Interview - Table Salt Gaming Design - Battlespace - Solo Skirmish RPG

Today I talk with the Creator of Battlespace and founder of Table Salt Gaming Designs Mr Rob Salters. We learn more about the intense, squad based tactical skirmish game Battlespace: The Ultra Modern Solo Skirmish Game and it's released Expansion Navy SEALs.  You can find Robert Salter and Table Salt Game Designs via the links below.

Game:
https://www.wargamevault.com/product/314447/BATTLESPACE-ULTRA-MODERN-SOLO-SKIRMISH-GAME

Blogs:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/310217/battlespace-ultra-modern-solo-skirmish-game/ratings

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2660098410938874
https://www.facebook.com/tablesalt.gamingdesigns/

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad78G852f3o&t=2951s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeNNa-X4lTs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUp62HV-wvo&t=1098s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8HpKAmIiNk&t=2s

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Yours Sincerely,

Adam 'Cosy' Powell

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CAST & CREW

Host: Adam Powell

Guest: Robert Salters

Sound Design: Adam Powell

Music: Epidemic Sound

Cover Art: www.Wix.com

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Transcript

Snyder’s Return : 0:28

Hello and welcome to size return a tabletop role playing podcast. If you've got some time and you want to play some single player, squad based tactical shooter, then my guest today has you covered. battle space is an amazing game play single player, which we will go into and explore with its creator and owner and runner of tabletop gaming designs, Mr. Robert Salter Robert Welcome to the show.

Robert Salter : 1:01

Thank you for having me on. Happy to be here.

Snyder’s Return : 1:04

It's a pleasure to have you and have some of your time. I know how busy you must be. Before we get into battle space, and tabletop gaming, and all those sorts of things, would you mind giving us a little background about yourself and how you got into tabletop role playing games?

Robert Salter : 1:18

I love to. So it all started with the game, I think many of us know as your request, actually played it on a whim, friend of a friend of mine, I want to copy from his childhood and we were kind of having a guy's night. He just broke it out and played it and instantly fell in love with it. My history with fantasy in general, was pretty sparse. I knew what who drinks was I knew about the world of d&d and everything, but never actually took action towards playing any of those games. But after playing your requests, I was just enamoured and just tried to find anything that was even relatable nearly closely relatable to a to that type of gaming style. From there, I started playing a game called mercs and just really trying out everything that was in the hobby to offer. Finally kind of settling in on a lot of tabletop and of course, d&d. I think if I was stranded on a desert island, and I could only have one game, I always tell everybody, it's going to be d&d hands down. So from there, I'm just kind of like everyone playing games, and enjoying them and always saying, you know, at the end of the game, you know, I wish I could have I wish if the rules were like this, or like that in just taking that time to custom design some rule sets and or house rule, what have it. And from there, sitting at my notebook where I kind of kept all my house rules. I was like, Man, I've got enough here for me to make several games. So I started On this path of designing games, just for myself and family and friends, originally, when people started coming back and saying, Hey, this is this is pretty fun. You know, you should see what else you can do with this and get this out in front of other people. I kind of crossed that next bridge in start it with. Start with

Unknown Speaker : 3:21

heroes among us. That was a very quick project, I kind of put those rules together, because I wanted something simple, originally. And once we got that out, done with the help of my wife, and friends to play test it, it did pretty good. Better than I thought it was. I figured I was gonna I was gonna upload it and maybe two or three people grab a copy and play the game. Once I started receiving emails, just saying, Hey, this is a fun game. Are you going to be doing an expansion for it? I was like, Okay, I guess I got to keep working on this stuff now. a year or two later came battlespace kind of derived from another project that was never released. But battlespace just became a this thing of its own and it's it's really put me kind of in the spotlight now and I've met met a lot of great people that are in the industry that are guiding me and showing me you know what I should be doing to release a good product and to make the fans of the product happy. So yeah, that's me in a nutshell.

Snyder’s Return : 4:33

All right. Well, you know, before we touch on to our space, which is sort of a main part of this, where can people find you get in contact with you engage with you and your content?

Unknown Speaker : 4:46

So battle space is in every game I release, I should say, is available on wargame vault calm. I've got a few other things their battle mats. I've got some papercraft designs you can download from there as well. If you want to contact me about any rules or suggestions or anything like that, you can look me up on table salt Facebook page, we also have the battlespace community page on Facebook as well. Also, I've got a cool little group on Facebook, which is the hero quest fanatic page. If you're familiar with that, we've got a just over 1700 members and it's a really great group. So yeah, if you if you want to reach out to me, Facebook seems like the best place or you can email me. And that's our cue salters@gmail.com. Always happy to hear from people.

