Just to prove I have been making some progress on the Advanced Campaign, here's one of the Sector Level cards and map:

Putting all these together in card and map format is taking some time, but I am slowly progressing along. I have made about 10 maps, and I've had about 10 others contributed from other anxious Doom fans. Hopefully not long now before we actually have a playable beta

-shnar

Stoopid forums. Here's a link to the image in my BGG gallery so you can actually *see* the whole map:

www.boardgamegeek.com/image/700870/shnar

-shnar

And no, this is not an April Fool's joke, I really am working on it

-shnar

Shnar...this looks awesome...good work!

Oh, I should add that the Barricades give to anyone standing in them a free Dodge from attacks that trace their LOS through the "wall" side of the barricade. The "soldiers" are controlled by the marine players after all marines have taken their turns, have 2 armor and 5 wounds, and can move 4 spaces and make 1 attack every turn (similar to Invader figures) and roll the Red and Blue dice.

Hm, thinking about the soldiers, I wonder if I should just make Soldier Cards instead of "generic" stats, and each marine could be given one card detailing who the soldier was and maybe each had something special about them?

-shnar

Great idea Shnar,

I like the level. Defend the position under enormous pressure while the invader tries to overrun the barricade. I can't wait to play the level.

Keep up the good work,

Boromir

I like the barricade idea...that is one thing that is flawed in the Doom rules. I'm a cop and an explosives breacher on my local SWAT team, and we're taught to always seek cover, utilize cover, and shoot from cover. The Doom rules don't give any real benefits for using cover. The Dodge token idea is good, but how would you replicate the tactic of shooting from cover? In Doom, you trace line of sight from the center of a figure to the center of a figure. I used to play Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures, and the D & D Minis rule was: when making a ranged attack, you can trace line of sight from any corner of the square your miniature is in. So, if your miniature is in front of a wall, one square across, with a corridor on either side, he could trace line of sight from any corner of the square he is in to the target square, meaning he could trace line of sight right along the wall. This is actually a very effective and cool method of mimicking the reality of people using a wall for cover, but leaning slightly from cover to shoot along a wall. I might "house rule" this line of sight technique to mimick shooting along a wall, and then using the extra Dodge token technique to give a bonus for using cover. I'll have to play test it, but think about it...tracing line of sight to a target from any corner of the square your miniature is in...this seems way better than using the center of the miniature. Tracing a line from one corner may be blocked, but using another corner might be clear. This mimicks the reality of people who will duck, climb, lean, or bend to get off a shot while still utilizing cover. It makes combat more realistic and three-dimensional. When using the tighter corridor game tiles, this may not be of much use (small corridors, doorways, and hallways are called "fatal funnels"), but when in a fire-fight with the invaders in larger rooms, this line-of-sight method could be used to great effect.

Hey, here's another thought. If any of you ever played the computer RPG, Neverwinter Nights , you'll recall the game had its own level generator where players and fans could create their own adventures. Many of these were posted on-line and were so well done that Bioware (I think that was the company that produced Neverwinter Nights ) sold an expansion to the game with several of these fan made scenarios.

I think a few of us who have really contributed a lot to creating Doom material, should maybe put our heads and ideas together and compose a professional manuscript of new Doom the Boardgame material (specifically, some of the best "house-rules" and new missions, and especially Shnar's and Tibs' enhancements and "Campaign Play" rules). If we presented it professionally to FFG, maybe they would assign an editor to the project and a Doom Compendium or something similar could be released (kind of like the Descent Quest Compendium , but with more than just missions...also rules for campaign play, etc.). This would probably generate more interest in the Doom game if they reprinted it. I know there are likely licensing issues and what-not with ID Software (or whoever bought out ID Software ), but internet rumors circulate about a Doom 4 for the PC. If that happens, maybe it would jumpstart FFG to get back into the Doom Boardgame. Just some thoughts.

Anyway, great work Shnar...it looks really professional, making me wish we did have this information in a book format and with cards and accessiories that were printed professionally. Keep up the good work.

