' covers most cases.

Infinity table variety, almost zero rules impact - what do you think? And does it diminish the 'video game' vibe too much?

 

[thetang22]

In most cases, the transfer shouldn't really be difficult...the squares in SDE are 1" squares.

Here's the catch.....there are a lot of diagonal measurements in SDE, whether for movement or AoE abilities.
- You can move 7 spaces, and effectively be moving more than 7 inches if you are going diagonal.
- A Burst 1 actually affects more than a 1 in radius around the target. The diagonals of the AoE go beyond the inches value they are supposed to represent.

These may be small potatoes in the grand scheme of things...but I figured I'd offer some of the inconsistencies.

 

[iamfanboy]

It's been one of the things I've been thinking about too, and I've got about the same solution as yourself - too bad most of my terrain is scifi stuff, or scaled for 6mm wargames...

 

[Gannon]

I'd assume it would be about the same as the Battletech transfer from Hex to Table Top.

It would definitely have to be more dense that an average TTG. and precise measurement of terrain/walls would be a must. 2 inches from wall to wall or terrain piece to terrain piece. Aura and Pulse effects measured out from edge of originator base to edge of target(s) base.

Different size battleboards/mats would be needed for different Bit sized games. 3' x 3' is going to give a huge advantage to the Consul in anything less that a 5 hero game. Maybe a 2' x 3' for 4 Hero, 2' x 2' for 3 Hero, and 1' x 2' for 2 Hero games.

 

[TSINI]

With a bit of thought into the templates, and some clarification of LOS, not much would need hanging, squares = inches is perfectly fine, but I would imagine the game time would increase quite a lot, as it would take longer to reach opponents, and more choice of movement angles etc.

 

[thetang22]

Different size battleboards/mats would be needed for different Bit sized games. 3' x 3' is going to give a huge advantage to the Consul in anything less that a 5 hero game. Maybe a 2' x 3' for 4 Hero, 2' x 2' for 3 Hero, and 1' x 2' for 2 Hero games.

Just keep in mind that (as TSINI mentions), it can take a while to reach things. Each tile in SDE represents a 1' x 1' area, and you typically play 1 tile per hero. Using 3x3 for a 5 hero game would be MASSIVE...the equivalent of a 9-hero game. 2x3 would be the equivalent of a 6 hero game, 2x2 would be equivalent of a 4 hero game....etc... You don't want to make things too big, because it can just draw out the length of the game, and right now, the games can be ridiculously long the more heroes you have anyway.