Dark Forest: The universal tabletop wargame

[carnosaur93]

So... My husband and I made our own entire tabletop wargame system called "Dark Forest".
+Dark Forest: The universal tabletop wargame - version 0.5+


The idea is that it is a relatively simple rulset, but completely agnostic to not just models, but also setting (Hence the name, referencing the grim fermi-paradox/sci-fi scenario of that name, but also spooky medeival vibes of a literal dark forest) 
While not technically 40k, i figured i'd post it here anyway, because there is certainly nothing stopping you from playing with 40k models in the 40k setting using these rules. In fact, great care has gone into making sure that you CAN do exactly that

Lemme give ya' all a quote from the rulebook that explains what it is all about:

"Dark forest is a “Universal tabletop wargame” which means that it is entirely model and even setting agnostic, relying on players to use the broad abstract options for units and wargear found within to find ways to best represent their models.

Dark forest has been made with the possibility in mind to run it for nearly any army size, be that big ones with upwards of 60+ models per side separated into units, all the way down to a skirmish game with small warbands of individual models operating and acting on their own. It is even possible to mix the two extremes or pit such vastly different forces against one another.
However the main intent in terms of model count is small armies and generally low model-count compared to more mainstream games, standing somewhere between a skirmish warband and a full army, but this is by no means the only way to play.

In short, Dark forest is a very flexible game. Get creative, and have fun!"


If anyone has any questions i'd love to hear and answer them, or if anyone feel like giving it a try we'd love to hear what you think!
it is still definately in the testing and tweaking phase of things, but the game is fully made and fleshed out at this point, it is essentially a "complete game" that just might need some tinkering to improve it in places, especially for balance
(there are plans to expand it with a couple more units and such in the future once the core we got here is good and solid, as well as adding in some FAQ-style clarifications for rules here and there in the book where needed to streamline playing the game further)

Edited July 11 by carnosaur93

[tinpact]

Congrats on the hard work! I'll have to take a look after I get off work.

[tinpact]

Okay, I've taken a couple reads through it.

 

There are a lot of neat things here. I appreciate how simple the system is in general - it looks like a good fit for small-medium size games. Saving individual damage points means large weapons can do chip damage, which is neat.

 

Things I think need clarifying:

• What goes in a weapon group and what do they do? Does every weapon in a weapon group have to be identical? (e.g. can a unit of Heavy Infantry take three 1-slot weapons and three of a different 1-slot weapon, or do they have to take three 2-slot weapons or 6 1-slot weapons? Or is the intention that units with multiple weapon groups can split fire? In which case, how does this interact with melee?)
• Can units shoot into/out of melee?
• Does rend have an effect past 10+?
• How does taking damage affect a unit's combat effectiveness? Do multi-model units lose weapons as they lose models? Do single model units modeled as multi-model units lose weapons as they lose health?

Things I think need a second pass:

• The frag/krak distinction doesn't really work with damage spillover - as far as I can tell, the first Launcher profile is strictly better.
• Likewise, the light ranged/melee options out-damage pretty much everything else through sheer volume; the Heavy Ranged Weapon is universally negligibly different from the Devastator, and the Armor Slayer just barely pushes ahead of the other options vs. an armored Leviathan.
• Some unit/upgrade combinations are probably worth reconsidering; a deepstriking whale equipped with 12 light weapons and rerollable hits and saves is incredibly deadly (although the same points investment in Chaff with the same loadout actually has significantly superior firepower, can double activate with Teamwork, and you can reuse them with Disposable).
  • Rerollable saves in general.

