Wargaming Campaigns vs. "ROLEPLAYING" 

Yeah, D&D as we played it in the 70s was much more like modern campaign skirmish games in feel than like RPGs as they are played today. A dungeon run was a series of tactical encounters, executed by a recurring warband which gradually gained power and experience. Admittedly, some tactical encounters were more efficiently solved by guile or diplomacy, but that was the extent to which we portrayed our characters as fictional personas. Backstories and plots/story arcs didn't come into the game until later in the 80s, and funny voices by anyone other than the GM trying to differentiate NPCs weren't a thing until the 90s. That's not a knock on modern RPG play--just an observation that it's evolved away from its roots, and some of us OG gamers are finding that old itch better scratched by skirmish wargames than by D&D 5e and its contemporaries.

@@printandplaygamer7134 Yep, came here to say basically this! (Although I do enjoy modern RPGs too.)

I pointed this out recently. Full circle..

Eeeeee, not really. Before they used the Chainmail rules they played Blackmoor and it really wasn't a wargame.

@@Smittumi OD&D also uses Chainmail and if you actually read the way the rules imply you play it; the game is basically like a series of Decent-style skirmishes to clear dungeon floors.

And! It's a lot easier to *prep* for a wargaming campaign than for a roleplaying campaign.

Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I've been gravitating towards wargaming more and more since I've gotten into the hobby last year

In some respects! Entirely depends on your prep routine as a GM and your style of running. Me, I have a rough outline I go by, but the thing I spend the most time "prepping" for is the next session or two of a game. For models though, that's some serious time that I still haven't found the perfect way to juggle it. But I'm sure I'll find out at some point. :D

@@FenrisChosen it also depends on the other players too. I mean, there's always *that* player who cancels a day before the game, and scheduling can be reaaaaaally tough, especially when you and your friends get older and have more stuff to do.

@@pedrobastos8132 True! I was more referring to GM-prep time compared to painting minis in preparation. But scheduling conflicts abound with RPGs.

Eh, only in super hardcore games. I assure you that our friends often get onto weird tangents that are spurred by in game events, but then we go back to the game.

@@jaimerivera2382 sure. I've been playing rpgs with my friends for more than thirty years, and we talk about lot of things non game related. But, as you have said when you talk about something non game related you have to come back to the game. There's a stop and you back, that doesn't happens in a wargame.

Yes, I came down to the comments to suggest *Rangers of Shadowdeep*. it really hits a sweet spot of campaign-based mini-wargaming and an rpg-lite/crpg.

I guess a part of doing it over call is that you don't need to include the entire party in some way or another, and can just let the group split off and have their personal journeys.

Makes it better since i got that "cats gonna cat," ad before this video

Best line in the video. Loved it.

I want to give your comment a like, but you're currently sitting at 69, so I think you can understand why my hands are tied. (10 July 2021).

Frostgrave/ Stargrave ?

@@Fughley I’ve played a LOT of Frostgrave, I’ve got almost everything they’ve done, including almost all the North Star models for monsters. For some reason though, Stargrave just hasn’t had that same narrative hook for me, the concept of Frostgrave and Felsted just seems like a more interesting setting than a rather generic sci fi

So did they get their questions answered?

@@TheCimbrianBull I haven’t heard back from them after the last game.

It should be much easier with a kill team since they are fever and it's possible to create a name and a persona for every character involved. This would include the characters strength and weakness especially mentally such since these tend to differ more among soldiers than the physical traits. Then you figure out what motivates each character to be where they are now, do they fight for honor, to protect their friends and family or to redeem themselves etc. And then finally you list the relationships between the characters, are some best friends, other rivals, leaders, followers etc. Now you should know the characters well enough to imagine how they would react to what happens in the game. :)

I run a Wrath and Glory game, and when we do combat, we've taken to a complete transition into playing a kinda Kill Team variant where each player runs their model, and I run everything else. It's a blast.

I was bummed to not see more mentions of 5PfH (although Rangers got a lot of love), but I saw your profile thumbnail and knew there'd be at least one shout. If we keep talking it up, it's gonna catch on eventually! :)

@@craigstephenson1050 Neuzd and I have been shilling Five Parsecs to Uncle Atom for nearly two years now! 😅 But it's gaining a lot of traction now so I have faith the people will come.

Which philosophy are you leaning towards? I have basic Cabals set up for Lords of Hell, Earthbound, Judges and the Brokers so far. Used a lot of dnd devils/demons. But also a lot of plant type monsters for one of them too.

Well, Vikings are pretty awesome, so you've got that going for you.

I believe he is referring to Dungeons and Dragons, World of Darkness, etc ... Pen and Paper Roleplaying games, though the message certainly can be extrapolated out to LARPing. =]

@@adamgill4623 Why wouldn't you want to LARP as a Viking! You're right though, my tired brain mixed up LARP and reenactment.

Tried Larping once 😬. That was enough.

