Not Even Joking
Inspired by a deeply cogent comment left at “The Joy of Wargaming”: Tabletop role playing games, properly played, ARE wargames.
Let me take my troll face off and address your comment with more sincerity. When RPGs branched out from the wargame hobby, they left a lot of money on the table. Some solid scholarship is being done today to work back to that fork in the hobby road and see what happens if we take the path less travelled. I am gearing up to run another solo campaign in this same style, but using a more Classic Gygaxian approach. Not just the same campaign but with orcs. We’re talking about something much deeper. An exploration of how Silvestri’s work might help us understand how Chainmail can be used not as an addendum to RPGs, but as a foundational framework.
Exciting stuff, but we have to be patient. Our forefathers left us very few guidestones, and what we have are occluded by years of overgrowth. It will take some time to clear the vines and get a better look at the road.
There is a deep and abiding power lurking in those time-shrouded woods. This is no slight against today’s gaming culture, merely a recognition that much of what we think we know about the Time Before just isn’t so. The only way to sort the history from the revisionist history is to go back and walk that ground ourselves.
Will definitely be following your journey on this one!
I love your blog but haven't read it in a while. This piece caught my eye as I am trying to get to the same crossroads – that fine line between RPG and Wargame. I want to solo game and find wargames scratch an itch but I want depth like an RPG. But I don't want to spend three months ploughing through rule books. Let's go back. Let's poke the sleeping beasts. I want to do a Trek syfy distopian universe so I have gone back to FASA and working my way forward. But I am also looking at Traveller – proper OLD SCHOOL Traveller – not the 'also rans', 're-imagined' or 're-skinned'. It's hard work! And time consuming, but interesting. I am really starting to get a feel for game mechanics and how they have changed. Love this hobby.
You might want to give the third edition of "Five Parsecs From Home" a look. It's a pretty solid modern adaptation of Traveller that includes a pretty robust solo mechanic. It bridges the wargame-RPG gap really well.