Those are great ideas. And would make great kitbashes...

Who says hobbit holes ?

That will be a great kitbash

Wow people still go to DC

I really like all the stuff, that comes with the download package of "Guncrawl". Great value for the money und the props look amazing. BUT (and this is a big BUT for me) it really is kind of a sandbox game. It's a scenario driven dungeon crawl without ANY scenarios, stats for the xenomorphs, marines, weapons, etc. Of course you CAN come up with everything on your own, but I would like to see some samples, basic guidelines, beginners scenarious, etc. to have something to hold on to before i make my own scenarios and stats. There should have been some scenarios on the ebbles miniatures forums (at least boardgamegeek said so), but the forum is offline. PLEASE point me to some stuff (e.g. a weblink) for an abolute noob who needs some starters advice.

Yep! That's exactly what it's supposed to be, a toolbox for building the exact kind of crawl game you wanted, using any miniatures you had on hand. The inspiration for it came from how much I enjoyed playing things like Space Hulk and the little missions included with Battle for Macragge, and my desire to seamlessly drop any universe into the game. I might want to put on a Stargate game one week, Aliens the next, do a Battlestar Galactica boarding action the next week, dig out my Space Marines and do a 40K themed RPG-lite the week after that, or do a 180 and re-enact extremely gritty Ghost Recon/Rainbow Six style CQB missions where people drop like flies if they get hit once.

As for the lack of scenarios and online resources, a lot of that has to do with the fact that I closed down Ebbles Miniatures and basically put the whole website into stasis on a minimal shared hosting package. I didn't plan to put Guncrawl back on the market at all, but I got a large number of requests for it and caved in. I'll need to go dig into the old forums and see if there's some way I can put together all the old profiles and missions and move them over here. Gimme a couple of days to temporarily bring the Guncrawl section of the Ebbles forum back online so people can use that as the interim archive, and I'll work on moving the stuff over from there.

Now that my girls are on Winter Break, I've actually got some time to get some things done. If you would like to delegate a bit and send some things my way to repackage, feel free to PM me and let me know. (Otherwise I'm going to be reworking some very very old TSR Indiana Jones-based paper works once the arcade games are done.)

I get where you're coming from. I guess it's really cool to just make the exact sci-fi crawler you ever wanted to have, but as i said i feel quite overwhelmed (don't know if that's the right expression, i'm no native speaker ;-) with all the possibilities without any examples of maps, scenarios, etc. I understand, that everything got lost with the shutdown of your old homepage and guess, that Guncrawl is just too "new" on this site, that user-made scenarios could exist over here.

Thank you very much for the effort of trying to come up with the old files from your former forum, I really appreciate that!

As far as I can say now, I just sat the whole afternoon (approx. 5 hours!) with two other guys and we were printing, cutting, glueing and having tons of fun creating the basic tiles and doors. And we're totally looking forward to building some of the really cool props next (the cryo-stasis-chambers are absolutely awesome, especially the one with the "nice hole").

Here you go!

I activated the Guncrawl specific sections of the old Ebbles forum and put the whole thing into read-only mode. I also activated the Flying Lead section because people have asked me for that too.

http://www.ebblesminiatures.com/forum/

There isn't a ton of stuff up, but there should be enough to get a feel for where my head was when I set up the profiling rules, and one of the forum regulars compiled a FAQ in that section as well.

Thanks!

thanks for taking the time for that. Adds to an already good buy.

Thank you very much. This really helps.

Great to see Ebbles miniatures have found a new home at WWG! I'm looking forward to more from the back catalogue appearing. Plus, hopefully, some new stuff! (That USSC Gunship from the blog looks brilliant. I do hope it'll be available here.)

One teeny tiny request: is there any possibility that the Guncrawl basic tile set could be sold on it's own? I already have the four sets that come with it.

There's a handful of products left to add. What you see in the Ebbles Labs section is basically 90% of what there will be.



Probably not for a while--I haven't been a full time model designer since late 2010, and everything I've done since then was stuff I did in my free time. Since I'm no longer an active gamer on account of having to sell off the majority of my gaming stuff last year, my tastes have gradually shifted away from 28mm gaming models to other stuff like whimsical paper toys, dollhouse furnishings, action figure scale items, and 1:100 scale display models.

