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Read more about the article Adventure Never Ends: A Tabletop Saga

Adventure Never Ends: A Tabletop Saga

In a short review of Jon Peterson’s triptych of D&D history, I allude to “The True Impact of D&D,” which, Peterson speculates in the closing of Game Wizards, after almost 50 years “has yet to be felt.” Since then, I’ve been thinking more about the game’s impact on my own life and how I see its effect on others’ lives. I have also been searching the information network for ways in which the game’s more forward-thinking proponents are, today, using DUNGEONS & DRAGONS as more than just a game. So exploring, one discovers a meta-dungeon stocked with obstacles and monsters, populated by heroes and wizards.

The wizards are those who work the game’s magic to help dungeon explorers overcome obstacles and defeat monsters. I don’t mean dungeon obstacles, like heavy portcullises and bottomless chasms. The dungeon is real life, and its obstacles are emotional, like autism and social isolation. And not fantastic monsters, either, like hobgoblins and trolls. I mean more fearsome monsters, like anxiety, depression, alcoholism, and post-traumatic stress disorder—dragons encountered in our daily lives. The heroes are those explorers who, through their experience in the game, emerge from the dungeon an improved version of themselves.

We also find treasures in the meta-dungeon. They come in many forms: anecdotes about making life-long friends at the game table, accounts of personal transformation aided by playing RPGs, and documentaries about the game and its impact on human lives.

One such treasure, recently unearthed, is Adventure Never Ends: A Tabletop Saga. Produced for Time Studios by Douglisio DiMuccio, Rob D. Miller, and Aaron Pagniano, this 40-minute documentary was released last month. It emphasizes the importance of D&D and reveals, through multiple interviews, recurring themes in the D&D play experience.

Notable interviews include Luke Gygax and Peter Adkison, among other game designers, a host of actors, and several school children. The children participate in therapeutic game programs, at which point we discover another treasure:

Also interviewed are Game to Grow founders, Adam Davis and Adam Johns. Game to Grow, a non-profit organization, uses D&D and Minecraft for therapeutic, educational, and community growth. Of their game therapy program, Davis says, “A lot of our kids are so burnt out on therapy, and they’ve been in social skills training programs that haven’t really helped them… This is more important than learning how to make eye contact or learning how to shake hands effectively. This is an opportunity for your child to care about being around other people” [17:10].

Heroes and wizards agree: D&D is a powerful tool to inspire, educate, and motivate. It’s a treasure.

I’m thinking to open the scope of this blog to talk about D&D’s larger impact on society. I know little about using hashtags, less about making new ones. On social media lately I’ve been tagging appropriate posts with #TrueImpactOfDnD. Some more savvy social media maven might suggest better.

A still image from the video, a child’s hand holds a pencil, on a table with paper and dice. Text reads: “In its 50 year history, the game of Dungeons and Dragons has inspired generations of players—each for their own reasons—but the common themes of community, creativity and confidence are hard to miss. This short film features dedicated players including actor Matthew Lillard and Luke Gygax, son of D&D co-founder, Gary Gygax. A film by DiMuccio & Miller” 39:18, 13 April 2023.
Click or tap the image to watch the full documentary on Time.com.

Read more about the article #Gygax75 and #Dungeon23: Create a D&D Dungeon Campaign in a Few Minutes a Day Without Too Much Thinking

#Gygax75 and #Dungeon23: Create a D&D Dungeon Campaign in a Few Minutes a Day Without Too Much Thinking

Setting Up a Campaign in Original D&D

In the original 1974 DUNGEONS & DRAGONS rules booklets, Gygax and Arneson give us scant guidance on designing the surface and underworld environments in which a campaign will take place, and hardly anything at all about setting up “the campaign for which these rules are designed” (Men & Magic, 3).

The first of three thin volumes, under Preparation for the Campaign, advises:

“The referee bears the entire burden here, but if care and thought are used, the reward will more than repay him. First, the referee must draw out a minimum of half a dozen maps of the levels of his ‘underworld,’ people them with monsters of various horrid aspect, distribute treasures accordingly, and note the location of the latter two on keys, each corresponding to the appropriate level” (Men & Magic, 5).

