Wolves Upon the Coast - Session Reports and Observations, part 2

 

 I've started playing in NBateman's Wolves Upon the Coast campaign being run from the Rainbow/Purple OSR Discord.  I wrote another post already which you can find here. This one is going to cover the events of Sessions 4 and 5 (I did not participate in Session 3) as well as my thoughts on those.

  

Current state of our map.

Session 4 + 5

As stated I did not participate in Session 3, but from what other players told me the party made its way to Jork, met with the local king as well as other characters and Albinus, the Christian scholar/monk in our party ended up going north to fight a giant named Thomas (who apparently keeps kidnapping and murdering musicians), using some poison they acquired along the way.

Session 4 begins with my character Thorgo and a few others going north to see what became of Albinus and the Giant. They arrive to a beach littered with corpses - Albinus, Thomas the Giant and also, rather inexplicably, some 30 odd bandits. Everyone except Albinus has their corpses ripped apart, their guts and innards picked at and missing. The party gathers up what treasure they could from the giant's bag, retrieve Albinus's naked corpse and sail back to Jork, along the way running into some crashed ships and potential drowned ghosts, which are promptly ignored.

In Jork the party spread the word of Albinus's deeds and his sacrifice for the people of Jork. The local bishop starts working the crowd and declares that Albinus is a martyr and a saint and the locals begin construction of a shrine in his honor. Meanwhile the king of Jork is happy the problem has been dealt with and gives Stignadr a force of 100 men and 5 ships to return to Rhus and help fight off the Merfolk.

While the army prepares to leave the party splits up, running personal errands. Thorgo goes to the hermit seeking knowledge of magic. The hermit is polite, but says he isn't taking in any apprentices, but directs Thorgo to a witch that he knows, warning him to not seek the path to power. (At that Thorgo politely keeps quiet as he's a guest in this man's hovel). Thorgo was accompanied by 2 NPC crewmates from The Freedom (the name of the karvi that the party began the campaign in). One of them says he's not interested in this magic nonsense and heads back to the group. The other one says he wants to go with Thorgo to learn magic. The two buy a small raft and head up the river, searching for the witch.

Session 5 skips ahead as the fleet has finished mustering and is ready to return to Rhus. Among the Brythonic soldiers are Robert the Stonemason (Also known as Bob the Brython) and Val, both local Christians and replacement PCs for myself and Havoc (Albinus's player). Robert has deeply mid stats, good HP and is incredibly learned, being able to speak fluently Norse and also able to read and write in Brythonic. He is a relatively new convert to Christianity and so is a bit...loose let's say with his interpretations of the holy scriptures, as are the others in the area. He became inspired by Albinus's martyrdom and sacrifice and is going to become a member of the saint cult dedicated to him, for sure.

On the way back to Rhus the fleet encounters an odd sight - an island that was not there a couple of weeks ago as the crew sailed to Jork. The island is covered in hills and an imposing mountain, as well as a port and village which are of strange and alien architecture and completely abandoned.

The fleet stops to loot some gold ornaments off an old boat and those who disembarked have a vision the next morning - the rising sun appears to them as a blazing red eye with a triangle in the center. Bob and Val declare that this is a sign from God and that he clearly looks upon them with favor in the upcoming war with the merfolk. This mostly keeps the crew of the ship content and not panicking.

The fleet proceeds through a narrow channel now formed between the new island and Rhus, and arrive in the fortress of Trecht, where Stigandr, having now returned with an army as promised takes Princess Sophia's hand in marriage.

The next morning there's a war council and the PCs, plus Sophia and Grimmr (the captain of the Jork fleet) decide to go explore this new island in hopes of finding allies against the merfolk, as it was observed that the merfolk avoid going to it since it showed up a few days prior.

The group makes their way to the island, finding the mangled remains of the previous doomed Rhus expedition sent to investigate it by the increasingly mad and demented king. Going into the forest towards the imposing mountain, the party run into the mutilated hanging corpses of beastmen and the drumming of strange drums in the distance. Sophia has enough of this shit and flees, Stigandr running after her to make sure she's safe. The rest of the party, composed of Ingvar and Olaf the vikings, Grimmr the Jork captain, Robert the Brython and Val proceed to the mountain - a strange obelisk of sheer rock, spiky points and no vegetation.

