Patreon Exclusives: The Narrative of Gunslinger 2030

In part 1, we covered the background setting of Gunslinger 2030, detailing the world and factions of the near future. Today, we’re going to discuss the original plans on how we’d advance the storyline of Gunslinger, using each release as a new chapter to show the world evolving as time moved on.

This is an element that evolved (and then shrunk) as the Gunslinger project continued. A lot of the information in this post was very early on and in many cases hadn’t been agreed on both sides of the project team so I can’t 100% say it was going to happen – this is all merely ideas that were on their way.

Characters

Before we hit the main narrative concept, I think it’s worth talking about an element of the narrative that I was keen to work on as it affected both the story and the figures you’d get – Characters.

If there is one thing that’s easy to spot, people enjoy setting more when they have named characters they can latch onto. There are plenty of wargamers that don’t write their own backstory for each mission and yet still latch on big narrative figures – this is especially visible when you look at a setting like Warhammer 40k. Characters provide you, the player, that link to the world, a viewpoint that helps you understand the morals and motivations of the factions involved. Having the same characters appear across several missions is a short cut to ongoing storytelling, an extra hook to get people inereated.

On my side as someone writing plot and designing figure concepts, Characters would also allow us the abilty to create cool and unique figures alongside the larger ranges. When Gunslinger started, the main thing we wanted to do was have each range be complete enough to assemble squads with all the weapons you’d need. If that was the main meal, then Characters gave us the dessert – a chance to make cool one-off figures or unique twists on the other designs.

The main type of characters we were planning to introduce were the Contractors. These would be our main characters, the ones that would reappear across different arcs and in different locations, with the potential of having multiple versions in different equipment. The two that received the most detail were Catherine Jensen and Alexander Wallace. These two were released in the first ranges (Jensen with Black Sector and Wallace with Kojoti), with the idea that you would gain at least one additional Contractor model with each range (set of three months of releases). This would be a chance for a character that fit the look of the core team but also had some of their own gear and equipment as well as a unique head sculpt that we would reuse in all their variants.

Catherine Jensen was a former Norwegian Army Ranger who joined military intelligence. After being let got after a successful career due to cost cutting, Jensen found herself in a role as the middle man between PMC groups and those wishing to use their services. In her first figure, it was her overseeing the Black Sector team, using similar uniforms but with her own custom rifle and a few extra pieces of gear.

Alexander Wallace on the other hand was a former British Army officer in the Ranger Regiment, entering the army from noble stock. After encountering Kojoti during operations in the Balkans, Wallace would provide them with intelligence in exchange for cold hard cash to help keep himself in the lifestyle befitting minor nobility. This arrangement was eventually discovered, leading to Wallace being kicked out of the army for “bringing the regiment into ill repute”. This didn’t stop his work though and soon he’d be working for Kojoti as a Senior Consultant, overseeing teams around the world. We’ll cover some of his story later when discussing the arcs but for his initial Kojoti release I wanted him to fit in with the ragged look but with a little bit more refinement – he’s wearing a soft shell and with a chest rig rather than the vests many of the other Kojoti had. That way, he’d stand out from the crowd when painted up, without looking completely out of place.

The other type of Character we designed was the Character Team. This was where we’d assemble a team of four, give each of them a unique head and then set them up to interact with the rest of the range that they arrived in. This could either be as adversaries, special units to work alongside that release or just a chance to add something different and offer the players/collectors something new at the end of a cycle.

We had two Character Teams released by the time I left. The Blockade Team was to be a backseat intro for the larger faction that would have arrived in the later releases. These guys were my first chance to go really deep on figure design (Black Sector’s design was mostly worked out, so I only advised on the second and third months of that range). As you can see on the moodboard above, the idea was to take the classic look from MW2 and update it to 2030 – everything from the weapon systems to the life preserver. I was pretty happy with the final result – a unique-looking team with a combination of weapons and clothing that made it pretty clear their purpose.

