How to Play D&D Like a Wargame Part 2- Theory Into Practice Reflections
In response to overwhelming readership of my first article on running the “Grand Campaign” using AD&D first edition, 1:1 time, Rules as Written adjudication, use of random tables over prepared storylines or modules I’d like to write a follow up based on nearly a year's worth of play in this style (close to 3 years worth now). A the time of writing the original article, I had been a player in #Brosr style games for about a year, but my own campaign was still mostly a module based campaign, and I had only just begun to implement all of the elements of Brosr style play. Now that I have done all of that and the #Nappendixia Campaign is now a fully functioning living campaign in 1:1 time fully using all the AD&D rules, I can speak anecdotally on what that experience has been like for me and all the players who have come through the campaign in the last year. It should be noted that my personal experience in this style of play comes from the group of player’s known as the Brosr, I’ve played in several campaigns with many of them and had great and fun experiences with them. In my opinion, what they do is the best attempt at playing AD&D 1e correctly, truly seeing the overall interaction of all the rules in the game. Yes it can be done without AD&D 1e, not all Brosr games use it, but it’s what I have taken to, and I can’t see a better way to run this kind of game without just going with the original source material. So for the remainder of this article, I will refrain from phrases like Brosr style play, grand campaign, etc, and I will simply use AD&D. The Brosr as a whole, and Jeffro Johnson specifically through his prominence as developer, writer,and speaker on this type of play are where my foundations lie, so whatever the reader’s opinions may be, that is where my allegiances lie, but from here on out this will be a straightforward article on my and my player’s own experiences in our campaign. If you read the first article (you really must read it first I’m going to reference it some) and were curious how this type of game persists over time, and what kind of struggles one may face when trying to maintain a campaign over the long haul, these were my real world thoughts and struggles over the last year that may shed some light on what it’s been like.
New people contact results in about 25% follow through- When I made my first push to acquire new players I advertised on twitter, and was fortunate enough to have some fellow gamers retweet me to boost the message. In all 20 people joined the Nappendixia server through this push, and 5 ended up being regular players. I have had similar confirmation form other DMs trying to get new players through similar means. About a 25% success rate. Some people really want to play but are overcommitters, some just want to check out the discord and don’t have any real intention of playing, and others belong to that odd slice of gamers who exist tangentially to playing the game, they are much more into buying the books and talking about the next game they will be running/joining. Gamers are like cats, don’t try to herd them, just know if you’re looking to add 1 new player to your game, get 4 potential candidates. If you have a large enough gamer community local to you, that’s another nut entirely, success rates will vary. One thing to be mindful of is recruiting from 5e and other modern gaming scenes. There’s a big learning/acceptance curve from 5e/story/freeze time style play and AD&D style play, expect consternation from some of these folks. My additional smaller pushes to find a new player here and there have been similar, gaining roughly 1 new player for every 4-5 respondents. Also be mindful that places like twitter are exhaustible resources. There’s only so many people on there looking for this type of game, so after 3-4 tries not too many new eyes are falling on your requests. Of course all of this hinges on consistently written session reports. See below, but obviously session reports are your best recruitment tool.
7-8 is max session size (up to 9)- When running your game online, the nature of the audio prevents people from talking over each other, so larger online groups can feel a little cramped. In a live in person table, small side conversations spoken quietly can occur while the DM is addressing the group, little crossover talking that happens all the time at live gaming tables cannot happen online. This can cause some frustration as people are waiting for a pause in conversation to speak. Also at that number you are likely to have varying degrees of audio quality, not everyone uses headphones etc. so just be mindful of room for all to talk in the voice chat. I found that a bigger group of 8 or 9 can work but is unsustainable, it’s too many to expect regular attendance from all, and some people shy away from larger games so what I found is you might have 5 1 week, 7 the next, 9 the next, then back down to 5 or 6, which can make for a flavorful sequence of sessions. It just seems there are too many variables to expect any consistency at that group size. Also be mindful of DM fatigue at that size it can be a lot to manage. I personally find the ideal group size to be 4-5.
