Roleplaying Games are Wargames

Preface

    The title is a simplification and shortening of the real statement. What I will explain below is how (Tabletop) Roleplaying Games are one subset of the broad and expansive design space of wargaming. This does not mean that RPGs are the same, or even similar to, say, board game wargames. Or miniatures wargames. Or matrix games (though they are to those ones!). Or any of other numerous game design practices that encompass wargaming.

Secondly, this is not about [scarequotes]TaXonOMy[scarequotes]. This is about history and game design.

Key Elements of a Roleplaying Game

    While I am sure there are much more well read game designers than myself out there who can elaborate further on this stuff, to me the two of the defining features of RPGs that set them aside from, say, board games or video games are


1. Tactical Infinity. In this case “tactical infinity” means that participants in the game are expected to freely offer any course of action they want to take, without having to pick from a predetermined list of choices or actions. In a boardgame the rulebook explicitly lists out all of the things the game actions that you can take when playing. A Knight in a game of chess can’t simply just wander off the board, then perform a flank charge on the enemy’s Bishop. A knight only moves the way the rules say it moves and that is it.

In order for this tactical infinity to actually have some kind of constraints and sense to it (After all, if you are free to take any action you can simply declare “I win the game.”) roleplaying games employ a participant whose job is to adjudicate the actions of the other players. That person is the referee.

2. The Referee. Or GameMaster, Dungeon Master, Judge, Royal Highness or whatever other title you prefer. The referee’s role in a roleplaying game is, first and foremost, to adjudicate the actions proposed by the other players, and in turn tell them how their actions and choices impact the simulated world of the game, and how things in that simulated world react. This is what keeps the ability to attempt anything in check so you can actually have a reasonable game.

3(ish). Campaigns. While one-off games of TTPRGs are possible and doable and, in some cases, the main way people participate in the hobby, from the very start the goal at least of a Roleplaying Game is the campaign - a continuous and connected setting and characters simulated, explored and changed through multiple game sessions, often with recurring characters. This one I don’t consider as key as the above two, but I figured bears mentioning.

History and Design Lineage

Where do RPGs then get those two above game design elements from? Were they fully formed and birthed from the forehead of Saint Gygax as he used his Galaxy-brain genius to give us mortals Dungeons & Dragons?


No. No they weren’t. Duh.


    Gygax wrote D&D (from what I’ve read second-hand, it is debatable just how much actual writing Arneson contributed to the finished product) as a way to formalize, recreate and allow others to recreate, the experience of Dave Arneson running his Blackmoor game for him and Rob Kuntz. So while the actual writing and product might originate primarily from Gygax, who himself has plenty of game design experience, the broader “idea” of what “a D&D” is, I would argue, came to Gygax through Arneson and Blackmoor.

    Blackmoor, in turn, is a variant of Braunstein, with fantasy, sci-fi, horror and other things thrown into it for good measure. Arneson explicitly started and advertised his Blackmoor campaign to his gaming circle as a fantasy Braunstein. So that leads us to the next step back in history.

    Braunstein is the name that Dave Wesley gave to a type of game he created and ran (and to my knowledge still occasionally runs at conventions) over the years. It is a wargame in which each player controls only a singular individual, usually with predetermined goals and abilities, while a referee helps adjudicate the interactions between the players. Wesley’s very first Braunstein game, and the most famous one, was set during the Napoleonic Wars, a favorite period of his gaming circle at the time. A big inspiration for making and running this type of game was his research into the late 19th century american wargame Strategos, of which Wesley created a variant he called Strategos N (the N is for Napoleonic, in case anyone didn’t get that).

    Strategos is a military wargame (meaning a wargame not meant for hobby enjoyment, but used in actual military training) developed by Charles Totten for the US army and published in the tail end of the 19th century. Strategos has the same key elements as above - a referee who adjudicates and mediates between the players that are participating in the game, because Strategos was a variant of the Prussian Kriegsspiel, though inherited through the British variants of that game from a decade prior.

    And finally, we get to the origin of it all. The literal Wargame (or Kriegsspiel in German), developed as a training tool for the Prussian military by George Leopold von Reisswitz and based on prior attempts at developing wargames in Prussia. And while Kriegsspiel has numerous variants, modifications and changes to it over the decades it was used, “Free” Kriegsspiel variant which Strategos above is based on, relied less on strict and codified rules about what actions can or can’t be taken by players, but instead of an arbiter (usually a more veteran officer) who would use their own military experience and knowledge, combined with potential mechanics to introduce randomness and uncertainness in actions (such as, say, a fog of war) in order to help the players get used to making decisions that would, hopefully, prepare them for leading troops on actual battlefield.

