Catullus64
2021-11-10, 01:49 PM
For those who don't know, Mordheim is a miniatures skirmish game, set in the Warhammer Fantasy universe and using rules which resemble a scaled-down version of the Warhammer Fantasy Battle game.
The setting is the eponymous city, which has been plunged into ruin and chaos by the impact of a giant comet of wyrdstone (the substance in Warhammer fantasy is usually called warpstone). Various factions scavenge the city, seeking valuable shards of wyrdstone for their own purposes, and fighting each other over it. You assemble a warband from one of these six factions: human Mercenaries, the warrior-nuns of the Sisters of Sigmar, the fanatical Witch Hunters, the Chaos-worshipping Cult of the Possessed, the Vampire-led Undead, and the nefarious Skaven ratmen.
I played a little bit of this game way back in the day at a local club. Lately I've been poring over the rulebook and supplements, and trying to convince some friends of mine in distant cities, with whom I regularly play roleplaying games over Roll20, to give it a try with me.
The trouble I'm running into is with using the Roll20 platform. Mordheim is a game of winding streets and ruined buildings, of ambushes, maneuver, and close urban combat; three-dimensional terrain is pretty vital, and relative height of obstacles is often a deciding factor in the gameplay. I'm struggling to figure out how to adapt it in a top-down, 2D medium like Roll20. Has anyone else ever tried adapting a 3D-focused game into 2D, and how did you handle it? I'd prefer not to have to move into and learn an entirely different platform. Answers bespoke to Mordheim are of course great, but since it's a niche game I'm very willing to take advantage of examples from other games.
The setting is the eponymous city, which has been plunged into ruin and chaos by the impact of a giant comet of wyrdstone (the substance in Warhammer fantasy is usually called warpstone). Various factions scavenge the city, seeking valuable shards of wyrdstone for their own purposes, and fighting each other over it. You assemble a warband from one of these six factions: human Mercenaries, the warrior-nuns of the Sisters of Sigmar, the fanatical Witch Hunters, the Chaos-worshipping Cult of the Possessed, the Vampire-led Undead, and the nefarious Skaven ratmen.
I played a little bit of this game way back in the day at a local club. Lately I've been poring over the rulebook and supplements, and trying to convince some friends of mine in distant cities, with whom I regularly play roleplaying games over Roll20, to give it a try with me.
The trouble I'm running into is with using the Roll20 platform. Mordheim is a game of winding streets and ruined buildings, of ambushes, maneuver, and close urban combat; three-dimensional terrain is pretty vital, and relative height of obstacles is often a deciding factor in the gameplay. I'm struggling to figure out how to adapt it in a top-down, 2D medium like Roll20. Has anyone else ever tried adapting a 3D-focused game into 2D, and how did you handle it? I'd prefer not to have to move into and learn an entirely different platform. Answers bespoke to Mordheim are of course great, but since it's a niche game I'm very willing to take advantage of examples from other games.