Patrons like freedom of choice, many like small factions constructed from random tables, but still lots of variety exists from patron in interest, knowledge, effort, intensity, and duration- My original idea for patrons was to take some classic modules and distill them down to a list of characters/creatures, locations, and magic items/treasure and give them to patrons as their initial resources that they could setup and distribute throughout their territory as they saw fit. That did not get much reception, as my early interests for patrons either wanted something generated from the random tables, or they already had a concept they wanted to work out. Others still wanted to run factions that were already established in our game lore and were currently NPCs. I had one patron hook into the module idea, but I’ve found that patrons should be dealt with on a case by case basis, as they all have different interest levels, knowledge levels, and staying power. I find it best to just be thankful for anyone that wants to participate as a patron and use whatever they give you for as long as they stay active. So far in my experience, all patrons involved in my campaign have eventually moved on, but not before leaving behind a nice little legacy of content. I have found this type of stuff to be especially useful after letting it sit, just waiting for the PCs to return to that area or re-ignite interest in that faction. We had generated a red dragon off the random tables one night in session play, and a player subsequently took over that dragon as a patronage. He generated a bunch of content for the dragon and his minions and left written descriptions of plans and personalities. After the player moved on from the campaign, I assumed the dragon took a long sleep and left it all to lie and marinate. Much later on in the campaign when I needed a villain to create a conflict with the PCs settlement I had all the dragon content and it provided for a good amount of session fun/content all generated organically and saving me time in generating the details myself.
Patrons will come and go, don’t try to manage them, it's like herding cats, just use and appreciate whatever they contribute- As above, be flexible with people who want to be patrons in your game, and appreciate whatever they add to the game and use what is good. It’s a tough sell to get someone to invest in your game world as a patron. Gamers tend to be quite creative types, and it can be difficult and a commitment for one creative person to invest their creative energy in what ultimately is someone else’s creative property. Who is to say your game world is so vibrant and attractive that it can garner contributions form other creative gamers? Why isn’t my game world the bespoke universe we all set our creative sword and sorcery energy into? You can imagine the conflicts that could potentially arise when asking/expecting people to invest time and energy into your gameworld, as much as you may try to cultivate a campaign culture that is a collective world where everyone can contribute. Again, the tactic here is to just be open and appreciative of whatever your patrons may create for as long as they stay active. Also if you have players who run their own games offer to return the favor and be a patron on their games. You can learn a lot being a patron in someone else’s game. It gives perspective of what aspects of Patronages are fun, and what are more tedious, what it feels like to get behind on your patronage bookkeeping, and how to maintain some involvement in the game when your time/interest level wanes. It is good to see the other side of being a patron.
Session reports are essential- Full stop. Do not run a session without writing a session report. Be sure to include the session date, session number, PCs attending, time passed, casualties, and some account of what happened in session. I like to do an “Adventure Log” that accounts for the events of the session and a “Session Notes” where I do a little analysis of the game, rules that came up etc. They are a time commitment, but the only way to show what you are doing and maintain a record of what has happened. Players do not remember nearly as much as you think from session to session. The reports are a great place for them to refresh what has been happening, especially in 1:1 time where players can miss a session and want to know what they missed. It also gives a reference point for new players who join and want to get a feel for what has been going on in-game without a big time-consuming monologue in session. Session reports are also the best way to generate new players. By publishing your session reports in a blog that you create and loosely promoting your reports on gamer related social media (I use X/Twitter) you will get eyes on your session reports. My blog recently started getting about 1000 views per month. That’s a slow accumulation of readers from consistent posting of session reports (my game is currently 99 sessions deep, with a report written for each session), but that’s also a lot of eyes for a few guys who get together twice a month on discord to play AD&D. If it’s not worth writing a session report for, it’s not worth playing it out. I actually counter this occasionally with some solo play that I do not document at all. Most solo players keep meticulous records and publish them as videos or blogs. I instead use solo play as a loose way to roll dice and try out systems without the formality of session reports. I don’t do a lot of solo crawling however, so I don’t take it seriously.
Introducing your campaign after its kickoff is difficult as there are/can be frequent new arrivals (have new player docs prepped)- It’s been a while since our campaign has had members coming and going, at the time of my starting of this writing there was a bigger group and more in flux, whereas currently we have a solid group of regulars and have shied away from new people. There have only been 2-3 times in the life of the campaign where it felt like there was a surge of new players/returning older players. There have been basically 3 eras of the campaign, each with a core group of 3-4 players that played regularly, and each of those eras had a period of an additional 3-4 players who played briefly or expressed interest but never formally joined the game. I found that during those times of higher interest it was helpful to have a new player's document that gave some background on the game world and a thorough explanation of how to do character generation. It can also be helpful to have a channel on your Discord for new player resources and questions. New players tend to want to roll up their own characters right away after making contact with the campaign and it’s helpful to have it written out exactly how you prefer your group to do char gen. Once the campaign starts it’s going- I found it very difficult to find a relaunch point or a “hey everyone here’s a great time to get started or rejoin after a hiatus” point in the game. I also found that some new players don’t want to know a lot of background info. They would rather discover it in game, and I respect and make space for that type of player. I try to keep my game sessions the same structure- attend to any downtime stuff, see what the party intends to do that evening/give a few hooks or suggestions if need be, let them plan their exploration and plot what day they leave, track the travel and adjudicate the game, leaving a little time at the end of the session to track travel back to a settlement. I have very recently put my game on hiatus- after 99 sessions and 99 session reports I am taking a few months off from running sessions and will return again this Summer. That will certainly be a time for a “relaunch” resurgence/recruitment of new players. I will have to see how that goes.
