The aim is to create a playable, miniature- agnostic tabletop skirmish game, set in a post-apocalyptic future.

That’s a lot of words, but if you’ve not heard the term ‘miniature-agnostic’ before, it just means you can use whatever minis you’d like, either converting up your own to match the setting, or finding appropriate minis from other games to use.

Will this be a published game? Will there be sculpted miniatures you can buy? Maybe, at some point in the far, far future, but that’s not the current plan. Right now, the goal is to write a set of rules that allows other people to play the game using their own models.

I started this project a long time ago, all the way back in 2021 after reading Tabletop Wargames by Rick Priestley and John Lambshed which talked about the nuts and bolts of game mechanics and game design. This coincided with a rise in popularity of indie and miniature-agnostic games like Turnip28.

Since the initial impetus back in 2021, it’s mostly been brewing away in the background where I occasionally jot down ideas, rules mechanics and lore as and when they come to me. It turns out writing a game is a little more complex than I first thought and finding time to dedicate to it is a major hurdle. But …

Over the last few months, my usual hobby time has instead been spent working on the game development. I’ve been getting into the nitty-gritty parts of rules writing in addition to fleshing out the lore and setting which I’m developing alongside the rules.

While I’ve been making consistent progress on the rules, I’m doing this all on my own, and while occasionally bouncing ideas off friends is great, that only gets you so far.

Having a Dev Diary is a good way for me to solidify some of my thoughts, and crucially discuss ideas and get feedback on them.

Side-note: I’ve seen lots of interesting Dev Diaries recently on TikTok for indie computer games, showcasing the games’ progress. That medium doesn’t really work for tabletop games, at least in the early stages. So for now, I’m taking a blog-based approach; perhaps later on I will do a talking head style video or have video demonstrations of rules mechanics. I’m hoping this process will be interesting and informative for all of us.

At the end of each Dev Diary, I’ll have some prompts or questions to get the ball rolling. Sometimes I’ll ask for specific feedback; other times I’d just love to hear about your general thoughts on what I’ve said.

I’ll be posting this Dev Diary over on Instagram. I’m aware that this long form content in image format might not work the best, so I’ve also posted it to www.beyondthetabletop.com in a standard blog format and I’ll also add it to my Patreon as a free article, so people can follow along with the project there.

Speaking of following the project, one of the first bits of input from you would be how you would like to hear about this project.

For now, I’m content with just posting this on my own socials, but should it have its own dedicated page to follow on insta or its own blog page?

I’m aware that it’s currently going to be muddled in with my own hobby and shop content, and not all of that content will appeal to everyone. It would also make revisiting content a lot harder.

Likewise, if you’re reading this on my website you can subscribe to my newsletter to get updates. My newsletter is a mixture of tutorial videos and shop updates.

Perhaps hosting it on a dedicated platform away from my hobby content and store would be better. Posting the content to just one place would also be better for my sanity and time than having it live in multiple places.

So I’d like to hear how you usually follow along with projects, and more specifically how you’d like to follow this one.

Likewise, I’d love to hear your first impressions of this project, any initial questions and topics you’d like me to cover in future Dev Diary instalments. Please leave them in the comments!