Miscellaneous:

• Having wizard powers represented by the stock weapons is fine, but the lack of auxiliary effects detracts in general, I think (you can blast an enemy with a missile, but not set them on fire or make them run in terror).
• Most of the unit upgrades are either "this unit is faster" or "this unit is tougher" - I think this part could use more variety.
  • One downside to the point system is there isn't granularity for smaller upgrades, but I think having a limited pool of upgrades to pick from a la Kill Team could work (e.g. for X equipment points, this unit can climb walls, or has burning attacks, or something to that effect).
• I think it would be fine to take a page out of Kill Team's book and make waist-high obstacles a flat -1" to traverse.
• The "ladder clause" seems very wishy-washy to me. I think a better way to go about it would be to give cavalry/vehicles both bonuses and penalties and make them explicit types (e.g. can opt to go faster, but can't turn freely, etc).
• Unit profiles are pretty same-y; aside from Chaff having a hit penalty, units mostly just get tougher and have more weapons capacity.
• I think there should be a 2-slot melee weapon.
• There aren't really a lot of ways for units to interact besides doing damage - there's no suppression or other crowd control, psychological effects, heroic challenges, marking units, etc.

I also made a little spreadsheet for expected damage with a few unit types vs a few other unit types (I skipped characters and the intermediate large units) accessible here

[carnosaur93]

Thank you Tinpact, i really appreciate taking the time to go through it in detail!
iam iam glad that there is alot that looks good!^^

Clarifications:
The weapon group thing is something i agree needs better explaining, it has stood out in my mind as something i probably need to rewrite to be more clear, but the short version is that a unit can take whatever weapons and howeveer many it wants, as long as it does not exceet their number of weapons slots (exception being that some units, like heavy infantry, having a cap on how big the weapons can be, in their case its only 1 and 2 slot weapons). But they can still take whatever they want otherwise... perhaps a better way to write that rule on those units is to flip it and state it not as "they can do this" as it leads to abit of confusion, but instead say "they can't take weapons of this size" (in this case taking up 3 slots) as putting it that way feels more clear and better imply that there is otherwise free reign?
And if a unit has multiple weapon groups, it can indeed split fire, again like with how the weapon slots are worded, it would make more sense to swap the logic on th rule to make it more clear? under the "Attacking" seection there is this:
   "If a unit has more than one weapon group, it may resolve each of them once during its
   activation one at a time by repeating this process until it has gone through all weapon groups.
   Different weapon groups may, but do not have to, target the same unit."
perhaps its a little clearer if that last line reads something like "Different weapon groups may target different units, or the same unit", to state the intent more clearly?

As for how it interacts with melee... it kinda doesn't in a way, which leads to your question about shooting and melee:
The easy way to explain it is that there is really no such thing as "Being in melee" in the game, only wheather or not you are in range of melee weapons, and that doesn't really have any bearings on anything else. so ranged weapons that doesn't have the "cannot target units within 6 inches" rule can still shoot targets in melee range, and even if a unit has just been hit by melee from another unit, they could technically choose to stay put and shoot ranged weapons at another unit if they want on their turn, they are not really "locked in" in any way like in warhammer.
the idea of shooting in melee is to leave it a little abstract and open to interpretation, like you could consider doing so to be like an overwatch, or shooting while charging at the other unit (like i think some units do in flames of war? machine-guns being technically melee weapons), or even think of the range stat line in melee being melee side-arms of the unit (as it is a similar, but lesser statline to dedicated melee options)

Rend has no effect past 10+, that definately deserves a mention in the rules, yeah, so that its mor clear.

Taking damage Doesn't effect a unit's combat effectiveness at all. It touches on a point that now that you point it out, i realized i literally forgot to add a description for in the game.
The idea is that Hit Points is meant to be a little more abstract than straight up life points or dead soldiers and such (your later thing about missing morale kinda also comes in here)
Essentially the idea is that its a mix of outright damage but also morale. so you could technically play the game and in narrative terms not have a single soldier actually outright die, even if your army gets whiped, as a unit running out of HP might just as well represent their morale breaking and them fleeing, as it would them actually getting outright destroyed.
This is something we went abit back and forth on for a while, and especially personally i struggled to get my head around at first, with years of warhammer experience having drilled into me that "models die and reduce the power of the unit"
but in the end, we decided to go the simple streamlined route, espcially as it gives a player way way more modelling freedom as this way you teechnically don't even have to worry about number of models in a given unit at any point, and its in the hands of the player to decide that their guys fought to the bitter end like badasses, or Didn't like the big cannons and ran off.



