Wesnoth Board Game?

[wolski]

Just wondering if it is possible making a Wesnoth board game? If so, are there plans? How would it work.

[Crendgrim]

There already have been several attempts to create a board game based on Wesnoth [1][2][3]. The problem about it is that you cannot implement the complexity Wesnoth has in a board game: You cannot expect any player to calculate movement, terrain defense, resistances, etc. etc. easily.
So, you have to simplify a lot of things. And without you creating a detailed plan yourself, there probably won't be anybody to reply here with something usable. If you don't supply more than the general idea, nobody can comment on it (of course not). Those people who may have ideas concerning a board game version very probably will create their own threads then, providing at least the basic concept.

[EasterSudharta]

I'm a little bit interested in a board game version of Wesnoth, This is very interesting. When will it be made?

[Caphriel]

I think the point of Crendgrim's post was that it probably won't be made unless you or someone else who wants it solves the complexity problems and creates a workable set of rules (in which case you've made it yourself!)

[taptap]

Just wondering if it is possible making a Wesnoth board game? If so, are there plans? How would it work.

The highest complexity still manageable might be something like a fantasy World in Flames. Most importantly: You can't seriously implement hitpoints in a playable board game, just sth. like full health, injured, dead.

[ancestral]

I think what should be taken from all these discussions is that Wesnoth the Computer Game works well as a computer game, and Wesnoth the Board Game probably shouldn't be a computer game; it should be a board game, with a Wesnoth theme.

[artisticdude]

The highest complexity still manageable might be something like a fantasy World in Flames. Most importantly: You can't seriously implement hitpoints in a playable board game, just sth. like full health, injured, dead.

Actually, Heroscape (a hex-based strategy boardgame) did it reasonably well, although the system they used probably wouldn't be feasible for a Wesnoth boardgame.

What they did was each character on the board had a card which listed a number of attributes, like the unit's number of movement points, it's number of hitpoints, etc. When a unit battled and took damage, you placed a number of damage tokens on the character's card to represent the amount of HP lost. If the unit accumulated more damage tokens than it had hitpoints, the unit died and was removed from play. The highest amount of hitpoints any unit in the game had was 23 IIRC, and the average was about 9, so it wasn't terribly difficult to keep track of HP (although good luck if you happened to hit one of the cards and send the damage tokens flying among your other cards).

The major problem with this system for a Wesnoth boardgame (beyond the obvious need to decrease the hitpoints of Wesnoth units from the amount they have in the computer game) is that you'd have to have a card for each unit you recruited. IIRC In Heroscape the units were all "Heros", i.e. each one was an individual, unique unit that there was only one of on the board, so the system didn't become too bloated.

[Heyub_CS]

Starwars did something that might work for this with their "attactics"

Every character was on a circular platform and when you moved it the wheel on the bottom would "tic" and a number dial would move, if the player rolled a specific number they could do a special move or something. They also have an R2D2 one that has another wheel that when you pushed a button it rolled a number between 1-9 which you could use as extra movement points. You could use the same idea for managing health, have a device with more dials labled 0-9, each unit you 'recruit' would take on a number (leader being 0) which the user could track hitpoints with... It would involve extremely complex or very large figures though.