Wargaming Campaigns

This new book by Henry Hyde is on a plane with his Wargames Compendium - thoroughly comprehensive. It's available free from Hoopla Digital, incidentally.

He starts by breaking down the definition of a campaign, because campaigns mean different things depending on the protagonists, time, space and technology. Even the protagonists' intelligence - can they even read a map? Does it occur to them to ask the locals about the defenses? - plays into this, though perhaps more on the scale of a roleplaying game.

Speaking of which, it's refreshing to see fantasy, SF and tabletop RPGs being referred to and provided options from a writer who clearly cut his teeth on classic historical games. There is plenty for a DnD gamemaster to use, just as much as a more conventional "wartime" campaign. For that matter, I can split the difference, as one thing I try to do in my games is to have a backdrop, whether or not the players ever notice it. There can be a war, and major events occurring that have an impact on the individual players and their adventures. If there's a war, the players might interact with mercenary troops - helping to recruit, catching deserters, rounding up drunken troops on leave, and the like. On an economic basis, if the fishing business is booming, the players will be dealing with events at the dockyard more frequently, or even traveling out to the fishing grounds to help catch a monster ship-killer. Commanders are even given RPG-style statistics - including intelligence, which affects reconnaissance die rolls, and initiative, which affects the turn on which reinforcements turn up. A small squad of WWII soldiers is detailed and a runthrough of what could easily be a free-kriegspiel game described as the brave-but-stupid officer gets himself in trouble, the hated corporal does nothing useful and the daring private passes initiative to toss a grenade at a Nazi machine-gun post. But this can be expanded to colonels and generals too; if they have statistics, they can be rolled against to see if they can be woken in time when the enemy is attacking, or if they deliver a rousing-enough speech to their troops. Hyde even quotes approvingly from DnD 5th Edition - the sections on customizing characters, alignment, bonds and ideals can all provide useful seeds for wargame characters of any stripe.

An entire chapter alone is spent on the factors a map can address, and how these differ according to terrain, period, logistics and many other things that should be considered when devising a campaign. Some of these things are obvious (maneuver is easier in the open than in mountains or jungle) but others merit serious thought. How far can the protagonists see, for example? Before the advent of the telescope, no more than a few miles, which means it's possible for armies to pass in the night, whereas today they'd be spotted hundreds of miles away by drones, radar, aviation, satellites...

Maps are of course an important part of campaigns, and Hyde spends significant time discussing these. There is a brief lesson on geology and how it affects the appearance of terrain, and specific instructions for modifying public-domain imagery with Photoshop-type software - down to pixel and color recommendations. Despite this focus on detail, he also points out the utility of more abstract "node" maps, such as those used on subways, where there is less consideration of distance and more of relation - the Snakes and Ladders campaign comes to mind here. I do like that he provides links to many online map generators, particularly the charming Azgaar Fantasy Map Generator.

Another chapter is on weather, though it spends more on the vagaries of climate and the chances of weather than on their effects in-game. A campaign "barometer" is described, with ladders each way to track humidity and temperature, that can be modified according to taste, season or climate (more chance of rain in the jungle, for example).

Tracking campaigns is important, of course, and while there are some useful tips on using spreadsheets to follow units (one handy bit is to turn the spreadsheet itself into a map, indicating positions by column and line!), Hyde's heart is in the classic hand-written journal. I can get with this, because I use a travel journal rather than a camera when visiting foreign parts. Hasty sketches and brief notes can convey just as much as essays and precise maps; there is a warmth and memory to paper and pen (or colored pencil) that makes me understand the nostalgia that comes with looking over a wargames campaign from decades past.

He finishes off with some reviews of his favorites (Tony Bath's Hyboria and Charles Grant's imagi-nations from The War Game come in for much praise) and a hefty example of his own work as a GM - mostly done online and around a gaming weekend where everyone met up after having maneuvered around each other. He is an interfering gamemaster after my own heart - when one player sent a fireship to destroy an opposing navy, Hyde rolled a few dice and determined that the captain had got his instructions wrong and instead blew up a ship of neutral refugees. The neutral country promptly declared war! He also cautions about the ease with which players and GMs can look at the same prompts differently - for example a player mistook a border for a road and accidentally violated a neutral country's territory. It is important to catch out unknowing confusion - the classic GM's ominous phrase "are you sure?" but delivered with explanation. It's okay, says he, to describe appropriate reactions to players who don't necessarily know what those would be; or to point out that they regard something as more important than it needs to be. A lot of GMs would let things like this pass and then pounce - but of course the purpose of a game like this is enjoyment, and there can be a fine line between that of the GM and the players. The thing to remember is that if the players are having fun, the GM is accomplishing her job, and that in itself is fun. It's OK for players to run roughshod over your plot!

A little more compact and less wide-ranging than his Compendium, but that's a good thing in this. The specific advice on use of specific software suites will be irrelevant to some users, but everything else is good and totally useful. A worthwhile read.