My Life As A Gamer: History Showing Timekeeping In Action & Order Is The Default

Sabaton History dropped a new video today.

No one in the United States talks about this front of the war, outside of anything to do with Gallipolli well to the south of this line.

Yet, as they note, we can see that--despite not being present there--it could have influenced Tolkien as Par observed; it is hardly unthinkable that Tolkien talked with one or more that fought on that front and took their experiences with being so readily observed by the Bulgarians into account when conceiving of Mordor and the Eye of Sauron.

Now, consider this for your game, Anon.

What does this story tell you? Consider the Allies as the PCs here, and the Bulgarians as the Opposing Force.

First, when running under 1:1 Timekeeping, those Bulgarians are not just waiting to get ganked. Every day that they are unmolested is a day that they reinforce and refine their defenses, shore up and expand their supplies, fill out their positions, and increase their vigilance over the contested territory before them.

That means, in gameplay terms, increase odds of hostile encounters- encounters likely involving attacks from hostiles that the PCs and their men cannot readily perceive, likely be unable to retaliate against, and are assured of attaining full Surprise (and all the devastation that can cause; imagine getting three full rounds of enemy sniper fire before you can do anything about it, along with artillery fire).

Old timers will sagely nod like this is obvious. Most players will have no clue that this is a thing and get mad; you can tell because, again, this is how it works in videogames and most RPG players are informed by the norms thereby and not by the wargaming roots of the RPG hobby.

To which I say only "Git Gud", which means not being like the retarded British officers in charge that front and demanding frontal assaults when that didn't work and clearly would not.

In a properly-run campaign, things cannot be static. If your party retreats, your opposition has time to recover and decide what to do about you and their position. Others may decide to intervene while you are away; that happens. The only way to be reasonably certain that a place you cleared stays that way is to occupy it; that's what "clearing wilderness to establish a Domain" is about.

Which allows me to post another video, this time from the Pundit.

This is one of the Pundit's best videos in a while, and he hammers against the Post-Modernism of Warhammer's pilfered-from-Lovecraft-by-way-of-Moorcock cosmology.

In short, D&D--and any fantasy game worth playing--has the implicit presuming that Order is preferable to Chaos and that Order, not Chaos, has the upper hand by being a default state of equilibrium. Chaos has to be the active agent in order to achieve its goals, and without active exertion it goes away.

This, by the way, is reflected in the nature of the Encounter Tables; wilderness encounters are more dangerous because Chaos (and Evil) has more room to manuever where Civilization (Order and Goodness) is lacking.

It's also implicit in the connotations of the Cleric and the Paladin classes, and even the Druid has something about it. (I have an opinion about this class, for another post.)

It's no surprise that AD&D works best when these are embraced and exploited for best effect, such that we now have a label for it (West Marches), and thanks to the #BROSR digging Patron Play back from the Memory Hole we can enjoy the conflict between Man and Monster, Order and Chaos, Good and Evil, as the proper wargame it was meant to be.

And make your enemies suffer when they think they can just neglect you after failing to breech your lines.