Trollopolous Lives!

Things are getting a little crazy over in Trollopolous and her nearby provinces.  The besieging orcish army, leaderless after the capture of their demon-queen, has quit the field, and that only made things worse.

Jeffro's AD&D campaign-by-the-book has kicked into high gear with a week of Braunstein style faction play featuring a number of different factions.  This is an always-on game of D&D in which events are on-going, and most of the factions are run by actual players - even when they don't have a table-session character affiliated with that faction.  Yes, some of the players have characters that are working at cross purposes to each other. 

 It's bretty nutz.

I'm not a participant, just a guy fanning the flames, and here's what I've been able to piece together so far:

• Chaz The Elf is leading a massive elvish push to secure the city for the King of Elfland
• Somebody has stirred up the goblins by funding Goblin Lives Matter riots which routinely target the AEI stores (Adventurer Equipment Inc.) for looting and pillaging
• John Wick, Regent to Prince Elric, has vowed to secure the peace by any means necessary and has declared a curfew for the whole city exempting only the Trollops, the city's most important export
• Fluid the Druid is working to eco-nuke the whole city from orbit
• The United Caveman Federation is a federation of peace
• The Church of Saint Cuthbert has been quiet, but they are Up. To. Something. (And run by an actual, real-world, not-even-kidding Catholic Priest!)  [Edit:  Oops.  Wrong campaign.  That's in the Waterdeep Session Reports.]
• The queen of Mount Glovermore is an NPC with a faction out in the hinterlands
• There's something going on in the City of the Dead, but I'm not sure who runs that qurater or if he is even still alive...undead...uh, I'm not sure if he's still kicking

And frankly, I have no idea who to root for in this mess.

There are a few low-key wildcards out there.  For example, Rhedegar is a blade for hire currently keeping the peace at the Prancing Umber Hulk Inn.  SaruMachoMandalf has made an appearance, but I have no idea what he's up to.  And there are more out there that I'm missing.

There is no central location for information.  Just like the real world.  The Trollopulous News Network is unreliable.  Just like the real world.  And you have to sift through everyone's own personal biases to obtain any information that you can use in your own life.  Just like the real world.

Combine that with a wealth of meme-dumping geniuses and you've got the makings of the the most gripping RPG campaign currently being shared across sociable media.  

For a good time, click the links.  Do your research.  

Where We Go Fun, We Go All In.

Oh, and remember to watch out for Sarn Idh.  He keeps getting away with it.

More Campaigning for the Best Campaigns

 Got another big blog for you fans of old school tabletop RPGs.  This time around we're taking a look at a longish game of ACKS, Autarch's excellent Adventurer, Conqueror, King.

This is another one of those new-old campaigns that takes advantage of certain lost secrets to present a style of gaming that fell to the wayside early in the hobby.  A constantly changing roster of active PCs.  Faction play.  Real time.

BDubs and Dragons is up to seventeen sessions as I type this, making now a good time to jump on board.  There's enough to help you kill a slow day at work, but not so much as to feel intimidating.

Written by one of my favorite Twitter follows, it features a rotating cast of characters, many of whom are inspired by notorious internetizens.

The Dawn Age Pervert.

The Dude but he's a cleric.

Hags.

You know, all the usual internet types.

He usually starts off each post with some little gem of observation about the game in general, what he tried that worked, and how he rolled with the punches thrown by his spastic and unpredictable - and all the more fun for it - players.

Here's a taste, gotta click for the rest:

Is prep a waste of time? I haven't ran my game for three weeks and spent some of that time preparing for the players to go off to a new dungeon. I thought about making a bespoke dungeon but instead chose a one pager I had lying around and will re-purpose its monsters and mise en scene as needed. This is because there's not a huge chance the players will go there any time soon. Why spend an hour or two drawing it up?

I also drew up the treasure map the players found last session, using my kids' crayons. The players never asked about it.

I also ran a two week mass combat military campaign with my dad which echoed into the region and the players hooks and options. Worldbuilding through wargaming! But this didn't come into play much this session either.

Games that cross the boundary into other games?  Are you allowed to to that? 

Honeybadger BDubs don't care.

Cleanup On Aisle Linkage

 Clearing out the chaff from the wheat of my link list this week, and it occurred to me that some blogs need more than a quiet pointer.

Around here, we believe that ACTUAL PLAY >> game theory, and today I've got one of the better AD&D session report blogs for you.  A lot of things are churning in the depths of the tabletop world, memes and ideas percolating their way up into the mainstream.  Within a few years, these thoughts and ideas will be commonplace and Johnny-come-latelies will be crawling out of the woodwork to sell you advice on "this great new playstyle that I just kinda thought up".