This summary is followed by the assurance: “This operation will be more fully described in the third volume of these rules” (5).

The third volume provides some degree of satisfaction in the details. The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures opens with an illustration, showing a “Sample Cross Section of Levels,” and a half-page of text, which again points out the referee’s burden of time, the necessity to draw maps of a few dungeon levels, that eventually the dungeon should have a dozen or more levels with new levels under construction, and that, indeed, the depth and breadth of a dungeon is limited only by the world’s capacity to manufacture graph paper (3-4).

The book then provides a sample dungeon map accompanied by several examples of tricks and traps and advice on placing monsters and treasures (4-8).

We will see shortly that the DM’s burden of time is a recurring concern for Gary Gygax. Much like entering the dungeon, we are warned against it, but we do it anyway—That’s where the fun is.

Later, in The Wilderness section, the referee gets an outline of maps necessary to run surface-level adventures:

“First, he must have a ground level map of his dungeons, a map of the terrain immediately surrounding this, and finally a map of the town or village closest to the dungeons (where adventurers will be most likely to base themselves)” (14).

Following brief examples of the now-iconic Blackmoor and Greyhawk base towns and a suggestion to use the Outdoor Survival map board for “off-hand” or “general” adventures, the rules then get into conducting play in areas previously established. In all that, though, the D&D referee has little in the way of an overview of how to set up the campaign.

Europa

To the April 1975 issue of Walter Luc Haas’s Europa zine, Gary Gygax contributed an article “HOW TO SET UP YOUR DUNGEONS & DRAGONS CAMPAIGN—AND BE STUCK REFEREEING IT SEVEN DAYS PER WEEK UNTIL THE WEE HOURS OF THE MORNING!”1 (18-20) In it, the co-creator breaks the daunting task into five steps. I paraphrase the headings:

  1. Campaign Hook
  2. Environs
  3. Dungeon
  4. Base Town
  5. Greater World

While still cursory, the article’s three letter-sized pages give the referee a more structured process to set up a campaign.

#Gygax75

A blogger named Charlie (who goes by @Thatakinsboy on Twitter), coming upon Gygax’s Europa article in 2019, was inspired to follow the guidelines to set up a campaign. In a September 10 article on his blog Dragons Never Forget, Charlie introduces the Gygax ’75 Challenge and invites us to play along. He gives us a series of articles in which he walks the reader through the five steps over the next couple months, as he creates the Valley of the Three Forks, a post-apocalyptic fantasy campaign setting inspired by sci-fi and fantasy literature.

Meanwhile, in October, fellow blogger Ray Otus of the Viridian Scroll saw Charlie’s introduction and caught the bug to make a campaign using Gygax’s brief guidelines. He reviews the article in “The Gygax 75 Challenge.” Then he went further: Otus wrote a 40-page book, outlining Gygax’s steps in “achievable, bite-sized prompts and goals for a week-by-week program.” The Gygax 75 Challenge booklet (PDF) walks a DM through the five-step process in as many weeks.

After laying out the purpose of the book in the Introduction, Otus reminds us of the weekly deadline and addresses Gygax’s recurring concern:

“You are allowed one week, (no more, no less!) for each step. That may sound a bit overwhelming, but don’t overthink it!” (1)

Some time afterward, the hashtag #Gygax75 began appearing on social media, as twenty-first-century old-school D&D fans became likewise inspired.

Questing Beast Ben Milton touts Ray Otus’s Gygax 75 Challenge as “one of the best resources you can use [to build your own D&D campaign],” saying, “It’s a great way to give yourself some structure and to shepherd you through until the end” (“The ‘Gygax 75’ technique for building DnD campaigns,” 2:29-3:04).

#Dungeon23

More recently, Sean McCoy started work on “a cool little project.” McCoy tweeted:

“Megadungeon for 2023. 12 levels. 365 rooms. One room a day. Keep it all in a journal” (Twitter, December 5, 2022).

McCoy elaborates on the project in a December 6 post, “#Dungeon23,” on his Win Conditions Substack. “I love dungeons and megadungeon play,” he writes, “but writing a megadungeon is difficult!”

