Fantasy RPG vs Fantasy Wargaming

[Ozreth]

Of course there is a lot of overlap between the two, especially when considering RPGs (D&D in particular) as played from the 70s into the 1990s.

Which do you prefer? I am a longtime D&D player and casual wargamer. I am lucky to still have the same group of players who have been with me a few decades now and are always willing to play. So time and players aren’t an issue for me (this seems to be a big one for many people as they get older).

But as of late I’ve felt dissatisfied with running D&D and have been more and more attracted to wargaming, both mass combat and skirmish with some story thrown in. I am unsure what the shift is happening and have been trying to feel it out. Am curious of others experiences on the matter.

[Elbows]

I find them to be completely separate, personally...but I've never enjoyed stuff like D&D (i.e. role-playing games which are 90% combat/meta-builds and using miniatures on a map, etc.).

I enjoy real theatre-of-the-mind RPG's...just pen and paper, without crunchy maps/tactical combat, etc. etc.  I find crunchy, arbitrary rules belong in a wargame and not a role-playing game. 

Having said that, I enjoy both genres, but don't run into much overlap.

[Ozreth]

I find them to be completely separate, personally...but I've never enjoyed stuff like D&D (i.e. role-playing games which are 90% combat/meta-builds and using miniatures on a map, etc.).

I enjoy real theatre-of-the-mind RPG's...just pen and paper, without crunchy maps/tactical combat, etc. etc.  I find crunchy, arbitrary rules belong in a wargame and not a role-playing game. 

Having said that, I enjoy both genres, but don't run into much overlap.

In that regard, do you separate OD&D and AD&D 1e/2e from 3rd edition onwards or consider them all one and the same under your parameters?

And which fantasy RPGs do you prefer? Games like Runequest and Call of Cthulu?

[Frugalmax]

For me and my group now there's a lot of overlap, but I come from the wargaming side and have just recently (relatively) gotten into actually playing the more "roleplaying side" of our campaign.

I started out with Warhammer Fantasy in the early 90's, and while I was always aware of RPG's, I never played a true RPG until trying WFRP 4e during Covid lockdown over Zoom (and even then I hardly knew what I was doing- but we had a blast!). I've played fantasy games for more than 30 years but never played a true game of D&D! That said we've had a long-running campaign that had spanned multiple games and rulesets, and so there always was a roleplay-ish element to what went on between games, and I was always attracted to the skirmish games and quest games that had elements of character and story in them (one of my favorite games was our original Necromunda campaign).

Now our campaign uses completely different games/rules from session to session based on what happens next. After each game night, I ask the players what they want to do next and design a scenario/game based on what they generally want their characters to do. So over the course of the campaign the players are basically roleplaying, even if only one in four or five sessions is a true "roleplaying" scenario.

For example- Three games ago we did a rank-and-flank battle game, in which the players took command of sections of an army. The next session the heroes were accompanying a messenger traveling with part of the army on their march home when they got ambushed in a mountain pass- a skirmish/heroic combat game. The last game they made it to the town, and after a celebration in the great hall, the messenger they were sent to accompany got framed for murder, and they had a day to find the real killer before their guy got separated from his head- a roleplaying game.

I'd love to hear what other people do! Does anyone else tie games together with "roleplay-lite" story decisions etc?

[Elbows]

In that regard, do you separate OD&D and AD&D 1e/2e from 3rd edition onwards or consider them all one and the same under your parameters?

And which fantasy RPGs do you prefer? Games like Runequest and Call of Cthulu?

Only ever played D&D recently, fortunately - ended up hating it and leaving the group.  I grew up playing WEG Star Wars, early "type-face" Palladium games like TMNT & Other Strangeness, etc.

Today, the only one which holds my attention is Dungeon World.

Re: Frugalmax

Yeah, if you're just talking about narrative...I don't mind putting loads of that into wargaming.  I'm fine with linked campaigns, etc.  I've written games that are based on developing your models with skills, abilities, etc.  As mentioned before though, I think those are firmly "wargaming" aspects.  To me, RPG's are first person, theatre-of-the-mind and their whole appeal is the lack of needing anything, so you're not limited like we are with miniatures/terrain, etc.

[Will Bailie]

I started out with AD&D around age 12, played loads of it, and moved on to other RPGs through my teen years and into university.  Once I graduated, got a job and started moving around more, I didn't have a regular group to keep any sort of campaign going.  But with disposable income, wargaming became more of a thing for me, and I could find gaming partners for one-off games or (less often!) short campaigns.  Now I that have a 12-year-old kid, I'm getting back to D&D and other RPGs with him (he's really keen on Call of Cthulhu). 

