The Drowned and the Damned Interview – Rich Chappell
The Drowned and the Damned is one of those Kickstarters that hits a lot of the high notes for me. It future proofs itself through 3D Printing, it keeps previous games alive because of 3D Printing, AND it is a full-on, fully 3D Printable game itself. It really does show off why 3D Printing is so cool. The Drowned and the Damned is a full game, in and of itself. It is a fantasy naval wargame. If you have played Man O’ War, Uncharted Seas, or Dreadfleet, you know the genre. (I own two of those games… so you can understand my excitement about this game). What is also cool, is that the first two ship races, the Elves and the Dwarves could easily be used as proxies for Man O’ War. If you don’t want to 3D Print your units, or you want to get your friend’s in on the action, then they offer not only the 3D Printed models, but also the physical version of the models.
On with the interview:
- For those unfamiliar, what miniatures games have you created? What mechanics do you use?
- Our first game was Across the Dead Earth, a post-apocalyptic skirmish game set in the UK, you can get the rules for that for free on our website www.deadearth.co.uk. More recently we have released Pirates of the Dread Sea – our fantasy pirate skirmish game. Both use 2D6 exclusively. They’re fun ad quick to play games that use alternating activations and also feature campaign elements and event cards to add the flavour of the settings.
- What miniatures games do you play, outside your own?
- I’m always testing my own games nowadays, but I used to enjoy Black Powder a great deal. have significant Warhammer 40k forces that get an occasional outing and I really enjoyed the Underworlds games. I occasionally play Black Seas and Cruel Seas, Blood Red Skies, In Her Majesty’s Name.
- How long have you owned a 3D Printer for gaming?
- No time at all! I only started 3D printing because the printer I usually use was closed during the first lockdown! Like everyone else who owns a 3d printer, I am now addicted!
- What printers do you use to print models?
- I have an Elegoo Mars and look forward to getting a Saturn, but the Kickstarter miniatures will be printed on bigger printers!
- It looks like you have previously released physical models. What made you decide to release a 3D printable version?
- Because even on a relatively inexpensive printer like the Mars, they look great! I didn’t realise affordable printers could produce a good enough quality to want our products to be represented that way. I was wrong!
- Do you have a favorite model you have created?
- Obviously at the moment I’m really into the Drowned and the Damned stuff, of which I think the Elf flagship is my favourite. From the rest of our ranges, probably Captain Thornback for Pirates of the Dread Sea, though I also love the bear riders (MMF purchase link) we made for a game that didn’t fund on Kickstarter, called The Shattered Crown. I’ve just been prepping them to be released as STL files today, actually, and they’re going to be even better than the original metal models, as they don’t have to be multi-part!
- Starting a Kickstarter for a new miniature game can be difficult. What kind of issues have you run into getting this Kickstarter rolling? How has your workflow changed over your releases?
- The biggest struggle really has been getting things ready before we had to launch the Kickstarter, which I don’t think we really did, but we needed to launch at some point and there wasn’t much else I could get done, as everyone involved apart from me is freelance and people need paying!
- How long have you been working on the Drowned and the Damned?
- Probably around a year, it really spun out of Pirates of the Dread Sea, which I was working on for more like five!
- How did you come up with this idea?
- It came out of Pirates of the Dread Sea and wanting to play a different scale, a different type of game. It was naval wargaming that got me back into wargaming after many years out, so I guess it was inevitable I end up making this game in the end!
- I’ll admit, when I first heard about this on your page, I was excited for the ability to use these as proxies for Man O’ War and Uncharted Seas. (It seems the Fantasy Naval genre struggles, in general) Is that how this started, or did you start with the thought of making a new rule set?
- I had Man o’War and enjoyed it immensely as a kid, but I actually really don’t remember the rules, other than having the big ship cards with tokens on. So the rules have come about like all my rules – what needs to happen to have fun? How do the different races or ships add to the tactical options and fun?
- Can you give us a glimpse of where you want to go with this game? New races, etc?
- Easy! Take a look at the Pirates of the Dread Sea rulebook and range – we would like to add all the races from the world – humans, orcs and goblins, undead, ratmen, Skrier (squid-headed people) and NPC monsters and creatures. All will have their own unique ships and styles of play if we get to make them! That all depends on this Kickstarter, of course.
I want to thank Rich for his time in getting this interview back to me. They are down to their final few days of The Drowned and the Damned Kickstarter. Full disclosure, I have already backed them at the STL level to get this when it releases. I’m also so happy to see that we have another convert to the 3D Printing family. Along with the highlights above that I think 3D Printing brings to gamers, there is one other aspect I forgot to mention. I think it allows for much smaller designers to bring their brilliant ideas to fruition. Please head over to Dead Earth Games to check out their other miniatures games Across the Dead Earth and Pirates of the Dread Sea.
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