Emergent Play vs Pre-designed Campaign Elements- balance is key, just a few pre-made “storylines” or locales is enough. You will accrue emergent play elements every session, leave a lot of open space for that to develop in- I was surprised by how much content was created in game through things turning up on the random tables along with spur of the moment ideas that came to me. I decided early on that the campaign world would be flavored by 70s-80s Sci-Fi movies, in addition to Appendix N lit, and set about placing a few attractions in that vein in the game world, and flavoring the main settlement with a similar theme. I put together a lot of characters and settlement locations, taverns, tradesmen, guilds, prominent characters, probably too much, definitely much more than my players have ever engaged with. I would start with a few taverns with a few prominent characters each, and a list of other town services (and their names, names are hard to come up with on the fly, the rest is easier), and wait to flesh out much more as the players express interest in the things on your list. I put a nearby dungeon location (though I made it not as close or as accessible as the player would like, causing them to not be overly interested in it) that also had some 70s sci-fi flavor to it and that was enough. Over time I had players making connections to random things I would casually mention in a session that made so much sense I would further incorporate the idea into the game. That’s how we got the crab-men at the oasis' love for silver connected to their desire to find a long lost vending machine filled with cool refreshing magical beverages. Stuff like that would get mentioned and it would make so much sense it would be like, well of course, you figured it out! I do look back and see a blur of things that came up in session and then got left by the wayside due to some other interest occupying a session. A better DM would be recording all of these factions and elements and adjudicating what they are doing in downtime. I am not that DM and cannot commit that level of commitment and organization, but I do however have access to my session reports and can go back at my leisure to mine the reports for errant creatures and scenarios that can be reintroduced into the game. In fact, I do intend to do that on our campaign’s current hiatus- mine the session reports for creatures, characters, etc that have been birthed into the world and have not been heard from in a while. A little development could provide with some resources that could be pulled out as needed in future sessions. I also intend to use the session reports to make more personalized regional random encounter tables based on occurrences from previous sessions.
Random encounter/ Reaction Rolls are essential- This must be ingrained to you as a DM. Live and breathe the random encounter tables and the reaction roll table. I’m returning to finish writing this article after starting it many years ago, and now revisiting this bullet point, it’s so obvious and ingrained in me now I don’t think I would have even considered listing it in my current DM state of mind. Do them always. And you never know what kind of opportunities to parley when you roll up a random encounter with a reaction roll of friendly. It can make for a fun encounter, as well as avoiding encounters and using the pursuit rules. There’s lots of gameplay in this segment of the game. Honing your skill in this area also lends itself to doing well and running 0 prep sessions as will be addressed below.
City Encounters can be done fun and effectively- having your settlement loosely fleshed out helps this a lot, giving your players a few locations and people to seek out. I find the tables in the DMG are perfectly adequate, avoid augmenting or improvising the tables and of course use reaction rolls. Also feel free to roll for random city encounters as players are assembling for a session. Often their in settlement prep accounts for at least a day of efforts, throw a few rolls for random city encounters and you’ve got yourself a nice little hook to start a session with.
