"IMAGI-NATIONS CAMPAIGNS." Topic
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Ottoathome | 24 Dec 2015 6:38 a.m. PST |
Dear List I restarted this thread as the bug apparently mangled my original intent. On January 16, I will have a game at my house and it will be the start of an 18th century Campaign. Each player will have several roles. He will be always the king of a country in a possible 12 world Imagi-Nations set up. But he will also be able to adopt other personalities in other situations. For example Take the wargamer Jackson Jills. Jackson will be the king of the Country Land O'Goshen. Another gamer will be in Bad Zu Wurst, call him Newt Rogina. The two of them will be "activated" as opponents in a campaign. The rules used will be my "Narrative Campaign rules." This is a very simple easy set which is run by both players telling me what their intentions are. For example, Jackson says "I want to hold position and train the army." Newt says "I want to forage for supplies." I then decide what the first battle will be, and make up the story that carries the players from the start of the war to the battle, we fight the battle, and then that situation becomes the basis for what the NEXT bunch of intentions are which the two sides give to me somewhere in the ensuing month to the next game. I then cross reference these intentions (given in secret) and make up the story from the end of the first battle to the next, and set up that battle. Other players play as sub commanders in the battle, even though they may as one of their roles be sovereign of other countires. They can in addition make up a character IN the forces of one of the two sides. For example Phil O'Dendron decides he wants to play, when playing with Jackson's army as "General Sir Percy Plowdung" who can often be a trial to his sovereign. We then determine the plot from there. Sam Evening decides he wants to be the Grand Admiral of Bad Zu Wurst, Prince Louis von Battenhatch, and his wife, Janet Evening wants to play as his mistress, perpetually being a gadfly to all his efforts. Distraction, shopaholic, gadfly. Each character will have their own sub rolls as they wish. The rules are extremely simple and the intentions must be stated out and written in clear English and not longer than twenty words. We shall see how this goes. I developed the basic system 20 years ago and it worked. We are going to try it with some new wrinkles and ideas. It is hoped that the development of subsidiary characters will flesh out the story and provide other interesting situations and scenarios. For example, Newt may get tired of Janet's constant interruptions and meddling and arrange to have her kidnapped and sent to a nunnery. Jackson on the other hand, for whom she is an agent, may try and frustrate the alleged kidnapping. Yhe system will use the big 4 by 8 map I made, but it isn't essential for anything but frame of reference story-telling. It is the intentions of the players when compared that will determine the action of thing. Otto |
Cosmic Reset | 24 Dec 2015 7:11 a.m. PST |
I know that you're a busy dude, but setting up a blog and posting the story might be a neat way to keep those of us who are interested, but can't take part up to date. In any event, it sounds really cool, hope you keep us posted about the goings-on one way or another. |
StoneMtnMinis | 24 Dec 2015 11:42 a.m. PST |
It sounds like it is going to be brilliant. Many years ago I ran an ACW campaign and one of the most enjoyable parts was watching the various commanders blunder around the map. It soon became apparent that the concept os scouting eluded most of the players. A couple of the smarter ones finally figured out how to systematically scout their line of march. And one actually figured out that he could talk to the npc's and get some additional information(some good some bad(insert evil umpire laugh here)). Let us know how the campaign progresses. Dave Stone Mountain Miniatures wargamingminiatures.com |
Ragbones | 24 Dec 2015 8:51 p.m. PST |
I'd love to be able to follow this. |
GamesPoet | 25 Dec 2015 6:35 a.m. PST |
I'd like to be able to follow this, too! Is there a plan for a log or website of some kind that shows story and game reports? |
Ottoathome | 25 Dec 2015 6:35 p.m. PST |
Dear Irishserb. Stone Mountain Minis, Terrament, Ragbones, and Games Poet. I'm very sorry, but I don't do blogs. I'm very busy with rules and my own Yahoo group "Society of Daisy" and putting on "The Weekend Convention" in June AND publishing my own "Fanzine" for the hobby "Saxe N' Violets." With all that I can barely keep up, and besides, I don't do blogs because frankly, I'm not that interesting a guy and they take an awful amount of work. I haven't even been able to keep up the electronic list for The Weekend Convention, and finally caved and just made the Society of Daisy Group the contact point for it. However, I will be posting stories and battle reports in "Saxe N' Violets" now and then, and I WILL be publishing a basic text letter on the progress of the game and battle reports. I fully intended to post these on TMP (when I'm not dawghoused) when they come up so everyone can see how the idea works. That's the basic thought here, to try and let gamers know how these things, experimental things, go and play out. So you will see these things posted from time to time, and if I can find it, right here on the same heading. The whole point of this is to find some way