Journal

In the post, McCoy mentions using a stand-alone notebook or journal. He uses a Hobonichi Techo Weeks planner, whose layouts have seven days on one side, for each room of the week, and a graph-ruled page on the other, for the week’s map section.

Random Generators

For days when an idea is lacking, McCoy suggests, “Generators are your friend.” He points us to Courtney Campbell’s Tricks, Empty Rooms, & Basic Trap Design and “a billion d100 lists on Elfmaids & Octopi.”

Flying Dungeon Stocking Tables

Here, I add my own Flying Dungeon Stocking Tables, random content generation tables with probabilities based on guidelines in Holmes Bluebook D&D, Monster & Treasure Assortments, and Dungeon Geomorphs. Available in PDF for print and phone.

DM’s Burden of Time

McCoy also addresses the recurring concern, proposing “one room a day” to reduce the otherwise daunting project into small tasks, achievable in a few minutes.

“Once you realize you can create a dungeon of this magnitude, your whole world opens up with what you can do.”—Sean McCoy, “#Dungeon23,” Win Conditions

A game designer with several RPG product credits to his name, including the wildly successful Mothership RPG, McCoy further encourages the dungeon-maker. In the same words as Ray Otus, he admonishes, “Don’t overthink it.” He continues: “Don’t make a grand plan, just sit down each day and focus on writing a good dungeon room.”

Later, he adds further advice: “The goal is the finish line. Just get to the finish line,” and “Once you realize you can create a dungeon of this magnitude, your whole world opens up with what you can do.”

Inspiration Inspires

There are also hashtags now for #City23, #Hex23, and #Facility23. Maybe you have another idea…?

Now It’s Our Turn

Ray Otus closes his Introduction to The Gygax ’75 Challenge with more good advice: “Just get started.”

Starting now and throughout 2023, I am combining #Gygax75 and #Dungeon23 into a project named for the resulting old-school D&D campaign: Deep Dungeon Doom.

1 Gygax’s is a title upon which no pundit can resist comment. Mine is reserved for this footnote.

Find Stephen on Social Media

I’m on Twitter and getting started on Mastodon. You can also find me on Facebook as well as LinkedIn.

Handmade Leather Dice Bag

A friend asked me for my mailing address. He wanted to send me something. Strange how we don’t generally have folks’ mailing addresses anymore.

Trans-Atlantic shipping can take a while these days, and, wonder as I might, I couldn’t think of what he might be sending. So I waited. My patience was rewarded by this small marvel.

Handmade Leather Dice Bag Sunnyland Gifts
Handmade Leather Dice Bag, Sunnyland Gifts.
Shown here with sets of five, six, and seven dice, which fit inside with room to spare. Fifty dice fill the bag to about two-thirds capacity.

It’s so beautiful I had to ask where he got it. Turns out, his daughter Lela makes them—by hand!

The leather is goatskin. The toggles and laces are cowhide. The polyester thread is braided and beeswaxed. Lela uses the saddle stitch method: a pair of needles weave a locking stitch that resists unraveling. No logos, stamps, or decoration, the style is simple and elegant.

Inside Seams Saddle-Stitched by Hand
Inside Seams, Saddle-Stitched by Hand.

The toggles were a little stiff on the laces, so they didn’t slide easily. I took the bag to the guy at my local shoe-repair shop—mostly to show it off. In addition to resoling my sandals, Stephanos can do anything with leather. I thought maybe there would be some drop of oil that would loosen the toggles. What do I know. Stephanos said I just had to work it a little. A couple minutes pulling the toggles back and forth on the laces did the trick.

This is most beautiful dice bag I ever had. I love it!

I realize this article reads like an advertisement. Other than the above mentioned social connection, I am in no way affiliated with L & M Productions or Sunnyland Gifts. I do LOVE this dice bag!

Help Defeat Real-Life Demons, Game Therapy UK

Are you a military veteran? Are you also a Game Master? Would you like to run role-playing games as a therapeutic tool for fellow veterans suffering from psychological trauma?

