Saturday 12 April 2014

The Idea of a Campaign

I suspect, although I do not know (a poll of local wargamers gave an overwhelmingly positive response, but since that is only me, this is hardly a surprise), that for most of us a wargame campaign is something we might dream of, occasionally sketch plans for but rarely actually get around to delivering on. And this is a shame, because my experience of wargame campaigns is that they can be extremely satisfying.

Of course, that raises the question of why, exactly, we should run campaigns as wargamers. A recent comment (I think by Ruraigh, but I could be wrong) suggested that the idea of a wargame campaign was to create battles or, presumably, a series of linked battles. A battle set in the context of an ongoing campaign has more hanging on it than a single “pick up” wargame.

I am reminded of a comment in one of the naval wargames books (although I forget which, perhaps some kindly reader with a better memory can supply the details) wherein the author comments that in a land based wargame, a cross-roads or village can simply be designated strategically important and hence provide a motivation for the battle. At sea, one cannot simply designate a stretch of water strategically important and then fight over it. Naval wargames, he argued, were better if fought in the context of a campaign.

Now, of course, the concepts of ‘better’ and ‘worse’ are highly subjective. I doubt if any wargamer worth his or her salt would seriously baulk at a wargame because it was not offered as part of a campaign. Any game is perhaps better than no game at all. But if a wargame is in any sense better for being part of a campaign, it rather behoves us to consider why that might be.

On the positive side of wargame campaigns, firstly, they tend to take away the dreaded ‘equal points’ battle so beloved of competition games. Smaller forces in campaigns can be forced to, or may accept, battle for entirely logical reasons. A weaker force may lose the battle but help to win the campaign.

Secondly, a campaign does provide reasons for having a battle, and also a context within which to have the wargame. Often, a win or loss is defined by one side getting to a certain morale level, or losing so many bases, or whatever, and, in a pick up game, that is so far as it goes. In a campaign a player on the losing side, instead of holding out until the last, might start a withdrawal sooner, so as to preserve a force in being. A beaten army is a more potent force (in many circumstances, at least) than a routed one.

Thus, a battle in a campaign context is different from one where the battle is the focus and end of the activity. As wargamers (and, indeed, as humans in general) the battle is the final activity of a lengthy campaign. If we read modern accounts of battles, we get lengthy accounts of the forces, the strategy, the grand tactical manoeuvres and so on, and then we get the battle. Perhaps this is followed by a brief ‘aftermath’ and account of the follow up and consequences, but it battle is the high point of the whole account. But, I suspect, real generalship is not, particularly, about the battle, but on getting to the field and getting off it afterwards. Certainly, I think, in ancient and early modern times, generals had little control of the battle itself, only the deployment, following up and retreat were theirs to organise.

On the downside of campaigns, there is, of course, the necessity to organise one and to play out map moves rather than to bang the figures on the table and get on with rolling dice. I suspect that this is the biggest block, psychologically anyway, to campaigns. Why fiddle around with bits of paper and maps when we could be having a wargame? My only response to this is firstly to agree, and secondly to point to the positive effects of a campaign as outlined above.

Secondly, I think, and this is confirmed by my own experience, that often the campaign is viewed rather as a grandiose scheme. Perhaps we have, in the long run, been badly served by accounts of Tony Bath’s Hyboria campaign and similar huge, multiplayer games. The complexity of running these is, even in these computationally sophisticated days, mind boggling.

I do not mean to be negative about such campaigns, of course. ‘The Campaign that Grew’ was some of my favourite reading in Battle and then Military Modelling, but it does give the impression that this is the Holy Grail of campaigns. In fact, if you read Setting Up a Wargames Campaign, Bath actually developed a wide variety of techniques for running campaigns in various forms and formats. Nevertheless, I suspect that Hyboria is, in the back of many wargamer’s minds, the gold standard for campaign games.

However, I do think that campaign games can add dimensions and purpose to wargaming. My own Fuzigore campaign is not complex. It consists of a scrawled map, some tables of international relations, and a narrative thread. As I have already documented here, this has led to a Gaul vs Gaul bash, followed by a raid by the beaten Gauls into Roman territory where they besieged and captured a city, ambushing and defeating the relief force, and finally a stand up battle between the Gauls and the miffed Romans which lead to the heavy defeat of the former.