to run a campaign without huge amounts of paperwork and record keeping and complex rules. I've been trying to "square this circle" since I was a teenager (now I'm 67) and the success wasn't too good. About 14 years ago I stumbled onto this idea by default and just thought it up one day. It worked very well back then with a few guys and now I'm going to give it another go. The main problem in all these games is the necessity of having all the players actively playing and coordinating their moves at the same time. That's not realistic in this world it seems and people always have other things hugely competing with our scarce times- wife, kids, jobs, illness, and so forth. I've tried to cut down the paperwork and record keeping and all the things that take time. I figured that I would simply get the "intentions of the players" stated in a sentence, and then plan out the battle from my head and let the gamers at the game have a go at it. The plan THEN was to see what was needed to make the battle work and add on these rule modules and rules that the players had to deal with slowly to get the best working model. I found out that NO rules were needed, everyone was quite happy with the result. We concluded the campaign back then in "The Elvish Civil Wars" and moved on to other things, and I thought of staging it again only in the 18th century. What we found out from that game was that once we had the intentions the battles and games more or less came off and the battles could be handled by whoever showed up. In fact one guy had an emergency in his family and couldn't be at the game, but we simply let one of the gamers be his general. I'm hoping it will work, so don't worry I will keep you posted. All the countries are Imaginary Countries, and the players can be from whichever they choose. The Countries are Saxe Burlap und Schleswig Beerstein. Land O' Goshen Bad Zu Wurst Floridanica The Gulag Archipeligo Kukkamonga Panacea Bathycolpia The Ante-Pasto Caldor Oxymoronia Zelotypia There are some control and governing procedures but these are invisible to the players, mostly determining who is "active" in the game, that is, gives me intentions. Usually this will be limited to no more than four players, countries at a time. That's one big change. In the Last campaign we had basically two sides. It will be a little challenging to have double that. We shall see. Otto |
daler240D | 26 Dec 2015 3:09 a.m. PST |
"I'm very sorry, but I don't do blogs. I'm very busy with rules and my own Yahoo group "Society of Daisy" and putting on "The Weekend Convention" in June AND publishing my own "Fanzine" for the hobby "Saxe N' Violets." With all that I can barely keep up, and besides, I don't do blogs because frankly, I'm not that interesting a guy and they take an awful amount of work. I haven't even been able to keep up the electronic list for The Weekend Convention, and finally caved and just made the Society of Daisy Group the contact point for it." Otto, Respectfully,I think you kind of make the case FOR doing a blog with this above paragraph. ALL of those things can be done via a blog. Many are actually IDEAL in a blog format. You make the longest posts on TMP by far and people read them with interest,(which disproves you are not interesting). Yahoo groups is a TERRIBLE format compared to what is available out there. You are also duplicating your effort if you create content in multiple formats. Once digital, it can be printed, crossposted, cut and pasted stored safely in multiple areas, oh and printed again and saved. Just an encouragement, as we would all love to be more in the loop with your doings. Daler |
Dye4minis | 26 Dec 2015 3:32 a.m. PST |
Instead of a blog, why not use facebook? It would be easier for others to link and promote as well as offer pictures that help illustrate their battles in progress? Great stuff, Otto! v/r Tom |
Ottoathome | 26 Dec 2015 3:14 p.m. PST |
Dear Daler240d Perhaps, but I've been doing Society of Daisy AND the Newsletter Saxe N' Violets for over a decade now and to replace them with a blog would be a disservice to the long time customers and respondents on the list. I do not feel Yahoo is a terrible format, in fact it's superior in many ways, being free, and unlike TMP and other war game sites, allows uploads of huge amounts of images and pictures and reports. I also don't feel comfortable with electronic format for as you say, it can be cut, pasted, passed around and plagiarized and vitriolified at will. Persons could change the rules and re-edit them under my name with horrible things added to them or slanders of others made out to be my words. Social media is not a nice world and has brought home to me that War Games is a social pastime with some very anti-social people in it. As I said before, I prefer to give away my rules and things for free rather than as downloads. As for facebook it has all the ills of social media, of which I do none. Consider me then simply old fashioned. War Games rose to its place today on the home-brew rules, the "fan-zine" the clunky clumsy efforts of individuals proseltyzing a hobby they love and through individual effort. I remain convinced that is the key to success in the hobby, that is the one-on-one-individual social effort. All these electronic things do not seem to do much to better that. Thanks for your words of encouragement though. The old ways are the best. Otto |
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