Towards A New Model of Adventure Gaming

As this post goes live, the IP holders for D&D are doing their darndest to rip conventional play away from the hobby approach of “anything is possible at the table (as long as you adhere to story-arc driven narrative games)” and into a consumerist approach of “gatcha driven subscription...

2d Delves: The Campaign Games

In our last post, we covered the basic mechanics of Four Color Studio’s latest offering, 2d Delves.  Today, let’s talk about the campaign game. It’s what the kids these days call “procedurally generated” and “narrative”, meaning that you use random tables and just wave your hands and make up...

Mary Shelley Invented RPGs

Thanks in large part to the bros actively re-inventing and reshaping RPGs through experimentation, session reports, analysis, and (sometimes heated) discussion, the hobby has cycled back to the age old question of, “Who invented role playing games?” Other lesser factors contribute, of course. The upper midwest Boomer Crew is...

The Basics of 2d Delves

The title 2d Delves does not, it turns out, refer to the number of dimensions involved in the game.  That’s a good sign for a miniature wargame as those generally require the use of a third dimension.  Instead, the 2d relates to the dice involved.  Most of the melee and...

Hyde’s Reach: The Forces

The northern nation on Hyde’s Reach is just a generation or two older than its rival, giving it a bit of a head start in the economic development department.  Add to that the extensive agricultural lands and relatively recent discovery of rich silver mines in a mountain valley down...

Hyde’s Reach: A New Campaign

There’s a new wargame campaign in the House of Wargaming, and it’s in a genre that I’m not too familiar with.  Luckily, you don’t have to be to get started.  You can learn on the fly, which is a lot easier when you’ve got a guide like Henry Hyde...

On The Nature of Braunsteins

This post feels a little, as the kids say, sus. There’s a whole lot of journalism going on right now that is nothing but trawling social media and scraping comments from the bottom feeders in order to engage in information laundering. Here’s the process: Identify a narrative that runs...

By Semi-Popular Demand

First of all: big new project in the works. Expect a busy July. Second of all: Hitting the five-thousand subscriber mark over on the Wargame Channel marks a significant milestone. The interest is there, and growth continues at a steady pace of a thousand new subscribers every seven months...

Red Letter Norms

The RLM guys are experts at one particular species of cultural tree, but have spent so much time looking at the one tree that they can’t see how the health of the forest is killing that tree. Naturally, that tree is cinema and the forest is the wider culture....

Homestead Hobbying

This is an RPG post.  I promise. For the last few years the family has slow-walked a low-key advance on the homestead front. This past month we added another notch on the victory post by throwing what probably should have been an investment in the hobby wargame channel into...