Interview with Richard Cowen about Xenos Rampant
As you may know I am big fan of Dan Mersey’s Lion Rampant and all of the games running on the Rampant Engine. Richard Cowen created sci-fi version named Xenos Rampant which will be published soon by Osprey Wargames.
Hi there. I live in Lancaster, a small city in the northwest of England, since I moved here for university nearly two decades ago. I share my flat with two cats, one of whom likes to chew any models with raised weapons that catch his eye. (My Great Unclean One’s sword looks even more chipped than it was meant to.)
Like many other wargamers of my age, my gateway drugs were Hero Quest and Space Crusade in the late 1980’s, before getting Epic-scale Space Marine for Christmas in 1992. At that age, I couldn't afford the rulebooks for other games that caught my eye, so I came up with my own rules until I could. Over my teenage years, I collected and played Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, Warzone and Gorkamorka, but my favourite had to be the classic Necromunda. Issue 37 of the Citadel Journal includes a collection of rules and scenarios I wrote for the game; this was my first published work, for which I was paid with a white metal Blood Angel’s Furioso Dreadnought.
At university, I discovered roleplaying via Lancaster University Roleplaying Society (LURPS) and, partly for lack of local wargamers, my attention moved away from the battlefield for a few years. Mostly it was tabletop roleplaying, particularly Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Unknown Armies and Call of Cthulhu (I wrote the example of play for the 1st edition of Cthulhu Dark Ages, based on a campaign I ran), but with honourable mentions for Godlike, Cyberpunk 2020, Mutants and Masterminds and Cthulhu Dark Ages, and wrote the official example of play for the last of those, based on a campaign I ran.
I’ve also done a little fantasy and horror LARPing, including helping write and run some one-day and weekend horror events. Useful skills I picked up were emulating a 19th century writing style, the best way to bury a body in the Duddon Valley at midnight and how to hurl myself down a flight of stairs without injury.
I got back into Warhammer 40,000 when a group of friends started running Apocalypse games of about 10-15,000 points per side, but I kept biting off more than I could chew with multiple massive army projects. A few years ago, the then-new Lancaster University Wargaming Society introduced me to a recently released game called Frostgrave and, out of habit, I immediately went out and bought way too many plastic cultists and undead from North Star. A small army’s worth, in fact, and that led me to Dragon Rampant.
I fell in love with the game, started writing fan rules and… well… look how that turned out.
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| Richard's Werwolf Schülers army for Xenos Rampant. Source: Richard's Cowen Blog |
Can you introduce Xenos Rampant to us? I think it was available free to download first, right?
That’s right. The first version of Xenos Rampant was a fan-supplement for Dragon Rampant, adding new units but still using the existing medieval fantasy ruleset of the original game. It was pretty well received in the community, and the Dragon Rampant Facebook group have been wonderfully tolerant of me posting pictures of little men with guns in among their elven spearmen and Nazgul, but its weakness was that it was still a fantasy game, just with more Shoot actions.
Xenos Rampant clearly needed to be its own thing, and at some point it morphed from being a supplement to being an alternate set of rules in its own right. And if that was going to happen… visions appeared in my head of a blue book with my name on the cover. I emailed Daniel Mersey and things started happening that ended up with us sharing co-authorship of a hardback game (similar in format to Frostgrave, Stargrave or the forthcoming Lion Rampant 2nd Edition).
Lion Rampant is lite game representing disputes of two nobles or chevauchée. What was the spark to redo the system into sci-fi?
Aside from a few dips into Warhammer Fantasy Battle and latterly Frostgrave, I’ve leaned towards science fiction miniature wargaming more than fantasy, so falling for Dragon Rampant was unexpected. I loved the fast, simple unit-based mechanics of the Rampant system and wanted to be able to field my science fiction models in a system like that. It was as simple as that, really: I wrote a game I wanted to play.
Sci-Fi is of multiple genres, from certain conflict of Dark and Light philosophies, to Dark Future where is only war or to Falkenberg’s Legion. From Space Opera, Dark Future, Post-Apo, Tech Utopia, Cyberpunk to Military sci-fi. How generic the system will be to cover it all, or did you focus on certain aspect?
