Gruntz Online Campaign tool?

[Mr. Harold]

I had an idea… I think an online wargame campaign tool would be awesome. You could select what kind of map city, rural, lava, moon, etc.

Then you could upload battle reports, and pictures and where on the map your battle took place, and it colors the map to show progress and you can program in random events, bonuses etc. to show up based on what you've captured or lost, or just random events like weather.

There could be a timeline view, where you can see how the war progressed, and you can share the page so other people can view it or read the stories and you could put up notable units, etc

I'm curious what others think of this, or if there might even be something like this out there already.

I would love something like this set in the Gruntz universe. I wonder if a "wiki" could kind of function in this regard... Obviously wouldn't have a map, but you could have different planets as entries, and then people could add their battle report under those entries.

[inrepose]

Very interesting. I don't intend to extend Barracks beyond being a builder but the Gruntomatic site might be an ideal place to extend into a mini hex-type space map. I already have the star map, so the campaign site could actually be a dynamic way to populate the star systems with planets. So as you play through the campaign you are naming and claiming a planet system.

Sort of makes it worthwhile using it if you are taking over a little bit of the star map and writing the history as your campaign plays. Like the wiki you propose.

OK now just to write the campaign rules.. Something simple would be ideal..

[Mr. Harold]

That would be awesome... and exactly what I was thinking.

I like the idea of claiming planets and such. And it'd be a cool way to show how Gruntz is being played.

You could select from one of the forces in the book, or even make up your own.

[inrepose]

Yes that works fine. I think over-arching should be the core factions and people could suggest military divisions and merc forces plus planetary "Houses" like Aris already started in a thread on the forum. I like the idea that people might get to propose a new faction and I could approve it.

I want to avoid people diving in and creating a faction called "David Killa Space Marine Faction". So I think new faction names and descriptions would be based on an approval process. Unless you created your own "entity" within the system, rather than always contributing to the canon design. Perhaps two modes to allow total free-form creation of factions and universe locations or an official mode where you work on the main systems like a wiki/campaign editor.

[Mr. Harold]

I think that's a good idea. Perhaps it has to be associated with a main faction, but then you can chose your own unit name, or something similar. And I agree, if not moderation, then at least some type of "report function" to keep wacky names from sneaking in there.

[quozl]

I'm interested in how this progresses and might be able to help out with implementation.

The gruntomatic is probably up to about 140 hours of work by now, you'd be surprised how much time even simple looking software can take. I wouldn't want to volunteer for anything like that scale of work again - though I have a long track record of such flights of madness

A campaign system using the Gruntz star-map, Gruntz symbology and Gruntz names and linking to the gruntz web-site but usable by other sci-fi games such as 40K, Infinity, Tomorrow's War etc might be used by a lot more people and might also be a good way to funnel new interested parties towards Gruntz. I'm always looking for ways to tempt the 40K players I know into looking beyond the world of GW! A larger audience would also reduce the amount of work put in per person using it - a motivational tool I often use on myself.

That's going off on a tangent from Robin's first post though.

If you just want a star map with people able to put planet images over parts of it and then text for planet names then I think that could probably be done with a simple wiki - with administrator access required to edit (but multiple admins) and updates requested via email. Perhaps some WIKI software allows moderating of edits which would make the whole thing simpler again - it seems very likely but I don't know WIKIs well enough to say for certain.

Setting one up on the gruntomatic site would be simple enough if it turned out to be a suitable way to go, but if it was something like that with no actual development required then it might make more sense to put it on gruntz.biz and have it under Robin's control. I'd be happy to host one under gruntomatic.com though.

I like the idea anyway - best of luck with it.

[Mr. Harold]

I absolutely agree, that even with a seemingly-"simple" set of requirements, the back end could get very complex very quickly...

I'll have to start doing a little bit of research and see what I can come up with in terms of solutions.

[inrepose]

Yes it is easy to turn into visionaries with an open skys the limit view on what can be done when the reality is very hard to achieve. Did I mention the requirement for animated space ships with realtime tracking of worm hole vectors?

[quozl]

On the other hand, if you don't have visionaries blue-skying random ideas and leave it up to the developers you'll get something too conservative and un-interesting

I think the best approach is to come up with the perfect ideal and then adjust/trade-off based on practicalities.

Don't let me put anybody off thinking up possibilities - they may well turn out to be practical as well as cool.