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.

"I roll to seduce the enemy commander!"

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 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, the “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 battlefields.

    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 most 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

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.

BSSS - Session 13: The Battle for the Undying City

Summary

We play out the big fight between the forces of Chaos and the Undying City's defenders using a tabletop wargame that I created for the scenario. 

Session Recap

Well calling this a session might be a bit wrong, but here we go. Since I could not get a full 6 player count for the wargame, I ended up participating as well. The way I have the game structured, both Chaos and Law each have 3 distinct bands of units, the control of which was split up between the players. 

Initial setup of the scenario.

The wargame itself begins mere moments after the events of Session 11. The party has just broken open the inner Gatehouse of the Eternal Bridge, and the forces of The Decomposition and their allies have swarmed into the city. With the Ritual Procession still not actually gathered in one place (various small processions leaving from different parts of the city to gather in the middle), the Chaos forces had to figure out what their general plan was going to be. 

In the scenario Chaos has 2 victory conditions. A Minor victory if they can remove all 12 Ritual Procession counters from the board by Turn 6 of the game, and a Major one if they can kill the Voice of Stillness, the otherworldly being that controls the Undying City in the name of its master The Pale Stillness of Justice. Law, conversely, only has one Major victory condition - Complete the Ritual. 

With Turn 1, things immediately went in Law's favor. The Blue band, the one that contains all the Procession counters, the Civilians and, most importantly, the Voice of Stillness itself, had the first activation. This allowed them to pull back some of the Citizens that were in the way of the Chaos forces, and bring them safely back into the Temple District. A very important move, as the Voice of Stillness needs to sacrifice a Civilians token every time it attempts to advance the Ritual, successfully or not, and it begins the game with not having enough sacrificial victims on hand to complete it. 

From there, Chaos decided to focus on the Ritual Processions then, which both works into their minor victory condition, and also makes performing the Ritual action a bit more uncertain for the Voice of Stillness. That and breaking into the temple district is quite difficult, with all forces having to be funneled through the streets and a very easy to defend gatehouse. 

The city's defenders sent out a properly huge stack of units out into the Great Market plaza to fight off the forces of Chaos, who in turn responded by summoning a rain of acid over the entire place, reducing every single unit that was in the area. This is done by placing a Miasma counter in the area, one which saps the strength of full units (or even kills reduced ones) and stays there for 2 entire turns, suddenly making the most central space in the board, the one which most roads go through, kind of an awkward place to move through. 

The beginning of Turn 2.

As Turn 2 began, Chaos was actually not looking too hot. While they had managed to take out some parts of the procession, it was not enough to actively hinder the Ritual from being advanced, and their nuclear solution at the Grand Marketplace meant that actually going around and doing anything was difficult as their own units would have been equally affected by the miasma that still lingered.  Law was generally looking in a strong position - well defended inside the Temple District, having enough sacrificial fodder to complete the ritual, and mostly just needing to bide it's time. 

Chaos, conversely, was on the back foot. They lost some of the Slime Priests, which was a problem as they are the primary way the Chaos forces could bring in more reinforcements. 

As Turn 3 started though, things changed. the Miasma had cleared, finally, and the giant stack of slimes, oozes and jellies, lead by the horrific Slime Titan now had the chance to actually move through the central market. 

Additionally, the force of Law decided to take on the offensive and, being lead by the 3 units of High Priests, rushed out and attacked one of the last remaining units if Slime Priests. However, Law's fortunes quickly turned at that moment. With the Temple district now vastly underdefended, the Slime Titan shuffled its lesser cousins through the city, devouring everything in its wake. Soon it broke through the Temple Gatehouse, and while the Voice of Stillness was hurling magical attacks at it, it only weakened the group, rather than demolish it. 

Finally, the oozes swarmed into the Great Temple. After a quick fight everyone was dead, except for the Voice of Stillness which had been reduced in strength and had to retreat away. Things were dire, but not impossible - as long as Law got to act next, they had plenty of spells that could wipe out the big green tide, allowing them to both stabilize and severely reduce the chances of Chaos to act in future turns.

