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There are a number of cardboard wargames at the operational level that can be used to run miniatures campaigns. Examples include Kevin Zucker's Napoleonic era campaigns and the Great Campaigns of the American Civil War series.

Love campaign play, but it's always so hard to keep momentum going. Either one or two players snowball and end up conquering huge swathes of the map, or scheduling conflicts cause it to fizzle out. I've learned to just enjoy the moment of it and appreciate it while it's still there.

Great video Lee. Good mix of content I too started as a role player. Playing tunnels and trolls then moving to advanced d&d and call of Cthulhu (a game’s workshop book then ). I think that’s why I prefer games that have a good narrative not just capture the flag.

12:32 That is exactly how I GM my OG TT game I wrote the thing and intend for it to be the most pure Rules as written expance for a game of it's scope but a few days ago when I GMed I never opened the book nore had any written session guide planned out just an idea bqased on an event chain in Stellarus a 4X space video game.... And just got stuck in to the game with my Flags friends and it was one of my best sesstions. Which you can have this experience with wargames it's just you need to be solo or have a good friend who trusts you not to cheat.

Hi Lee; have tried running the odd campaign, but found that while some of our group are keen on the detail this brings, there were others who dislike the admin that it requires & the 'drawn out' length of the campaign. So it all boils down to the fact that you are either into the admin, depth & length of this concept or you are more into single battles - personally I am happy with both.

You could also look to the many solo-roleplaying tools and mechanisms designed to allow people to play RPGs without a GM. Most of these will have some sort of "Oracle", or generator of evocative phrases or imagery which is interpreted to add details or complexity to the game siuation. This could just as easily be applied to a narrative campaign at the tactical or grand strategic level to give the same sort of uncertainty that things like Chance carrds would.

Love Campaigns, running them or being involved. Map based are my favourite. Having clear objectives and suitable rules and unbiased umpires is also important. Do remember putting on a battle for a roleplay group where their characters fought on one side in the battle. Great viseo and topic.

As a Footnote. The Triples Wargames Campaigns site is not configured for use from a mobile. So if you wish to view, please do so from a Pad, Laptop or Computer. Cheers.

Nice response thanks Lee. Very thought provoking you make some very sound points I must say. I think the two campaigns that I've played that most closely align to your narrative ethos are the commercially available Dell’arte Della Guerra from Real Time Wargames and The King of Mann which was one I concocted myself. The first was a 15th century Condottiere campaign which was huge fun combining battles with diplomacy and back stabbing. It finished as a quite improbable tie for the win. If only Leonardo Da Vinci had completed the painting of the fallen Madonna in time then victory could have been mine! 😂 The second was set in the dark age as players controlled rival warlords vying for control of the Irish Sea and Western Isles. Again a massively narrative campaign with much inter-player diplomacy and massive swings of fortune as the one time front runner finished the campaign with his warlord's head on a spike outside Dublin's city gates. Both were huge fun and a real hoot whether playing or umpiring.

I am curious, Big Lee what edition of Dungeons an Dragons do you play and which one do you consider your favorite? I've played every version of the game but found I prefer AD&D 2E and the BECMI Rules Cyclopedia. I enjoy wargame campaigns but seldom had the chance to do so. If its an historical campaign you need players who know and understand the history to make the game better.

Play Unsafe! That's a blast from the past. It jives a lot with my own RPing tastes to this day. Fond memories of playing with Graham back at Indiecon many moons ago! Have you tried explicitly narrative-focused wargames like the Silver Bayonet?

Campaigns are the way to go.. especially as I am primarily a solo wargamer, they can take as long as you like and the narrative is half the fun. I confess mine are primarily sci-fi and the different parts of the campaign can use different game systems. I’ve always thought that the mechanics that I build to help with my opponents (I refuse to use the term AI cause its not) focus almost entirely on the commanders and their reaction to a tactical or strategic situation rather than a specific move here/ shoot that. Featherstone’s talk of a campaign diary is also a must and in writing these I find it becomes natural to expand on and infer the personalities and motivations of the commanders involved as you write.

Hey Big Lee! This is a subject that is near & dear to my heart. As a wargamer, I soon got to the point that fighting a single battle was no longer as satisfying as it had been. Campaigns are a way to deal with the "challenges" that a Commander would confront. I am interested in how a General can do everything right... and still come out on the short end of the stick! (I've been there more than once!) The characters that have been developed over the years are a joy. The triumphs and defeats of the Comte Armand d'Iffy and Ritter Hugo von Schwillingstaufenstein, just to mention two of them, have provided a lot of enjoyment! I will have to latch on to a copy of Play Unsafe! Thanks for the recommendation!

I recommend reading Henry Hyde’s Wargaming Campaign. Excellent book on designing a campaign.

Having been in a couple pf campaigns that folded it seemed to me that those running it either didn't appreciate the amount of work or wanted too much detail in it. There have been many good blogs with imagi-nations campaigns that were successful for many years. I think that linked battles works best for campaigning. GW did many in White Dwarf and there have been some in The Wargamers' Annual. As I have stated previously, I am a fan boy for 5 Parsecs and 5 Leagues, which are narrative skirmish games with a campaign structure. Now I'm seduced by VBCW where it is one big campaign. I'm no spring chicken (69 this year) but I keep finding new things in wargaming.