Also, this year looks like it's going to be a potentially busy one as a programmer, as well as presenting other business opportunities that I'd really like to take a poke at. It'll probably be a fair while before I get around to doing gaming PDF models again.



Given the age of most of these items and the generally lower prices over here at WWG, it made more sense for me to bundle the smallest (in terms of content load) Ebbles sets together for new WWG customers and then discount the bundles into line with the rest of the catalog. The basic tiles were actually going to be retired outright because they were superseded by the better ones included with the Guncrawl game in 2008, but I included them in the bundle because they figured prominently in the box art for the props packs.

Ah, well, that's frustrating. As much as I'd like the tiles (either the originals or the updated version), I can't really justify re-buying the sets I already own. Maybe if I win the lottery...
Still, if that's what makes best economic sense for you guys I can't complain. It'd be unrealistic to expect WWG to cater solely for MY needs!

And it's disappointing to hear there's no new Ebbles goodness on the horizon. That USSC gunship looked sweet. But if you're getting steady work and new opportunities, then that has got to be your priority.

I really wish you would add the Derelict II Mega Set and Firebase Maginot sets to your stuff here on WWG. They are fun to work with. I have made an array of different coloring options for different enviorns. They are wonderfull sets, Chris!

I bought the GunCrawl set for my great grandson and he was thrilled. I decided to make boards for the Derelict II Mega Set and Firebase Maginot as well for him. He is in hog heaven with them and his parents were as well. They are now playing as a family, which was my hope. I have read on these forums how other families do so and I so much wanted this for him. It hurt me to see him sitting alone so much with a handheld game ... so isoloted. He has as well invited a couple friends over to play GunCrawl and the Derelict II Mega Set and Firebase Maginot boards I made for him. They also had sat with those handheld games like he had. You should see them interacting now ... I am so happy! They do tend to add some of their own rules, which is fine.

Anyway, I hope you will add those two sets. I don't care how old they are they are still great sets.

I'll say it again, you're the coolest lady on Earth Delta

What Denny said. That was a nice thing of you to do.

Derelict II and Maginot date back to 2003/2004, and while they hold a special place in my heart, they're just too far out of date on too many points to re-release in their original form. I would rather redo or re-imagine them completely in modern formats and at my current level of texturing skill. The biggest holdup to that is finding enough room in my tiny office to stage a suitably epic photo shoot.

Isn't that what the WWG test-build team are for?
Surely there are some amongst that group who could put together some superb builds for the photo shoot?

Oh, no, we don't ask that of them. The beta team's job is mainly to test build new things and make sure they also work for other people besides the designers. We don't hit them up for photo builds because it's a lot of work to stage and take a decent photo shoot.

I can't speak for the other designers, but I know I prefer to take the photos myself when I can. For one thing, I like having direct control all of the variables like lighting, composition, and color balance, plus I can stage things to make postprocessing in Photoshop easier. For example, controlling the balance of diffuse vs direct illumination by strategically moving the camera and the lights means I don't have to try and fix glare hotspots or deal with washed-out colors and detail.

I also have no problem scrapping a whole photo shoot or rebuilding a hero model if I screwed something up (giant glue blemishes or sloppy edging on the hero model or whatever), but it feels unfair to hold a beta tester's feet to the fire like that.

Thank you Denny and Mel for your kind words. All of you designers are special. Your vision gives us the models (tools) to let loose our own creativity in dioramas and game boards. You all are very special indeed.

I found the discussion of the photo shoot for a model or set very interesting. Like Zen, I had thought that was part of the wrap up that someone else did, though I can see why a designer would want to control that.

I can't help but wonder what a reboot of those two sets would be like. Wow!!! is all I can imagine. If you are like me, however, you'd rather do something new than revamp what you have already done.

Reading other post, I know you are into other scales ... action figures, dollhouse scale ... and the like. I started playing around with the plastic army men scale when my great grandson made me a deal I couldn't refuse on his army men a few years ago. I did it just to help his little sale, but became fascinated about modeling for them.

It happens

Were the army men about twice as big as 28mm figures? I like that scale too! In fact, I've been spending half an hour or so a day building a 1:30 scale Ares Vulcan over the past week for the heck of it. Just the left foot and the arms remain to do on the base build, then it's on to the weapons and options. I'm supposed to do a photo post on my blog when I'm done with the base build.