Each of the Burya-156 Operators also received a name and background to explain how they found themselves on this particular operation. Led by Igor Zakharov, Sascha Antonov acted as the pointman with the mohawk, Valentina Kondakova handled commincation and electronic warfare while the young punk Ilya Dygalo provided a marksman. One of the advantages of writing this information, alongside making the characters more interesting, is the ability to drop more information about the world for people to latch onto. Alongside character details such as Sacha’s sea sickness (a problem for a unit mostly operating from ocean-going vessels) and Valentina’s entry to fieldwork coming from a posting in Bogota are tidbits such as Ilya’s time fighting for the Volga Independent Republic or Igor’s work against the Russian accelerationists before the Federation broke apart. It is unlikely we would have specifically detailed these parts, but leaving threads dangling would have given players something to fire up the imagination. As for where that information was given out? We’ll cover that down below.

In contrast, the High-Risk Contractors provided less story development but were more of a chance to bridge the gap between the original inspiration (Army of Two) and the world of Gunslinger 2030. These little dialogue clips help to reveal both the character of their faction and the type of person willing to dress up in all that armour and go into battle with it on. I went for a mix of nationalities and teams to shows this is a global organisation but also wanted a few interpersonal links – for example, both Taylor and Rodriguez being Rangers was down to the idea that one got the other into the business. If we had managed to do a second team of High Risk Contractors (or even a few additional individuals), it would have been a fun time writing even more variety to them.

While these were the Characters and Characters teams we released, I had a few other ones written on the drawing board. The Characters I’m going to keep quiet on as I’m redeveloping them all for ChargeReal, but as a rough guideline it was a combination of inteligence officers and soldiers for hire you’d expect for a more “boots on the ground” Tom Clancy novel. The Character Teams however I’m happier to share and had a few designed. In fact, you saw one of them in the form of the Raptor Diagnostics team. Gunslinger V2, with it’s focus on one and done teams each month, would have seen a few of the character teams evolve into a slightly larger team but with less focus on the lore. As well as the Raptor team, I had also created a Kojoti Killteam (the CQB focused operators mentioned in the first post), an additional Blockade team (La Maldición), a Middle Eastern Local Protection Force (think Mosul SWAT) and a set referred to as CIA Day Trippers intended for actions south of the border. These teams are in various stages but helped to show the variety of forces we could have potentially expanded the range to, creating an ecosystem to show off the aspects of the 2030 world.

Arcs

A big idea I had upon entering the project was a system of arcs, a method of tying the figure releases to an ongoing story. Every three months of releases would be a range, with five packs (two in the first month, two in the second month and one in the final month) for the focus range (for example Black Sector GIG or Kojoti Team Chernobog) while the sixth pack would be a character team. The plan would then be that each set of releases would give you a complete force, as well as something to either enhance the focus range or act as an OPFOR

Before we get to the fun details, it should be pointed out that in the end, this release system did not work. The number of figures produced each month was overwhelming to the sculptor leading to some aggressive burnout, while from the customer side it was effectively locking people out – for example, if you had no interest in the Kojoti team, then it’s possible that you’d be dropped off the Patreon for three months until we finished with the scruffy AK guys. If this was done again, it would probably make more sense to alternate months through the arc – take the same time to release the figures and finish the story, but allow for some more variety for everyone involved.

With that aside over, let’s talk about the arcs I came up with:

Prologue

Every good action film needs a pre-title card sequence – be it jumping off a dam and leaving your friend to die, raiding a cartel house and flushing the cash down the toilet or a gunfight in a KKK rally, a good prologue helps to setup the scene, establish the tone of the piece while planting the seeds for what comes later.

For 2030, I assembled the prologue to help get the vibe down of the first release. Black Sector had already been designed as a concept, while I had come up with a small OPFOR team dressed in scuba gear and primed for sneaking around. From this I worked out the idea – Black Sector had snatched a HVT and now Burya-156 were rolling in to stop him talking before he revealed too much. A quick look at a map gave me the region – the Black Sea coast of Georgia, close enough to Russian territory to allow some cross-border work before a Black Site hidden away.

Of course with this writing, I realised I had managed to write myself a prologue to my prologue, that being Black Sector actually raiding the target. In my head, it’s a combination of the opening raid from the French film Forces Spéciales and the Modern Warfare 2 mission Loose Ends. A remote Dacha somewhere near Sochi, the lights going out as the power is cut, the guards hired from Kojoti taken down by Black Sector teams moving through the darkness, finally capturing the target (a former FSB agent by the name of Victor Khorkov) in one of the upstairs rooms before Jensen watches him being dragged to a waiting helicopter.