It is a generic system, intended to cover pretty much any category of science fiction, the same way that Dragon Rampant does fantasy, and this was represented by themed sample forces. However, with the additional page count available to us above that of a blue book, we had the chance to look at some genres more closely.
We now have a chapter each for five genres: weird war (early 20th century super-science and sorcery), urban fantasy (cults, UFO’s and occult investigators), modern day alien invasions (what I joyfully called the War on Terra), post-apocalyptic (Mad Max or The Walking Dead) and space opera (battles beyond the stars). Each chapter contains the sample forces that epitomise a given genre, plus thematic optional rules for things like boarding actions, panicked civilians and zombie infestations. I’ll admit to having hinted at a ‘canon’ setting for Weird War, spun off from the historical Werwolf organisation, but it’s really just a framework to justify the insertion of monsters and alien technology into real-world history.
I believe you already knew this question will come, but, well, name “Xenos ” imply relation to certain game with biggest market share. Is there any connection?
I suppose That Game is always going to be the squiggoth in the sitting room for any science fiction ruleset, but no, there’s no real connection other than that I wanted to stick with the heraldry theme of Lion and Dragon Rampant, and the Greek word ‘xenos’ sounded better than ‘alien’.
What are the design goals for Xenos Rampant, what do you want to achieve?
The goal is to have a simple, fast-moving ruleset that’s easy to learn but covers small-scale battles between about 30-50 models per side, plus maybe a vehicle or two. Think about the science fiction games of the olden days, back when plastic tank kits weren’t quite as common, and your pocket money wouldn't stretch to more than one metal war machine.
As mentioned earlier, the Dragon Rampant rules are well suited for medieval warfare, but needed some tweaking before they could plausibly represent a more modern style of combat. I think we’ve achieved that, with two-way firefights when units take Shoot actions, long range snap shots beyond effective range that are mostly just good for suppressing targets, rules for vehicles, and a reworking of the morale rules.
Where did you started in Rampant games, with Lion Rampant or others?
I came into the Rampant series via Dragon Rampant, but picked up Lion Rampant shortly afterwards and have collected the other games as they were released.
Rampants are quite a wide series of game, did you draw from only one of them, or from others books in the series as well?
The bare bones of the system are Dragon Rampant, which is itself an evolution of the first edition of Lion Rampant. A few rules and conventions have come in from the other games, most prominently the concept of free actions from The Men Who Would Be Kings.
The activation test in the Rampant games is a (sometimes controversial) part of the system, which Dan instituted to represent the difficulty of reliably issuing orders on a confusing and chaotic battlefield. As command and control practices improved over the centuries, the activation system in each Rampant game has evolved accordingly, so that by the time of The Men Who Would Be Kings (19th century colonial warfare), units could be expected to do their ‘thing’ without a roll. That’s been carried across into Xenos Rampant, with each unit having one or more actions for which they don’t need to take an activation test. For example, Heavy Infantry are tough troops intended for sustained front-line fighting, so they get Shoot as a Free Action, while Light Infantry are less resilient and rely on speed to keep themselves alive, so they have Move as theirs.
Back to mechanics, Are there any requirements for models, scale, or basing and how many models we will need?
The game is ‘manufacturer agnostic’, so if you have a science fiction model, it can probably be fielded in Xenos Rampant. In fact, with weird war, urban fantasy and alien invasion genres covered, there’s nothing to stop you building detachments of 20th century historical or modern miniatures as well. For example, one of my playtest detachments is a completely non-supernatural Soviet force for Weird War Two, and another is a modern US Special Forces team.
Scale and basing is up to the players. 28mm, 15mm, or 1:72 miniatures, mounted on multi-bases, square, circular, hexagonal bases, or whatever, it makes no real difference, so long as the players are consistent in how distances are measured.
Generally speaking, armies (or detachments, in Xenos Rampant terminology) number about 30-50 models, although there are extreme examples in both directions among the 40+ sample detachments in the book. Using Reduced or Single Model Units, the combat team of space opera super soldiers and the war machines of the ancient (and possibly extinct) alien precursor civilisation come to just 4-5 models each, while the primitive tribal aliens and post-apocalypse zombie swarm both weigh in at 76 models, but all are worth the same points value.
There are tank and walkers, right? Can you tell us how they will work.