    As you can see, the connection to D&D, and from it all Tabletop RPGs (as RPGs are all, in one way or another, direct or indirect responses to Dungeons and Dragons) leads directly back through a century or so of games back into the Wargame. Not just in simple reference, but in what all of those game designers I listed above have repeatedly taken and reiterated upon from that first Kriegsspiel.

And those very same principles - the ability to attempt any action that a player can think of, and the referee’s job to then moderate those actions, are still very much present in mos RPGs.

    Now, as I said in the preface, this does not mean RPGs are the same as other forms of wargaming like Matrix Games or Miniatures Games or Board game Wargames, or Map Games or the numerous other design iterations. Hell, a good amount of wargames nowadays don’t even use a referee and instead rely on somewhat restricted actions that players can take.

However those all are still wargames, or at least an aspect and interpretation of wargaming as a practice.

What Does It All Mean?

    Nothing. I do not tell people that RPGs are wargames as a hot take to make them somehow change the way they play. I say it because too many people, influenced by company marketing talking points around “originality” or “uniqueness” or “new and better game design” seem to think that RPGs are somehow this utterly self-encompassed thing, and that wargames design can’t offer anything to their games, as wargames are also only about fighting. A statement which itself also shows ignorance about the scope of topic, theme and practice in wargaming.

    Wargames are more about conflict and conflict resolution. That conflict need not be violence though. The conflict in how to allocate resources in a civilian infrastructure is still a viable thing to wargame (and has been done). Yes, a game which utterly lacks any conflict or the need to resolve it is probably truly outside the scope of Wargaming, and some people’s RPG games probably do attempt to be about that, but I would argue those are outliers which simply reinforce the majority rule.

In conclusion - wargames and their offspring tabletop roleplaying games are much more complex, nuanced and usable for a broad and more expansive activity than simple entertainment. And that’s a good thing.

Recommended Reading

The Wargame Developments Handbook - https://wargamedevelopments.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/WD-Handbook-Third-Edition-October-2022.pdf
Jon Peterson's Blog - http://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/
Playing at the World - https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262548779/playing-at-the-world-2e/
The Elusive Shift - https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262544900/the-elusive-shift/
The Connections UK Wargames Conference - https://www.professionalwargaming.co.uk/2024.html

Getting Started with Miniatures Painting: Basic Tools and Paints

 Here is a quick and straightforward guide on what will give you a good start if you want to get started on painting miniatures. I am not going to discuss getting miniatures or preparing them for painting (cleaning, assembling, priming etc). Just a list of things of paints and tools that would give you a good start on this.

A NOTE: I will not mention any specific brands of miniatures paint here, because all major manufacturers have some good and some bad products, and what you should use is what you can get your hands on. I have things I prefer, and I use paints from like 5 different companies.


A SECOND NOTE: I will assume you're painting sci-fi or fantasy miniatures, as those dominate the hobby and market.

A List of Paints

    I would start by acquiring the following colors

• A white
• A black
• An off-white or bone color
  
• A green
  
• A deep and rich red 
• A deep blue
  
• A yellow (Whichever one you get will suck. Don't worry about it)
• A silvery metallic paint
• A copper or gold metallic paint. Ideally both
• A black wash/shade
• An umber wash/shade
• A sepia wash/shade
• Between 1-3 shades of brown, tan or ochre. Preferably ones that are not too similar to each other.

This will get you enough to paint most fantasy and sci-fi minis. You should mix your colors to achieve more complex tones, using black, off-white or browns to make colors lighter or darker. From here on you can expand your collection of paints by getting individual things you need for whatever it is you're painting. Stuff I would generally get, if you need it, would be

•  Some kind of purple
• A bright fiery orange (those are hard to achieve by mixing most miniature paints)
• Any other bright or very vibrant color you might need
• Colored shades or washes. I increasingly prefer to just use contrast paints and dilute them with some contrast medium+water to make them into a wash. 