@@andrewsjurseth2517 I "monstered" a few times in LARP, and that was fun.

Sorry, no offence but my head is now spinning with idea of role-playing with epic scale minis...

If the thought of needing to do a voice is putting off role-playing then you're in luck because most games aren't critical role and the majority of role players don't use a voice when playing.

The made-in-Germany skirmisher system "Freebooter's Fate" comes to my mind, it strikes a sort of middle ground between RPG and tabletop game - Set in a pre-industrial fantasy caribbean populated by pirates, an imperial army, voodoo-priests, pirate goblins and assassins, it offers a very enjoyable fighting system in which the individual acts of your crew/gang matter VERY much, a narrative more or less develops by itself (getting crippled, drinking rum/injecting yourself with Mr.Hyde-serum in the heat of battle, using the enviroment to your advantage and random, luck-based actions that vary from something as simple as stumbling over a rock and falling to mishearing an opponent's battle cry as an insult to your mother and attacking even more furiously are the bread and butter of the combat system) and the individual models are of very good quality. Since your "army" is usually not greater than 8 models (unless you're playing Goblins or Voodoo-Cultists) the individual struggles and heroic deeds/failures and fuck-ups of your guys will really stick with you. It's an immensely fun, snack-sized game that would work very well as a long-term campaign, especially because the rule books and supplementary materials offer a metric twat-ton of scenarios and gameplay modes that reach from the epic (a full-on pirate war between up to four crews) to the hilarious (competitive dodo-catching). Some downsides, however, are that the potential of individualizing your guys (making them "your dudes") is pretty much limited to battle experience and colour schemes, because not only are all the models metal and thus not easy to convert, but also each model already IS an existing character in the game's lore with their own backstory, abilities and relationships - you can merely equip them with different stuff, but never really change what they do and who they are. Also you need a LOT of terrain if you want play the game with any semblance of strategy and skill. But all in all it's a definite recommend from me. It's cheap, fun, can be played in many different ways and the setting and miniatures are both rather cool. Another fun thing is that it's played completely without dice, but rather with cards. Sounds weird but works pretty well once you're accostumed to it.

Thanks, but actually I’ll be using them for games like Space Weirdos and maybe Stargrave. Thanks for watching!

Were you talking about the models at about 4 minutes in?

@@ChazCharlie1 I believe so. Those are definitely the hobgrots from Dominion.

It would indeed save you a lot of money if you don't ask for the bill. :P

Adam has serious tavern owner beef - something clearly happened to him in a tavern...

If anyone is wondering, it "Red Solstice 2 Survivors"

how can say you don't like the play-acting but like the storytelling? The acting IS the storytelling, everything else is set-dressing

@@randombencounter263 in my experiences, it's been more like narrating what my characters do and say rather than acting or speaking as them. It was a more conversational, casual style that I liked. I enjoy listening to folks play and act their parts, like adventurezone, but it's not for me.

Truth!

which is which though? In a lot of ways, I think wargames actually make you feel more like a character then an author. in wargames, units are much more susceptible to the caprices of circumstance, while in rpgs characters actually seem to have a good bit of “narrative fiat” that determines how the scenario as a whole progresses in an authorial way. In a way I think rpgs are much more like scene writting and wargames are more like setting writing. you may create a groups initially,but the actual events are much more procedural.

damn dude

@@luc410 At least I've not been forced to sell my Battletech stuff. And I still have some unassembled space marines from the Indomitus box.

By that logic Chess is a role-playing game where you play a king.

@@JoelJoel321 id say that it is.

@@codyweaver7546 Fair enough but I fear the term loses all meaning then.

@@JoelJoel321 it certainly requires one to remove the typical constraints of the definition but I'd posit that all games are inherently roleplaying games. The more abstract a game is the less of an RPG it is.

@@codyweaver7546 I guess... but that means we need a more precise term to distinguish games like D and D.

I felt exactly the same though most of this video, but I gotta say he has some points that really ring true at about 9:30. Realistically, most TTRPG tables do expect some level of roleplaying, and tables that have literally none are not so different to how he's describing his skirmish play, except now you take one turn in 5 rather than every other. It's also not that easy a style of game to be having offline chats during play. Most of the time someone is talking about what is happening in game, either what their character is doing, the GM describing, or the party planning it's next move. It's kinda rude trying to have offline conversations while that's going on. I still believe there is the perfect table out there for anyone to enjoy TTRPGS, but finding the perfect one can be very hard. It sounds like whatever Atom would get out of that table, he gets 90% of that out of his campaign skirmish games.

I appreciate it. I’m nearly 50 years old and know what I’m about, and I’m glad you didn’t try to convince me I’m wrong about what I like. That said, the video is really more of a sneaky way to get new wargamers to try out campaign play by comparing it to RPGs, so maybe it’ll help. Thanks for watching!

I enjoy Necromunda, especially the models and terrain that have been released in the last few years. Thanks for watching!