James Hewitt has an impressive resume. I bring up the list of games he suggested for him (Blood Bowl 2016, Adeptus Titanicus, Silver Tower, Gorechosen) and he chimes in and adds a few more (Necromunda, Betrayal at Calth). His decades-long career in the board game industry is iconic, and if you've played a Games Workshop boxed game released between 2014 and 2017, he probably had a hand in it.
While his time at Workshop is what most gamers know him for, Hewitt's work on the likes of Hellboy and Blitz Bowl is just as commendable. After coming on board with Modiphius as a contractor to work on Fallout Factions, an adaptation of the hit skirmish video game, he now works in-house on its games four days a week. I sat down with him to talk all things Warhammer and Nuka-Cola.
“I would never consider any game I've worked on finished,” Hewitt told me via video call. He explains that there is a point where all your changes and improvements offer diminishing returns and done is better than perfect. This is doubly true when you're working under tight deadlines at companies like Games Workshop, and aside from Adeptus Titanicus, Hewitt never had to tinker with his creations for long. Gorechosen was created in just two weeks between returning from vacation and switching roles at the company.
Hewitt had more time for other projects, but the success of Blood Bowl focused attention on the Specialist Games team he was a part of, and their lengthy playtests and relatively calm environment were suddenly frantic and hectic.
He's been away from Games Workshop for seven years now, and his experience at Modiphius has already proven to be a boost to this frantic design process. Fallout Factions: Nuka-World will be the first game that hasn't been abandoned as soon as it hits store shelves. This time he will be there to push it forward rather than watch others thrive with his child.
“With Factions,” he explains, “it's the first time I've been around to develop a game I've designed. Looking back at Games Workshop, the first thing I did was Betrayal in Calth, which is a Horus Heresy squad-based tactical combat thing. It was kind of a throwaway, like they wanted a game they could put in a box and sell no game, like miniatures.” And so I'm really proud of that and I'd love for the series to continue with this set of mechanics and change it differently each time.
“Blood Bowl I did a little bit, but it was mostly pre-release and I moved on to other things. I designed Necromunda and then left the company. Titanicus, there were a lot of delays because it was supposed to be resin, and then it went to plastic, so it was redone. It was originally going to come out when Necromunda did it, but they changed it. So I released it and then left.”
“I keep seeing these games that I design and then other people take them and do great things with them. That's beautiful in itself, but it's so satisfying to be here with Factions and we have all these plans and I'm here to help them move forward.”
Built like Necromunda, more like Blood Bowl
Factions is an interesting game because it is intended to appeal to such a wide range of people. It's a skirmish game for Fallout fans who have never played with miniatures before, it's approachable in its rules and campaigns, and it exudes that iconic Fallout style. You have about a dozen models to upgrade between missions, in addition to bottle caps and SPECIAL stats, chemicals and Deathclaws, but they may not work exactly as you imagine.
In terms of gameplay, Fallout Factions began life as a “Necromunda/Kill Team type game” to act as a complement to Modiphia's dense, granular Fallout Wasteland Warfare. However, Hewitt's explanation of the mechanics of playing League is more reminiscent of Blood Bowl.
The balancing mechanic means you can upgrade your desert raider team without worrying about being overpowered against a new player. Similar to the Blood Bowl incentives, if your roster is lower than your opponent's, you can buy off the local Commonwealth merchant and stock up on stimpaks and RADs to level the playing field.
Matches should be short, approximately half an hour long, and played on a 2'x3' board. Setup is quick and gameplay is as frenetic as it is fun. Sounds perfect for a pub night and tournament play could be even more exciting.
Hewitt emphasizes the importance of creating the “feel” of a game, especially when adapting an existing board game or IP. The translation of mechanics, even from digital to desktop, does not always work in the new medium. Hewitt has learned this over the course of adapting dozens of games, from Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower (based on Warhammer Quest and Hero Quest), Hellboy (based on, well, Hellboy) and Blood Bowl 2016 (you know where this is going), a process he calls “game archaeology.”
While Modiphius has many remote employees, Hewitt and seven core design team members work from the Nottingham office. “When you're working on a board game or something, it's just easier to go around the table and try things out,” he explains.
Despite this, he always comes back to video games when deciding on factions. “In Fallout 4, I have different savas where I can go and deploy cheats to look around, or go to the weapon crafting table and pack some weapons to see what we're doing in the game.”
Hewitt says Factions is up there with Titanicus as his favorite game he's ever designed (he'd say so), but it doesn't seem like a coincidence that two games he had nine months to design without interruption are his favorites. The process seems less laborious, the design could afford more iterations and testing, and the end result is more polished as a result. Who would have thought to give their designers enough time and resources to make better products?
- Released
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June 26, 2009
- ESRB
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m
- Developers
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Cyanide studio
- Multiplayer
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Local multiplayer
