All good things need a clear vision. I have one for Gasland, but I wanted to write it down, so that I could share it with others. Here it is. As ever, I reserve the right to be smarter tomorrow than I am today.
I want Gaslands to be a tabletop hobby wargame that offers a hybrid of car combat and racing, set in a post-apocalyptic setting, that assumes the use of kitbashed matchbox toy vehicles in place of more expensive miniatures.
I need Gaslands to be playable right out of the paperback book, without the need for additional components. I want Gaslands to be better with a small set of custom skid dice.
I want individual games of Gaslands to take less than an hour to play.
I want Gaslands to be enjoyable as a one-off game; and even more satisfying over a campaign of 5 to 15 linked games.
I want Gasland to feel closer to Thunder Road than Car Wars in terms of rules complexity. I do not want Gaslands to feel like it is attempting to “simulate” car combat in painful detail. I want rules to exist because they are the minimum rules required to create maximum fun.
I want Gaslands to use movement templates to make movement easy and quick.
I want as little downtime for players as can be. Ideally none if this is possible.
I want Gaslands to feel closer to Rush 2049, Mario Cart, Borderlands 2 and Crackdown than to Gran Turismo. Simulation is not the aim of Gaslands. Over-the-top cinematic action is. I want film and video game tropes to be welcome and natural to the feel of the game.
I want to recreate all that’s cool about car combat in Mad Max.
I want to create a tabletop hobby wargame that is different to the many other car combat games available to players.
I want players to laugh when they play Gaslands. I want players to laugh because of the cinematic or unexpected or absurd things that happen to them or others during the game.
I want Gaslands to be fun with 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 players, and maybe even 7 or 8 if possible.
I want Gaslands to be the sort of wargame that is appealling and enjoyable to people who have never played a tabletop hobby game before. I want Gaslands to be a “gateway” tabletop game, bringing new people into the hobby. I want Gaslands to also be fun for tabletops veterans.
I want Gaslands to be a successful product for Osprey, and I want players to want to share the game with others. I want both of these things to be true because the game is high quality, fast to learn and riotous to play.
To see the movies, tabletop games and video games that inspire Gaslands, check out the Ludography, Videography and Filmography.
If Gaslands sounds like your sort of game, and you want to help make it the best it can be, please sign up to be a playtester in our forums.