If you want to get ahead of the curve, you should be reading Waterdeep Session Reports.  It's already a long-running campaign featuring 21 sessions of thick and rich AD&D goodness, and one that incorporates a lot of the old ideas that have been rediscovered now that the serious thinkers have moved on from the OSR and turned their gaze upwards toward the heights of rules as written AD&D.  Even the OSRIC guys, bless their hearts, quailed before that challenge and produced a simplified and half-measures version of Gygax's masterpiece.

No spoilers - the Waterdeep Sessions are experimental, and go in some really interesting directions.  The best I can offer you right now is the promise of a campaign that is intricate and steadily grows from the ordinary into something very, very different.  Solid recommend!

Edit to add:  This madman has a second blog where he posts a "town cryer" style update on all the doings that are afoot in Waterdeep.  THE WATERDEEP WAZOO.  No spoilers, lots of extra bits, but a must-visit for his players, and a must-visit for anyone who wants to stay up to date on the campaign.  Good stuff, Maynard.

Now That's What I'm Talking About!

Bradford Walker steals a march on me by laying out in detail some thoughts that have only been drifting, half-gestated through my mind lately:

RPGs are a wargame derivative.

It's time to explain why this is so, and in so doing expose what the appeal of the medium is and why most RPGs utterly fail because they refuse to exploit that appeal and thus play to the medium's strengths.

Read the whole thing here.

Play the right way and you will experience something no other medium can achieve: supreme visceral virtual experience.

He delves into that murky skein that separates player from character, and why leaving that skein in place, acknowledging it, and working within the boundaries it creates can provide for a much richer and more meaningful gaming experience. 

Then go buy his book, it's space opera done right:

2mm Gamers Rise Up!

Is something of a 2 mm Renaissance is in the air these days? Or maybe it's just observer bias - that I notice more 2mm projects because I myself am working on 2mm projects. Whatever the case, if you're interested in 2 mm projects have I got a doozy for you.

Nik Harwood brings it with a LOT of great shots in his gallery.  Go check it out.

Of Interest: Wisdom from an Angry God

"Gaming, at its core, is a hobby which seeks neither mediation or approval from Johnny-come-latelies."

Heavens to betsy, I do believe I have come down with a terrible case of the vapors.

This one is pretty complicated.  Basically, there is an in-authentic and ham-handed movement being orchestrated to remove the influence of Western Civilization from the gaming scene and replace it with the pink slime skinsuit.  Friend of the blog, Jeffro Johnson, wrote a phenomenally influential collection of blog posts for the OSR that turned into a fascinating study of the works listed in Appendix N, and how they relate to our culture.  The Johnny-come-latelies who spent three years saying Appendix N doesn't matter, watching with horror the burgeoning reclamation of the gaming space, have launched a counter-offensive whereby they hope to shift the meaning of Appendix N from "the books that built tabletop gaming" into a label with no more meaning than "books some rando likes"

This review from the good guys at DMR Books goes into things in more detail, and thoroughly demolishes one of those astro-turfed project in fine style:

So give Bebergal’s book a pass. Go big instead. Put your time and money into reading the works of Appendix N (find the old editions), the Players Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Masters Guide. Form your own conclusions. Jeffro Johnson’s Appendix N is far better company on this adventure. Johnson shows there is more treasure to bring up from his passionate, engaging delve... Bebergal, though, just stumbles into the first pit trap on level one. He needs to roll a new character, hope for a better wisdom stat, and try a whole lot harder.

As said above, there is a lot more to the story, and this review covers it all extremely well.

Go read it here. 

Twargame Advice

A world of advice on using Twitter to get your wargaming fix:

Stay away from the #warmonger tag.  It's for people who don't do a lot of wargaming.  They like "thuh comm-MUNE-itay".  You get lots of ads for milktoast content providers and soy-based podcasts.  A lot of  paint-by-numbers figures that will never face the trial of the dice.  Lots of consoomer activity with maybe a splash of vaguely wargamey webcomic art (circa-1998 in style).

Not a whole lot of wargaming, tho.

Warmongers. Nothing a little testosterone
supplement can't fix.

You're looking for the #wargame tag - that's where people who actually wargame show up to show off their tables and link to interesting blog posts.

An odd dichotomy, but one for which I am grateful.

