VASSAL Scenarios

[Schoenwulf]

The more PGers on VASSAL the better!

As a newbie to the site and certainly not a vintage player (other than in age that is), I have hesitancy to comment on the APL position. However, I believe they have made a huge marketing mistake in not being more Vassal-friendly. As one who has used Vassal for other games in this same genre, the lack of ability to play online was definitely the biggest impediment to my finally playing this great game. Over the years, I had looked at many of APL's offerings, but made very few purchases because of the inability to have online opponents. When one lives miles away from a LGS, where most of what is played is fantasy stuff anyhow, it's either solo or Vassal; my guess is that I'm not alone in this regard. When competing games like CC, BoB, and many others have Vassal mods, it would seem prudent for APL to embrace this approach rather than fight it. For a comparison in roughly in the same genre, look at the success of GMT with Combat Commander versus Academy Games with Conflict of Heroes. GMT has fully embraced Vassal play, even by providing free Ventrilo access for those who don't Skype. Otoh, Academy contracted with a third party to market a PC version of CoH that doesn't offer the flexibilty of Vassal. GMT has been very successful, while the CoH PC game forum is pretty much a dead zone. On the financial side, you really can't play CC online unless you own the actual game because the tables are necessary for play; it would seem that this is similar for PG. Ergo, I just don't understand the reticence to seriously jump into Vassal support for this great game.
And, having discovered this site, there is no question that PG has the best online site of any game in the genre. The PG-HQ is amazing, a truly remarkable resource and repository......thanks to all who make it that way!