Game Therapy UK is starting a pilot project you might find interesting. It’s a volunteer project. They are to offer several training modules, from basic through advanced, including mentorship.

From their website:

Game Therapy UK is an exciting new charity providing innovative, evidence-based therapeutic games (“Dungeons and Dragons Therapy”) to groups across the UK, including people experiencing homelessness, people in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction and military veterans exposed to psychological trauma/PTSD.

Military veterans of any country are eligible to participate, whether it’s to run games or to play.

For more information, visit Game Therapy UK and sign up for their newsletter.

Defeat demons with D&D!

A DM’s Use for Solo Play

YouTuber Daniel Norton of Bandit’s Keep talks in his latest episode about how Dungeon Masters can use solo play to improve their games.

In his affable style, Daniel covers several topics that apply to any D&D edition and probably to most other role-playing games. I haven’t much to add to what Daniel says so well. I can only tease you with Daniel’s list of ways a DM might use solo play.

  • Play test adventures
  • Create adventure hooks
  • Plat test encounters
  • Map and stock a dungeon
  • Create interesting NPCs
  • Learn game mechanics
  • Rehearse published adventures
  • Build your world

The most ambitious projects on DONJON LANDS are solo endeavors. Not all use D&D, but they are all for one D&D campaign or another.

  • Wyrm Dawn uses How to Host a Dungeon to create a history for Wyrmwyrd, a B/X D&D campaign.
  • The Battle of Throrgardr is a 12th-level B/X scenario, which decides a pivotal moment in Wyrmwyrd’s history.
  • The Valormr Campaign uses rules for strategic-level wargames to play out events in a war that revealed major details about the history, including the origin and use of the Wyrmwyrd.
  • The latest project is Dreaming Amon-Gorloth, a Holmes campaign, in which I’m stocking a large dungeon as I explore it with an adventuring party.

I find solo play especially useful for large projects, because I can set my own pace and play the particular game that fits the purpose. While Valormr, for example, could have taken years with a group or even just one other player, I wrote the rules, prepared the scenario, and played it in a summer. Not to mention the prospects of finding another player as interested as I am in such a wargames campaign.

To close the video, Daniel invites us to let him know if we would like to hear more from him about solo play. Of course we would.

Please visit the video “Playing Solo D&D can make you a better Dungeon Master” (7:48) on YouTube to leave a message for Daniel in the comment section, and see his other YouTube channel Bandit’s Keep Actual Play for more old-schoolery.

The True Impact of D&D

I am a long-time professor of D&D’s influence on contemporary culture. The thesis, familiar to many of us, begins with the concepts of hit points and experience levels, borrowed from D&D and incorporated into the earliest video games. Where it ends is expressed in eloquent fashion by Jon Peterson at the close of Game Wizards.

Back in 1980, a reporter who asked if D&D was only a passing fad learned that “Gygax and Blume think not. D&D, they say, will last fifty years or more.” As unlikely as it was in the 1970s that this esoteric offshoot of the wargaming hobby might become a pop-culture phenomenon, it is just as unlikely that in 2021 the game would be more popular than ever. As a new generation grows up playing the game, it may be that the true impact of Dungeons & Dragons has yet to be felt.

Jon Peterson’s Triptych
Jon Peterson’s Triptych of D&D History:
Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures, from Chess to Role-Playing Games, San Diego: Unreason, 2012 [currently out of print]; The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity, Cambridge: MIT, 2020; and Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons, Cambridge: MIT, 2021.

Peterson’s work is thorough, well-researched, and written from the historian’s objective perspective in a clear, concise style. Jon Peterson carries the lantern by which we explore the labyrinth of D&D’s obscure past, from its creation throughout its continuing evolution.

Find Jon Peterson’s books and read more about D&D history on his blog at playingattheworld.blogspot.com.

OD&D’s “Recommended Equipment”

A 1st- to 9th-Level Campaign
The Outdoor Survival Map Amid Other Tools for a D&D Campaign.

Don’t Throw Out the Box the Map Board Came In

In this article, I don’t mean to say anyone is playing the game wrong. I mean to say that our OD&D games—or at least our esteem of the rules—might improve if we reconsider the ignored parts of Chainmail and Outdoor Survival.