Definitely, yes. Xenos Rampant is an infantry-focused game though, so don’t expect to be fielding companies of hovertanks; each standard-sized 24-point detachment is allowed a maximum of one armoured vehicle, which will be classified as either a Fighting Vehicle or a Transport Vehicle.
There are also Softskin Vehicles, which are recon buggies, civilian cars, militia technicals and other types of vehicles that are fast but can be be taken down with small arms fire. A detachment can have several of these, but vehicles can’t take up more than half of your force’s points value.
Rules-wise, we’ve kept vehicles simple. For most purposes, they’re similar to infantry, but obviously tougher, faster and, in the case of Fighting Vehicles, packing bigger guns. On the other hand, vehicles have their own movement rules and are not quite as manoeuvrable in cramped environs.
Like most unit types, vehicles are extremely customisable, including options for flyers, skimmers and walkers. Since you asked, walkers move like infantry and also make it more effective in close combat (stamping or crushing with claws etc.).
Certain Space Opera and Grim War settings are build about heroes and antiheroes, is this covered in the system?
I mentioned Reduced Model Units and Single Model Units earlier; for those who’ve not experienced Dragon Rampant before, this is a lovely mechanic that Dragon used for heroic units and that we decided to bring across into Xenos.
Units have a Strength Point value, which in simplest terms is how many soldiers there are in the squad, with each Strength Point lost translating to a soldier being taken out of action. But what if the unit consisted of ogre-sized monsters who can take more hits than a typical human soldier? Just use the same unit stats, but field fewer models, and take off casualties after every other Strength Point lost, or every third one, or whatever feels appropriate. That’s a Reduced Model Unit.
Single Model Units are the same thing, but there’s only one model, representing either a very large creature or a particularly badass hero capable of taking on while squads of enemy troops single-handedly. Throw in a few characterful upgrades and the hero will be saving (or burning) the galaxy before you know it.
Detachment commanders, whether fielded as part of a unit or as an SMU, are also the main beneficiaries of the campaign system. All commanders come with a random commander trait themed to the style of force you’re fielding. A pirate warlord is likely to be more aggressive than an academy-educated military tactician, so those two commanders would roll on different charts. In a campaign, commanders can either gain new traits or buy off any negative traits they’ve picked up.
What are the strongest points – game mechanic wise – in Xenos Rampant?
Wow, that’s a tough one. As one of the co-authors, my ego says ‘all of them’, but if I have to narrow it down, of the mechanics inherited from Dragon Rampant, I’d say the flexibility and customisability of the unit types. Especially with the Reduced/Single Model Units concept described earlier, one unit stat-line can represent many different types of creature. For example, a squad of Berserk Infantry (assault troops with a tendency to charge enemies even when you don’t want them to) could represent bloodthirsty desert ghouls, resurrected SS soldiers, frenzied cultists, a single mutant abomination, or a mob of brutish aliens.
Of the new mechanics that we’ve introduced to Xenos Rampant, my favourites would have to be the vehicle rules and the altered morale rules. Regarding the latter, failed Courage tests leave units Suppressed rather than Battered, reflecting the different behaviours combatants exhibit under fire than on a medieval battlefield. Units will retreat, but are more likely to dive for the nearest cover instead, where they can catch a breath before resuming the fight.
There are tons of Sci-Fi games on the market, what will people bring to buy another?
Put simply, I think the Rampant games have an excellent reputation amongst fantasy and historical gamers as simple, yet powerful, rulesets. That’s thanks to Dan, plus his collaborator on The Pikeman’s Lament and Rebels and Patriots, Michael Leck. I feel that Xenos Rampant adds something to the series, continuing the timeline from the colonial era of The Men Who Would Be Kings through to the 20th century and beyond. For those gamers coming in from outside the Rampant games, Xenos Rampant provides a ruleset catering for relatively small armies that isn’t tied to a particular manufacturer’s model range or release schedule, across a variety of styles of science fiction.
Thank you very much for this interview, as far as I know release date is 22nd of November 2022, we wish you success and I will buy one to expand my Rampant Series!
Czech Version will follow soon. Richard answered question by Dalcor.
Unfortunately I came to conclusion that I don't have enough pictures from sci-fi games to illustrate this article, so I will use some of the sci-fi pictures as inspiration. D.
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