Monday 24 September 2012

Musings and Newsings

POWERGAMING vs NARRATIVE WARGAMING

On Saturday night, Dan and I visited a Wargaming Club in our locality at http://www.sadwc.co.nr/ that he had found on the internet. Now Dan used to frequent the Chelmsford Bunker until he was accused (rather bizarrely) of being a POWERGAMER!

The reason for this vile and foul insult?

He cheered once!

Now, I love nothing more than beating Dan on the field of battle and laughing in his face, as he reciprocates frequently, but I could never conceive him to be a POWERGAMER. No loop hole rich armylists for he, no cheese laden flavour of the month armies either, just a force made out of the models he likes visually, coupled with some interesting rules.

We were made welcome by the guys who frequent the group and found the Village Hall they use to be very well stocked with scenery and very large gaming tables. Perfect really! Especially when you have a look at the games they play there. A nice range of historicals, to fantasy to sci fi.

To quote Dan; "When GW get it right... they get it right! Shame they get it wrong most of the time!" This game best
proves that particular point to be true.

We had taken a copy of Space Hulk Third Edition with us (a game we used to play a lot of a few years back) and had a brilliant time playing The Artefact Mission. I was the Terminators while Dan took the Genestealers.

I was thrashed of course!

But it was a wonderfully fun game. One thing that we have always done is remind each other of forgotten rules, even if that rule is detrimental to our forces, though Dan is a bit of a LAWYER when it comes to strict interpretation of the rules. So quite how the POWERGAMER tag was bandied in his direction, as he's a rather honest gamer.

Dan and I mid game some years ago. Note: getting my son interested at an early age!
We discussed how though a straight line up and fight game was interesting we'd always prefer to play game with a strong narrative element. Hence, the switch to Slave to Darkness and using Realm of Chaos properly. Some of you may be aware that Lost and the Damned contains a comprehensive Narrative Wargame system  and I plan to be using it to develop and produce each of the campaign's games.

But more on that in a later post.

So which do you prefer in your gaming? Narrative or non-narrative?

CHAOS WEAPONS 


I am sure that many of you are familiar with the Chaos Weapons in Slaves to Darkness. Well, I am proud to unveil my new chaos weapon onto the blogging world!

Just don't slip..!

Cutting up old school miniatures is a bit of a task and I hope this beauty is going to make the process smoother than using some old hacksaw. Especially when you consider what arrived in the post this morning,

Restoration will be sweet.
Two broken 80s miniatures! These sad souls will be soon brought back to life as my Khorne and Nurgle champions for my next campaign. Both of these beasts need a weapon fix and will need their heads removing. Khorne (on the left) will be requiring a pinhead attribute while Nurgle (on the right) will be receiving a chaos gift of a face of a beast of Nurgle.

I hope to start work on these tomorrow evening!

OLDHAMMER GOES PUBLIC!

This Friday, Dan and I will be putting on a demo game of Realm of Chaos at http://www.sadwc.co.nr/ and I believe that this may be the first public outing for Oldhammer, though I may well be wrong! If you are in the area pop along and visit us or just wait in the comfort of your arm chair and wait for the extensive battle report over the coming weekend.

Orlygg.

4 comments:

  1. Oh, narrative. Definitely. I couldn't give two hoots for points balance, winning or losing. It's all about the creation of a narrative tale for me. Which is one reason why I prefer playing in campaigns to one-off games.

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  2. Narrative of course.
    I'm fed up with "powergaming", I've got no problems with noisy guys ;) just I'm fed up with those who don't paint their armies, who want to win and only to win with combos...there are to many of them...and i don't say that because I was a loser :D...I'm not always lucky with dice but I was always in the first guys when I used to play in tournaments

    Narrative...certainly, the best way to gaming...
    Realm of chaos gives a lot of inspiration.

    David

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  3. Narrative of course...I don't mind a straight up game every now and again...but a story at least makes it more interesting.

    Great to see you corrupting the little one right off the bat!

    Blue

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  4. Narrative, please! I have come to realize over the years it is who you play with as well. I have a very tight knit group I play with, we are all familiar with each other and our habits good and bad. So we tend to have a good time no matter what we are doing.

    I have always said I would much rather lose over a good well thought out game then win in an unimaginative lined up slug fest. I get kind of tired of fights to the last man.

    Good luck on the public game. Would be interesting to see your campaign expand.

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