by Brant Guillory, 2 May 2024
Designer Keith Tracton took some out from his many-varied projects – design work with LNLP, local community theater, voiceover work, and coordinating stunts for an as-yet-unnamed Muppet movie – to chat with us about his soon-to-be-released and long-under-development1 Raider Drop Zone.
You’re mainly known for your work on different titles with Lock ‘n Load Publishing, but Raider Drop Zone‘s been floating around a while. How did you sneak in the work on this one around all of your other current design projects?
I have a fantastic development team on the World At War 85 series, and they will get their opportunities to shine in the next couple of volumes of the series. That decision bought me a whole lot of time, which I decided to use to relax by working on other projects that were on the back burners, like Raider Drop Zone and the WaW85 squadron level air campaign game (working title: War In The Air 85).
(FYI: For the WaW85 series, Nicholas Michon is heading up the team for the next volume after Blood and Fury, entitled Never Give In, to showcase the French. Then Jeff Schulte is going to oversee the title after that, America Breached.)
Raider Drop Zone was developed in less than a year because I designed and wrote the original rules in 1991, and they were tested back then. (So….I cheated…) Those rules were forgotten for many years, buried in a file on my shelf as I moved from one place to another. Last year, I rediscovered the box containing the rules (not the first time over the years, TBH) and was amazed to find that 90% of them still made sense, while the other 10% I promptly discarded as nonsensical. Fortunately, I also had the original counters, maps, and player aids.
There is a history of printing in my family starting with my grandfather, so, along the way I had accidentally accumulated decades of desktop publishing experience and proficiency in Adobe Creative Cloud software (caveat: I am no Marc von Martial!2). But I was quite comfortable setting out to create polished and functional components for the game, keeping the elements of them as simple as possible. I tried to leverage the most efficient techniques I had come across to produce the components, particularly the rules (yes you must use Styles!) and counter sheets. That helped me transform the 1991 version of the game into a prototype in less than a year.
click images to enlarge
If we gave Raider Drop Zone a DNA test, what games would show up in it’s genetic background? Are there specific things you picked from those games to incorporate? Or was there a more general vibe your were aiming for?
Part of it is game influence and part literary. The origin of the idea for this game came directly from Avalon Hill’s 1977 version of Starship Troopers. In the back of that rule book is a montage which included a rendition of a Mobile Infantry drop zone grid. Back in 1977 I wanted to make a drop zone game. But it took me until 1991 to actually write something down, And of course I couldn’t publish anything based on Robert Heinlein’s universe without permission. However, a friend of mine and I had been working for fun on a science fiction universe for years, ever since high school. He wrote the initial version of the primary alien race and asked me to do the Terrans – us! – based out of our solar system. Later I defined and wrote a couple additional alien races as other opponents in the universe, and which are what I use in my games. The Kraken, who are the alien opponents in Raider Drop Zone, are absolutely reminiscent of the Arachnids from Starship Troopers.
Then there was Star Soldier, SPI’s 1977 man-to-man scifi version of their own Sniper simultaneous movement game (so, first edition), which was also an influence: the Orbital Artillery Strike rules in RDZ are an homage to the Ortillery rules in that game.
The universe in which RDZ is set is called Firepower Pass, because that’s a tactic that the massive epic naval fleets of the race that my friend created used to conquer one of the Spiral arms of the galaxy. I also use it to be the title for the literary universe behind the setting of Raider Drop Zone.
Then there is the literary background of Warhammer 40k, by Games Workshop. I have played 40k only once or twice, but I love the novels that have been written in that universe. They have a stable of sci-fi writers headed by Dan Abnett and Graham McNeill who have written novel after novel exploring that universe. But one section written by Dan Abnett created a regiment (and a 15 book series!) whose weaponry names I pay homage to by using them as some of the Support weapon unit types from Dan Abnett’s creation: Gaunt’s Ghosts, The Tanith First and Only Regiment.
