Vassal (game engine)

The Vassal Engine is a game engine for building and playing online adaptations of board games, tabletop games and card games. It allows users to play in real time over a live Internet connection, and also by email (PbeM). It runs on all platforms, and is free, open-source software. For example, there is a Star Wars Miniatures module, where players can play with up to three others in a digital replica of the table-top game.

It is written in Java and the source code is available from GitHub under the LGPL open source license.

History
Vassal began as VASL (Virtual Advanced Squad Leader), an application for playing Advanced Squad Leader.

Available modules
Vassal modules exist for over 1000 games.

Copyright and licensing
In September 2008, Games Workshop issued a cease-and-desist order regarding V40k to Tim Davis, the V40k module maintainer at that time. The module is still played.

Games Workshop has also issued a cease-and-desist order regarding Space Hulk.

Similar projects
Similar engines for making board games include ZunTzu and Boardgame.io.