Doom forever!

The one philosophy I am following with any new rules in the Advanced Campaign is to keep things as simple as possible. One of the things that makes Doom different from Descent is how "streamlined" it is. So, for the barricades (which actually came from another map submitted by another player, which I felt would work great in a "defend" map) is to provide a reason for the marines to stand in that square, rather than moving around the corner (since the Barricades block movement). One thought was to give an extra armor, but I felt that was a little too powerful. Giving a dodge felt a lot better, the idea that the marine is ducking behind the "window" and popping up to see/shoot, so he gets a free dodge.

It's simple, no core changes (it grants the person an "ability" that was added in the Expansion, Agile), and even easy to justify.

As for a Compendium, that will be my next great challenge. I would *love* to have a best-of-the-best PDF collection of user-created missions, or even printed book like Descent's compendium. I don't think that FFG will ever create one though, and I think it's because of licensing issues. For Descent, there are no fees involved. To print anything new with Doom, FFG has to keep their license fee current. No idea if they have or not, but I have a feeling they are letting it slip away since it's not very profitable for them. So even if we did all the grunt work and all they needed to do was slap an editor on it and print it, I doubt they would do that.

I do intend however to at least have the Advanced Campaign cards available on ArtsCow.com, so for $10-$20 you can get a professionally printed version of the cards (you'll still have to print the map, the avatar sheets, and any new tokens like these barricades and soldiers, oh and the manual too).

-shnar

Your artwork is truely awe inspiring, my friend. I'm very excited to see this as a playable beta.

I'm assuming you have a bunch of blank templates you use to make the cards and map sheets and such. If I could make one humble suggestion, it would be to please include a zip file of those templates along with whatever beta package you eventually create so that those of us inclined to make our own additions can use the same amazing backgrounds. =)

Not a problem. I'm doing all this in Photoshop, and at first I'd thought about doing something like that and then just putting txt-boxes in Word, but then I realized quickly that I wouldn't be able to resize the boxes very easily, so these map sections are done completely in Photoshop. But that's not to say I can create a blank one that takes average sized everythings

-shnar

Will you playtest this before you release it?

I am currently working on an "Aliens" mod (yes, for Doom), but I'm not sure if I should playtest it first before releasing it.

shnar, did you catch the typo in the second line under Objectives? Looks like a word is missing.

The Warp said:

Missed it, but got it fixed now, thanks

(assuming you mean missing the "start" of every turn)

-shnar

redsimon said:

I'm going to be releasing as I go. This is a rather large mod and the sooner I get feedback on how things are broken the better. A lot of the things I'm doing are going off of theory and not actual playing (my group doesn't meet often enough to really playtest this, so I'm just guessing at what might or might not work). For example, I don't know if 10 turns is too long or too short to challenge the marines, particularly at the different power levels. I also don't really have a good testing plan devised yet (i.e. test this sector level with this kind of setup), so I think the easiest thing to do will be to just get a playable version of the game that has minimum components and send it out.

These minimum components will be:

- Planetary Map
- 1 Avatar and his upgrades
- 4 Lieutenants
- Marine Skill Cards and Skill Tree
- Printable sheet for new tokens
- Handful (10?) of Sector Levels
- Handful of Encounters, Locations, Encounter In Hell levels
- Lieutenant EndGame Levels
- Avatar EndGame Level

Once I have that, it will be a complete enough game that a group could run with it and play a campaign, give me feedback for tweaking, etc. I'm about halfway done with the list, and the rest is coming, slowly but surely. Hopefully by summer I'll have a testable version of the game

-shnar

I can't wait to play your campaign.

If you need any playtesters, I volunteer :-)

shnar said:

Yes, that's probably the best solution.

For my mod I need new miniatures which I also paint (especially as some of them are metal). I already have painted and based Aliens, Alien Queen and Colonial Marines. This leaves Facehuggers and eggs to be completed. With painted miniatures playtesting is much more fun.