Move towards 0 prep sessions- At the time of my starting writing this, several years ago, I was still doing some prep for games. It usually came down to me seeing what was created in recent session play and assessing the likelihood of players wanting to/having to interact with it again. Those things I would flesh out better, roll hp for, read over abilities and MM entries, flesh out villages or dungeons etc. Even that became boring/tedious over time, and not all of it got used. I feel that no matter what, no matter how you prep, when you are a DM who preps, you always have the prep hanging over your head as something you have to do before each session. Once it becomes unpleasant to prep, it starts being more desirable to cancel/postpone sessions, and then you are very quickly falling into the pitfalls of the 6 session campaign. The best prep you can do is to consistently be reading Appendix N books, keeping your mind and your instincts sharp. It can be scary to move over to zero prep sessions. It’s ok to look things up, it’s ok to take a breath and think something through. In a few sessions you get into a new zone of running games and it feels refreshing and freeing. Be brave and keep adlibbing and going with things off the top of your head, it's ok to go back later and think them through more clearly. Get it down in the session , then record it in a session report, then refine the concepts/characters/storylines over the course of session play. Early on in running zero prep session I wrote myself a note as a reminder, the note has since been added to my campaign folder and I regard it sometimes. The note says- “Use Random Tables/ Don’t Fudge Rolls/ Use Morale/Reaction Rolls/ Use Abduction/ Take Your Time” My new title for this bullet point would now be- Always Run Zero Prep Sessions!
Use your calendar, don’t change anything, use holidays. Managing 1:1 time will come naturally- I don’t use different names for months or anything like that, we call everything exactly as it is in real life. It just simplifies so many things. Same with the 1:1 time ratio, I’ve heard of other ways to run the passing of time, but I can only handle it at the 1:1 ratio. The same with holidays, they can add fun and flavor to your world, just remember they come around each year, so be prepared to recognize any holidays annually in your game. I have found 2 holidays, 1 summer, 1 winter works for our group. We use Christmas and Fourth of July and flavor them slightly to fit our campaign world. Holidays can be a good opportunity to run some city encounters, give gifts, and introduce political intrigue.
You will build up so many potential adventure hooks it will be difficult to catalog them all. Many will just be laid by the wayside- So true. I currently have a 3 ring binder filled with stuff that I thought I would need for the campaign- adventure hooks, locales, adventure seeds, etc, plus pages and pages of stuff that got generated/discovered in session then perhaps got fleshed out then stuffed into the binder for later development. Well, the binder is now so full and unwieldy it is basically unusable, it’s too full of stuff and is in desperate need of an organization. However you only have so much time to run your game and you focus on what is fun and what serves the group and the campaign so you end up with a lot of loose ends. I suppose you could make the argument from the perspective of someone who wants story from their games that it’s unfulfilling and doesn’t serve an overall narrative, but it does lend itself to life’s unpredictability and also the episodic nature of storytelling that can also be very fulfilling. Having too many adventure hooks to address in your fantasy roleplaying campaign is a good problem to have in my opinion.
Managing your Discord Channels/ Privates etc. get reliable audio, use your camera- Yes get to know your tech, despite having audio problems last session that I could not resolve until later, I have always invested some time into knowing how to use both the Discord channel and the related tech. I recommend not going overboard on extra channels for your discord, I could comment on what I find useful and what channel types I have found not useful but that likely varies by group. Just know that a bloated discord channel that’s hard to navigate impedes a superior campaign. Keep it as streamlined as possible. I also recommend decent quality wireless headphones, and definitely don’t try to run a game off your phone. Speaking of phones, I have found a fair amount of people who prefer/have to play on their phones, so be mindful of that. I have definitely enhanced my online sessions by including a document cam so myself and my players can see minis to represent marching order, to lay out combats, and also to show my dice rolls live on cam. I roll too many dice to roll them all on our dice rolling app on discord, that’s great for the players to use, but it would slow the game down if I used it. Rolling live on cam has really cemented the no fudge/ roll in the open way to run games. But I also recognize that players who play on their phones can’t really access the cam, so I still keep things generally theater of the mind. Nonetheless, I make sure I know how to use my tech and run my Discord channel well, despite not being much of a techie.
Fung Shui your DM area- This is crucial, don’t be the DM that always is looking for something in his stack of notes. Set your stuff up on a big table and utilize your space. If you’re serious and have the space, have a dedicated gaming area with room for your die rolling, books you reference, a space for minis, a place for campaign notes and a space to record notes on the session and adjudicate combats. I like to run that on a clipboard that I can move around as I play. I always fill out this sheet the same way and use it to record treasure, calculate xp, and write the session reports. Things I have found helpful include wireless mouse, dice rolling box, a small tray to place minis, and good lighting. Having multiple screens is probably the most helpful thing you can do to assist you in running games online.