By way of apolgy for all those wahah!-wahah!-wa-hacky! soy-faces, let me recommend a solid channel for those of us looking to up our painting game.  Vince Venruella isn't a personality whose primary goal is establishing a brand.  His videos are not bookended by marketing ploys and video diaries and tedious attempts at humor.  Instead, they are hugely informative, densely packed with the theories and fundamentals of painting, and all presented in a cool and casual style that educates.

Great Borodino Thread on the Twit Box

If you're on the Tweeter Machine and you want to read about a massive and intricate refight of the action at Borodino, brother have I got a thread for you!

If you're smart enough to avoid that place, then brother have I got an website that neatly compiling the thread in browser-friendly format for you!

Here's a taste, gotta click for the rest!

Some gorgeous shots of a lavish table and a lot of furious wargaming action.  You won't want to miss this, and it makes me even more hungry to start my own journey down the Napoleonic rabbit hole.

Coming Out of the Box

If you liked this project,
you'll love 2017's project.

Completing Castle Meatgrinder, a large wargaming project from start to as-near-to-finished-as-any-wargame-project-ever-gets, was the least of my 2016 successes. Over the course of last year, my fire adopted a number of new irons, and by the time the Holiday season rolled around it was all I could do to keep them all in the air and not get burned.  So 2017 is going to see a few changes around here.

Long story short, Jeffro Johnson - one of the first bloggers that I really connected with - has asked me to write a bi-weekly column for the Castalia House blog.  In addition to that, one of my favorite authors, Schuyler Hernstrom, has asked me to collaborate on set of war game rules.  I eagerly agreed to both of these, and the natural result of these new project is my coming out of the box.

Oddly enough, neither man asked Warren Abox to participate.  You see, I spent 2016 moonlighting as a writer and a literary critic over at another couple of blogs, and it was under that name - my real name - that they came to know me.  Of course, my decision to enter the literature lists was a direct result of my contact with him via our shared online war gaming circles, but I tried to maintain some separation between my nom de guerre and my nom de moi.  I even went so far as to publish a handful of guest posts at the Castalia House blog under both of my monikers, without letting the blog editors in on the secret.  They are now!

Over the last six months, it has grown more difficult to maintain that separation. For one thing, I just don't have the time nor the energy to maintain two profiles at the same time.  For another, my reading and war gaming are not really two separate hobbies, but two of the many struts that support hides covering the geeky little teepee in which my heart dwells.  With the advent of the blog series and the (as yet under wraps) fantasy wargame, it's time to ditch the anonymity and bring these two hobbies closer together in my online work.

You're a reader here, so your primary concern is probably, "what does all this mean for the blog?"

Rest assured, it's not going anywhere.  It may slow down a bit as my focus shifts.  More of my nerdery will wind up pasted at Seagull Rising, and my 2017 War In A Box Project will be documented over at the Castalia House blog.

I have no intention of shuttering this site completely.  Anything of a purely wargaming nature will wind up posted here.  The bulk of my painted miniatures and most of my actual play posts will appear here.  All the brainy stuff, the literary analysis, and likely even the RPG related posts, are going to be moving over to Seagull Rising.  This means that War In A Box will maintain its typical tight focus on wargaming that you've come to expect over the years.  If you want to learn more about me, and about my writing, then you're of course welcome to check in on Seagull Rising from time to time.

On Wednesday, I'll be kicking off a big wargaming project over at the Castalia House blog that you won't want to miss.  Don't worry, I'll post a quick link here to remind you, so you won't miss it.

Oh, and lest I forget!  Thank you for painting and pushing lead with me, even if only vicariously, for the last five and a half years.  It's been a lot of fun, and I look forward to continuing the enjoyment for years to come.

Moving Day, Helping a Friend

There's a new blog on the block that should be of interest to anyone who has been following my own conversion over to the (latest) One True Scale: 15mm Skirmish.  You probably already know Sam Pate from his blog, Wee Blokes.  He has decided to open a blog specifically for his forays into 15mm skirmish gaming.

From the man himself:

One of my plans for 2017 is to push on with my delayed exploration into 15mm Skirmish Gaming. I know it happens but the majority of 15mm posts I find are either figure reviews or larger battle reports\games. Similarly most Skirmish posts I find are in 28mm. Having dabbled my toes in I feel that 15mm Skirmish has something different in its play, more than "the same but smaller". The scale distances and movement seem more open, so (in theory) the tactics could be as well.

Add it to your regular blog feed, because he has some of the best looking games around.  Unlike we eternal planners, he also posts a host of actual play reports.

Note:  I'm not actually a friend of Sam Pate's, I'm really more of a yuge fan of his.