A recent Grognardia article reminds me of a point I’d like to bring up. In “Retrospective: Outdoor Survival,” James Maliszewski gives adequate treatment to the 1972 simulation game, with due attention to designer Jim Dunnigan, mention of the included Wilderness Skills primer—which reminds James of The Boy Scout Handbook, and a brief summary of play and the five scenarios typical of a wilderness environment: Lost, Survival, Search, Rescue, and Pursue.

He doesn’t miss the map board, of course, and its suggested use in OD&D as the setting for impromptu adventures. James notes that Outdoor Survival is the second entry in Vol. I under the heading “Recommended Equipment.”

When playing OD&D, I think1 we don’t take the rulebook’s advice seriously enough. It’s true, “Recommended Equipment” is misleading. Considering the “Dungeons and Dragons” rules are first in the list, “Required Equipment” would be more accurate. We would hardly think of playing D&D without dice, to cite the list’s third entry.

Likely due to the cost of two more games in addition to the ten 1970s dollars we already spent on a box of three slim booklets—not to mention dice, we content ourselves to replace Chainmail with the Alternative Combat System and sometimes use Outdoor Survival’s map board as a wilderness setting.

In so doing, we neglect the other—admittedly cumbersome—combat rules, like move-and-countermove (Chainmail, 9), parry and number of attacks per round by weapon class (25-26), and I’ve talked enough about jousting.2 In fact, the Alternative Combat “System” replaces, with a d20, only Chainmail’s fistful of dice to determine hits.

Later D&D editions revisited Chainmail to restore some of the combat options. The Holmes edition’s oft-bemoaned implementations of parry and number of attacks per round (20-21) are examples, as is B/X’s oft-ignored combat sequence (B24). But OD&D combat, bereft of these options, becomes the stereotype “I miss, I hit… I miss again.”

We also explore the wilderness on a hex map, but without any dangers apart from monsters with lots of hit dice rolled on the Wilderness Wandering Monsters tables. For this reason, commenter Gus L., in response to James’s article, likens adventures in the OD&D wilderness to “a bus ride with fistfights.”

It doesn’t have to be that way. On the page before the wilderness monster table, Vol. III refers us to Outdoor Survival’s rules as well as its board to handle lost parties (17). Further, when a party becomes lost, food may well run short. In a desert, water is scarce. Maybe it makes for a less than heroic adventure, but rules to handle starvation, thirst, weather, and fatigue are found in Outdoor Survival. By breaking up the succession of fistfights, incorporation of those rules can turn the bus ride into a challenging journey accompanied by the threat of many-hit-dice monsters.

Grognardia doesn’t mention Outdoor Survival’s most interesting innovation for an early 1970s game. After we’ve learned the rules playing a Lost scenario and maybe a Search or a Rescue, lackluster as they may be, we must press on to Scenario 6.

Scenario 6: One of the most interesting aspects of OUTDOOR SURVIVAL is the opportunity it provides for devising your own scenarios. Once you have mastered the mechanics of play, many additional ideas, providing more testing of outdoor knowledge and skills, will come to you. Integrating these situations with the standard games will add pleasure and skill-sharpening to the playing.

—Jim Dunnigan, Outdoor Survival

There is a certain irony in that Scenario 6 appears under the heading “Optional Rules.” For best results, I recommend using “Dungeons and Dragons”—those slim booklets containing lists of spells and monsters—as additional equipment.

Notes

1 I use “I think” as a lazy and weak shield against attacks from those whose opinions differ. Excuses to my sophomore English composition teacher, who pointed out, “If you didn’t think it you wouldn’t write it, would you.”

2 Strategy on the Jousting Matrix

The Thing About a Dyson Logos Dungeon Map

Watching one of Dyson Logos’s time-lapse videos is mesmerizing. Finger tips squeeze close to nib. Black ink trails as the pen glides along straight lines, jerks through hatch marks. Parallel lines become a long corridor, a protruding rectangle a door frame. Rubble strews across the floor.