An anecdote I like to share is that I tailor my Campaigns I run to the players involved. Getting someone new into the hobby, but they had roleplaying experience, I (after probing with questions that they liked to see, of course) I gave a lot of room for the units they commanded, ad their general, to be people with personalities and their ambitions and goals - in the case of the units the sub-commander responsible for them. Important was also for the player to feel involved in the setting, and that they ahd a chance to change the tide and the outcome of the campaign. If they could not, they would still influence the world around them with the decisions they made - and inform them that they could make a difference, then tell AND telegraph in the game just what difference they had made.

Great section about campaigns, Lee-no surprise that I was nodding along with you! 😁

Narrative is the way to go for one off games and campaigns. Tend to go for connected scenarios or games than campaigns as, in my experience they tend to fizzle out before conclusion. I always preferred being DM, and still prefer to be umpire for competitive or co-op wargames. Easier to build characters and stories with 'Imagi-nations'.

As my current 'obsession' is refighting all the major battles of the ACW in 6mm, the 'narrative' was set over a century and a half ago. But your topic did make me consider a question that has interested me for some time. It is... Skirmish games that use only a handful of figures .... an RPG with a significant martial component .... Are they the exact same thing, just approached from different directions. If so, what implications can you draw. If not, where is the 'line' when does an RPG combat become a skirmish wargame? When does your small narrative skirmish campaign actually become an RPG?

It was great to finally meet you. Great summary of a great show.

Scales are like statistics ... a type of lie :)

Yes, I can only agree: if in doubt, get a few test figures and compare them. 👍 For all kinds of armor and uniforms, it makes sense to measure the figures from the soles to the eyes. You can always see the height of the eyes, but not always the top of the head. By the way, the list in the blog is really good and useful. Thx for this.

Fantastic creative talent on display; thanks for sharing. And special thanks for showing some of my games (20:08). Mike

Yes. Proportion on the figures. I dont like the so called 15mm " "squat" miniatures the ones that while 15mm are "stumpy" looking. You see a few of these from 3D print manufactures abd the occasional resin or metal. the proportion of the legs and torso are just "wrong". I wont drop names. I avoid these like the plague. Then you get marvelous highly detailed and superbly proportioned "25mm" miniatures like Fife and Drum who are making museum quality amazing historical figs... more then "scale" I believe "proportion" is the key.

Thanks for this review Lee, am now on the edge...looking at your lovely armies, 6mm looks good👍

I’m happy to use any scale or size whatsoever as long as it’s 1/72, the proper scale for serious people. 😂

Haha I love the thumbnail

This is quite old rules, when one can get official print version or buy pdf?

Great video. My caveat to people who are trying to offer advice would be "Don't assume players coming from Warhammer are going to want a Warhammer like experience". I came from Warhammer (though in the 90s) and one of the draws for me was games that felt completely new and exciting in how they approached things.

Have a single army for several old out of production armies i have played and loved. But only having one army makes it hard to find another player, so always have atleast two armies for each period/game. That way it is easy to pull out a couple of armies for a game.

Call me old school, full fat, red meat, caffeinated scale modeller, but pragmatic; I can't control what is outside of my control. What really nags me is proportions of weapons and equipment. If those are are to a consistent scale then I can live with heads that are too large etc. Unfortunately, this means my life is full of sorrow. ;-)

Lovely looking games and really nicely put together video

I've visited your blog scale chart before and it's very useful. I would quibble over your definition of N-Scale as being 1:160. That's true for US but in the UK it's 1:148.

In regard to fantasy gaming, not only has scale creep made it more difficult to add to old armies, if trying to enlarge armies from miniatures manufactured in the 1970s or 80s, but manufacturers and sculptors also (and understandably) have very different takes on the height of the standard fantasy races when comparison to their human miniatures. This is great for the secondary markets, when buyers know what they are getting, but it does make it risky to buy new figures if there isn't an arcuate scale with high-definition pictures provided. You also make a great point about miniature style being almost as important as height... I have a lot of old Ral Partha from the days when they were making detailed casts, but they seemed to all be on Ozempic (or 1/2 siege rations for a couple months). These skinny figures don't look so great when paired up with thicker predecessors. And not only has casting improved over the years, allowing manufacturers to provide more detail, but the switch from lead to pewter, I am only referring to metal figures here, has also impacted particularly the smaller manufacturers when working with old molds, The pewter does not seem to flow as well as lead did, back before it was verboten (not to mention ductility issues, which is another topic altogether).

This topic is why I find figure comparisons of different manufacturers made in videos or web sites very useful.

When I started we had traffic signs (round ones) filled with fine sand plus soem rocks and plants and put a box of plastic 1/72 (WW2) soldiers and aftera while the occational vehicle each down into that terrain. My dad had been working in printing and we went around getting metal from them casting our own toy soliders at home my brother and me next (and our friends). Later in school we played roleplaying games, boardgames etc. As soon as my brotehrs sons started school we fell right down that hole again :) Played so much the last ten years, almost as much as when I was 15....