That, however, did not happen. With Chaos still being on the initiative, and the Hedgehogs of Mercy, the band of player characters in the Between the Serpents of Smoke & Steel, having quietly also made their way into the Great Temple, the time of Law had come to an end. The Hedgehogs seeing the chance to end this Ritual for good summoned forth a spell and struck down the Voice of Stillness, shattering the control of Law over the Undying City. The game finished only halfway through Turn 3. 

Final state of the game as of Turn 3. The Voice of Stillness was in the Temple District Area which has a unit of yellow Archers in it.

Observations

This, I think, was a rousing success. While I am generally very pleased with how the wargame itself works, and have had several people now tell me that it just works really well as a stand alone wargame (and even 2 of my players expressed an interest in playing it again in the future, just as its own thing!), it is always nice that it actually worked on the one "official" playthrough that it was designed for.

The game definitely took way longer to play as a 3v3 team game, rather than a simple 1v1 game as I've played it so far in my playtesting sessions with other people. As people were still learning how to play this and also consulting with their team mates, there was a lot of time spent simply discussing potential moves rather than making them. That's fine, though it did mean that a 2 and a half turn game took nearly 4 hours, when 1v1 playtests I've done before took about 2 hours to complete the game (usually going up to Turn 5 or so).

The bit of game design I am most proud of, and one which my players also appreciated in having really captured the spirit of things, was how the Hedgehogs of Mercy were used in the game, being a sort of strike team that Chaos or Law can use to mess with the other side, plus the absolutely perfect storytelling beat of having the Hedgehogs themselves be the ones to land the decisive killing blow on the Voice of Stillness also really helped. 

So, with this I am now happy to have the game just be something I can play with friends now and again if I want to, and I think this helped make my campaign a fun and interesting experience for everyone involved. While the BSSS campaign is going to be winding down soon, due to other obligations on my time, it will always have this high point to look back on! 

How I made a tabletop wargame in about a week

 As a direct result of the actions of the players in my current campaign, the Undying City now has a fairly sizeable strike force (calling them an army might be giving them too much credit) of Chaos-aligned cultists that serve the Chaos Lord known as The Decomposition, along with allies they have managed to rally to their cause. And what is that cause? To disrupt the ritual currently being performed in the Undying City which will transform every living being in the city into undead, and in the process (and of actual concern to these Chaos cultists) will completely cement the city as a stronghold of Law in this plane of existence.

Initially, my plan was to simply have the fighting on the city streets happening either in the background or maybe even having the party directly participating in it. However my players have been reluctant to really pick a direct course of action, their current stance mostly being that they want to wait and see which way the fight will go, and if possible try and stop both forces from actually keeping control of the city. 

So I was left in a bit of a dilemma, where in order to logically progress with the game, the battle for the city had to be resolved at least to some degree. Well, I didn't really want to just come up with a way for it to go, or come up with some broad strokes system to simulate it and then just tell my players how it went. Because, after all, this is a gaming campaign. The point is to game!

That got me thinking - I really enjoy tabletop/boardgame wargames. So couldn't I come up with a quick and dirty one to allow my players to actually play out the battle as the commanders of Chaos and Law, and then let them zoom back in on their characters and have them react to the situation? Well yes. Yes I could. And so I did. 

Concepting and Design

So, first things first I had to figure out what the system for this game was going to be. I personally enjoy card-driven wargames, but that would involve way way too many cards to have to design and make, and I did not feel like that was a productive way of doing it. After some quick and rough brainstorming, I settled on using the main combat system (and from there, unit stats) from Brotherhood and Unity, which I've played a couple of times and quite enjoyed and found to be pretty straightforward and light for a tabletop wargame. 

With that I had to determine how the map of the city will be traversed. Initially I was going to use areas similar to the board game Dual Powers, but after actually trying to draw that as a map it just looked way too cluttered and hard to read. Instead I just went with point to point movement, another staple of tabletop wargames, except the ones that use hexes of course. 