I miss those little army men style spacemen figures--if I get my hands on some, I'd like to see if they paint up okay and take a poke at some sort of in-scale moonbase diorama. Failing that, it'd be fun to get back into sculpting 54mm tall figures. I used to do that a lot with Sculpey/Fimo back in the mid-1990s.

I see a lot of appeal in doing Derelict III in TerrainLinx format and Maginot's successor as a SwiftScenics set. More so if I can figure out how to blimp them up to 1:30 scale after the fact.

The army men are 1/35 scale (51mm ...2"tall). The last time I used Sculpey was to make the two dragon figurines that I use as my avatar here. Sculpting anything very small is difficult for me. The paint job was badly done as well ... still I keep them.

Glad to hear about your work with the Ares Vulcan! I'll have to check out your blog for updates on that. Are you going to do the drop pod as well?

I can see a lot of appeal in your doing Derelict III in TerrainLinx format and Maginot's successor as a SwiftScenics set as well. WOW!!!! That would be awesome!!!

Hey Mel!

I was looking through some post on GunCrawl stuff today and bumped into your thread here. I almost forgot I compiled a GunCrawl FAQ a wile back and that is was on the old forum, Lol.

I figured if it's ok I'll post it here in the thread for anyone who still might need it or anyone who may have certain questions come up during game play. I hope this is the right place for the FAQ.

I mostly made the FAQ for anyone (like me) who wants to play the game as close as possible as the creator (Mel) visioned it. I will say this tho that GunCrawl truly is more of a sandbox style of game, that in which you can easily modify or supplement some of your own rules and versions of rules. Which makes it all the more fun and a great game!
Here it is:

GunCrawl 1st Edition - FAQ
"A Game of Close Quarters Havoc"

GunCrawl 1st Edition Published By Ebbles Miniatures
GunCrawl 1st Edition - FAQ Compiled by David DeWitt

First of all a big Thank You to Mel for Designing GunCrawl, as its a wonderful game and providing these many answers to all our questions, since its release! Also a big Thank You to everyone who asked questions for Mel to answer, with out them this FAQ would not exist!

*** GunCrawl 1st Edition Questions and Answers: ***

Q.) What is the movement rate for Unknown Contact markers?

A.) The movement rate of Unknown Contact tokens is up to the map designer, as you can make them exactly match any enemy figure's Movement, or you can choose to have them move at a slow but steady pace. I like to have them move once in the Enemy Phase towards the player figures, because it feels "creepy" to have a lot of Unknown Contact markers slowly enveloping the players.

Q.) If an unknown marker is revealed during the enemy phase, can the revealed enemies act or not?

A.) Yes, revealed enemies may act immediately, when they're revealed, they're in direct LOS of player figures, so they usually have an opportunity to close and engage.

Q.) Do you roll for enemy reinforcements each and every Enemy Phase or do you only roll for enemy reinforcements when there are already enemy figures on the map?

A.) Every enemy phase, unless specified otherwise by the mission.

Q.) Can enemy figures that are played by the system (e.g. Aliens) open/close normal doors?

A.) Yes, unless specified otherwise by the mission.
Normally, if enemies couldn't open doors, you'd end up with like 8 enemies stacked up outside of a closed door twiddling their thumbs, so the standard assumption is that enemies will do whatever it takes to fulfill their behavior rules (always approach player figures), including opening any doors between them and the player figures they're approaching.

Q.) The rule for enemy defenders reads: "Corridors and junction tiles that are blocked by doors are treated as if they were room tiles." Does that mean that when I open a door to such a 'sealed' corridor tile, I immediately roll for defenders and set them up according to the room set up rules, i.e. by rolling on the room placement table?

A.) Yes, but you can place them anywhere you want on those tiles. The Enemy Placement Grid only really works on real room tiles.

Q.) When initially placing defenders in a room, do I roll the exact position for each defender in the room, or do I only roll for the first defender in the room and then place all others adjacent to the first one?

A.) Just the first one, then place any others in an adjacent space. You can also do it the other way if you feel it makes more sense in certain circumstances; the rules are flexible that way.

Q.) When making an attack with a gun with multiple attack dice, can I decide to fire less attack dice than allowed, in order to save ammo?

A.) Yes.

Q.) When defending, must I interrupt as soon as the enemy figure comes into LOS or can I wait until the enemy comes closer to my figure and then interrupt him?

