What's Next For "Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic" After The Kickstarter?

Regular readers (as well as those who subscribe to my bi-weekly newsletter) have likely heard that my RPG "Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic" is currently live on Kickstarter! If you haven't heard of it yet, then I'd urge you to go check it out, and if you want to help make the game a reality then consider becoming a backer. It's just over 70% funded at time of writing, and we still need all the help we can get!

EDIT: The KS funded, and Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic is now available on DTRPG!

And while I covered a lot of stuff about the game last week in We Want You! "Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic" is Now Live on Kickstarter!, this week I wanted to talk about where I'd like the game to go, and what extra stuff I'd like to do with it, assuming we can reach our goals, and people want more than just a single, base book. So whether you've been following the news of this game for a while, or you're just now hearing about it, here's some stuff I'd like to do in the future, if the rest of this campaign goes well.

Because the Vespoids are just the beginning!

What The Game Already Has

For folks who are just joining us, I thought I'd offer a quick run down of what the base book for Army Men already has, so that what I want to add in the future has some context. In addition to the core rules of the game (it uses the mechanical parts of Dungeons and Dragons' 5th Edition that have gone into Creative Commons, with some additions for more tactical options), the base book gives you:

- 5 Resins to pick from, each with their own, unique benefits.

- 5 Casts to choose, each with 3 subclasses you can branch out into.

- A bestiary full of dangerous animals, dinosaurs, and the fearsome, insectile Vespoids.

- A setting full of nations, history, culture, and religions to explore.

- An armory full of unique weaponry and equipment.

- Unique systems for gear acquisition and threat management for Game Masters.

- A starting mission for players to really get stuck into the setting.

Now, that's a lot of stuff, but it's just the tip of the ice berg when it comes to what I'd like to put into the game once it's out in the wild and players have it in their hands.

What I Want To Add Going Forward

If I get a chance to shoot my shot, that is.

Army Men was never intended to be a one-and-done game, but rather a series of expansions strung together with supplements and tales that players could use to tell deeper, stranger, and more wide-reaching stories. And if we can find the audience for it, there are a lot of things I'd like to do for the game going forward. Some of the bigger things include:

- Additional rules for vehicles. Tanks, planes, motorcycles, and more, because vehicular combat should always be an option.

- Additional Casts to choose from, including options for characters with animal companions as a nod to historical figures like the horse Sergeant Reckless, and the Polish artillery bear Wotjek.

- Mission packs so that players can really get involved in the game and setting, and Game Masters can have a template to follow for designing their own campaigns going forward (given that Army Men uses a format that's unlike a lot of other RPGs).

- Options for mercenaries and contractors. While Army Men's core book sets the scene, this expansion (tentatively titled Soldiers of Fortune) would give players more flexibility, emulating things like The A-Team, or even The Equalizer using the setting and system.

- Expanded armories, tech levels, and enemies. Labeled "Weird War" in my ideas folder, this gets into sci-fi territory with ray guns, bizarre monsters, experiments gone awry, and more!

- Smaller supplements to flesh out the setting, similar to things like my 100 Fantasy Foods or 100 Sci-Fi Mercenary Companies lists.

Something I'd really love to do with Army Men is to get enough folks interested in playing it to expand the meta narrative of the setting, and to bring players along with the story as it develops through the mission packs and expansions. Because the core rulebook for Army Men starts us roughly 50 years after the incursions by the huge, insectoid creatures known as the Vespoids, which caused all the resinous peoples to set aside their differences, declare peace from the war they were fighting, and unite against this common enemy. But I'd like to expand the storyline so players can find out where the Vespoids came from, allow them to discover the even greater threat that lurks behind them, and to expand the borders beyond the Plastos Federation to see what other strange and bizarre nations, cultures, and creatures are lurking beyond their own battle lines!

And, as a final item on the wish list, I wouldn't be averse to expanding the game out to other forms of media, if that was something players wanted to see. Whether it be audio dramas (like the introductory story in the video above) collections of short stories/field reports, novels, or even comic books, if enough people love the setting there are all sorts of things we could do with it once the initial game is done.

So How Do We Get From Here, To There?

First, we've got to take that hill!

As the saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step... and in this case, the first step is getting Army Men's Kickstarter funded!

While the KS has been going all right thus far, we still haven't even reached our minimum goal, to say nothing of the stretch goals that unlock at 10K and 15K (a standard-issue set of army-green dice to ensure your troopers roll hard, and an ammo can for hauling all of your necessities to game respectively). And the best way to make sure that all of us have the energy and space to work on sequels is to be sure that the initial offering made the biggest possible splash, and that there's a lot of people out there who elected to check this game out!

So if any of those expansions sound like something you want to see, then help us lay the foundation for the game so we can go forward with confidence! Back the Kickstarter for Army Men today, and if you've already done that, share it with your friends, your gaming table, or even your family if it sounds like the sort of thing they might get a kick out of!

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