Onto your second list of points!
i agree on the launcher, it has been hard to stat them out to a point where it feels like there are uses for both modes, iam very open to suggstions on that one. although iam not entirely convinced one is strictly better than the other against every target as is, especially when you can spend a reroll point to reroll the d6 of damage.
But i'd love some ideas for how to differentiate them more, without outclassing other more specialized weapons for their weapon slot cost

The light ranged/melee is sorta designed to be the best in raw damage potential, but to fall off as targets get tougher and more well-armored, they seemed to fit that curve in my testing, where once you go up against mor armored units, or units with Toughness, other options start outperforming them
As for heavy ranged/devastator, the main difference is range. devastators are abit more powerful, but short ranged. Heavy ranged has much longer range, but the restriction that it can't shoot close-up targets, making units with them very vulnurable to melee units, so while the stats are not super different, the playstyles should be... Plus, even if they weren't its more about letting people represent more models... "Meltagun? Devastators.  Lascannon? Heavy ranged" that sort of thing.
In my testing the Armor slayers made more of a difference against more targets though, did you remember to include Toughness on the bigger units? i'll have to do some more testing on comparison there, but in general, the melee weapons were abit finnicky to balance, as range can't be used as a factor, so its pretty likely some further adjustment is needed there

For the utility upgrades, yeah, lots of testing and some balancing are needed on those, they take a lot more testing to balance though than something like weapons as there are way more factors and combinations at play
In your example though. it is worth noting that you can't Deepstrike into melee range for those weapons, and you'd have to pass the 6+ roll to be allowed to pile in... that can of course be rerolled, but that still nets you a 75% chance of success at best, and if failed, a big chunk of your army just basically lost their turn. thats a big risk if going that route (i think its a viable enough setup though, its how i plan to run a tyranid trygon)
Its also worth noting that its pretty unlikely for that unit to be able to reach more than one viable target on that turn, so it could easily end up with more raw damage at its disposal than it can actually make effective use of, essentially just massively overkilling a smaller cheaper unit, whereas if you mixed in some ranged weeapons, you could damage or destroy more targets more easily.
But this would be a unit that is very good at taking out other big "many eggs in one basket" threats... which i mean, thats good right? being able to kit out a unit to fill a role of your choosing, thats what the "make your own units" approach is all about^^

For rerollable saves, it doesn't seem like that big a problem to me, as saves are made against each point of damage, not each hit, so its actually one of the less effective ways to use your reroll points versus things like that deepstrike pile-in roll, or making sure to land hits with big weapons



Onto the misc-list!
For wizards, you can defiantely represent them in more ways than that... for example, iam personally working on a tyranid "psychic tank" kitbash project. the idea is to run it with extra armor and regen to represent it using its psionic powers mostly defensively as a regenerating barrier, kinda like void shields... and then of course combined with something like devastators to represent the psychic blasts.
Something we have considered though, but has been relegatd to "expansion content down the line when the core is tested and solid" is a sort of general "utility unit" with very few weapon slots, but a choice of some utility ability from a little seperate list unique to this unit, so it gets a choice of like healing, moving other units, marking units for bonuses, etc. this should fill that void abit better, and also plug some other shortcomings like what you mentioned in your lastmost point, but while keeping the spirit of "make your own unit" intact.
Of course. you are welcome to and encouraged to just add stuff to your game yourself as well, thats part of why there is a blank unit card in the back of the rules, so if you wanna make a wizard with a very particular ability, you definately just should^^ (although i know this is a hypothetical, of course)

I agree on the utility upgrades, we need more of them!.. but i don't think i agree that they need to be smaller and more granular, i'd actually been considering going the opposite way and making each one more impactful, but i think thats a matter of preference
But i totally agree that more variety is needed, i just can't come up with any that covers something an exsisting one doesn't already. climbing is an interesting one though, iam noting that down.
the thing with the utility upgrades though is that by design we don't want them to ever be offense, setting a unit on fire would do that, because it very quickly becomes a matter of "why would i ever pick anything else than more offense?"
Early on in the rules, we had a shared pool of "Loudout points" used for both weapons and upgrades, and quickly found that it felt crappy to always have stuff like surviability, or movement, or other interesting stuff come at the cost of offense, so we split the list so you never have a reason NOT to give a unit some intersting choices that define what they are better.