A.) You can interrupt visible enemies at any point during the enemy phase.

Q.) In order to dispatch (kill) an incapacitated enemy figure, my figure must be adjacent, one action then kills the incapacitated enemy. Is there a way to shoot/make a ranged attack vs. an incapacitated enemy figure, in order to kill it?

A.) No, if you want to shoot an incapacitated enemy, you perform a normal attack action, counting the incapacitated enemy as LVL 1 and just add more recovery dice to the targeted enemy.

The Dispatch action represents the player figure ensuring that the enemy is really and truly dead, like breaking necks, slitting throats, shooting them through the head at point blank range, and so forth. You don't really have that same "certainty" from across the room.

Q.) Is there a limit to the number of times a single figure can be healed by a medic each turn?

A.) No specific limit, but the medic's action limit pretty much ensures that a maximum of 3 attempts are made per turn.

Q.) Is there a limit to the number of medics that can heal a single figure each turn?

A.) Nope, other than how many you can actually fit in adjacent spaces.
EMT’s and paramedics routinely work in pairs or small groups, and if you happen to have more than one combat medic, you can pool their actions in the same task.

Q.) When rolling a “1” in a Resuscitation attempt, the wounded figure dies. Is the same true, when rolling a “1” for a Tend Casualty attempt?

A.) No. When you're attempting to resuscitate a casualty, the assumption is that the patient is circling the drain and death is pretty much imminent unless you stop the bleeding or whatever else requires stabilizing. When you're tending a casualty, the assumption is that the patient is fairly stable and is not in immediate danger of death, in such cases, a 1 just means the medic dropped the med kit, missed a vein, or otherwise managed to have zero effect in the treatment attempt.

Q.) Is there anything that actually makes the Alert level go back down or does it just stay up when it goes up?

A.) It goes up and stays up. The rationale is that if alarms are going off and the people sent to investigate keep failing to report back, they're just going to keep going to a higher state of alert until the problem goes away. It's a mechanism for ratcheting up the tension as the mission continues.

Q.) How do you determine what the magazine capacity should be, or is it just guess/estimate?

A.) You only have to worry about actual ammo capacities when profiling real weapons. If you're doing imaginary weapons or you don't know how many bullets are in a “Mow-em-down” BLAM-90's magazine, just pick an ammo roll that feels right and go from there.

The ammo roll primarily measures the likelihood of a weapon running out of ammunition at an incredibly inconvenient time, rather than being a measure of "realistic" capacity (Ammo counting is included just for people who prefer to count their bullets).
Weapons that have a low ammo capacity and a lot of attack dice tend to run empty frequently, while weapons that have ammo capacities large enough to keep up with the weapon's practical rate of fire are less likely to run out quickly.

Q.) How do I determine how many enemies enter play out of sight when rolling for reinforcements or defenders in a room or corridor, or do I write that on the dice table when rolling for enemies?

A.) For the number of enemies, you either use their Threat Values or simply make up the number yourself when you're doing the patrol/defender tables. Personally, I go by the total number of attack dice in the players' possession as a starting point, and then I tweak that number as needed.

Q.) For the close combat attack dice, power, and reach there is no spot on the card for it, would it just be placed in the special notes area?

A.) Since most player figures tend to have the default "fists and feet" profile of Power 0 Dice 1, the only time anyone has to make a note of it is when the figure has a Physical Aptitude other than 3 or more than 1 unarmed close combat attack die. So, close combat profile modifications tend to be on attack cards or in the Special Rules section, yes.

Q.) For the attack dice method do you compare all the enemies on the board to all the players on the board or just the ones appearing?

A.) For fairness, all of them at once.

Q.) For the Attack Dice method do you compare attack dice to attack dice on both sides?

A.) Only if both sides have ranged weapons. In that case, I throttle the enemies by the number of ranged attack dice they have, so I don't end up placing 6 machine gunners with 4 dice each on the board when there are only 6 players with 2 dice each. So, I place enemies until the number of enemy attack dice matches the number of player attack dice.

If the enemies are all close combatants like aliens or whatever, I tend to go with 1 alien per player attack die. If they're particularly weak or easy to hit because they're of a lower LVL, I place 2 per player attack die. It might not sound like much, but it's more than enough when you factor in misses, Trauma, failed ammo rolls, and so forth.