From there, I had figure out how to model the two forces involved. The Chaos incursion were easy, as I had previous already written up their numbers and so just used those as a base for my units. With Law I had to finally sit down and figure out just what forces they actually had in the city. 

An interesting design challenge was how to handle all the damn magic-users running around the place. Between the party, the leaders of the Chaos force and the ruler of the city (an otherworldly being known as the Voice of Stillness, and the individual actually casting the ritual of undeath) there were a lot of magical types around. In the end I took another idea from a game I like - Dragon Pass. In that game magical units have a sort of spirit that they project that can be used to perform attacks on other enemies.

In my game this ended up simulating the combined magical attacks or defenses of a unit of magicians. I also came up with Spell Cards, which players can play and usually require a magical unit to be near the target to actually do the spell. 

This whole thing took about 3 days of on and off writing and rewriting of ideas.

Designing the Game Pieces

Next up came probably the most fun part of the project - designing and drawing all the game elements that I would need for the game. In my case that meant creating unit counters, spell attack counters, a playing board, spell cards, activation cards (which I ended up using to determine play order) and then reference sheets for unit special abilities and general game rules. 

One of 3 counter sheets of units for the game.

The unit art is also a direct inspiration and reference to William Church's wonderful and evocative art on the counters of White Bear and Red Moon/Dragon Pass and Nomad Gods. The units themselves are relatively simple (by wargaming standards) as you can see. They have a name, artwork, and then 3 stats - Attack, Health and Movement (a star over one of those indicates some special rule assocaited with it that is listed on the reference sheet). A white bar indicates that the unit is an Individual (as opposed to a group of similar people or creatures), and on the reverse side the counter has a grey bar across it to show that a unit is of Reduced strength. 

The actual game board, representing the Undying City as a series of locations connected by pathways, all broadly aligned with the map of the city I had already drawn.

The board took a few tries to get it looking right, but I am personally pleased with the final result. The color of the location's artwork indicates which part of town it's in (which doesn't really matter for gameplay purposes, but was just a nice visual element), the bar on the bottom indicates what type of Terrain it counts as, as well as the number of non-Individual units that can be stacked in it at the end of an activation. 

Then I included a turn tracker, a Ritual tracker and a chart for terrain and combat for ease of reference during play, along with supply boxes for both sides. There could have been other elements that are worth including in the map, and I might eventually get those printed and pasted onto it at a later date, but for now it has been quite serviceable. 

Spell cards

The drawing and design of the elements took a couple of days of very intense work, and the kind of work I absolutely adore as an artist. Of being completely in the zone, thinking at any given moment about simply opening photoshop again and doing more art! 

Making the physical components 

And next came the hardest part -actually getting these made. In total I made 160+ unit and special counters, and those took a lot of work to cut, a lot of them ended up kind of crooked (inevitable when cutting by hand), but I am generally pleased with them. The board and tokens are also quite large, in fact almost absurdly so by the standards of most commercial tabletop wargames, however it makes them a lot easier to handle when one considers the game can be played with up to 6 players, and it would be helpful if they could actually see what is going on. 

A slightly blurry photo of the board and counters all set up.

This whole process took 2 and a half, almost 3 days total to actually do, mostly because at one point I had to just force myself to take a break since cutting the counters was giving my left arm a very painful muscle cramp (which took about a week to completely clear off).

Playtesting

The final, and often most important, step of any game design is of course playtesting. I played a couple of games by myself, which helped iron out some of the rougher ideas in the activation system, the actions each band of units takes during their activation, and so on. 

I have so far also done two playtest sessions with a fellow wargamer friend of mine, and while there have been minor tweaks in special abilities here and there, the game more or less works quite well, provides various ways for each side to achieve it's victory conditions and offers several not-so-obvious avenues for strategy. I consider all of that a success of design! 

The true and final test, of course, will be once I actually run the game for the players in my campaign. That will happen this upcoming Sunday, and I absolutely plan on writing up a session report for it, though it will of course be rather different than the usual one. But even after that, I am pleased enough with the game (and have had enough of a positive response from my friend) that I will likely keep playing it as a game in and of itself in the future too.