Robert boasts that he will climb to the top of this thing, with the boisterous Grimmr immediately challenging him to a race. Everyone except Val (who is of low constitution and would almost certainly die trying to do this nonsense) decide to have a race, climbing up the mountain in 5 grueling days. Eventually, Ingvar makes a surprise advance and manages to overtake everyone, getting to the top first. All who climb the mountain experience a strange feeling if awe and cosmic insignificance, and find themselves marked with a triangular mark on their shoulder - the sign of the mountain and a potent magical protection.

The climb down, now without any food left, claims Olaf who is lost to the mountain, but the rest descend and meet up with Val. On the day of their descent they also go out hunting, as they are all very hungry, and in the process run into the beastmen, having now captured Stigandr (who had previously stood behind to hold them back as he told Sophia to run away) and experimenting on him, completely mangling his left arm at this point.

The beasts seem in awe of the people who have the mountain's blessing and do not stop them as the party retrieve the barely awake and concious Stig and return to their makeshift camp, giving him food and water, and Robert giving the poor naked man his shirt to keep him warm.

The party try and fail to leave off the island and go back to Rhus, but their attempts at crossing the channel with a raft are thwarted by a flash storm that just does not let up, so eventually Robert declares another boast - he will swim the channel in the storm, reach Trecht and get help. Grimmr, now going stir crazy from doing nothing for 2 days straight, oneups him and proposes another race.

Robert can't do much but agree, and the two men strip naked and dive into the murky stormy waters. Grimmr is lost to the storm, blown out into the open seas, but Robert, exhausted and hurting gets washed up on the shores of Rhus. He pushes through the storm and the night, out of sheer determination and reaches the ruined walls of Trecht. Apparently the battle had been fought and lost there in the time the party were busy racing up a mountain. He runs into a friendly local, tells him about the others stranded on the island then politely collapses from exhaustion.

The next couple of days the party manage to get saved and get back together and hear that the merfolk attacked en masse, destroyed the fortress, but the Jork and Rhus forces managed to drive them off in the center of the island, at heavy losses, but still victorious. The victory was hollow though as the Jork soldiers realizing there's little food simply raided the treasury and abused the local population.

Stigandr, exhausted from his ordeal, renounces his pagan ways and asks to be Christened, which Robert performs himself. The party gather up what they can in The Freedom and make ready to set sail back to Jork. Sophia asking them to send help and food, but the party are doubtful that any help would be of use - Rhus is clearly a cursed and doomed place, and so they just want to get away.

Observations

Fuck this is way longer of a recap than I intended, but so much keeps happening in these sessions that it's hard to cover it all even when condensing things significantly.

I wanted to have Thorgo learn magic from the moment I created him, so this was a great way to get him moving on that direction. Nathan, our Referee, says he's fine with running individual side-sessions for people, so Thorgo will be doing his own adventures. I made Robert as a throw away character to just play in the session, but he now has 3 hit dice, personally had a hand in installing a Christian king on the throne of Rhus (for what that's worth) and has a magical blessing from the weird mountain.  So my stable now has 2 very solid looking characters, which is almost not what I wanted, as now I have to actually put some effort into both of them hah.

Boasting continues to always feel slightly odd - the fact that you declare a boast, then get the bonus, then keep it if you succeed sounds like it should be intuitive, but that's...just not how actual boasting in real life works. You boast to others after the fact about the great deeds you've accomplished. So it just doesn't quite fit, but we seem to be getting the hang of making it work.

The race up the mountain was lots of fun, completely decided on the spot, and also helped underline just how little most of us, who aren't Stigandr, actually cared about Rhus and its fate hah. The race was a series of Constitution attribute tests, which definitely helped underline a broader issue with D&D like games, which that attribute tests are very awkward of a mechanic, in a system that does not focus on raising your attributes.

Val has a CON of 4, which is why his player decided to not even try and run him in the race - he was going to die, 100% guaranteed.  This brought on a good discussion during the game, and is something I've thought about on and off for a while now too.

Broadly speaking, I think that if you are going to have attribute checks be a regular element in your game, then your attributes should be able to be raised above what you rolled initially. Tunnels & Trolls makes that effectively the entire engine of the game, and it works fine and solves the problem.

Another observation is that these sessions have been just absolutely packed with action and events. I suspect that is due to the general density of stuff in the Wolves hexcrawl, more than anything else, but of course that's for our referee to know. But even just the immediate area around Jork appears to be full of giant monsters to hunt, a dungeon and numerous other things. And that is but a tiny speck on the entire hex map that composes the Wolves Upon the Coast campaign setting.

I am definitely interested in seeing how running two different characters will go. I usually use side-characters as mostly just throw aways, and in B/X or other older D&D games that makes sense - when you need XP to level up, playing multiple characters simply means you are diluting your XP per session and thus all of your characters just end up overall weaker.

