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.

Hintervale: Gondor Calls for Aid

Will you answer?

In all seriousness, I need your help.  My latest project for The Joy of Wargaming can't go anywhere without you.  Check it out.

Help a brother out.

Let me know what you think the best option is here, would ya?

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:

Song of Drums and Shakos - First Runthrough

 It works!

I was afraid it wouldn't.  My experiments with Flying Lead weren't a lot of fun.  They power of modern weapons meant that the games bogged down into two static lines blazing away at each other with little motion or forward progress.

Needs more flags

Fortunately, the Napoleonics version of the game requires two full actions - on the same turn! - to reload a firearm.  That means that my first game included a lot more maneuver and a lot more charging into the bayonets of the enemy than my abortive attempts at modern wargaming.

Note also, this is my first foray into proper Napoleonics.  Though I have dabbled with the French Counter-Revolution to get my feet wet, this remains my first real game of proper Napoleonics with Brits versus French on the road from Tres Verdes.  It was a grand adventure that really came down to the last turn, and I'm looking forward to re-fighting the scenario with a few tweaks to make it even more interesting.

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.

Shots From the Long Hunt

Four heroes wade into the stinking mire of the great swamp.

Follow the full action here.  This was the fourth mission in a "Nightwatch" campaign, a solo wargame that uses tower-defense style design to keep the player on his toes.  Waves of enemies every round force some difficult choices as each mission requires the player to accomplish a few tasks.  In this case three relics must be destroyed, but in others the characters must search four points for an item and escape, or even defend three points from the hordes.  It makes for a complex tangle of challenges.

With two new hirelings manning the oars, our dauntless heroes venture to find and destroy the remains of three unholy abominations whose power lingers over this dank land.  Here, our intrepid wizard takes a moment to scatter the bones of one of the dead nightmares.

Jumped by two giant frog men - literally - the wizard skeedaddles, leaving the hired help to clean up the frog mess.  

In this scenario, the terrain items are the only dry ground.  Movement between them requires pushing through the shallows at half speed for our heroes.  Not so for the frog men, who leap across the gaps, nor for the tentacled thing which pursues them through the mire.  They never got a clear look at the watcher in the muck, but they did get an all too close look at the thing's giant pseudopods.

They also got a first look at the most dangerous of the Crimson Wyrm's minions - scaly lizard men toting assault rifles who loved to hang back and unload from a distance.  Here, our brave wizard cuts them off with a wall of fire that obscures line of sight, and forces the lizards to take the long way around.  That detour means wading through the waters, and buys our heroes time to deal with the hordes of smaller and weaker lizard men that have them surrounded.