Back to games for a moment: in 2006 I published a game called Firepower Pass, a set of 3D Squadron Level Space Combat miniatures rule, which is no longer in print. But the background and descriptive text in the scenarios is all a part of my Firepower Pass universe and the Midpoint Station figures heavily in that narrative. The strategic map I adapted and which is in the scenario book of RDZ is from the strategic map in the Firepower Pass rules.
I have another scifi ground combat game in the Firepower Pass universe on a different scale and in parallel development. It directly helped me refine the combat systems for Raider Drop Zone. The other game is the first in a series of four games called Firepower Strike – The Siege of Midpoint Station, and Volume 1 is called Cracking the Hammer Bastion. That game itself is based on a scifi siege game that I did in 2015 for myself, depicting the Siege of Vervunhive straight out of one of Dab Abnett’s Warhammer 40k Gaunt’s Ghosts novels. So, it all wraps around! (Tangentially, I blame that game and posting pictures of it on Facebook for how I got the position to head up the WaW85 series. But that is another story.)
What’s an example of something that changed significantly during the testing and development of the game? How did it evolve?
The combat system itself totally evolved and was then replaced when, in the end, it could not portray what I wanted it to, and which sometimes happens. The original combat system was much like many over the years: strength was definite and added together into odds tables. Support units provided column shifts. It was, well, OK, but fiddly. I really wanted something that was result-based but still had an operational feel, fitting the unit scale in RDZ of Raider companies.
So, I tossed out the combat system from 1991 and replaced it with what I have been developing since then. I have been experimenting with combat systems for about 50 years now, toying with designs, none of which are fully developed: a Waterloo and a Gettysburg game (who doesn’t have one of those, right?), even an Invasion America epic-scale game.
But all using similar, linked concepts: I focus on the people and the groups of people involved in combat situations and how their psychology interacts with their and their enemies equipment, and their unit cohesion under fire. But now I am at the point where I can actually focus on implementing my preferred ways to characterize a combat environment, even a fictional one. My goal is to distill down my concepts on the cohesion and estimated success rates of units of differing experience levels into simple systems. The result is what I call in RDZ my “Shock and Awe” combat system (a variant will be in the Firepower Strike series). Shock is your strength; and Awe is your morale-equivalent. And there is relative unit size which factors in. But your Shock value is a category of strength, not a definite value. And terrain of any kind is always a factor for both attacker and defender. Leading to the occasional unexpected result, like the equivalent of a Roarke’s Drift situation.
What are the future plans for the development both the game world beyond this initial project? Are there plans to adapt the rules engine to other conflicts outside of this specific game world?
Raider Drop Zone is a trial balloon for my process and my Shock and Awe ground combat system. As I have mentioned, I mean to cover the Procyonese siege of Midpoint Station in the four Firepower Strike games in development. I will be exploring other aspects and scales of the Firepower Pass universe: I have a board game version of the original Firepower Pass 3D Squadron miniatures rules in the mix, which will be much more affordable and compact (its a board game!). Also another set of rules written in the 1991 range is an operational level game way above the Firepower Pass squadron scale, with a working title of Fleet-Legion, and that is in development too. (The Procyonese Fleets carry and support their Legions…)
If you were a polyhedral die, which one would you be, and why?
Two ten-sided dice. Then I could roll in 5 percent increments if I added myself together; or 1 percent increments if I read myself as percentiles. I like flexibility 😉
Don’t forget, there are bonus questions from all of our interviews that we set aside for our Patreon supporters – just one of the perks of joining our Patreon!
Thank you for visiting The Armchair Dragoons and mounting up with the Regiment of Strategy Gaming.
You can find our regiment’s social media on Mastodon, BlueSky, Facebook, TwXtter, YouTube, and even Threads, if we could ever get an auto-post to it.
(We have an Instagram page and it’s really just a placeholder & redirect to our articles.)
You can support The Armchair Dragoons through our Patreon, also, and find us at a variety of conventions and other events.
Feel free to talk back to us either in our discussion forum, or in the comments below.