Well in Wolves there is no exp, and Robert now has more hit dice than Thorgo! So I think that helps people just make new PCs and simply run with them. That and of course our referee being willing to handle multiple PCs and keeping track of the timeline that entails.

Wolves Upon the Coast - Session Reports and Observations, part 1

    I've started playing in NBateman's Wolves Upon the Coast campaign being run from the Rainbow/Purple OSR Discord.  While this post is, ostensibly, a session report in practice it's mostly going to be me talking about observations from the game so far.

Current explored parts of the giant WutC hex map. Hexes marked with a red dot are ones we have actually visited, not just seen.

 

Session 1 + 2

The campaign started, as per the WutC way, with our party of now former thralls having killed our masters and taken over the raiding ship we are on. My character, a man who only gives his name as Thorgo rolled high enough stats to get the meager bonuses offered by them, but only 2 HP. Questionable.

After sailing around a bit the party ran into the isle of Rhus and met with the local aristocracy - the demented king Maritz and his two daughters, Sophia and Louise. The island, it seems, has been under a sustained assault by merfolk from the depths of the ocean who have killed numerous people, sunk every single ship sent out for help, and have been a general nuisance. Stigandr boasted that he'll bring back an army to push away the merfolk and take the princess's name in marriage (nobody is still quite sure which princess that is, including Stigandr himself).

The whole army getting process gets delayed due to a rather prolonged rainstorm, during which the party explore the island, get into a fight with some merfolk, kill some more merfolk, make friends with the locals and explore a seaside cave that has a merfolk idol of some kind with its head missing (a likely reason they are so agitated and attacking the island).

As the weather finally clears the party make final preparations and sail west to Albonn, to seek help. As they were warned numerous times by the princesses, as soon as the ship cleared away from the coastline a gathering of merfolk ambush it. The preparations come in handy - nails sticking out of the gunwale of the ship along with everyone in the crew being armed with javelins or bows manages to whittle away the merfolks' numbers and only a few get on board, with Thorgo declaring a boast that he will defend the entire right side of the ship by himself, which he does, and Friggis (who has 1 HP) declared he will not be touched by a merfolk's weapon for the entire fight...which he did not. 

With their anime protagonist bullshit aside, the party manges to clear the boarding party and speed away from the second wave of attackers, having suffered only 1 PC casuality and a couple of followers. The ship soon makes its way to Albonn where they run into a rather dodgy looking village, apparently run by exiles, outlaws and thieves. Getting some directions and the lay of the land from the locals the party rest on their ship and prepare to sail north the next session.

A short summation of the two sessions so far.

Observations

 So overall I quite enjoyed these two sessions and look forward to the campaign ahead. Below is a non-exhaustive list of things that stood out to me throughout the games so far.

General Campaign Setup

The game is being run on Discord, through a text chat and a voice channel (no video). I find online games rather exhausting and mentally taxing, making it very hard to focus, but with several sessions now between this and the ASE campaign I mentioned in another post, I have found that perhaps the presence of video is what really makes me wiped out after gaming online. With audio only, and having to simply follow a text chat along with it, I am able to shift my focus a lot more easily to the various spreadsheets and map and other such things.

Speaking of, the campaign has a shared Google Sheets document with a roster of the characters, individual character sheets, a quartermaster sheet showing everyone's inventory and then a sheet for the ship and our fellow escaped slaves and newly joined Rhusian warriors. It is very well laid out and makes tracking what is going on a lot easier, especially in sessions with 6+ players. 

The combination of voice + text is also surprisingly useful. As people are chatting or discussing things, declaring actions and so on, what we often end up doing is then making action declarations or comments in text, which  reduces the level of overall noise while still allowing everyone to act simultaneously  (which in turn speeds up the game). A good example is in session 2 during the fight on the ship, as my character became more and more pumped up by adrenaline he would start shouting taunts at the merfolk, which I always just typed in chat rather than add more noise to the already busy voice chat of running a small skirmish-sized fight.

General Engagement 

A combination of having most of the players in the game also being referees of their own games, as well as the shared space used for characters and inventory creates a pretty high level of engagement from all players during the sessions. While a few of the players choose to step back a bit, most everyone else is always doing something, rather than waiting for the referee to give us a prompt. That includes maintaining the shared roster, handling mapping in tldraw (see above), or just taking notes.