Apart from the first of these, the battles were not heavy duty campaigns, but the narrative thread strung the three combats together, and made each one greater than just the pushing of lead on a table. Of course, I am now in a narrative quandary about what to do next, but that, in fact, is part of the fun. If I want another battle, I’ll roll a few dice and make something up.


But I think the campaign games need not be complex, but do need a strong narrative. A bit like normal wargames, really.

30 comments:

  1. Do you think that this may be a subject where there is a strong divide between solo gamers and others? I've found that as a solo player, campaign battles in whatever form have been a lot more likely to keep me interested, whereas in two-player or multi-player games, then the campaigns I have been in have rarely worked well at all, or have fizzled out quite quickly - or even before they start.

    Regards

    John

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    1. It might be the case. I think everyone involved has to be fairly committed to meeting deadlines, playing the games and so on. With one person that can be possible. I think the difficulty goes as the factorial of the number of people involved!

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  2. I found something very similar to what JWH mentions above with various D&D campaigns that I tried to start way back in the 1980s. After a few games, things always fell apart due to something or other. Usually, I grew bored with actually playing with the others involved. Far more interesting to design and write the stuff. Solo 18th century campaigns with a narrative thread more than anything else have managed to hold my interest much better in recent years.

    Best Regards,

    Stokes Schwartz

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    1. I think most of my RPG-ing took place within a friendship group where we would probably have met up anyway, and we took turns at playing and umpiring, and did not generally fall out too much. But we did land up needing something more than a simple dungeon crawl to make it worthwhile. some of the campaigns got really complex, and it took commitment to keep going.

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  3. Yes, I believe it was me that suggested that the purpose of a campaign was to create battles on the table. That is certainly the purpose of the ongoing campaign that I have been running since 2009. The campaign structure provides a narrative and a reason for the battles, which makes them more interesting than the sort of pick-up game I might otherwise play.

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    1. I'm impressed; keeping a campaign going for 5 years is quite a record. But you must have a robust system for running it, and good commitment (I keep using that work) to sustain it. Unless it is like my campaigns which keep going on 1 battle a year!

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    2. We have managed to fight one or two more battles per year than that! :) The campaign blog (Talomir Tales) currently has 197 posts, some of which are background and filler, but most of which are campaign updates and battle reports. The campaign began with a skirmish campaign. We expanded it to include a local war between four neighbouring states, because that would give us a bit more background to the campaign and events happening outside the characters' control. The skirmish campaign finished when the main character got too powerful but the small national campaign has expanded to include all of the northern part of the campaign world. At one point we also held a joust tournament for light relief, and we have had to recruit additional players so that the campaign did not implode due to the number of battles we needed to fight. There have been a few breaks to gather our breath before continuing, but the campaign looks set to continue for some time to come.

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    3. Ah, a campaign that grew, they are often the best sort, so long as they don't grow too far, too fast, or get over-complicated.

      I tried some trade rules for my biggest campaign. the idea was to create opportunities to fight over trade routes and customs. I think I forgot two things. firstly, wargamers do not need excuses for battles. secondly, it created far too much complexity. And so another campaign crumbled beneath its own weight.

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    4. That sounds like why the big sci-fi campaign I want to run has never managed to get off the ground. I want to run it using the (somewhat complex) Pocket Empires rules from Traveller, but there always seem to be better things to do with my time than to sit down and learn the rules before we start. I suspect that a better option would be to start a local war using GM's fiat and then expand once we are playing instead of trying to get the whole thing up and running first.

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    5. I suspect that a lot of effort can be wasted by working out details for bits of the campaign world that never get used. At least if you start small and use the world, all the work is not lost.

      Somewhere I remember reading a recommendation of 1 hour GM preparation for 6 of gaming time. It seems like a reasonable ratio to me.

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    6. Of course, sometimes the world-building and campaign design are the game too. I used to GM RPGs a lot and I spent an inordinate amount of time designing stuff, building worlds and writing background material, because I enjoyed it. In those instances it never got in the way of playing the game, but it certainly seems sensible for a wargames campaign designed to generate battles that a minimum of effort goes into the preparation and a maximum into rolling dice and talking shite with your mates.