So for me, it's cyclical.

[SgtSlag]

I am a huge fan of 2e BattleSystem (mass battles) and 2e BattleSystem Skirmishes (mini's game with a thin veneer of RPG on top).

I've been DM'ing AD&D since 1980, switching to 2e AD&D in 1989.  I started playing 2e BS in 1992.  I love both, but the setup/tear-down of 2E BS and Skirmishes is a time-sink.

I own 1,500+ painted figures for 2e BS gaming.  My last game was in 2022?  We had 10 players, with me ref'ing it, with around 1,200 figures on the tabletop.  The battle was taken from our RPG sessions.  It was a blast!  My RPG players (3 of 4) played their PC's in the BS game.

Around 4 players in the BS game were veterans, the rest were noob's.  All of the noobs asked to be invited to the next BS game -- all were AD&D RPO'ers.

I would love to run more BS games, but life gets in the way.

I love tabletop war games because it is multiple hobbie rolled into one:  collecting, painting, terrain building, modeling, and, of course, gaming.

I think more RPG'ers would jump into wargames if they were given a chance to play in them, experiencing them without making an investment.  Once they get involved, they might make the investment in figures...  Cheers!

[ithoriel]

I find them to be completely separate, personally...but I've never enjoyed stuff like D&D (i.e. role-playing games which are 90% combat/meta-builds and using miniatures on a map, etc.).

I enjoy real theatre-of-the-mind RPG's...just pen and paper, without crunchy maps/tactical combat, etc. etc.  I find crunchy, arbitrary rules belong in a wargame and not a role-playing game. 

Having said that, I enjoy both genres, but don't run into much overlap.

I ran a campaign for decades using SPI's Dragonquest and when SPI went under I typed out the whole rule book on a word-processor and re-jigged the thing to be closer to what I wanted and ran the campaign for about a decade more with the "HeaddenQuest" rules.

My fantasy battle experience is limited to HotT, Warhammer, Mordheim and Warmaster. The latter being by far my favourite. The local club ran a couple of multiplayer campaigns with unit progression of sorts.

I loathed my limited experience of "theatre of the mind" RPGs as nobody seemed to have the same theatre in mind!!

Give me minis who have to trundle across the map over characters who seem to be able to teleport 200 yards from their last reported position to the heart of the action. For me, maps and minis keep players honest, YMMV.

I am one of those oldies who's chance to play face-to-face has dwindled to nothing, so I get my fix through things like 5 Parsecs and computer games like Elder Scrolls Online or Fallout 76. Pale imitations of the days when eight of us regularly got together of a Friday night, or Sunday afternoon and evening, to play.

Well, having got that off my chest, if you'll excuse me, I need to go see Ward and find out what Foundation have "mislaid" this time. 

[Padrissimus]

In 1983 I got a brand new game called "Warhammer, the Mass Combat Fantasy Roleplaying Game". So we started roleplaying with the rules, and used them for wargames too. I guess that mode, what some others saw as an overlap between two different hobbies, stuck with me ever  since. I very recently did a two part video on what that game was like, a mish mash of RP and WG, and how I got into it. (See below.)

Now, my Tilea campaign is an example of roleplayers wargaming (or wargamers roleplaying?!?) as the players play one character each, and all happen to command armies in the campaign. The RP takes the form of the strategy, diplomacy, communications, talking to their NPC servants, and other rulers (NPC or PC) and the wargaming takes the form of tabletop wargames.

The first (most pertinent) part of the video:

[Patrice]

I love to mix RPG and skirmish wargaming, historical, but also fantasy. 

Examples of RPG-minded fantasy games on wargaming terrains:
https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=94121.msg1161784
https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=143410.msg1830177#msg1830177

[punkrabbitt]

I started with D&D back in '79 and my first wargame was Striker for Traveller. I really got into WH40K Rogue Trader when it was released. Outside of Striker, I've never overlapped the plethora of RPGs and wargames I've played in the intervening years. I was at a Frostgrave and heard about an RPG group that did their verbal roleplay but when vombat came up they used Frostgrave.

I'm sure I had a point, I know I did. Oh well.

[Hobgoblin]

I like both and also like the overlap between the two, though it's sometimes tricky to achieve.

In general, I think theatre of the mind works best for RPGs, in that it allows much more to be done in much less time - and certainly much less prep time. And it tends to be more immersive, overall.