Boasts and Gear

A standout with Wolves's built in system (a sort of stripped down OD&D affair) is the way character advancement happens. For those who don't know, in Wolves you don't gain experience, but instead your character can loudly and in public boast about attempting some kind of feat or other (slaying a monster, finding a specific treasure, doing a heroic deed of some kind) and that boast comes with an instant bonus of either +1 Hit Die or +1 (+2 in our house rules) attack bonus. Once the character succeeds at what they boasted they will do, that bonus is permanent. If they fail, the bonus is lost, but they can simply boast about something else. If they actively avoid or are seen to be dragging their feet about achieving what they said they will, they also lose the bonuses and, more importantly, can never boast again, as their reputation has taken a permanent hit.

There is also a mechanic where a rival or party member can challenge the boast, one-upping it which in turn gives another bonus, but if the original person then concedes that challenge, the challenger now must fulfill the challenge themselves. 


This whole setup, while very evocative of the kind of Beowulf-like setting of the campaign, does present some interesting challenges to the more typical OSR party-based advancement and cohesive action. It is a lot more individualistic, as each person has to stand out on their own, and in fact any subsequent boasts must, kind of by necessity, be more and more bombastic. Conversely, the bonuses you get from the boasts are both good and yet...kind of not good enough for the effort required. Case in point - Thorgo, my character, started with 1 HD and 2 HP. During the fight on the ship he declared his boast, getting another +1 HD and rerolling both to now get 11 hit points! Awesome, right? Well...sort of. He did get hit for 2 at one point, which would have killed him before his boast, but whether had 3 or 11 HP did not matter for that fight.

What mattered, however, was his gear. I started Thorgo using chain armor to help compensate for his low hit points, and while the party was mucking about on the island waiting for the rain to stop, he exchanged his starting spear for a greatsword. In Wolves Upon the Coast all weapons have some kind of special ability related to them, as well a a weight class which says if they do 1d6 hits (for medium wepaons) 2d6, drop lowest (for heavy weapons) and 2d6, drop highest (for light ones). And having that extra damage from the greatsword definitely helped out a lot more than the extra hit points from the +1HD.

I own &&&&Treasure, the Wolves treasure and gear book, and have used it in my own campaign before, so I know what kind of insane trinkets and weapons you can find in this campaign, which again makes me think that advancement in this campaign has to be, by necessity, more individual rather than cooperative.

I wonder perhaps if the natural way of doing this wouldn't be a semi-cooperative, but also semi-competitive game, rather than the generally accepted heavy cooperation of your typical OSR dungeoncrawl. It would fit with the literary references for this campaign, that's for sure. This is something to explore and keep an eye on as our campaign progresses. So far some people, me included, have felt that boasts are a bit awkward and rather forced, though that might also be due to our rather limited environment (you could only really boast about stabbing fishmen, since there was not much else happening on that isle).

Playing Fighters is Cool, Actually

If you have looked through my blog, you might have noticed that I quite like Fighters. I tend to talk about them way too much, if nothing else.

Well guess what, in Wolves Upon the Coast you all start as Fighters. There are no "mental' stats, no classes or backgrounds (aside from all of you being former slaves and whatever languages and character background you come up with yourself).  Magic exists, and is powerful, but requires ritual, specific ingredients (some quite rare to find) and is often one-off spells unless you want to go to some drastic measures.


And it fucking SLAPS! Even just two sessions in our characters feel so different from each other, despite mechanically being the same. People gravitate towards different weapons, armor, tactics and approaches and that naturally creates different ways of handling mechanically similar actions like combat. Fighters are great, and Wolves Upon the Coast is a fucking proof that you can make them work.

Anomalous Subsurface Environment: The Clown War, Play Report

    I've played in three sessions so far of a pickup game of Anomalous Subsurface Environment (ASE), a very gonzo and science fantasy megadungeon, run by Mr.Mann on the rainbow OSR discord server, and using vaguely OD&D or B/X and his houserules.

Below is a (hopefully) not too long play report of what happened in those three sessions as we murder just a frankly unhinged number of clowns.

Player Characters

• Herzgrau “Doberman” Mauler, level 3 Fighter 
  
• Razzledazzle, level 1 Magic-User
• Teela, level 1 Halfling
• Misha the Wide, level 2 War Bear
• One Man Army Corps (OMAC), level 1 Cleric
• Ascellus Tiramisu, Level 3 Fighter 
• Alon, level 2? Magic-User 
• Sparkles Witfully, Level 3 Cleric of Science

Sidekicks

1. Sir Esferico, Balloon Bodyguard
2. Oog

Preamble (Sessions 1 & 2)

Misha the Wide, a Hill Cantons War Bear, somehow finds himself in this strange land of Wizard Towers, sci-fi tech and, most terribly of all, dog-headed people (sorry Doberman)!

