Fantasy RPG vs Fantasy Wargaming

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

I came to RPG gaming via the original D&D white box and the supplements in 1976 at the age of 13.  It also introduced me to miniatures, but i had been an SPI/AH wargamer since the age of 7 as my dad was an avid player. For the next 50 years or so my gaming time tended to be 1/3 running my  Fantasy RPG campaign, 1/3  Napoleonic Miniatures, and 1/3 cardboard counters and hex map wargames. We only used theatre of the mind in non-combat situations but we used airfix plastics and a few expensive lead figs, and a plethora of homemade counters on an erasable map for combat.  We always played linked scenarios in long winded extended campaigns that often took years of play to resolve story arcs.

I still prefer RPGs this way, although we no longer use D&D or any sort of overly bloated and expensive rules.  I now use home brewed versions of Tales of Blades and Heroes which are much more streamlined and quick playing.  For bigger battles, we usually use Fistful of Lead: Bigger Battles. My campaigns have always been more legendary, low fantasy.

Sadly my core RPG group was more or less destroyed by Covid: couples broke up and some players passed away.  I have been thinking about rebuilding my campaign, but the easier route has been skirmish gaming.  I play more Fistful of Lead than anything else in different genres. Painting figs by far is the biggest part of my wargaming/RPG hobby: probably 90% of my time.

I have had a lot of difficulty finding players willing to step into flexible home-brewed rules.  Too many seem only interested in playing orthodox, published, overly-crunchy power games, or they only want to play online rather than ftf.

[PhilB]

I started playing D&D in '74 (at age 14), after stumbling by accident onto a group doing a huge fantasy-medieval tabletop battle in the U of Iowa National Guard Armory, using the Chainmail miniatures rules. I had already dragged some friends into tabletop wargames using a set of red and blue plastic civil war soldiers, using HG Wells' Little Wars rules (as best we could) so finding "the big kids" playing a fantasy-medieval battle was a bolt from the blue.

Towards the end of the Chainmail battle, I recall there was a siege where some individual characters entered a mine under the castle walls and were confronted with some kind of crypt with other adversaries - they were using D&D for that, which had just come out.

We went on to play D&D and other RPGs with the fanatical fervor of youth for several years, then life dragged be away and I only returned to the hobby in the early naughties (2000- 2003). We played DD3.5 for several years before shifting to Pathfinder (PF1) and then to PF2 on its launch in 2019. Now, we're playing online (FVTT) mostly once a week, and just had our third annual marathon weekend sessions (12 hours Saturday, 12 hours Sunday). It's been great fun, and now that I'm retired I find I enjoy gaming as much as in the '70s.

To the OP, if you're tired of DD5e, try PF2. It can be very free-form RPG roleplaying, or very tactical map & figure based skirmish style, or anywhere in between, depending on how you and your group lean.

[SgtSlag]

If members here are interested in a fast play RPG, I would suggest 2e BattleSystem Skirmishes (PDF format only):  each Fighter has 1 Hit Point, per level, essentially; every successful Hit, inflicts one HP of damage, so combat is fast, furious, and deadly.  You still have level advancement, armor, spells, etc.  All of the trappings for the RPG are there, but combat is super-fast-play.  It is based on 2e AD&D RPG rules (Monster Manual; DM's Guide; Player's Handbook), which are available in POD and PDF.

I've run some one-off games, with figures and full 3D terrain, as well as 2D dungeon/cavern terrain.  Combat plays fast!  Yet we still had the RPG experience in these games.

There are plenty of options available out there.  Cheers!

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

That’s the sort of thing that I like about FoL/TOBH most figs have very few hit points and a hit almost always takes out a fig.  The whole 20th level warrior of 180 hp taking forever to kill by attritional “thousand cuts” removes the tension of battle.  Every hit, once made, should have a chance to kill. The earned hero point mechanic to allow a rare reroll in ToBH when things go awry just seems so much more tense…players go looking for a chance to get one.

[mikedemana]

This discussion has come up a few times in our group recently. We have moved from playing bigger 15mm battles over the years to 28mm skirmishes. I made the point to my friends that we were really kind of returning to our D&D roots. Our D&D games 40+ years ago never really had a lot of role playing, problems solving, or story telling. We were more of a "kick open the door and kill the monsters" group.

A friend of ours recently returned to our group after 5 years absence or so, and he really wants to blur the line even more. He started a superhero skirmish where we control one character. His first two scenarios have been really light on the fighting and definitely feel more like role playing. Of course, he has floated the idea from time to time over the years running a role playing campaign again. We have talked him out of it, though I think he's suckering us in on this one... 

That said, I want to run Sellswords & Spellslingers for the group, and I really can't see each controlling more than two figures (two might be even better as we average six players in our games). That gets really close to the one character RPG kind of feel, though my games will be focused on the combat and the storytelling will be the thread the unites the scenarios into a campaign.

There is definitely a very close similarity between RPG and skirmish. Depending on the game master, you could have a very skirmish-like RPG game (our old D&D) or RPG-like skirmish game (Pulp Alley is another that blurs the lines).

Good topic!

Mike Demana

[Patrice]

I think I like how this thread is going.

The kind of skirmish games I like to run (as GM, historical of fantasy) is: each player is a character who commands a small troop (10 or 20, or sometimes 30 soldiers). The PCs has two life points, all others only one (except some adventurers very small cliques where everyone could have 2 hit points).

The PCs have missions, or obvious interests to do something; with one or two secondary objectives to give them too many choices to think about... They may also take advantage of anything else they find (often surprising the GM).

Depending on context and scenario, the players can be on opposite, enemy sides (with slightly different objectives unknown of their allies) or on the same side (with slightly different objectives too) ...and what I like most is when at the beginning of a game they don't know if they are all on the same side (vs the GM) and strongly suspect each other.

Large fantasy monster have a random number of HP, not very big, for example: 1D3, 1D4... that means roll the die every time when a new wound happens, you never know before if it will kill the beast or not yet (till the last one).

[Padrissimus]

I love this discussion. My gaming groups had a GM (me) from the off, as we started using formal rules (after many a young childhood year of mucking about with toy soldiers) with Traveller, then continued with Warhammer (both RP and WG). Now in our very king running WG campaign, I am the GM, and the players are rolplaying rulers, and wargaming their armies when required.

An example, however, or a stark way of connecting RP and WG, was when I ran several two day (weekend get togethers) sessions, where the first session was WFRP (1st ed) which then modified (or not) a 6th ed WFB game the next day. Like when a PC party of saboteurs tried to inflitrate the camp of an army of pirates, so as to blow up as much of their powder as possible. In the subsequent wargame, the pirate army's ability to shoot more than a few times could thus be affected. Or when another PC party attempted to divide, or lure off a portion of, a huge horde of Skaven, affecting what forces the Skaven could bring to the field in the battle the next day. Added fun was having surviving PCs, who also got away, present in the force on the tabletop.

Not the subtlest method of amalgamating RP and WG, but fun. Also quite different to how our WG campaign is being run - although if a player ever sent a PC party type group to do something important/interesting, I would happily put together an RP scenario and play it out.

(Edit) Also, my RP often looks very much like my WG, as in tabeltop, scenery, figures. I turn every fight in our adventures into a wargamed skirmish. I have most often done so, and find it much clearer to picture and keep a track of this way. I do have to speed-make a lot of scenery though!!!