Then the hatching. Short, quick strokes: one, two, three—one, two, three… That’s when we know: this guy’s wired different.

There’s a thing about a Dyson Logos dungeon map. By the hatching we recognize the style, because we’ve been admiring his work for more than a decade. But it ain’t the hatching.

The thing is the design.

To make the point, I chose a Dyson Logos map without hatching. Tunnels of the Shrouded Emperor is an example rare and fine.

Tunnels of the Shrouded Emperor
Tunnels of the Shrouded Emperor, Map by Dyson Logos.

The tripartite doorways either side of the entry hall, middle north, a blind stairway landing just south of it, rounded triangular daises in an octagonal room, a balcony overlooking half a chamber, stairs to the side, the generous use of dungeon furnishings—these catch the eye and draw us in.

But there’s more. Charting an imagined course through the dungeon, we follow branches, turn around at dead ends, weave one way or another along parallel routes, until we progress, via a wide thoroughfare, into the southern caverns.

This long trench reminds of a dry watercourse, perhaps a former Darkling tributary, which leads us to the dungeon’s end, where we find only stones and dry bones and lurking creatures. For we’ve missed the diamond-shaped central chambers where its priests work to repair “The Shrouded Emperor.”

That’s the thing about a Dyson Logos dungeon map.

Dyson Logos has been creating hand-drawn maps for fantasy role-playing games since 2009. You can support the creator on Patreon.

Pits and Pendulums and Other Means to Retire an Adventurer: OED Traps Digest

Searching for traps? Find them in the OED Traps Digest from OED Games.

After using it in his games for eight years, Dan “Delta” Collins of Delta’s D&D Hotspot and Wandering DMs finally, in this Hotspot post, opened the cover on the pit where he cached this six-page booklet chock-full of traps.

Search for Traps at OED Games

One Table, Myriad Dooms

On the first page, Dan explains in one paragraph how to generate a trap for your dungeon stocking needs. He tells you how often a trap is present, your chance to find it, and failing that, your chance to trigger it.

If you’re old school, you might consult the Monster Determination and Level of Monster Matrix from OD&D’s Underworld and Wilderness Adventures to determine the trap’s level. I adore the “Lost Matrix,”1 and I’m excited to have another reason to use it. On the matrix, you might find a 3rd-level trap anywhere from dungeon level one through five.

Let’s take pit traps, for example. On upper levels, you got your standard covered.jpgt traps for neophyte adventurers. For more experienced delvers, you got pits with spikes, pits with monsters, locking pits, and pits that crush you in your plate mail like a tin can.

The rest of the digest-sized page is a single table of d12 traps for each level, one through six. That’s 72 traps at the end of a dice roll.

Table entries are brief and descriptive. Dan suggests the text may be copied straight into your digital dungeon room notes.

Five Pages of Descriptions

Dan doesn’t leave you gazing at the approaching edge of the swinging pendulum. In remaining pages, he describes each trap, divided by type. There are eight types, including crushing, confining, and magic/energy traps, plus my favorite pit traps. Some have variations, like a poison’s strength or a missile’s accuracy. Each description provides how much damage, what save if any applies, and how to escape the trap should you survive its immediate effects.

Furthering our pit-trap example: At the deepest levels, you might find, if you’re lucky, a covered pit. Lifting the cover, you see spikes poking up from the bottom. The points are covered in poison. When you don’t find the cover, you fall through it, it locks, and the pit floods. Don’t worry. Dan tells you how to get out of it. Spoiler: It’s a job for friends topside. They should have an axe. Hold your breath while they work.

The OED Traps Digest is a free download for the Original Edition Delta fantasy rules system. Go to OED Games and search for Traps.

Working Traps on Wandering DMs, Sunday

For a live trap-stocking demonstration from the author of the OED Traps Digest, catch up with the Wandering DMs on YouTube today at 1 p.m. Eastern US. In “Dungeon Design Dash 2,” Dan and fellow DM Paul Siegel continue their work from a previous episode. Earlier, they stocked monsters and treasures in a one-page dungeon. They intend to finish this week with puzzles, tricks, and traps.

Don’t forget your ten-foot pole. I’ll bring the axe.