In the first delve the party is already going down to level 4 of the dungeon, and they find a circus being run by strange red painted naked men. After enjoying the various sideshows and carnival games most of the party piles into the circus proper to watch the show. Doberman and another character refuse to do so and end up being hassled by Barnabous, the carnival crier, and the ticket collector. Things escalate into a fight, multiple carnies get killed by a flamethrower and the party engage in a fighting retreat, killing Barnabous (maybe, since he comes back) in the process.

The next delve the group decides to scout out the territory of these dungeon clowns and get a read for their strength, numbers and other intel, in preparation for a full on assault on them. After a few brief encounters and questions the party has some vague idea of their territory, rescue and befriend a big man named Oog, and also a character that got turned to stone.

The Clown War (Session 3)

The party gathers up its numbers, recruiting several level 1 characters, equipping themselves well (Misha now owning a bespoke large set of plate armor which puts his Descending AC to 0!) and venture down to level 4 again, looking for trouble.

With good communication, coordinated action and psychotic mercilessness the party begins to systematically go room by room, slaughtering any naked clown people they find, only stopping occasionally to interrogate some before murdering them as well.

Through this process the party learns several useful bits of information. There are in total about 70 to 80 painted men, the enormous bronze gong near by is used for prisoner exchange with other denizens of the dungeon (which the clowns kill and eat as a way to keep the ecology of the dungeon in balance) and they do not appear to have a solid leadership in place.

Through more commitment of war crimes (murdering unsuspecting targets, murdering people who have surrendered) the party makes its way into a foul smelling kitchen where a particularly large painted man chef is busing himself with some cooking. Ascellus, in a bout of brashness, challenges the Chef to a duel, which the Chef quickly starts winning, at which point he is also murdered by the rest of the party.

Loot is found and, more importantly, a secret door leading to the back corridors of the clown territory. using those passages the party reach what appears to be living quarters and/or a clown brothel (the mind shudders), and proceed to slaughter even more them. Unfortunately the last assault leaves victims alive for long enough to start screaming which alerts the painted men patrolling army.

The party decides to take a pincer position in a four way intersection of hallways, and through the use of firebombs and flamethrower (see previous mention of war crimes) manage to cut off the first wave of the clown army. Unfortunately the second wave bring along with them a cannon, which they proceed to fire into the central branch of the party, which happens to house the vulnerable magic-users.

Alon gets a broken leg, but poor Razzledazzle gets hit square in the chest, blowing  hole out of him and allowing him one last spell (his finel razzledazzle if you will) before he expires. The party then proceeds to firebomb the ever living hell out of the shield-wielding clowns, which finally routs them and allows the party a chance  retreat themselves.

Thus ends the first phase of the Clown War. The casualties on both sides are, as follows:

The Party: Razzledazzle, the Magic-user (Dead), Alon the Magic-user (wounded, recovering).

The Dungeon Clowns: 40 Painted Men (dead), 1 Painted Man Chef (dead)

Thoughts and Observations

I quite enjoy Mr.Mann's house rules, and repurposed and tweaked my Hill Cantons OSE character (that I never got to actually play in B/X, only a variant of him using 5e) to fit better. He's almost at level 3, which is impressive, though HC characters do start at level 2 so there is that.

The session focusing on the Clown War was very high energy and fast paced. All of this clown murder took place within 2 hours of gaming (less even since we also had preamble and people sorting out inventories and such). Despite 8 people playing in a voice-only pick up game, things ran smoothly through the employment of classic player roles - a Caller (extra important in the big fights), a Mapper, a Turn Keeper and a Quartermaster (me in this case, mostly recording the kills).

The reason for the especially bloodthirsty session is that in Mr.Mann's rules 1 HD worth of enemies killed gives 100 experience, similar to my OD&D campaign I've written about on here. So that very much leads to trying to take out as many enemies as possible.

ASE itself is...just as bizarre and absurd as I've heard (I've only read the general setting and like 5 rooms on floor 1, so I was going in blind). While things did run well enough considering the number of players, since this was a pickup game we also had several people who had not played in the previous sessions and as such were perhaps a bit lost as to what on earth was going on and why we were killing clowns in this dungeon. Or, in fact, why the dog-headed man had a goddamn flamethrower (that one I don't know either!)

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.