That said, in our four-year Basic D&D/RuneQuest campaign (we switched rules as we switched worlds and then back again ...), I used miniatures and scenery from time to time, and they worked really for big set pieces - like this encounter with the Demon Lord of Manticores in Hell:



Like Elbows, I tend not to like very crunchy RPG systems (I kind of make an exception for RuneQuest, but I increasingly think it's not the best system for Glorantha; the plus side might be that the amputations come so thick and fast that combat is discouraged and pure roleplaying then takes over!).

I would say that early D&D - whether the original set or Basic or Advanced - is a very simple and streamlined system that blends very well into wargaming. There are some great blog posts out there showing how easy it is to turn early D&D into a mass-battle wargame: the Monster Manual even gives you movement in inches and a very simple stat line for all kinds of troops! I think Gygax even has something about a 1:20 figure scale squirrelled away in one of the AD&D manuals.

It's worth noting, too, that Chainmail is still a pretty decent wargame that plays well, and it blends seamlessly into early D&D (it's one of the two combat systems in the original rulebook).

As my playing opportunities have shifted from every day (at the height of Covid) to occasions (when either the D&D group can be assembled or when I meet up with old school friends who still dabble every three months or so), I'm increasingly interested in scenario-based skirmishes that take on some aspects of role-playing.

For example, I'm currently working on a Gloranthan skirmish in the Big Rubble that will involve two or three players plus me effectively GMing (playing the adversaries common to all the player groups and springing surprises). The players will also be playing against each other, though temporary alliances may be forged along the way.

I reckon this will play out as a sort of 'proto-roleplaying', in that I expect people will get into character and speak in first person as the game goes on.

I'm also interested in the kind of early/proto-D&D that involves large groups of henchmen and players in opposition to each other as much as in cooperation. I think that sort of thing runs into the kind of skirmish game I'm planning at the moment.

There used to be a great video online of one of MAR Barker's original Tekumel players running a Tekumel game with miniatures, large retinues for each player and an above-ground area with a dungeon level beneath. That looked amazing - and it was clearly both an RPG and a wargame.

[fred]

Interesting reads.

When I started gaming in the 80s we played RPGs lots of AD&D 1e, and various others, MERP, WHFRP and Pendragon come to mind, and we played wargames, which were big Fantasy and WWII battles - with a fair overlap of players across them all.

But I don't recall that we ever tried to blend our RPG campaigns with our wargames.

With our RPG games we used figures and floor plans for combat, so this was probably pretty skimish wargame like - but it also included a lot of 'theatre of the mind' for non-combat, and some combat. At the time I don't think we knew what a skirmish wargame was, so never made that connection.

I do think there are some different expectations in an RPG and a skirmish wargame - mainly driven by having a GM/DM in the RPG who is running the world, and whilst playing the adversaries, he isn't playing against the players (generally!!). Mixing these two formats up when it's not expected can cause some challenges with expectations vs reality.

I've not played a RPG for years though, I think I now prefer the tactile (and tactical) elements of wargames, whether they are skirmish sized or mass battle.

[Hobgoblin]

I do think there are some different expectations in an RPG and a skirmish wargame - mainly driven by having a GM/DM in the RPG who is running the world, and whilst playing the adversaries, he isn't playing against the players (generally!!). Mixing these two formats up when it's not expected can cause some challenges with expectations vs reality.

That's certainly true. But, historically, wargames have often had a referee running the world (from Kriegspiel to early Warhammer, at least by the book). And RPGs can be a lot of fun when the referee goes all out to defeat the players in combat situations.

There are also expectations that players should be cooperating in an RPG. But that hasn't always been the case either; Gygax and Arneson's early campaigns has a lot of player vs player action (I think the cleric class was introduced to combat a PC vampire, for example).

So yes, running a 'hybrid' game does need a shift in expectations, but as long as everyone's clear, there's no reason that it can't work well.

For the game I'm currently plotting, I'm planning on building four sides on around the same points. I'll play the baddies (broos and perhaps a few other chaos creatures), who will benefit from a more defensible central position and a few surprises, but will suffer from being the target for everyone (Storm Bull berserks, Zorak Zorani trolls and dragonewts) - so everyone else can earn victory points by killing broos and the like. I'll play the broos to win, but I'll be hugely up against it and fully expect to be wiped out long before the game is resolved (the other three groups will be aiming to wipe out the chaos creatures AND make off with some valuable treasure, so they'll need to challenge each other even if they initially find common cause).

[snitcythedog]

For me, I prefer skirmish games.  In campaigns they have a RPG-lite feel and stand alone they are more wargame-lite.  Finding a solid RPG group tends to be one issue that puts me off and on the other side, I hate painting regiments.  Skirmish games tend to fit nicely in the middle.