A THIRD NOTE: I would generally not buy any "skintone" labeled paints. Leaving aside that those more often than not simply are just a very pale, white idea of what a "basic skintone" is, you can achieve a decent looking skin tone by simply mixing your off-white with some kind of warm or reddish brown (either one you already have, or mixing any brown with a bit of your red). 

Other Tools

    Obviously, if you're painting you'll need a brush. There are a billion opinions (most of them from people who have no idea what the fuck they're talking about, but simply regurgitating shit they heard from someone else) about what is the right and correct brushes to get.

Ignore all of that shit. More likely than not, you're painting 28mm scale figures, and for that you can do 99% of your painting using just a number 2 sized brush, synthetic or natural hair bristles, that can maintain a fine point.

That last bit is the only truly important thing in miniatures painting. You want a brush that will not lose its top as soon as you put paint on it. How expensive that brush will be for you depends on where you are and what you have access to. I've painted minis using just random brushes i bought off Amazon and it's been fine. I mostly use an artist's sable hair number 2 brush I can buy reliably at a local art supply store. It doesn't matter.

Next you'll want some kind of a palette to put your paints on. For this you can use any non-pours surface really. A spare plate, a single smooth ceramic tile, just a cheapo plastic palette you can buy from the arts supply isle of your supermarket. They'll work fine. Don't bother with a wet palette for now. They're good, they're nice to use - you do not need one at all.

You will also want a thing to keep water in, and some paper towels or a piece of cloth to clean your brush on as you paint.



And that's it. You can acquire most of this in pieces or buy a starter set that most manufacturers usually sell.

2x2 Napoleonics

 I have been interested in checking out the wargame 2x2 Napoleonics ever since Chris McDowell posted about it on his blog.

However between life, other hobbies that took priority over it, and just general distraction it has taken me well over a year to get around to trying it out, but I finally did! Yesterday I sat down with a friend of mine and we played a couple of games, using some matchstick armies that I made for the units (inspired by this excellent blogpost)

Units for the two armies.

The system itself is quite simple and straightforward, requiring a few pieces of terrain, around 14-16ish bases of units for a 40 point pickup game, and all rolling is done via just one six-sided die.

This post will not be a full on battle report, as both games took about an hour at most to play through and I don't remember enough specific details to write a compelling one, but I will use the post as an opportunity to share a few photos from the games and talk about my impressions of the game.

Board setup and initial deployment in Game 1.

2x2 Napoleonics does a few things that I found pretty interesting. One is that you do not deploy your entire force at the field at once, but only get 10 army points worth of units, unless both players draw when they roll for initiative at the beginning of the game.(For every time you draw and reroll, each player gets 10 more AP worth of units they can field from the start). Everything else is reinforcements, which not only enter from two designated entry points which players place before the game starts, but also enter in very specific order, which you also have to set up before the battle has actually started.

Second, the defender (the player with the lower score rolled on that initiative roll) gets to setup the terrain on the board (picking the battlefield as it were), which again means that a lot of important game decisions are made from before any actual fighting starts.

I quite like this, though I will admit that at least with these two first games it meant that neither of us were quite sure what we were doing and if we were doing it well. I imagine the tactical nuances of setting up the board and properly arranging your reinforcements only get better as you play more games.

Game 1 in progress. That unit of French Grenadiers caused absolute havoc during the game, eliminating two or three of the 5 units needed for a victory all by themselves.

A problem we ran into as we were playing was some lack of clarification on a few points, which mostly stem from the rules being quite short. The rules, for example, have no real information on whether you can break up a units movement allowance to let it go around obstacles (it says you can pivot and turn around freely during your move, so that implies you can?). Because if you can do that, then the rule for moving sideways at 2 times the cost makes zero sense, as you can simply turn around and move "forward" for free, then wheel back around.

Another question relating to movement was whether units can pass through friendly units or not when moving. That simply is not addressed at all.

Lastly line of sight is a bit vague in the rules, having only one example in the end showing you that, yes, units do get in the way of line of fire, but apparently a whole-ass town doesn't, only providing a cover bonus for the infantry unity within the town? We ended up simply making some rulings of our own to keep the game going, but it felt like these were easy enough to address in the rules in the first place.

Board setup and initial deployment for Game 2

Some things I did like in the system is how brutal and decisive combat can be, with units fighting in the open often resulting in casualties of some kind. Since a fast game's win condition is for a player to simply lose 5 units, it does indeed lead to quite fast game.

