Evolving Our Campaigns

Inspirobot knows what must be done...

So, 2020 has brought with it this whole big mess.  

I don't really want to get into it, you already know what it is.  Anyways, I haven't had an on-table game THIS ENTIRE TIME.  I'm a good boy.  

I gave up the idea of actually completing any of the wargaming campaigns that were currently in-progress or set to begin.  I had been thinking for some time about what the 'appropriate' number of games was for any specific campaign - and I think it's time we evolved our mindsets about what constitutes a wargames campaign and what we want to get out of one.

For the old club, this was easy.  As many games as you could physically play with that large a group of people was the appropriate number of games for that campaign.  This led to some truly epic campaigns, some of you may remember.  We kind of carried that mindset forward into the era of Iron Seer, but the hard stop earlier this year has put some things into perspective.  What this really means is that the big change we're enacting now is exactly the opposite of the ideas I had when we started - meaning more campaigns with fewer games in each.

I want to start campaigns up again, but it's going to have to be very different to accommodate what we need to call 'modern existence'.  For one thing, my area is in the middle of a 'flare-up' and lockdowns are rolling past like the cascade of doom it is.  Quarantines and self-quarantines are the order of the day.  I had already consigned the year as 'lost' even though I already declared 2019 my 'lost' year.  To be fair, I accomplished a lot more hobbywise this year than last but what-hoo.

So what's in the toolbox?  Let's put something on the menu.  I'm hangry for some wargaming.

Well, I've talked about Game Masters for wargames for some time now, and I think it's time I started running these campaigns more oriented toward that mentality.  Let us forgo the pretentions of tournaments and such - it's a pain to keep up with that anyway.

Instead of narrative-framed 'leagues' with lots of players and timed in months, I'm going to devise smaller campaigns focusing on smaller groups of players.  Instead of 'winners' in the campaign, they will operate more like RPG's in the narrative.  That is, it will worry about what faction wins, much like our team campaigns.  It will matter which player wins what, and who's the Op-For at the time (usually I'm sure this will be me).  I'm sure there will be some accolades in there to call out specific honors for each campaign.  Maybe we'll start a Hall of Honors on the site.

Anyway, look for campaigns to overlap.  We'll be keeping track of these in the Campaigner.  Generally any game will be open to anyone who wants to play.  I'll generally want to do a spotlight for games that I've recently introduced, but it's time to revisit some of the old ones nice and proper as well.