Tony Bath's Wargames Campaigns - Characterization
Nov 4, 2016 2:34:02 GMT -5
Admin Pete, tetramorph, and 3 more like this
Post by jmccann on Nov 4, 2016 2:34:02 GMT -5
There are multiple people interested in discussing Bath's writings about campaigns, Hyboria, and so on, so I'll start with this post. I am reading through the Characterization chapters of Tony Bath's Ancient Wargaming edited by John Curry. I have the edition printed in 2009 (noted on p. 2).
My interest in the topic is similar to Bath's although the outcomes of the characterization for Bath were more closely limited to military or political or dynastic events than would be the case for my campaign or for most current RPGs. Despite the lack of what we call role-playing, Bath put a lot of thought into characterization in order to have a rich interplay of simulated personalities as a backdrop for the battles and campaigning which were the main point. Role playing as we think of it does not seem to quite exist though. On p. 109 we read how "We - the Controllers, that is - " used characterization to resolve what should happen when a nobleman runs out of money to pay a band of mercenaries (spoiler alert - it does not end well for the nobleman). So the characters and their relationships serve as a framework for generating and resolving in-game situations. They are more or less like NPCs.
Bath describes planning out the offices of the systems of government for each country, using historical or mythical systems from the governments of several regions and periods of history as well as the Hyborian world of Robert Howard. This section reminds me of the section in the 1e DMG starting on p. 88 labelled "SOCIAL CLASS AND RANK IN ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS" which lists forms of government, ranks, and social classes.
Now that the slots in the government model are created, he generates families to populate the available slots. His procedure involves some strange dice and a quirky procedure for generating random numbers. With the wide availability of polyhedral dice and widespread understanding of how to use them to generate populations of game entities, the specific procedures Bath uses to generate random numbers is not of great interest (other than historical, but I am concerned with using elements for gaming) while the outcomes are. In a later post I may consider the population generated by following Bath's procedure.
And I will end this here. I'd like to hear anyone's thoughts on any of this, especially if you have used something like this in game play.
My interest in the topic is similar to Bath's although the outcomes of the characterization for Bath were more closely limited to military or political or dynastic events than would be the case for my campaign or for most current RPGs. Despite the lack of what we call role-playing, Bath put a lot of thought into characterization in order to have a rich interplay of simulated personalities as a backdrop for the battles and campaigning which were the main point. Role playing as we think of it does not seem to quite exist though. On p. 109 we read how "We - the Controllers, that is - " used characterization to resolve what should happen when a nobleman runs out of money to pay a band of mercenaries (spoiler alert - it does not end well for the nobleman). So the characters and their relationships serve as a framework for generating and resolving in-game situations. They are more or less like NPCs.
Bath describes planning out the offices of the systems of government for each country, using historical or mythical systems from the governments of several regions and periods of history as well as the Hyborian world of Robert Howard. This section reminds me of the section in the 1e DMG starting on p. 88 labelled "SOCIAL CLASS AND RANK IN ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS" which lists forms of government, ranks, and social classes.
Now that the slots in the government model are created, he generates families to populate the available slots. His procedure involves some strange dice and a quirky procedure for generating random numbers. With the wide availability of polyhedral dice and widespread understanding of how to use them to generate populations of game entities, the specific procedures Bath uses to generate random numbers is not of great interest (other than historical, but I am concerned with using elements for gaming) while the outcomes are. In a later post I may consider the population generated by following Bath's procedure.
And I will end this here. I'd like to hear anyone's thoughts on any of this, especially if you have used something like this in game play.