Conversely, the setup of Game 2 that you can see above, with 3 towns and a lot of woods, provided for some really hard to assault defensive locations, with the French Grenadiers parking themselves in the larger central town and not really being dislodged out of there for the entire duration of the game


All in all I quite enjoyed 2x2 Napoleonics, which is honestly impressive as I have almost no real interest in that time period as far as wargaming goes, but I always enjoy a nice set of clean rules that facilitate quick games. Both my friend and I are interested in playing it again, though potentially with some tweaks in the army compositions as some units definitely felt weak and under-performing in the two games we played. Either that or simply finding a real world historical battle and recreating that one.

What follows now are going to be just a few more photos from the games.

British reinforcements lined up and waiting to get to the battle.

French Grenadiers fending off a British assault on the larger town and coming up victorious.

The two armies slowly and cautiously approaching each other on the outskirts of town.

Temple of 1000 Swords, a Tunnels and Trolls Session Report

At my LGS’s monthly RPG event yesterday I ran a one shot using a modified version of the 5th edition Tunnels and Trolls system, running the OSE adventure Temple of 1000 Swords.

The game has 6 players, none of whom had played T&T before, but who did have experience in RPGs in general. Of the pregens the only notable one was a dwarf warrior with 66 starting strength (the TARO rule in action!)

Session Recap

After being given a general premise and goal (Go find where all these goddamn rusted swords are coming from, and do something about it!) the party started right at the entrance of the dungeon.

The dwarf managed to instantly fall into the trap set up in the entry hallway, risking drowning were it not for the efforts of the others to pull him out. This caught the attention of the duck people in the next room who mocked the party, the dwarf challenged them to a duel and won it after the duck he was fighting conceded after a few rounds of being smacked around with a hammer.

Railing up the ducks to go fight their fishy enemies, the ducks thundered off towards the merfolk section of the dungeon, while the party looted and explored the place. They were attacked by some of the iron mongrels that seem to prowl the dungeon, defeating them and getting some diamonds out of their guts.

Further exploration eventually lead them to the forge where Piotr the knight was cursed to keep making swords. They ran into Gladio, the god of the temple who put a geas/curse upon them to kill 9 people in 9 days using swords, then fucked off cackling.

The party explored some more of the dungeon, eventually finding the Hierophant that Piotr killed, taking the knight’s magic spear out of him, resurrecting him, spearing him back down, resurrecting him again and eventually him being able to get his hands on the dwarf before he could shove the spear back in him, killing the dwarf in a single attack (the party was trying to flee, so the dwarf decided to run away rather than stay and fight).

At that the party simply ran away, explaining what they could to the town council. Despite their abject failure to solve the sword problem, they were allowed to perform the next 9 executions in order to lift their curse, but were then also promptly told to leave town and never come back.

Observations

I had two main goals with this. First was the obvious - I have not run a game in months, and wanted to do something about it. On that end I obviously succeeded, as the game did indeed happen.

The second goal was getting some actual experience running T&T for a group and seeing how it feels. The aesthetics of a system can and does matter to me, and I so far have been enjoying the one T&T offers. Combat was fast, though not as fast as I was hoping (turns out adding up a whole bunch of large numbers over and over isn’t actually significantly faster than just people rolling a bunch of d20s, though it is slightly so), but it still worked pretty well.

I like Saving Rolls as a unified mechanic and how well they can work for basically anything, I like the spellcasting and I like the absurdity of how powerful some starting characters can be compared to others.

Also, as a GM, adapting the monsters in the dungeon worked out quite easily. Slapping a Monster Rating that vaguely feels right (and it does seem like a lot of it is based on vibes and how difficult you feel the monster should be to challenge in combat) and then simply using the abilities it already has was very intuitive and fast.

The module itself worked fine, and its slightly goofy and absurd premise also fit the general goofy tone that T&T often has associated with it. I wouldn’t say the Temple of 1000 Swords is my favorite OSE module or something, but I think for a one-shot at an event it works quite well and offers plenty of things for people to poke at and mess around with.

Choosing Fighter means choosing Violence

The excellent Head Lopper by Andrew MacLean.

I often think about Fighters. I also like what others have written about fighters.

A regular discussion on the OSR discord has been the various ways in which people boost Fighters to make them feel a bit more like the archetype they promise, yet sometimes fail to deliver in the eyes of people.