If I was writing this as a film, this prologue to the prologue would probably be mostly shown in flashback moments as the Burya-156 team are briefed in their quarters on the old bulk cargo hauler the MS Konev, somewhere in the Black Sea as they headed out of Trabzon.

Speaking of which, it’s worth talking about a little narrative experiment I attempted during the final month of the Black Sector release that contained all this information – that of Tenebris Aquis. I’m not sure how many people actually interacted with this project, but it was a proof of concept to work out how best to share more details. Using a scripting system called Twine, this interactive experience was designed to be slightly more interesting than simply reading through a page. It was intended to be a conversation between Team Leader Igor and his Blockade Handler, setting up the mission to go deal with Khorkov. As well as a full briefing doc, it also included personal files for the team (where all the details mentioned above were displayed) as well as a few other hints for future events – the page for Kojoti was locked (with the intention of unlocking it once they were announced) while a mysterious “Project Vangarian” pointed towards events several arcs ahead. There was even a few other little hints towards smaller character moments – someone called Alexei (the original name for the team leader character) is implied to have been captured by Jensen in the past

Overall, it was a good starting point but it needed way more time and way more work. Due to the rush, I was unable to create custom graphics for it, having to rely on stock photos and the renders I made for promotional work, as well as half-assing the theme of the webpage. The push on social media also wasn’t that great – ideally it should have gone out to all the patrons and gone out early, giving them plenty of time to read through and start getting ideas before the release, building it up and getting much more attention.

The other downside to this release was not being able to get a scenario ready to play over. This was down to both timing but also down to the decision made not to support a single particular rule system with the Gunslinger system.

As for what would happen in the prologue canonically? Well in my planning, I always assumed Blockade would have been successful, moving past the Black Sector forceseliminating Khorkov after discovering him tied to a chair in a shipping container awaiting another round of interrogation. However, the former agent had already revealed some tidbits to Jensen and Black Sector, sending them off to the next location with a name “Wallace”.

Syria

The first full arc was set in Syria, in particular the eastern half of the country close to the border with Iraq and Jordan. From the off, I knew this was going to focus on Kojoti, our Serbian PMC doing shady work out in the desert. These guys gave us a different perspective compared to the Western teams, as well as a chance to push out further into the world. Syria is also a location which can play into the changing world of Gunslinger (as mentioned in the first post) – with the Russians out of there, the country is home to a mix of militias, contractors and private corporations. The story was that Team Chernobog, under the command of Alexander Wallace, had been deployed to fight off the counter-regime forces (both internal and external). However, they also had another objective, striking against private corporations operating in remote bases in Jordan and Iraq and stealing military and corporate secrets. These attacks are not going unnoticed, leading to Jensen’s arrival and the eventual deployment of forces to stop these attacks (once the go-ahead has been given by the Syrian regime).

The initial idea for the figure releases would have been to have Kojoti’s Team Chernobog as the first release before being followed up by a set of figures in the Ubique range (more on that in post 3) designed to represent a variety of Middle Eastern militia groups, accompanied by a character team of Western Contractors performing EOD duties in the region. These sets, combined with the Black Sector figures from the first arc, would then tie into an operation where Black Sector and Kojoti would fight each other, assisted by their local proxy forces, before culminating in a raid on the Chernobog base inside a factory complex in Deir ez-Zor.

With this longer arc, I decided to try and get in some more narrative through what was planned to be a series of short stories. This first one “The Lion and The Coyotes” (which you can find linked above) was designed to setup events in the region, introducing Wallace and the Kojoti team, as well as using a dialogue between the government representatives and Wallace to show more of the situation. Follow up stories would have then covered the events leading up to the final battle, mentioning the other elements as well as laying down information to be used in the future (such as the Intel Source “Fountain” and another group by the name of “Trident Acquisitions”).

Once I realised that we wouldn’t be getting multiple releases in the original plan, it was quickly slimmed down to focus on just the final encounter between Black Sector and Kojoti, with the intention to release coming at the end of the Kojoti releases. It even reached the point where I had started speccing out a layout for a possible final engagement (with talk of Dan from Desk-Ops potentially creating some elements to capture photos of before the final release). However, because of the time compression, this project was ended before it began – additionally, this was the time when I started to realise that maybe I should start looking for an exit.

