Cyrano grabbed a few minutes with Troy Goodfellow of Paradox at GenCon, and had a chat about Runemaster.

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Paradox Interactive isn’t just some software company: not to wargamers, and not to me. This, after all, is the band of Swedes that took a nigh-unplayable board game and turned it into one of the most successful strategic wargame franchises in PC gaming. This is the company that created the greatest medieval soap opera simulator in the history of everything and layered it on top of a robust conflict engine that lets me (and, apparently, some of the contributors to this very site) fancy themselves rulers of obscure kingdoms. And this is the company that soon (never soon enough, mind) will release one of the most anticipated World War II strategy games to come along in quite some time.

This is a company that has nurtured the wargame like its own child and kept alive the grognard fire during the harsh winter of console ascendancy.

So why, then, am I standing in the Paradox Interactive booth at GenCon talking to Troy Goodfellow about a game that involves the participation of men, elves, dwarves, and other fantasy races in the coming of Ragnarok?

And, let me say, talking to Troy Goodfellow about Ragnarok is weird in and of itself. He’s a widely-published games critic, co-founder and co-host of the “Three Moves Ahead” weekly podcast, and overall fanatic for the history of the Great Patriotic War. What, then, does he think he and the Paradox team are bringing to Runemaster, the up-coming turn-based, tactical RPG set in a world confronting the Norse eschaton?

The answer, reassuringly, is the ability to simulate people killing each other in various ways. OK, ok…Goodfellow, now an assistant producer at Paradox, and I spoke about other things…

Like the Clausewitz engine, for example. This is the system, first built for Europa Universalis III in 2007 that’s lurking under Runemaster’s hood. He said, early in his tenure with Paradox, he was invited to corporate and given a quick run through an earlier version of the game. He asked what it was running on and, when given the answer, admitted to being shocked.

Based on my own plays through the alpha of the game available at GenCon, I think most users will be shocked too. The game is in the family of Heroes of Might and Magic in that there’s an overmap where heroes are minted, armies raised, and experience gathered. It’s worth noting in passing that the game does not include city building or development. Heroes get their armies the old-fashioned way: at barracks.

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