Refocusing

I initially created this blog to host my stories from the Warhammer Campaigns I was apart of. It was slow in the beginning because my group had the habit of ending campaigns early. For this blog that meant little was posted before the campaign it was based on was cancelled. The Border Prince Campaign was the first time I was able to produce a substantial amount of material here. Over time I've expanded what this blog about, such as including other war games that I play. The plan was to eventually have campaigns with other games but the core of this blog has always been Warhammer, until now.

I have come to the realize that my Warhammer world have fundamentally change and I need to adjust my blog because of it. When Age of Sigmar drop, it destroy my local Warhammer gaming community. Beside Phil and myself, it seems the rest of my peers have decide to move on to other games. None of them care for Age of Sigmar, which I can certainly understand. What is disheartening to me is that they seem to also giving up on Warhammer Fantasy as well. The games they are considering to move to are all games I have thought about getting into in the past but have decided I have enough on my plate for now. In about six months I will see how my peers still feel about 8th edition then. Or maybe I will have the funds to get into the games they are currently playing. In either case for now I have to contend with the fact I have only one opponent to play either Warhammer Fantasy or Age of Sigmar. That does put it in the same boat as Flames of War for me, just with a different opponent. At least Phil is still expanding his 8th edition forces and is interest in playing weird match ups.

Mixing games with my own fiction will still be a major part of this blog. I just have to use more than just Warhammer to tell my stories. Which games is something I still have not decided on. So much of this depends on who I get to help out and how much free time they have. Here are the games I'm considering. Legend of the Five Rings's Clan War is very appealing to me. While I have never read that deeply into the setting, I own the third edition RPG book and was in a short lived RPG game. In general I like the setting, I know several people who would be interested in playing and my podcast partner Tracy has A LOT of the models. However I have never played Clan War itself so I might not even like the system. Another downside is that I'm not sure Tracy could even commit to a campaign until the Summer. For a similar favor kind of game, Samurai Battles is also an option. It might be a little harder to get people into it but I do have my own small set of figures. If I could get enough interest in it then I would either be reliant on Tracy's large set or expand on my own. Fortunately, for a war game Samurai Battles is cheap to expand upon. For a completely different style of game I am considering Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition. Instead of a war game, Descent is an adventure game similar to a board game version of tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons. This will require work to figure out how to turn a gaming session into something I can post here as I don't want to just post videos of us playing the board game. The upside to Descent is that it will open the door to my friends whom are not interested in war games. I've actually have not played Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition, but I have played several games like it including very briefly the first edition version of Descent. I am confident that it will be a game my friends and myself will enjoy. Another option that I am much more reluctant to try is for me to game master a tabletop RPG. I would imagine it be even more difficult to turn gaming sessions into material I can use here than it would be for Descent. I've also been burnt out on tabletop RPGs in the last few years. There are two upsides to this. For one it will be by far the easiest for me to get people to join. Second, along with Descent will allow me to craft stories that are at a more personal scale. Instead of the focus being on large armies crash into one another, the stories can be on individual heroes trying to make a difference in the world. And I have to admit I still have the itch to want to GM a game. What system to use is yet another wild factor in all of this. Dungeons & Dragons 4th and 5th edition, Pathfinder, Anima and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay are all options on the table. No matter which of these options I go with, from Clan Wars to Pathfinder, the story I tell in them will be set in the same world as the one I created for the Border Prince campaign. This means a lot less for Clan Wars and Samurai Battle as their story would be literally on the other side of the planet. For the others while I won't visit the Border Prince region, I will connect them to my current lore in some way.

With all that said, Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar will still have a place here, albeit probably much smaller. I will be working on designing a narrative campaign that the two of us can play. It will be a very free from system where we decide how the outcome of each battle will affect the next. In some ways it reminds me of the End Times storyline. End Times was written in a cycle of the plot leading up to a battlefield confrontation, pausing the story to discuss who were the major characters of that battle, telling you the results of the conflict and then continue on with the plot that would eventually lead to another battle. The narrative campaign will be posted here in a similar way. One or more entries detailing the fiction that leads to a conflict. The next post will be a detail battle report of what happen during the game and the significant of it. The following posts will continue on with the story. I've never tried anything like this before. I am hopeful that it will work out but if it crash and burns, I will just have to come up with some else. I will also be playing some 8th edition and Age of Sigmar games that will be for fun and/or practice that will have nothing to do with the narrative campaign. If something interesting happens during those games or I learn something new I will have a post discussing them on the blog.

One last thing to mention is that I am also working to get a BattleTech event here. Unlike everything else I have mention so far, if the event gets off the ground, it will be in its own universe. However a lot of things needs to happen and I'm not confident that it will get done in a reason amount of time. If it does seem like it will happen I will talk more about BattleTech then. I will most more once I come to a few decisions. Until then.