I think LotFP did a step in the right direction, by allowing only the Fighter to get basic attack bonus.

I say go one step further. Only Fighters get to participate in combat.

Sounds silly when written out like this, but why? Class-based systems are mostly about carving out a niche. You pick the role you want to do in the game, and the system provides those with a handy class. Often the issue with why certain classes feel "weak" or "boring" or whatever other negative you want to assign to them is because another class (or multiple classes!) are intruding upon their niche.

Magic-users can cast spells. Clerics can turn-undead. Thieves can Backstab. And so Fighters should Fight.

If you want to engage in combat as a mechanic, then make it so the Fighter is the only Player Class who gets to do that. If you want to concede some ground on this, maybe allow combat hirelings to fight at half the effectiveness of a Fighter.

There you go. The Fighter now is back to having their niche well protected by incursion from literally every other PC.

 

The Greylands House Campaign Retrospective

 

Between August and November of 2023 I ran another campaign or iteration of The Greylands, which was my first ever OSR focused campaign that I ran back in early 2022. In this case rather than running it as an open table with a bunch of players, it was a house game for only two players, each of them running two characters initially (and eventually a fifth PC joined the party).

Due to how slow I have been in getting to this post, some of my thoughts are no longer as fresh as they were in December, but there are still some things I would like to look back on with this campaign.

Running a game for just two players

It has been kind of a curious progression between these last three campaigns. In the first Greylands game I had a very healthy pool of 17 players, most of which played in at least two sessions, and most sessions were 5-6 players (one time even going to 7).

With BSSS the overall open table player pool was smaller (11 total) and the game quite quickly formed around a core of 4 players with occasionally having a fifth person join in for a session or two.

And now with this second Greylands game it was just two players. Obviously this also wasn’t an open table, so it was never going to be more than that anyway, but it’s still a trend I hope reverses drastically in my next game!

But, how did it feel to run for just two players? Kind of odd. After running much larger games this one felt much smaller and a bit more personal I suppose. A thing I definitely noticed is that without the larger group of players there is both less game time spent on waffling about and trying to decide what might be an option to maybe proceed to take an action. Conversely there were no “outside” voices and perspectives to offer solutions or courses of action. If the two players didn’t think of something or didn’t consider an element, then there wasn’t anyone but me as the referee to potentially point it out to them.

Also both my players were very much not people used to the OSR play style, nor entirely comfortable (or that interested, let’s be honest) with it. As such they did not exactly have many sessions of dungeon delving and problem solving to draw upon, and there was no third party to also offer potentially different points of view.

I also decided to give each player two characters (plus any hirelings and animals they had) to control, which while it helped beef up the party numbers requiring little adjustment on my end, probably did not work AS well as it could have. I think if I was to run something like this again I would instead have players still just run one PC at a time (though if they want a troupe of potential PCs to use, that’s always cool of course) but beef them up a bit to make it so they won’t just get killed at the first fight they get into.

On my end, I can’t say I am particularly a fan of just having two players, as I enjoy some of the chaos of having 4+ people playing in the game, but I won’t say it’s awful and I hate it either.

Running a regular campaign versus an open table

So here’s the simple fact - I’ve not really run many campaigns, despite playing RPGs fairly consistently for 20 years. I’ve played in some, I’ve tried running, but before the first Greylands I think my longest campaign was maybe 4 sessions long? That’s not a campaign. It just isn’t.

The reason I went with an open table approach for the past two campaigns is because I did not (and technically still don’t) have a stable and reliable group of 4-5 people who could play in a weekly game, and so an open table allowed me to draw from a big enough group of people that I could consistently have enough players for a game to fire. My usual approach was that if at least 3 people sign up for a session, the session is happening.

Open table games tend to necessitate some concessions and adjustments in how play flows during a given session. I made it a point that all sessions always begin and end in a safe location (usually the closest town), with downtime happening between sessions. This is pretty standard stuff - it allows for PCs to join and leave the group from session to session without needing any explanation or justifications as to how they’re now here, when they weren’t here last time.

However, with a stable closed game, and even more so one where both the referee and players all live in the same place (as was the case for this one) there is no need to have that kind of setup. So we regularly had the game pause just in the dungeon, or even in the middle of a fight (coming back to finish it later in the day, or maybe the next day) and it felt….weird.

Not bad,mind you, but after 20+ sessions of open table playhaving characters just frozen in place simply felt weird and unusual. I don’t know if I dislike it though.