The fact that you have skills with graphics (and I don't) gave me the idea that maybe you could make tokens (i.e. images for tokens) for me. I only need 6 pictures and they don't need to be overly detailed or have much colours. Are you willing to do that?

shnar said:

Well, that's a more important correction than I realized, I thought it was supposed to be "end" of turn. =P

Regarding the question of ten turns being too long, I don't think that's an issue. Based on my experience with RtL dungeon levels, it usually takes the players between 3 and 5 turns to clear a level about the size of this mission (depending on special rules and number of monsters, of course.) So asking them to hold it for ten will impose the desired feeling of waiting around longer than normal, but it isn't an unreasonably long period of time. I think it should work out well.

If there's one thing I'd change I'd make it ten tokens on the card, remove one each turn and let the invader score a frag for every two remaining. It gives the marines the advantage at the halfway mark (unfortunate) but I worry that players might forget to do something that only happens every other turn. (Do we take one off this turn, or next turn? I was too busy geeking trites.)

redsimon said:

Sure, what images do you need? The "soldier" tokens in this map I stole from an Aliens game

-shnar

Steve-O said:

Yeah, I was struggling on how to make the rewards work for this. I thought about just saying marines earn X-Accommodations if they last 10 turns, Invader earns 1 Frag for each soldier killed, and that's when I thought having a tick-down counter would be nice, put the Accommodations on the card and slowly remove them. If the marines flee early, the Invader gets those tokens as Frags. 5 sounded like a nice number but I wanted the marines to stay more than 5 turns, so every-other-turn came up. It is a little gimmicky to keep track of every other turn, but the numbers just matched nicely while keeping the explanation rather short.

10 Accommodations seems too much (the overall game, 50 is about where the marines should be at the end game, so 10 in one sector would be 1/5th the game). I'm trying to make it around 3 to 5 Accommodations per sector level (the easier levels are 3, harder ones are 5), assuming the Invader will frag a marine on average 3 times in a sector level.

So, the idea is that A) the marines can potentially earn 5 Accommodations, B) the Invader can earn Frags if the marines flee, C) the Invader has some easy Frags on this level (the soldiers with their 2 armor, 5 wounds).

-shnar

shnar said:

I now see it is seven pictures:

Pictures for new aim, guard and dodge order tokens, a token showing a heavily wounded Colonial Marine, a token showing a red cross (like the place holder in the first Doom mission in area 4), a token showing a Smart Gun from Aliens, a token showing the head of an Alien.

shnar said:

Oh, right. I forgot that Accommodations were actually a thing in the advanced campaign =#). I was just thinking of it as a random token label. Carry on.

- New Aim/Guard/Dodge, do you want these a different flavor than Doom's? Or just more of the same (i.e. for more players)
- The wounded marine, is he lying down, or just have some bandages?
- Red Cross, can you describe this one a little better? Something like the Question Mark Encounter tokens?
- Smart Gun, is that the large gun Vasquez and Drake used?
- The alien-head, do you want it sideways or bird's eye? (i.e. looking at it from a profile, or from high above) Same with the marine, is it bird's eye?

-shnar

Steve-O said:

Yeah, it's my Doom-ish way of giving the marines Conquest Points

-shnar

shnar said:

The order tokens should be new ones, because the original ones are too colourful and the design just doesn't fit for Aliens.

The wounded marine should be lying on the ground, bird's eye view. The background should be a metal floor. It will represent a wounded marine on the game board.

You can see the red cross symbol in the doom missions book, mission one, area 4. It's basically a large red X. The background should be a metal floor. It will represent an Alien spawn point on the board.

Yep, the Smart Gun is the gun used by Vasquez and Drake. Pictures of it:

www.propstore.com/aliens.htm

and

www.imfdb.org/index.php

The token will mark the ammo left for the weapons of a squad on an ammo sheet and also the orders from the Corporation.

The alien head should be shown sideways. The token will show the tactic the Alien player chooses each turn on a sheet.

Oh, and make the images square, it's much easier to cut out after printing and gluing to cardboard.