Snyder’s Return : 5:45

All right, well, I will put links to as many of those things down in the description below. And a friend of mine loves her request and he recently relatively recently reacquainted our gaming group with it and we thoroughly enjoyed it. So that's definitely something I'll be looking into. So battlespace the Tell us. Tell us more about it. Tell us everything about it if if you wouldn't mind.

Unknown Speaker : 6:07

No, yeah, I'd love to so battlespace is an ultra modern solo skirmish game. And I think it just I started working on it before our world went crazy with COVID. But it seems like it was just released at a good time. So for a solo game, with a lot of people being no sheltered in place and quarantine. It think that's what really resonated with a lot of fans out there. But it's everything. I feel like a game should kind of encompass where it's rules that are easy to grasp, but can be complex. It's got a very simplistic enemy AI system, but it is very challenging. The game works off of a D 20 system, which some people have asked me you know, know what was the thought process behind that, and I say I went with D 20. Because it just gives you a broader range. And I love that one thing about solo games I feel like they always need is that bit of randomness. And I think with that d 20, giving you such a broad range, it kind of throws that in there. So battlespace itself. You don't need much to play the game, just a handful of soldier miniatures and you can use anything from those little green army men to the, you know, $6 apiece miniature from Spectre miniatures, or Caesar miniatures or anything like that. You can play on an area that's as small as a two by two up to as big as you want to go. I think we played a game the other day on a three by four. And I love to do something bigger. I just don't have the space for it. The game itself also has a card component That was another thing I really kind of wanted to have available. I love when you can kind of quickly build a force. And with the implementation of the cards, the soldier cards, and the gear cards, it just makes building a team so quick and easy. Yeah, that's really it. Again, it's a short rule book. It's about 24 pages. And it's a good game and a lot of people have been saying a lot of great things about it. So I'm happy.

Snyder’s Return : 8:28

Well, that's That's great to hear. And as you say, you've mentioned a couple of the different mechanics and mentioned sort of gearing up and building a squad. So could you give us an example of one of the scenarios and how you're different mechanics or play into that and and how someone might sort of in layman's terms or play through one of your skirmishes,

Unknown Speaker : 8:49

okay, um, I think I'll use a mission three as an example. And this mission your soldiers have been here. Have drone driven over an ID and their vehicle is disabled. So now they're setting up a scheme, they're setting up a position around their vehicle. And so they are pretty much entrenched they are surrounded by enemy soldiers. So a player playing his first game, it will start with the player phase with if you're used to playing any kind of game like d&d or anything like that, the start of how you would begin a soldiers activation is very simple. You roll like for initiative for each soldier one at a time. If a soldier meets or beats a, his initiative number which is on his soldier card, he can then activate he'll receive two actions. With those actions. They're pretty typical, you can move shoot, you know, use some bit of gear you may have but basically, you would Take those actions with each soldier, you want to put them in good positions because cover is a huge factor in this game. Because especially because you're playing against this AI that is relentless. So the AI is going to be moving and shooting with every turn they get. One other interesting aspect we have about the game is when you fail the the initiative for soldier instead of that soldier just not being able to do anything. a sitrep card is drawn sitrep cards kind of control the enemy even more, and the environment. The sitrep cards can do anything from you know, your soldier tripping your soldier getting a chance to take another action. There can be there's a there's about 24 cards and we're adding more, but they're generally bad so you don't really want to draw them as much as you can. So but you draw a sitrep card, and it will play some effects in the game. After that card has been played out, you can then take one order or one move order with your soldier. And once you've gone through all of your soldiers, you're going to start the sitrep phase itself. So the sibert phase is very simple. you'll draw a sitrep card, and you'll play it again, you'll play out what the card tells you to do. Then after the card has been resolved, you're going to then move any enemy there on the stage on the battle map. And once they move into their new position there then take a shot at any soldier that is in line of sight. So that's where that cover plays a key factor because with any game, you know, when you're in cover, you get some sort of bonus. I think one thing I failed to mention that I guess I should have said this at the beginning was how the action works in the game. Normally, normally, most games, you know, you kind of you roll for your guy and then you roll for the bad guy we wanted to do was just again simplify that. So all enemies have what we call a threat level, what the threat level is a number and that kind of can vary from how experienced a soldier by enemy soldier is. So this is going to be one role of the D 20. Adding any modifiers that you may have to meet or beat that number. And this works in two ways. This will work the same way as if the enemy is firing at you versus you firing at the enemy. So we've kind of took it to take the action to spotlight your soldier because your attack if your soldier is attacking, he needs to meet that number to the enemy. And if the enemy is attacking your soldier, you need to think of that role as your soldier getting out of the way of that, that bullet that's coming at him, you know. So,