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    7. I fear a lot of it is getting older. I no longer have time to spend 8 hours designing a scenario, what with work, family commitments and so on.

      Oh, to be young and even more irresponsible again!

      These days I have to go for the simple, the fast play and the small to get any wargaming in at all.

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    8. I actually think the act of devising a campaign is the best way possible of getting your head round the detail of a new period. Having to present it to others is a great incentive to learning.

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    9. Young? I remember that ... vaguely. Yes, my heavy duty world-building was back when I was young and had fewer responsibilities than I do now. These days I get a two-three hour game once per week and struggle to find time to paint, let alone design campaign games. Simple is definitely best under these circumstances.

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    10. Aye, trying to teach others is a great way to discover exactly what you don't know. I think this links to Ruaridh's point, though. To make something simple (and 'accurate') means to have to really understand it.

      Funnily enough, I can find time to paint, just not game. and of course, I write a bit too.

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    11. Chris mentioned devising a campaign, not me. I assume that is the point you meant. That said, I think I learnt more about Old English and Old Norse from teaching undergraduates than they ever did, so the point certainly resonates with me.

      I find that it is easier to commit to gaming time if my regular opponent is present, because I feel less guilty about not doing my research due to the social commitment. When I am on my own, even when I am technically not at work, I feel guilty for spending time on my hobby that could be used reading just one more article or writing something related to my research. I really need to get that under control one day.

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    12. Yes, Chris did, but blogger doesn't let me reply to individual replies, so confusion can reign (unless I'm missing something).

      I suppose the only solution is to wargame the things you research, which might be OK for Norse sagas, but might be a little harder for, say, laboratory astrophysics, although we did have a few good Sci-Fi RPG games where most of the players were physicists.

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    13. While you can wargame the things you research to some extent, there is often resistance because the research highlights things that are in direct contrast to people's long-held and cherished beliefs. Once they have invested emotionally and intellectually in a particular version of the past, they are extremely reluctant to give that version up. I have found this where my own research directly contradicts the established concepts relating to the Viking Age.

      Were your Sci-Fi RPGs Traveller-based? I always loved the internet meme about Traveller: 'Do maths for fun. Play Traveller'. I never did get the reason for including the various formulae for space flight in the rules, but I still love the game.

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    14. Fair point about research and ingrained beliefs about something. After all, I think many people think the early Roman Empire is boring, because DBM made it boring. And try telling anyone that the Vikings didn't wear horned helmets (you are about to tell me that they did?).

      The Victorians have a lot to answer for before the court of history.

      We tried several more or less horribly complex SF RPGs. I recall 'Space Opera' (unplayable), and the one we we used which was Ringworld. This worked because it was based on the familiar (to us) rules of Runequest and Call of Cthulhu. However, most of the scenarios were Traveller ones, which did tend to the very good.

      But I still had to explain at great length to some of my colleagues that lasers were not subject t to 1/r^2 dissipation...

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    15. I laughed out loud at your comment about dissipation. Just what I needed this afternoon. We played Space Opera and Aftermath, both by FGU. They were complex but we coped, probably by leaving a lot of the detail out. Aftermath, in particular, was rather odd with its calculations for damage based on muzzle velocity and calibre. I believe there was even a formula for calculating what sort of damage a round ought to do.

      The Vikings did not wear horned helmets. They are an invention of Wagner's costume director for the first production of the Ring Cycle at Bayreuth in 1876. Before that date Germanic barbarians wore horned helmets and Vikings wore winged helmets like Asterix.

      I do have a theory about the horned helmet though. Fighting was thirsty work. Vikings drank from horns. Vikings had to carry lots of gear to battle so they glued the full horns to their helmets to provide a pre-battle beverage while leaving their hands free for carrying shields, axes, spears and swords. They then threw the horns away after drinking from them. This is why no Viking helmet has ever been found with horns, and is also how the Vikings invented the beer hat.

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    16. I think the dissipation thing simply proved that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing...

      Calculating damage based on muzzle velocity and calibre sounds, well, seriously complicated.