Downtime still happened, but now it was not this regimented thing of “downtime is always between two sessions!” instead simply happening when the players wanted to deal with it, and often spending more than the 1 week minimum, occasionally spending close to a month in pursuing various projects unrelated to the dungeon.

Running the same thing twice and limited campaign scope

Since this campaign was both a continuation and also a soft reset of my previous Greylands campaign, I decided to use Dyson’s Delve (an absolutely excellent dungeon for this kind of game, in my opinion) again as the tentpole for the game, which with some occasional forays into nearby regions, ended up being the main focus of the game.

And since I had already run this same setup before, it gave me a rather interesting opportunity to observe how different playgroups handle the same dungeon. The first Greylands campaign’s players ended up fighting the goblins on level 1, using flaming oil and murdering prisoners after they had already surrendered, and so the goblins became immediately hostile to the party, setting up traps, then barricades and employing firebombs of their own, eventually hiring an ogre to go stand outside the entrance to the dungeon. The party never made it through level 2 of the dungeon, let alone any deeper, while declaring that the dungeon was “too dangerous” and going to other places instead. (Too dangerous, in this case, being that over multiple delves 1 PC was killed and 1 was injured and then recovered.)


Contrast this with the party in this iteration, who approached the goblins without hostility and over the span of half the sessions in the game eventually not only befriended them, but actually became allies with the goblins, effectively taking control over the 4 topmost levels of the dungeon, and giving them access to a lot of goblins, if needed! While, yes, this approach means that some magic items and experience was left at the table, it also meant that they didn’t really need those, as they had access to the goblins that already had the items and were willing to help if push came to shove.

The way the two different groups approached the same simple situation has been fascinating to me, and is something that has really made me want to run the same adventure or dungeon for multiple groups some more, to observe what novel ways of approaching it can happen.

Playing with people you are more emotionally attached to

This one is a bit of a personal note, but an important insight from the campaign and thus worth mentioning. Seeing as I was playing with my partners, I actually have found that process at times more stressful than running for my usual group of acquaintances, friends and strangers that would be at my open table games.

With people you care deeply about any dissatisfaction with the game or even strong emotional response to the game tends to then affect me quite more as well, making me rather hesitant to really remain as a neutral referee (which of course I don’t have to be, but I find is good practice in OSR games). It’s not like I pulled back when danger presented itself to the PCs, but rather it made me more hesitant to run the scenarios when danger was present in the first place. A curious thing, and one that I am not sure what to do about, or if there is much to do about in the first place.

Final thoughts

I was overall pleased with this campaign, so that’s good. I think some interesting world building happened as a result of, allowing me to flesh out aspects of the campaign setting that I didn’t have during the first iteration of it, and also helping create a lasting, player-driven change in the setting by reestablishing the manor house under which the dungeon was located. Conversely, I am not sure if the campaign will be returning to this area any time soon, but if it does then at least I will know that the manor is now rebuilt and is there.

I felt like the focus on a singular dungeon worked quite well, even if that was not my starting intention (it mostly happened due to overwhelm not allowing for prepping more expansive events and opportunities during the campaign) and helped further bolster my decision to aim for a megadungeon focused game for my next one.

There are no stats for this campaign, since technically speaking this is still the same Greylands game as the previous one, so I have not compiled any for this next installment, though through my notes I can probably recreate some of those later down the line. I also know of maybe only one or two other people who even care about campaign stats anyway, so it’s fine, hah.

Looking back at 2023 and a year of blogging

 Since it seems to be the thing to do on this last day of 2023, I am jumping on the bandwagon and writing a post about the year in review, specifically focusing on this blog.

So, what did I do this year?  Well, I blogged! A lot! 60 posts (not counting this one) in 2023, and several more lined up and waiting for me to get around to writing them.

Between the Serpents of Smoke and Steel - an OD&D Campaign

While I technically prepped and started this campaign in 2022, most of it was run in the first few months of 2023, so it counts.

I had gotten very interested in what OD&D presented mechanically for your standard dungeon crawling adventure, and wanted to explore some of the implications of that. I went with a magical Mesopotamia sort of setting (which in retrospect I did not do enough with, due to not feeling that emotionally invested in it), slapped a few house rules on top of Delving Deeper and off we go! The campaign ran only for 14 sessions total, a rather short thing, but an eventful one. I really liked how having only 2 classes properly focused players on what they wanted to do, I enjoyed running huge masses of people fighting between each other without needing to do much in the way system changing, and the thing peaked with a tabletop wargame that I designed, drew and then assembled myself. That one is a definitely a highlight for me for this year! 

