Mark Holt Walker is an enthusiastic dude and he has a lot of creativity bottled up inside him. He also is somewhat of a writer and story teller and has created an entire world, and in fact an RPG, around the undead intervening in a hypothetical World War III. He now has merged both of these things together into a very interesting and intriguing looking hex and counter wargame called The Long Road.
I reached out to Mark about answering some questions for me on the design and he was more than interested. Where did this idea come from? It was a hope to flesh out the universe that I created in those novels. And I can see that at times, there might even be some confusion with that.
And The Long Road weaves in and out of that story. Mark: We do it very simply. Well, to rally from that disruption, it has to roll against its morale. Grant: What role do Heroes play in the design? What makes these Heroes…well heroic? Of course you have to keep in mind the scale of the game.
Most The Long Road counters represent platoons of infantry or tanks, mobs of zombies, packs of werewolves, etc. So the hero counters represent the named hero, and their posse, so to speak. Of course, there is Mike Hudson. Mike Hudson starts out the war as a private in the army, just an everyday, dude. The Saturday before the war, he meets Katarina, who ends up being a year-old vampire. So Tentani tries to hunt down Mike Hudson, and Kat will try to save him on occasion. Grant: What do their counters look like?
And how do they differ from the rank and file? They do have a key factor, they would have a close assault factor to movement, that type of stuff. Pretty much just like everybody else, but along the left side of the counter or with some left and right side of the counter depending on how many skills they have, they have specific skills that they can use that makes them quite a bit better than the average infantry platoon or something.