The barricade thing will need abit more testing on my end, but i personally like it the way it works now, its more future proof if you don't play on flat ground as well.

I knew the ladder thing was going to be a little controversial xD
for all these crazy fantasy/scifi models, there is a lot of gradient between "creature" and "vehicle", on the back of lots of discussion and iteration, it was eventually boiled down to just being an issue of ladders though, so i ended up just adressing it as that.
i still don't think the game needs strict cavalry an vehicle units though (it was a thing in an earlier itration, but didn't work out)
However, its nice to get some feeedback on the current ruling of things. from your points, iam thinking that a good compromise would be to make the optional "cavalry and vehicles" rule a little more impactful? i like your idea of potential limited turning, thats a solid way of representing them, and could probably be worked into that optional extra rule with some other advantages in exchange (more speed?)
if that rule is made more impactful and meaningful, do you think that would cover not having outright cavalry and vehicle units?

Units being a little samey is kinda by design, they are more about "size classes" than to be thought of as actual units. the upgrades and weapons you give them is what gives them definition and diffrence from similar ones (a fast flying juggernaut with all melee weapons is pretty diffrent from an extra-armored regenerating one with all ranged weapons, for example)
That said, while not up and live yet, a few adjustments have been made to that end already, while not final, we're looking at making "Brutes" and "Tyrants" slower but tougher, to differentiate the units more, its not much, but i feel like its just about enough with that change

Originally there was a 2-slot melee weapon, it was the Armor slayer. but then i noticed i could just halve the number of attacks and make it a 1-slot weapon, which just gives more options for weapon loadouts in the game (its a massive change for units that are limited to 1-slot weapons in particular). the same happened to the ranged Devastator. "more options is more good". and 1-slot weapons are the most flexible and adds the most options to the game
For a 2-slot melee weapon, you can just take 2 Armor slayers, and you end up with what is the statline of the original 2-slot weapon
essentially, the logic we went for is this, from pg27 above the list of weapons: "Additionally, you can always use multiple copies of a smaller weapon to represent a single bigger weapon on your model, like picking 2-3 “Medium ranged” or “Heavy ranged” weapons to represent a chaingun"

 

The last point is something that got touched on with the other points... but i agree! the game could use more of that, and at this point our best idea is to implement it through the yet-unamed "utility guy" unit that can pick an ability from its own little list of options for that (as well as couple 1-use "battlefield abilities" that you can buy for points for your army)
Aside from that, morale is basically just piled into HP for streamlineedness and more narrative freedom (and because warhammer in all its forms has a history of 90% of units being practically immune to morale anyway)
And finally you do have the commander unit no matter what your army is comprised of, who has some abilities they can use.



whew. giga long post, i hope that answers some of the questions? and adresses the points decently well?
i hope i don't come off as defensive, i don't mean to be if i am. There are already some good points to take out of this feedback, be it exact rules, or just wordings on some and clarifications for other things.
Feedback is extremely helpful, just as playtesting is. and the hope is that someday this can be a resource just out there and available on the internet for people to use for whatever tabletop wargaming needs they might have, so we want it to be good and accessible.


+EDIT+
I just took a deeper look at your mathhammering, thats a lot of work, again, very much appreciate it. iam not a wiz with spreadsheets so this is super useful info.
Looking it it, i see your point with the light melee/ranged a little clearer and what you mean of it seeming the best pretty much across the board.
Iam thinking an easy fix here could be to lower the power stat of both? iam thinking 7+ on both fronts, so a pretty drastic nerf, but one that makes them worse against units with toughness, and still quite strong against units without, bolstering the roles of different weapons against diffrent kinds of targets as a result
Additionally your mathhammer data makes it pretty clear that the medium ranged needs some changing, especially with the nerf to light ranged/melee.
Iam thinking changing the power down to 6+, and giving it 1 rend.
This makes it a little more of an alround option.
Oh, and the Flamethrower would need a nerf too to be in line with these updates, down to a 7+ power just like the Light ranged/melee
When plugging these numbers (for Light ranged/melee, Medium ranged and the Flamethrower) into your formulars, it creates some smooth damage curves between the weapons against different targets where things look a lot more balanced.