Snyder’s Return : 13:11

okay, well, you mentioned how important cover is and how relentless the enemy and how you have to make choices for shooting at various actions, equipment and things like that. How is movement measured? And how are things like throwing arcs and and sort of reward weapon sort of dynamics like that control through the game?

Unknown Speaker : 13:36

Okay, great. So movement is a is very again simple. The game comes with a what we call the manoeuvre card, the manoeuvre card is going to have everything you need on it as far as when you need to throw a grenade. Um, there's a there's a mechanic called drift. The card will handle that as well. And the card works as As your tape measure, if you're familiar with playing tabletop, skirmish games or tabletop games in general, you'll place this card against the base of your model, and you'll move your model along the width of the card. And that's, that's pretty much the card in a nutshell. Again, that card is going to be used for your throwing arc. So seeing if you can clear an obstacle, you'll line the card up next to wherever the obstacle is. And if the throwing arc does not run into that obstacle, you're clear to throw that grenade and then you follow the rest of the rules for the drift mechanic scene where that final position of that toss grenade will be. And that's by rolling a D 20. And following the diagram on the manoeuvre card itself.

Snyder’s Return : 14:52

All right, well, it's it's a clever way of handling things and especially as a single play. You don't want to have to measure by Is or trying to guess guesstimated having that that card there to sort of establish that ground rule? Mm hmm. The wrong term, but I'll go with it. Is seems really useful if someone is trying to visualise this game as we're sort of discussing it, where could they go to maybe see the game being played?

Robert Salter : 15:24

Well, I've done two YouTube videos. You can go check out you can just YouTube it and put in the search field.

Unknown Speaker : 15:35

battlespace solo skirmish game, but is on the actual page of let's talk board games. There have also been at least two other playthroughs that I've seen on YouTube so you can check it out on YouTube.

Snyder’s Return : 15:53

Again, a link to those will be in the description below. So that all stays currently consistent. Have the core game that we've released and a memorial day mission. So is that it? Or what is the future for battle space moving forward?

Unknown Speaker : 16:11

Oh, man, it's a bright future for battle space really bright. So we are releasing the Navy SEALs expansion that will give players the opportunity to play as navy seals. That's going to be a six man team. This expansion will also include a short mini campaign with five scenarios. And what we did different with these scenarios versus the missions in the book. We wanted this to play out more like a story just to emerge to immerse the player into the game even more so. So this time you're actually going after a bad guy by the name of the butcher. And he's going to be taking you through, you know, this, this atmosphere that we've kind of made with a few opening titles or excuse me with a few opening up a bit of dialogue. And we're hoping people will enjoy this, this, this take on it on these missions and really give us some feedback, so we can continue on. Other than that, I guess the biggest news would be us teaming up with modiphius to release a deluxe edition for battlespace that is can be hopefully coming out before the end of the year.

Snyder’s Return : 17:40

Yeah, I mean, that's exciting news, especially, sort of a powerhouse in the industry is modiphius. They have some very large product lines. So ya know, that's that's amazing. So if someone Listen to this and they're interested in, they're engaged and they think Yeah, you know, I've got some time to myself, I've got a board, I've got some minis I can definitely get behind this. They purchase it from you, what advice would you give to them running for themselves or introducing say their friends or family to it? Potentially? What advice would you give them to running a game of battlespace?

Robert Salter : 18:25

I think the best the best thing is to

Unknown Speaker : 18:29

well, if you're not going to use one of the missions in the book and say you want to set up your own mission, and you want to get people interested, do a little bit of research about either past or current events. That way it'll kind of hit home you know, um, and then put your own bit of flavour to it. I think making sure you're not to see it was a good way of putting it, making sure your that fun is coming first. You know, if you're going to introduce This game to people because it is a lighter game, you know, and we want people to enjoy it. The game has a serious undertone. So you don't want to scare people off with that. So I think again, with with bringing people in with a just a nice hearty bit of action. But with that, that veneer of a current event possibly could make the game stand out to them as much as the person that's I guess that's trying to introduce it to, to the friends and family. And I'm sorry, go ahead.