Q.) For the Threat Value method do you compare Threat Value to Threat Value on both sides?

A.) I simply continue placing enemies until total enemy Threat Value is as close to total player Threat Value as possible.

Q.) Ok say a weapon has 2 attack dice, when attacking an enemy do you roll both at the same time and the enemy defends for all that hit, or is one dice rolled at a time for a total of two in an action?

A.) The former.

Q.) When 2 or more dice are rolled at the same time and the enemy failed his defense roll on both, does he go down and the extra dice do something, like add to recovery roll?

A.) He would get one recovery die per hit. You only add the attack's PWR to the target's REC once per recovery die, it doesn't stack.

Q.) When attacking an enemy that is down from an attack with a ranged weapon, when attacking to add to the Recovery roll, for each dice that hits does it add just one to the Recovery roll?

A.) Each hit inflicted beyond the first simply adds an extra Recovery die, turned up to the face that matches the sum of attack PWR and target REC.

If you're finding that you consistently have a lot of red shirt enemies laying around wounded instead of dying quickly, you may want to give them the "Insignificant" special rule on page 19, so that you only have to make Recovery rolls for important enemies.

Q.) Does power or the accurate effect add to accumulating the recovery roll?

A.) Only Power is added to REC. Accurate only modifies the to-hit roll.

Q.) For a character with squad leader or officer ability, when giving action point to team character, you take an action point to do this, now can the action points be split up between characters, or is there a limit on how many can be given to a character, in one action step?

A.) It requires one action to issue orders, how you split up the order point actions is entirely up to you.

Q.) When issuing orders does the target need to be in LOS?

A.) If you're issuing orders to subordinates that are out of sight, it's assumed they're wearing radios or carrying personal communicators, or they have a really loud voice.

Q.) When dispatching an enemy is the diagonal space to the enemy adjacent?

A.) Yes, any space touching a space occupied by the player figure is an adjacent space.

Q.) How does the devastating effect work?

A.) Devastating weapons inflict 2 recovery dice per failed defense roll, so if you get hit by a Devastating weapon and you fail a DEF roll, you get 2 recovery dice instead of 1.

Q.) Can a character or enemy have dual weapons, of course only things like pistols, but then can 2 attack dice be made, representing both weapons being fired, or are there any certain rules on this?

A.) You add the attack dice together, so two machine pistols with 2 dice each means the figure rolls 4 in a single attack action.

Q.) When an enemy enters LOS does it immediately have to fire using all of its actions or can it attempt to try and move closer?

A.) An enemy must automatically fire a ranged weapon if a target enters LOS and is within range of the enemy's weapon, and it will use all of its actions to attack. For a close combat type enemy it will keep moving first till it is in range to attack.

Q.) I know if you attack an enemy and it becomes incapacitated, then when you attack the incapacitated enemy again, say with a ranged weapon, you count the incapacitated enemy as LVL 1 and it adds more dice to the Recovery roll for each hit, but does the incapacitated enemy still do a defense roll for the dice that hit, even being considered LVL 1?

A.) Defense rolls represent armor, hide thickness, and overall ability to resist the initial attack effects, so the answer would be yes; incapacitated enemies still make DEF rolls.

Q.) With regard to flamers, if a flamer is a 1 die attack, it sounds like all adjacent squares will suffer a power 2 attack? To carry it further, if an enemy is hit with a 3 die attack consisting of flame markers on his space and on both sides; would he suffer the marker attack and two power 2 attacks?

A.) Yes, and almost yes. For obvious reasons, it would be difficult to actually put a flame marker in a space that is already occupied by a figure or object, so what normally happens is that flame markers are simply placed in any visible spaces adjacent to the target. Any figure or object that is adjacent to flame markers sustains one hit per adjacent flame marker, this indeed does mean that if there are 3 flame markers adjacent to a figure or object, that figure or object sustains 3 hits.

Q.) What happens when the area attack would miss into a wall, we ruled that it stops at the wall and the 1/2 square area counts as the center of the area.

A.) You ruled correctly.


*** Other Questions and Answers: ***

Q.) I was looking through some of the options in Adobe Reader when I went to print a model and was wandering what the Page Scale of your models was intended to be, since it has an option for None or Fit to Printable Area?

A.) Always leave scaling to None and always leave Centering on.


Thanks Again to Everyone!