The launcher seems to be in a good place to me, considering that rerolling the damage dice on the second profile is a thing that pulls the favor a little in that direction.
If it needs an extra push though, my immidiate thought is to nerf its rend by one (also making it not just directly as good with its top profile as two Heavy ranged weapons)

Interestingly as well thanks to your math its looking like chaff needs to have their offense neutered slightly more to offset the extra weapons, down to a -3 hit penalty instead of -2
They were always meant to compare to infantry as a more defensive, but less offensive options, as low-skill meatshields there to absorb bullets, not land them.

Edited July 31, 2023 by carnosaur93

[carnosaur93]

Version 0.2 is now live on the link in the main post!

I rebalanced the weapons like discussed from the feedback and number-crunching from Tinpact.:
-Light Ranged and Light Melee have been nerfed
-Medium ranged has been changed a little giving it a more defined generalist role.
-Flamethrowers has had their power nerfed to be in line with the other weapon changes.
-Launchers have had their top profile slightly nerfed, by reducing their rend by 1

-Cannons have had their power nerfed by 1, down to 3+
-Most built-in unit melee weapons have been updated to be in line with these changes also.

A couple units have been slightly changed and rebalanced:
-Brutes and Tyrants have had their base movement reduced from 8 to 6 inches, and their armor improved from 8+ to 7+, better defining them as chunky big ogre-sized things.
-Emplacements have had their "Firing positions" rules updated, it now interacts with melee, and should be better for representing completely immobile units and structures.
-Heavy infantry now has 2 weapon groups! (this combined with the changes to brutes should help the units be more balanced against eachother, where previously Brutes were kinda just strictly better. it also makes mixed weapons, tactical space marine squad style, much more viable on the unit.)

Additionally there has been some wording updates without changes to the actual rules:
-I added a description of the idea behind the abstract HP under the "attacking" section of the rules.
-Restrictions to weapon sizes on units have had their wording updated for clarity.
-I updated the wording on the explanation for weapon groups a little, and added an example in the description.

Edited August 1, 2023 by carnosaur93

[carnosaur93]

New update for version 0.3!

Its a big one. two new core units have been added, both of which possibly really shake up the game.

First there is the "Underdog" essentially a less beefy version of the "hero" unit, meant to be a human equivalent single-character model, and likewise a perfect unit for models in skirmish warbands!

Second there is the "Adjutant", uniquely it is a support unit, they are balanced to be a little below curve for their price in terms of survivability, and considerably so effensively.
However, they can pick one of five utility or support abilitites from a list unique to them, allowing you to represent a very broad range of support or utility flavored units such as tacticians, utility wizards, medics, field-engineers, priests, and whatever else you can think of using their rules for (as is the whole core idea of the game of course)!
 

Additionally various little wording changes have been made here and there so sentences read better and are more clear, as well as a small "foreword" paragraph having been added at the start of the book to try to explain what the game is all about

Edited October 19, 2023 by carnosaur93

[carnosaur93]

Another update has been made, the game is now version 0.4
there is now only a small portion of planned things left before the game will be considered effectively finished.


The "underdog" unit from version 0.3 has been renamed to "champion" as this better suits their stature, and has less narrative flavor association "What is an underdog, but an unexpected champion?".
Additionally, the newly renamed "Champion" unit, The "Hero" unit, and the "Tyrant" unit have all had the restriction that disallowed them from taking the "disposable" utility upgrade removed! heralding the coming of things like undying undead commanders, unimportant replacable officers, or reforming trickster demons and much much more!