Can it support 50 people? Can your campaign maintain the interest of 50 people? 1 DM, 8 players, 2-3 patrons has been about my max, it takes several hours a week- I think this may have been a question going on among the Bros years ago when I started this article, I’m not sure why/how this is on the list but I’ll comment. No the campaign cannot support 50 people simultaneously, however it could certainly support 50 people over its lifetime. I’d say there’s already been 30 or so people who have engaged with this campaign, but more importantly I have no interest in running a game that supports that many people. The above statement of 8 players and 2-3 patrons is from years ago, and that number did not last, however interest and effort have always been enough to make it fun and worth doing. Here we are many years later, and the campaign has just gone on hiatus with 3 regular players. If we can get 1-2 more people to join/rejoin when we pick back up I think that is the sweet spot for me for game size. 4-5 solid regular players is ideal for me. I no longer have several hours a week to run downtime things and play out various 1:1 factors. It’s just not sustainable, not many people have that kind of free time, but I have found scaling back downtime and out of session communications has not affected things too much. We always take the first 15 min of session time to adjudicate any downtime stuff, and the players have also come to adjudicate some things such as construction and hiring of mercenaries on their own.
Players remember little about your world/hooks at the beginning of play, they will remember more than you do once they invest in the game- Don’t overcomplicate the adventure in your world. Populate it with a few iconic characters and conflicts and let it grow organically. I find that more often it is my players that recall an event from the campaign’s past when revisiting an area or location more so than I do. They will also use them as resources to tap into when trying to acquire troops or allies, seek quests or sources of plunder, or trade partners. You never know what will stick in a player's mind, just keep it fresh and creative and pay attention to what people are paying attention to.
Empower your players- vet them and then let them self-adjudicate- Help your players find that level of elite play they are capable of. Those that stay, and commit and contribute to the game will figure it out and acquire a style of elite play and a stable of tools to get them that leg up in whatever situation they find themselves in. Through practice and guidance, my players have gotten adept at hiring their own mercenaries, calculating construction costs, thoughtful and creative spell use, and some have begun to run patronages and adjudicate conflicts that come up in down time. Now as they get to and approach name level they are starting to plan their domains.
Ideally players will spinoff and begin running their own 1:1 games- This is great for several reasons. First it’s just great to get another 1:1 time, abductive, player driven game on the map. Second, now there’s potential for crossover, will the campaigns connect? (They should) Are they on the same game map or do the worlds connect via portal? All those queries come up for your group to resolve, and it enhances play for both groups. Plus you, the DM, now have an outlet as a player should you have time to play in your player’s group.
Players that go on hiatus likely won’t return/ players use the drop in/ drop out style less than you think- I haven’t seen a lot of return players. I’ve since had one who played regularly, then dropped and rejoined after months, then dropped again. I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed back up again but he is the exception. I think most people are looking for a regular game and want to/have the time to show up regularly. I also think that casual play is a little diminished because casual players know their characters will always be behind on levels compared to the regular players. That’s not something that should be a big deal, multi level parties should be the norm, not the exception, but so much of rpg’s is driven by the player side of things, and most players push a little bit of ego through their characters and are thus reluctant to engage in a game where they may be deemed a second banana. Personally I would love access to a game like this as a player, something I could show up to on weeks when I had the time but not get into the scheduling nightmare that is being in a modern RPG group.
You will lose all interest in new games and gaming products. Once you have acquired all the original source materials you need for your game you won’t need any additional books or materials at all. You stop chasing the next big gaming product- This is true, I no longer scroll gaming sites looking for new releases/new games. I think that a lot of 6 session story gamer groups get caught in that loop, because as their short-lived campaign is losing steam, they and others in their group are noticing this new product and thinking- hey I’d like to run a game using this- which helps the demise of the current campaign and the immediate setup of the next campaign. When people are looking inward at what can the group create as a gaming group instead of what new product is going to give us this amazing gaming experience things flip and you start to get wonderful things from your campaign. Plus if you still want to collect cool books just put all that collector energy into acquiring a killer Appendix N book collection. You should always be reading Appendix N lit.
Your campaign will become a superior alloy of your personality and those of your better participants. It becomes a reflection of the personalities of your friends, not product driven/ personal driven- Do this- read the rules several times. Read the PHB and DMG in tandem, section by section. Really familiarize yourself with how combat works, play out multiple combats on your own and really check each rule interaction. Read the ADDICT document on combat that is a good resource to check yourself on how combat works. Be very careful looking for youtube videos or even Dragonsfoot questions about combat. Many of them are wrong! Stick to RAW, the ADDICT doc, and the Bros for help on combat. Read Appendix N Fiction! Lots of it! Run fun games for you and your friends. Encourage more friends to give it a try. Run groups online, run groups in person. Play your game seriously and present it in a way that exemplifies what is so special about AD&D.