Snyder’s Return : 19:38

No, sorry. I was just agreeing with you. So please continue.

Unknown Speaker : 19:43

No I was. Last thing I was going to say is is is having a nice table setup as well. I think that really brings a game to life, if you can, if you can set up that environment and it looks close to your your, your material that you use to Are you? I think that always just emerges people integrate, immerse people into the game.

Robert Salter : 20:06

So yeah, nice table setup will always do it.

Snyder’s Return : 20:10

All right. Well, you mentioned in our description of the gameplay mission, three of the missions that are available or even the ones that are coming up was your favourite mission to play and one that you would potentially go back to several times trying new things as you play it.

Unknown Speaker : 20:28

So mission three, bring up same mission twice, we're mission three was my favourite mission. And anyone that goes to watch that YouTube video, may notice there's a there's a moment in that game, when I'm playing and a soldier fails a role that I really needed to make and I hit the table. And that was, you know, that was not rehearse. I really was so upset that I actually like kind of hammered down on the table and tried to press on with that. a different strategy. Um, I think with the new content coming out, you guys will see there is a mission that's kind of different from anything we've done. It takes you inside of the enemy's compound. And so this is actually the last mission that you will play. And so just having that different bit of atmosphere is or was was, was kind of eye opening to what else we can do with with the rules and with missions that we create in the future.

Snyder’s Return : 21:37

All right, sounds exciting. So you obviously find a lot of hard work into tabletop, gaming battle space and and other projects that may not be sore soon for release. So what do you do for downtime? How do you relax?

Unknown Speaker : 21:55

You know, I just started playing a game called pickleball. It says Similar to tennis it's like a tennis and ping pong hybrid. And that's kind of what I've been doing when I've got some downtime you know away from writing content for these games. But I live in the south here in the states and it's pretty hot so it's something we got to do early in the morning so

Snyder’s Return : 22:21

fair enough. Fair enough. So with we've spoken to at some length about battle space, and you mentioned your other titles earlier in the interview. So is there anything coming on a different track that we can look out for from table so gaming?

Unknown Speaker : 22:39

Well, this this next thing we're looking at doing it's this is very early on, so I can't keep any promises or make any promises. We always want it to do a game with a enemy field feel to it. Because I was a kid growing up watching You know, Dragonball Z and stuff like that and and playing games such as persona four by Atlas games I think I feel like the PlayStation two or something and so I kind of just love that whole that anime pop style we want it to do something to kind of to to kind of highlight that and kind of just bring that out to the forefront because I don't see a lot of games a lot of tabletop games at least with that same character design and art style so

Snyder’s Return : 23:34

all right, well, it we may see come to fruition I hope so. I do I like anime for myself. So definitely something I would keep an eye out for. I do like to remind everybody where they can find you and and your content and where they can get this this great solo skirmish game. battlespace?

Unknown Speaker : 23:54

Yeah guys, so check out the Facebook page for for any contacts. You might Need to make the Find a great group of people that are already playing the game and if you have any questions the Facebook group the battlespace community page is where you'll find me and these people, they would love to answer any questions you may have. If you're ready to make that purchase, the game is at war game vault calm. You can find all the other titles and content from table salt there as well. Other than that, you can um, you can send me an email and again, my emails are queued salters@gmail.com. And I love to hear from you guys and get some of your feedback on some of the things that we've done.

Snyder’s Return : 24:39

All right, well, Robert has been amazing and a real pleasure having you on the show today. And once the Navy SEAL release comes out, I'd love to speak to you again to see how that all plays out and everything you do with modiphius if you'd be willing to come back.

Robert Salter : 24:55

Oh, I would love to come back anytime you're ready to have me.

Snyder’s Return : 24:58

It's been an absolute pleasure. I look forward To speaking to you again in the future.

Robert Salter : 25:01

Great saying thank you. Thank you.

Snyder’s Return : 25:18

Thanks for listening. If you want to hear more of us or to get in contact with us, you can find us on Twitter at Return Snyder. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and also if you wish to support the channel on patreon@patreon.com slash nice return. music and sound effects provided for this episode are from epidemic sounds.com Transcribed by https://otter.ai