The intended ending of the arc would have seen Black Sector (with assistance from a team of High Risk Contractors) raiding the Kojoti base, fighting both active fighters and the secruity team (including the PKM gunner in his Y-Fronts). Alexander Wallace would have been captured and taken away for interrogation but a phonecall from a higher power would have led to his release. Wallace, being the cad he is, would of course take a moment with Jensen to reveal that, despite working with Kojoti, he was actually a double agent, with British SIS using him to redirect Kojoti against targets that suit British Intelligence. It would also be made clear that this work was not out of some sense of duty but instead purely for the financial benefit – we have to make it very clear that he is no James Bond! With Wallace released, it would allow us to reuse him in future sets and give us a moment to move on to the next location.

Mexico

The final arc that had a chunk of work done on it was Mexico. This was actually one of the arcs I’d started thinking about when we began the project (perhaps inspired by the pile of people doing Cartel based projects at the time). The basic idea was that the increasing industrial base in Mexico after the US-China trade war was leading to an increase in wealth among industrial concerns but also that the Cartels and Government corruption would rise. This would then lead to an initiative by a member of the Mexican social elite (who had previously served in the US Marine Corps before returning home) to utilise former US military personnel (along with loyal members of the Mexican military, police and civilians) to wage war on the Cartels. This of course has some fans north of the Border and so the Project finds itself being equipped from the piles of gear that the US Army had put into warehouses during the economic downturn and supported (unofficially) by certain US Agencies. This scheme would be referred to as Project Vangarian (although it originally had another name that was used for another team in Gunslinger after my departure from the project).

A big part of this planning was to engineer a setup to release a group of figures that could be used for US Army Special Forces from roughly 2017 (inspired by the Coffee Or Die article “The Valley Boys”, as part of the idea that Gunslinger ranges should be usable for both the present day and our 2030 setting. I was also wanting to try and push the design out with a mix of body types so alongside the SCARs, M4s and M320s (as well as a few marksman rifles and machine guns) there would also be a visible difference between the figures – some guys built like linebackers, some a little more on the skinny side and everything in between. This was all part of the concept of pushing forward the types of figures available on the marketplace, as many ranges focus on a single body type with only minor differences between the figures.

The wider set of releases would have been split into three. The first part would have been forces from Project Vangarian, with the six different figure packs giving a variety of former US Special Forces and Mexican personal to build up a variety of forces for small scale operations while the character team would bring a set of Day Trippers from a certain three letter agency, sharing a similar look with a few more high tech elements. To go up against them, a Ubique release focused on troops armed with AR15 pattern small arms would be released, along with a series of heads designed for Cartel operations in the three months following. The Character team with them would be the Blockade operatives from Prizrak-222, the previously mentioned “La Maldición”, giving a set of Russian operatives dressed for sneaking around, striking from the scrublands of Northern Mexico before retreating away and leaving nothing but terror and misdirection in their wake. This set would then lead into the final part of the Mexico arc, as Blockade deploys larger and more aggressive teams to support their Cartel allies – this would bring in several squads worth of Blockade operators, with RPL-20s, PKP machine guns and Kord 6P67 assault rifles for that unique look and feel. Mexico would probably end with Project Vangarian on the back foot, setting up a return to this theatre later. But alas, it was not to be.

And with that, we’ve covered all of the narrative work that was done on Gunslinger 2030. Now over 9 months on since I was involved, looking back I’m glad I did Gunslinger. There was plenty that I learned, and much I was able to attempt to see what worked and what didn’t. That said, if I was to do it again, there are many things I would have done differently. Much of it comes down to planning – the biggest problem from my side was the rush to get things done. The entire project would have benefited from working much further in advance, having the chance to iterate on both the narrative and the figures released.

However, I’m not entirely done with the Patreon posts. One of the concepts that I came up with early on in development was a range called Ubique. Although we never got to release any of the sets I had planned for this range, I do think it’s worth covering the concept in detail, partially because it allows me to theory craft and partially because I want to see what other people think. For that post, see you before the end of the month!

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