Notes

1 I call it the “Lost Matrix,” because, after an abbreviated appearance in the Holmes Bluebook and a more extensive rendition in the 1979 AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide, it isn’t reproduced in later editions—the beginning of the end of the old school, so saith the grognard.

Setting Up a Wargames Campaign

I came only recently to Tony Bath. I’d heard vague stories about a game in the misty past set in Conan’s world. Details were murky and scarce. It wasn’t clear if it was D&D or something else, and I couldn’t sort out how the game related to the archetypal barbarian.

In early 2011, while browsing the Hill Cantons, I discovered a four-part series about Bath’s Hyboria wargames campaign (December 2010). Author Chris Kutalik had got hold of a copy of Setting Up a Wargames Campaign by the legendary English wargamer. Kutalik doesn’t so much review the book as proselytize. That day I became an acolyte.

Today, we take for granted the campaign. For modern role-playing gamers, a single adventure is called a “one-shot,” and while the form has its merits, it lacks the scope, continuity, and satisfaction a campaign provides.

The Society of Ancients

Tony Bath founded the Society of Ancients and its journal Slingshot in 1965. Now in its 56th year, the society continues to thrive. It has an active members-only online forum, hosts an annual Battle Day, and still produces Slingshot bi-monthly in full color.

So it was, too, with wargamers in the 1960s. Pushing lead figures across a tabletop gets stale after a number of unrelated battles. The context, coming from historical accounts, is inflexible. The setup and tactics, again historical, are sometimes limited. Battles often ended in a slug-fest, there being no reason a general might conserve troops for the morrow.

Veering from the strictly historical wargame, campaigners step back from the table and consider the larger theater of operations. On large-scale maps showing rivers instead of streams, mountains instead of hilltops, countries instead of towns, opposing generals exercise strategy instead of tactics. They march armies, represented by pins, across the map, each general in secret from the other, until forces meet.

In the ensuing battle, the context, setup, and tactics are all determined by the preceding events and the terrain upon which the two forces find each other. Troops must be used effectively or be withdrawn to fight another day. This is the stuff of the campaign.

In Bath’s Hyboria, King Arthur and his knights waged war on Conan’s Cimmerian hordes.

In those years, Tony Bath devised the quintessential wargames campaign. But he went further, for he set the campaign in a fictitious world. He lifted the map from the end papers of a Robert Howard novel. He cribbed also the setting’s name, and so Hyboria came again to life in the second half of the twentieth century. Bath borrowed real-world cultures, both ancient and medieval, to populate the continent with peoples, whence armies were drawn.

In Bath’s Hyboria, King Arthur and his knights waged war on Conan’s Cimmerian hordes. Carthaginians struggled against Viking raiders. Picts crossed swords with Persians. Aquilonians, allied with Argives and Nemedians, laid siege to a Turanian town occupied by Hyrkanians.

Tony Bath’s Ancient Wargaming including Setting Up a Wargames Campaign

That was only the beginning. Bath describes the process and much more in amicable prose. Setting Up a Wargames Campaign was published in 1973 by Wargames Research Group. It had a second edition (1977) and a revised third edition in 1986. Copies now circulate on various reseller sites for not extraordinary prices. At the time, though, I couldn’t find any such copy.

Instead, I found a reproduction. As part of his History of Wargaming Project, John Curry, with the Society of Ancients, published Tony Bath’s Ancient Wargaming (2009, 2011), which is a reprint collection of three previously published books:

  • Peltast and Pila Ancient Wargaming Rules (Tabletop Warfare, 1976)
  • Setting Up a Wargames Campaign (WRG, 1973)
  • The Legend of Hyboria (Society of Ancients, 2005)

In setting up the Valormr Campaign, I’m using Wargames Campaign’s first three chapters, in which Bath describes the basics:

  • How to Set Up Your Campaign
  • Map Movement
  • Contacts, Battles and After Effects

I’m sure to make use of later chapters in subsequent campaigns. Furthermore, the ancient wargame rules Peltast and Pila will serve in campaigns taking place earlier in the DONJON LANDS time line.