      I never got to play Space Opera, just spent an afternoon trying to create a character under the direction of an experienced game master. I started to decide then that life was a little short for that, or perhaps I'd been too impressed by the Runequest roll 3D6 8 times and there you are.

      I knew there must be a sensible explanation behind the Vikings and horned helmets; and on the other hand, it seems that the resourceful battle weary Vikings emigrated to Australia and called each other Bruce. Either that or they are infesting the roads where I live thinking that they are in the Tour de France, and therefore can ignore other road users.

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  4. I'm a great believer in the campaign and have run them of all shapes and sizes, from solo to a massive 35-player epic mediaeval one. I reckon my success rate is about 50% - some fire up the imagination of everyone involved and run and run (the big one took on a momentum of its own and looked like taking over my life at one point.), others fizzle into nothing in very short order indeed. I have never found out why this is or how to predict which will succeed and which won't.
    Perhaps I just can't identify a strong narrative from a weak one?

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    1. I'm sure that mood has something to do with it too. If you can latch onto something that fits the mind-set of the players they are more likely to want to keep playing. Finding a way to reinforce the positive aspects of the experience must help too. My current campaign runs well because my friend and I enjoy bouncing the stories off each other and we have created a bunch of characters with whom we have become attached. This should be the case for all our failed campaigns too, but for some reason they don't seem to run in the same way. Who knows what the secret is? Perhaps it is just a zeitgeist thing? :)

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    2. Maybe so.
      I am convinced it's not about the complexity or the amount of effort you put in. Sometimes players buy in to the complex ones that you spend a lot of time to put together and other times they don't, but the same is true of the really simple back-of-an-envelope campaigns too.

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    3. Your comment about complexity is right. Campaigns just seem to take off or not regardless. Mind you, most of my campaigns fail to take off because I don't get the terrain built for the scenarios or the figures painted or both. I really need to learn not to be a perfectionist and accept that playing the game is more important than playing the game with painted figures and the best terrain I can manage.

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    4. I am certainly not going to try to define the difference between a good campaign (in the sense that it works) and a bad one. A lot does depend on the narrative, and on player involvement and engagement.

      My best multiplayer effort was an early online one based on the thirty years war. after two years of game play Russia had emulated Mr Putin and was the master of Eastern Europe, France had a fleet in the Baltic and the Spanish had invaded North Africa. A lot of fun was had along the way, largely because players submitted battle reports which became slowly more outlandish and exotic. Engagement was the key there, I think.

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    5. I suspect that engagement is the key for most campaigns. If the campaign hits the players at the right time and stimulates a suitable level of engagement then it will be a success, but it needs the right players and the right pacing to maintain interest while preventing burn-out. Perhaps I could get funding to pursue research in this topic with the goal of producing the 'perfect' campaign. Are there any games manufacturers out there willing to support me? :)

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    6. I think you should. I'm sure wargaming is under represented in research council grant making anyway, and we could apply as an interdisciplinary group. After all, this blog has touched on history, physics, ethics, philosophy and social sciences.

      And if we can get industrial sponsorship, of course....

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  5. Hi there Polemarch. Thanks for the fine post, which I've only just read. I am completely with you when you mention that campaigns should have a strong narrative, but do not need to be lengthy. The ones which seem best suited to club play in my recent experience (last five years) have been those which have featured between three and six linked games, when the results of the previous games affect the later ones. Having an end in sight keeps players motivated, ensures themes are sharply in focus and means, practically speaking, you can tell people when the final game should be (working forward from the starting date to the end date of the last game). I agree that the gold standard is Hyboria, or perhaps now Henry Hyde's imagi-nations, but over never had much success with even solo efforts on that scale.

    On a personal note, thanks so much for the terrific blog, which is always interesting and thought provoking. I don't always agree, but I always enjoy reading what you have to say!

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    1. Disagreement is allowed; I suspect I have, in fact, changed my mind many times. after all, the blog is written in electrons, not on tablets of stone.

      I think campaigns with a given goal are probably more manageable than playing nations, although painting up figures for, say, the 100 days and then never using them again could be a bit of an issue for us reluctant painters.

      I do like linked campaigns, where you have three or more battles each somewhat dependent on the outcome of the last one. But it can be a pain to keep them balanced.

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