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Author Topic: Making a campaign diary  (Read 596 times)

Offline S J Donovan

  • Scientist
  • Posts: 354
Making a campaign diary
« on: April 28, 2022, 02:48:21 AM »
Looking for suggests on making up a campaign diary (maybe similar to Grant's Wargames Campaign).  Not necessarily important to this idea but it will be for an 1880s imaginary army campaign against various enemy states.

Offline has.been

  • Galactic Brain
  • Posts: 8235
Re: Making a campaign diary
« Reply #1 on: April 28, 2022, 06:53:57 AM »
Over the years I have wanted & tried to have such.
All have failed, for various reasons:-
Not everyone commits to the idea/work,
It becomes a chore,
It takes longer than the gaming (tail wagging the dog),
Essential players leave, don't contribute or lose interest.

My suggestion is to do it as a kind of scrapbook.
For each campaign day/week/month whatever produce...something.
Some times it will be full battle reports/maps/gossip etc.
other times just something like a newspaper clipping.
The important thing is to keep it ticking over.

I have spent ages (& ages) doing all the campaign background,
maps, characters, army lists etc. etc. etc. Those ALL FAILED.
What you need is a 'coat hanger' upon which you can 'hang' your
campaign. For me this is normally a nice map (I like maps :D)
We play one game  & that tends to lead to the next game.
The Romans win, so the Carthaginians will retreat. Now where
would they go? ...

This has meant, not only longevity of the campaign, but a heck of
a lot less work/hassle/frustration.

I hope this helps.

Offline Elbows

  • Galactic Brain
  • Posts: 9451
Re: Making a campaign diary
« Reply #2 on: April 28, 2022, 04:03:17 PM »
What media are you planning on using?  An easy way would simply be a blog following each game, with pictures and occasional maps, etc.

However that's less cool than a simple nice bound paper journal, etc.  However then you won't be adding much in the way of photos or maps lest they be hand-drawn.  However, it would be kinda cool to simply see it as a log-book from later wars.  An entry for a diary could be as simple as:

"August 12, 1832.  General Mailar carried out a defensive action against elements of the Artusian cavalry on the outskirts of Heilburg.  Heavy casualties sustained.  General Mailar himself was injured in the fighting."

Done.  Doesn't have to be anything fancy, just a couple of foot notes and add in any particular flourishes, such as "Light infantry under Corporal Juut fought bravely to the last man, ensuring the safe retreat of the artillery.", etc.

Don't be too verbose or even you won't want to read it later.  But a large paper tome with a log-book style of bulleted quotes and anecdotes could be really cool to flip through later in life. 
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Offline S J Donovan

  • Scientist
  • Posts: 354
Re: Making a campaign diary
« Reply #3 on: April 28, 2022, 09:52:56 PM »
has.been Over the years I have tried all you indicated with varying success since they were mail campaigns.  The best part was writing a newspaper with all the news that fits.  Now I am looking for something more structured.  That I can keep up with on at least a weekly basis therefore I am looking at Grant's campaign book system.  Maps are cool, I was once a map maker in the Army so maps are a big thing for my campaigns.

Elbows I have gone the blog way and was not very satisfied with the outcome.  Basically, it took more time for the blogging than all the game prep and table campaigning.  That's one reason I have come back to paper/journal idea.  At 76 now I want to look back, hopefully fondly, on past games.  I can do that with my past mail campaigns, but they were decades ago, and I have a large unpainted lead pile for campaigns yet to come (1960-64 Congo, Malaysian Communist uprising, several campaigns on Jack Scruby's Mafrica, and the Back of Beyond.

I am putting together my own basic campaign system (stolen from the best sources in my wargaming library) with combat based around The Sword and the Flame and its' various iterations. 

Appreciate your thoughts.

Offline has.been

  • Galactic Brain
  • Posts: 8235
Re: Making a campaign diary
« Reply #4 on: April 29, 2022, 12:33:36 PM »
Quote
Maps are cool,
  Hear, hear! :D

A nice idea, but the two times I've attempted it failed through player apathy,
is to give each player/country a terrain budget. e.g. the master map will be
on hexagon paper. Each player gets a sheet & designs his country.
What goes onto (or in the case of rivers alongside) the hex costs.
Barren desert = quarter of a point,  City= 20 pts, Mountains =5pts.
Rivers = 1pt per hex side. Good roads = 2pts per hex. & so on.
Player a) is Greek Hoplite based, so has several cities, lots of mountainous
terrain (clear hex between = pass) Rivers, & good roads.
Therefore his country is relatively small.
Player b) is Nomadic Arab based, so lots & lots of barren desert, no cities,
roads or rivers, but the occasional oasis. Result is that his country covers
a lot of map hexes.
Once the players hand their maps to the umpire the fun begins.
1) mess around with the countries (I used blue-tac ) until 'happy'
    Players don't decide which way up their country is.
2) There will be gaps between the countries, well this isn't a jig-saw puzzle.
    The gaps get filled with:-
     Mountain ranges, thick forests, seas, even 'independent' little countries.
     If the umpire wants he can stretch a players country for a better fit, but
     I never needed to.
3) Either give players an accurate master map, or one based on what they
    are likely to know, and play the campaign.

As I said, I failed twice to get this off the ground, but I did have fun with it.

Offline eilif

  • Scatterbrained Genius
  • Posts: 2383
    • Chicago Skirmish Wargames
Re: Making a campaign diary
« Reply #5 on: April 29, 2022, 03:38:52 PM »
It's been a while since we did one but we've had pretty good luck blogging our campaigns.  Click on the Campaign tab here:
https://www.chicagoskirmishwargames.com/blog/campaigns/
and you can see some of the campaigns from the past.  Usually it's just an introduction post for setting -often including a map and some background- followed by semi-narrative blog posts for each game night as the campaign goes along. 

I don't think we've ever stuck rigidly to a "conquer the map" sort of campaign, but just having a map -especially one with varied terrain gives nice narrative impetus for various scenarios and terrain themes/setups.

Nothing too complicated, but it does keep all involved updated as to the state of the campaign and usually we're able to craft them into some sort of an arc that leads to a climactic final battle or two to end the campaign. 

I don't know how many folks outside the club ever read them, but I've quite enjoyed going back and reviewing our past campaigns from time to time.

 

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