Utility upgrades that boost movement have been somewhat buffed:
"fast" now grants plus 6 inches of movement, instead of 4.
"flight" now grants plus 4 inches of movement, instead of 2.
"Hit & Run" now lets a unit move further if following melee attacks

Several new utility upgrades have been added! Such as:
"obscured" that limits range against the unit.
"Supressive" that allows a unit to temporarily reduce the accuracy of units it attacks (emplacements having bonuses to this upgrade if they take it).

"Lightning reflexes" allows a unit to retaliate before the enemy unit resolves its attacks.

"Savage" An upgrade that increases a unit's melee pile-in move distance, and gives them a plus 1 bonus to all wound rolls (this one is a big deal, as outright offensive utility upgrades have been diliberately avoided, but after much consideration this exception has been allowed to exsist as it was missing as a flavor choice for many many units.)

Several new adjutant support abilities have been added, mostly relating to the new utility upgrades, they are:
"Direct" allows the adjutant unit to temporarily buff the range of weapons on a friendly unit by 5 inches, boosting both the maximum possible weapon range of the game, and allows powerful weapons with short range to pose a greater threat when used with this support.
"Obscure" allows the adjutant to effectively hide a unit, limiting how far away it can be attacked from, exactly like the "obscure" utility upgrade does.
"Disrupt" allows the adjutant to reliably hamper a unit as if it had been "supressed" but circumventing any dice rolls to do so.



These new changes and additions have been made mainly in order to adress the somewhat low amount of interplay between units short of just attacking enemy units, the game now having many more combinations of support, buffs, and debuffs than it had in the previous version, not to mention the initial first draft.
Additionally, the changes to, and new utility upgrades should allow for fielding many more types of units in ways that feel appropriate and flavorful (such as orcs, ogres, and beastmen with the new "savage" upgrade. Combined arms forces with "suppression", Skilled defensive combatants with "Lightning reflexes", and sneaky stealthy units such as camoflaged snipers, alien stalkers and predators and more with the "obscured" upgrade.
Every upgrade, unit, or ability added to the game effectively multiplicatively adds more possible units that can be represented in the game, as it can be combined with any exsisting upgrade to better represent your models, so this update should make a huge difference!

Edited April 17 by carnosaur93

[carnosaur93]

Bam new update to version 0.5, link in the original post has been updated!

A few small cosmetic changes, like:
- adding the mention of mechs and kaiju to the page-one description.
- lowering the font size slightly which gives me more room per page for cleaner layout.
- added a short sentence under "multi-model units" that mentions you can play with larger units if you want to.

a major gameplay change!
- The starting amount of reroll points have been halved, it is now 1 reroll point per unit, instead of 2 reroll points per unit
(this makes the "blessed" utility upgrade much better, and less reroll points in general should be better for the game, as it is now a bigger choice to use them or not.)

A new optional rule!
- Front-armor: a rule that lets you represent directional armor on large models by adding very simple rules for them having a front and back facing,

it then adds +1 armor to the front, and -1 Armor to the back... this could also be used on other units to represent things like regiments with shield walls and the like.
(this is the thing iam personally the most excited about in the update, as it adds a lot more tactical depth to the game by making positioning matter much more. if it goes well and smooth in testing, it might even become a baseline rule for the game rather than an optional one, but time will tell!)

Two new utility upgrades:
- Bloodthristy: makes the unit heal 1 HP when it destroys another unit, but more importanly it also grants an additional reroll point to its army when it does.
- Reprisal: Essentially makes a unit explode on death, dealing a powerful automatic hit (on avarage about 20% more damage than attacking with a cannon, thanks to not having to roll to hit) to all other units, friend and foe, within 5". the number of hits generated scales directly with the unit's point cost, so it should be viable on big and small units alike!
(these two are more interesting than they look, because it creates more choices to consider in terms of target priority, and in the case of reprisal perhaps ignoring a unit entirely... additionally, in this game there is nothing disallowing you from attacking your own units, allowing you to pull some funky tactics with these two effects, further nudging the game away from being just about attacking enemy units with your own.)

Edited July 11 by carnosaur93