But the campaign had to come to an end, as I was getting done with the setting, the campaign had reached a nice pause point and soon after I was going to be spending 5 months outside the country (and that can be a bit of a problem for an in-person game, let me tell ya!)

The Greylands House Campaign - Returning to the familiar

While I was in the US with my partners, I wanted to run a weekly game for them. Earlier in the year I figured I'd just keep going with BSSS, but instead I decided to go back to the setting and system (a slightly tweaked B/X) from my first OSR campaign - The Greylands. The Greylands, if you haven't checked the blog or heard me talk about it on Discord, is my knock-off Hill Cantons setting that I am hoping to eventually make a bit more of its own thing. 

In this case I literally packed all the dungeons and other materials from the previous campaign, reset the main tentpole dungeon of the region (Dyson's Delve, reinterpreted as a dungeon under the old manor of the Boyar that used to rule the area) and just run my two players through it again.

The game ended up focusing almost entirely on the main dungeon itself, and it actually lead to some interesting comparisons between how these players and the previous ones had handled the dungeon and how the dungeon had responded to them in turn. These are observations I hope to post about at some point soon in a retrospective on the house campaign.

Outside of that, the game was enjoyable for all involved, produced some fun and interesting characters like Rusty, the  runty hobgoblin talasum (who truly lived up to the expectations of his bullies by just generally being deeply ineffectual throughout the entire game), Baba Tonka the tamed grizzly bear and others.

It also helped cement my decision to stick with this setting and explore other parts of it in the future, which I hope to do in the coming year. Check in here for more of that, I guess.

Legacy of the Bieth - I get to actually play for once! 

So yeah, as the subheading says, I also actually got to be a player, not just referee this year! I had the honor and pleasure to participate in Humza's Legacy of the Bieth campaign. I had played in it in 2022 as well, during another prolonged visit to the US. However my character, despite all the misadventures and brushes with the Death and Dismemberment table, was at the end of it only level 1. This year though I got to be a lot more involved and participate in a lot more lucrative ventures, getting poor old Rustam to level 4, with friends in the world of the djinn and allies and connections in the mortal world as well.

I always enjoy opportunities to actually be a player in a game, so this was very special for me. Besides this campaign, a couple of sessions in a bizarro version of the Hill Cantons and a few con games were all the play I got to do. Here is hoping I actually get the chance to play in more OSR games next year!

Blogging a bunch

So yeah, like I said above - 60 posts! I have been enjoying posting session reports and I find I get a lot out of them as a referee being able to look back on events in the campaign(s) and more importantly on my observations on what worked, what didn't and what stood out in a given session.

I also posted a bunch of classes and little rule-things relating to my Greylands setting and system that I hope to implement in the next installment of the campaign. 

Plus there was also the stuff not directly relating to a game I am currently running or plan on running. Stuff like my post on running play-by-post games, or a few reviews of books, or my current series of posts on hobby best practices, which seems to resonated with people and that makes me happy and glad that I decided to write it. 

I am not much on coming up with and writing theory, so it was nice to get at least some of that done. 

Hobby goals for 2024

Finally, looking forward to 2024 what am I hoping to do? Well there's a few blog posts that I want to write - two more posts in the hobby best practices series, a retrospective on my house campaign as I said above and a post about the importance aesthetics play in miniature wargaming.

I also hope to start up a megadungeon campaign in a different, more Slavic part of the Greylands world and get to post regular session reports from that as well! If all goes well and life doesn't completely kick me in the balls I am even hoping to actually get two different groups going in the same dungeon, just to see what kind of interesting experiences that produces because I haven't done that before!

In non-RPG hobbying I hope to make a significant dent in a long-term modeling project that I will hopefully post about here at some point once I feel I have enough worth showing, and I am really hopeful I can get back into miniatures wargaming. I had kind of stopped playing those entirely for a few years, and I am hoping to get more involved in these again. And since I'm doing wargaming I also plan on doing more board wargaming in the upcoming year, which is what had helped scratch that itch until now. 

So that's it. Goodbye 2023!