A real can of worms.....

Hi Lee; my understanding is that the foot to eye measure was adopted as a more reliable measure when dealing with figs & uniforms which had hugely variable headdress (eg Napoleons old Guard busby, vs a WW2 helmet). As you say also, there are huge variations between the 'bulk' of figures from different manufacturers which can make identical scaled figs completely incompatible. It's always something that, particularly new gamers have issues with understanding; great work on creating your scale table, which I feel will take a huge number of hits as ref material for many gamers.

Tom Meier (founding sculptor of Ral Partha and pioneer of using green stuff) used to have a personal website with a rant about scale creep and how measuring to the eye was just wrong. I suppose measuring to the top of head makes sense if you are the sculptor starting with a dolly, but it could be confusing for us users looking at flat caps and shakos, bare heads and great helms - especially in the days before online catalogs when we often had to trust a written description and possibly a sketch when buying figures sight unseen.

Thank you for choosing my suggestion for a topic. I do come from the world of modeling, that morphed into table top wargaming. I was taught that the denominator for scaling is 1.8m or 1800mm, as the average height of a human male. Thus at 1/72, we get 25mm. 1/76 = 24mm, 1/87 = 21mm, and that 20mm = 1/90. I as a modeler always viewed this as a hard rule. Having read more wargaming books, I understand that over time the denominator in now viewed as a variable with a range of 1725 to 1825mm, as the average height of a human. This means a 1/72 scale figure ranges between ~23 and 26mm. While I have this understanding, the mathematical part of my brain, and modeler part of my brain, cringes when someone says 1/56 (32mm) is 28mm (1/64). Cheers!

Scale ... I have too main points to make and a possible 'spin-off' talking point to suggest. First point, I think it's been said elsewhere, but foot to eye I think deals with the headwear issue. As an ACW gamer I definitely don't want my Iron Brigade, in their distinctive tall black hats to be the same height model as a regular kepi clad soldier. It would imply the regiments in the elite unit only recruited short arses.😂 Secondly, the difference in manufacturers versions of 6mm, 10mm, etc really do leave you only two options, physical comparison...or ... just buy Baccus6mm ,cos if Peter 'Mr 6mm' says it's 6mm, then who are we to argue? 🤣 My related digression, which you could do another talking point on, touches on scale and the aforementioned Peter Berry's latest line. Scale...figure scale, ground scale, building and terrain scale, and even scale as it relates to firing ranges and movement distances ....! Now that an even more confusing mess than just miniatures and scale. Do you feel up to picking your way thru that maze, Lee?

One also needs to beware of manufacturers internal use of scale: for example, TAG sell 28mm figures (very nice ones too) but try comparing their Russians with their Tartars and you'd think they were different manufacturers.

Well presented overview of the 'scale' issue were one size fits nobody. Also great to see Bob Carruthers get a nod, I think his Line of Fire and related titles were excellent introductions. A TV equialent to Osprey, and perhaps could be part of a how to start in X resources segment. So many Line of Fire, History of Warfare and now free towatch on youtube, and included wargamers and some still presenting on TV in recent years.

Part of the problem is different casting tolerances, not to mention different sculptors with their own preferences, style and skills. Also, once a sculptor has created a ‘dolly’ of a particular size, everything else in the range is going to match that. Frankly, there is so much available nowadays that you simply pays yer money and makes yer choice.

This problem of scale is not just height, one very popular manufacturer insists on putting 28mm heads and torsos on 20mm legs and another has figures that have a rather large BMI. I've always understood the idea of measuring sole of foot to eye level was to allow for vastly differing head ware, bare head to bearskin or mitre.

My opinion must be the must contentious of all. Difference between different ranges doesn't matter to me. Base sizes matters more. As long as they all have the same base size, it doesn't matter. Also, not all people are the same height.

Scale may breakdown when a manufacturer bases his models on NBA basketball players instead of the average height of people generally. Ultimately, wargamers must take the blame for choosing to buy the inflated figure sizes. If only wargamers had chosen to stay with the one-true-scale, 25mm.

Tend to differentiate between size (6mm, 12mm, etc.) and scale (1/72, 1/76, 1/87, etc). As a veteran gamer, I am used to using O, OO and HO/OO when sizing figures. Many manufacturers use 'foot to eye' rather than 'foot to head'. As you say, proportion is also a problem, my mate sculpts proportionately and gets complaints that his hands and weapons are 'too small for 28mm' but they are proportionately realistic. It is a mess trying to decide which figures are compatible unless you physically compare. I remember the days when you could get away with having '25mm' metal command figures leading units of plastic Airfix HO/OO French Line Infantry. Now, I have the prospect of being able to add metal figures from a range described as '10mm' which measure 12mm (foot to eye) and are compatible with a range of plastics described as 13.5mm! It was so much simpler in the 1970s.

The idea of measuring to the eyes was a trick that miniature makers invented in the 1970s so they could sell slightly bigger and more detailed miniatures than their competitors. It was the original scale creep. I'm surprised people still do it. Scale creep is one of the main reasons I'm moving to 3D printing. It lets me adjust everything to exact scale.