I wrote a Wargame and you should buy it

So, I've blogged about The Dolorous Stroke on here a bit. Well, it's done now. You can buy it here, it costs five bucks for roughly 100 pages.
I'm planning to get it into print, but that could take a while.
I'm gonna talk about it some.

So the initial thought process went something like this:

• Inquisitor is really cool but too detailed even for me. See this blogpost for more of my fangirling.
• The LOTR skirmish game is pretty good and should never have been made a large-scale game.
• Arthuriana is under-represented.
• This Dark Age Of Sigmar/AoS28 stuff is really cool!
• Fuck it lets make it a game.

So I built a game based on my particular tastes. Which is to say:

• Alternating activation.
• Simple resolution.
• Changing dice sizes rather than +/- X modifiers.
• Injuries rather than loss of HP.
• Playing cards always make tracking stuff easy.
• Tempo and timing wins games, not removing models.
• Hard to kill models, tabling your opponent ineffective. 
• Weapon choice matters.
• Freeform character creation, no list-building points-cost bullshit.

So my philosophy was to make the game as an engine for interesting encounters and atmosphere, creating a slightly darker chivalrous feel to things. Story and setting and characters are more important than tactics. If your warband aren't converted, you are Doing It Wrong.

Which is why you've got things like special rules for jousting, noblewomen as social/command powerhouses, magic as limited but devastating, a stat for Virtue.

Some of my early thoughts can be found in this post, where the commenter Alandros suggested the game's eventual title. Stuff's been modified since then, but it's a good insight into my early design thoughts.

I've been playing it a bunch with local gamers. They seem to like it. I have plans to run a big themed campaign with, like, a Quest and Tournaments and Dark Secrets.

And then graphic design wise I tried to keep things fairly tight. Consistent use of sidebars for setting stuff, little heraldic shields as page ornaments to break up the text, and big full-page illustrations every so often. It'll do.