The audience has lost interest in it—but what comes next?

Attached: 1 image Awful Tasting Cola Drink only 49¢ from Johnson Smith's Fun Catalog (1979)

Beth Dobbin ran for Great Britain at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Five years on, she is largely bedbound after being diagnosed with ME, a devastating illness for which there is no cure.

The Meta boss looked traumatised when he sipped stout on the Cheeky Pint podcast. An hour later, his glass was still half full

It’s hard to believe. But in 1998, only *half* of the world's girls went to secondary school. Today it's over 75%. That’s over 100 million more girls…

Attached: 1 image I suspect this is not a licenced Disney product. #Moldova

Tom Jones’ “Sex Bomb” rendered in the style of a 16th-century chanson, by music theory lecturer Jonas Quin: Via MetaFilter.

The beginning of wisdom is calling things by their right names.

Rolled 1d7 with a result of 1: **Chapter 1,_Character Creation_** Rolled 1d9 with a result of 8: **Section 1.8,_Random Character Creation_** [This article references the **_Fudge_** _1995 Edition_ rules. Specifically, Section 1.8, Random Character Creation.] The rules of **_Fudge_** lean toward deliberate character creation, but some players prefer the random element and this section provides one example of how to facilitate this. In this case, 2d6 is rolled for each attribute to generate a level ranging from Terrible to Superb. Once the attribute levels have been determined, 2d6 is then rolled for each skill to generate a level from Terrible to Fair. In both cases, players may get free levels to increase the attributes and skills of their choice. Rolling 2d6 for traits doesn't appeal to me much for games outside of **_Traveller_** , so, as suggested by the rules in this section, I developed two 3d6 attribute tables—one in which the default level is Fair, and one in which the default level is Mediocre. (See "Random Attribute Generation for Fudge.") I don't have anything else to add except that I approve of both options being available. Different players prefer different approaches to character creation, and there's no reason not to accomodate both if it helps both kinds of players enjoy the game.

“ _**It’s like a bird. If he knew what he was doing, he would fall.”**_ — **Carl Reiner** --- _The Battle of the River Plate on the game table; not quite as it actually happened._ Earlier on social media I shared the news I’m returning to the City of Chesapeake’s annual reenactment event for the Battle of Great Bridge Dec. 5-6, 2026. Once again I’ll bring along my terrain diorama (sectioned off into convenient board “spaces”), paper miniatures, dice, and signage asking “Can You Win the Battle of Great Bridge?” I invite event attendees to learn about the battle, survey what the area might have looked like 251 years ago, and, using extremely basic rules, play out the fight between British forces and Patriot militia. Last year 1,100-1,600 people passed through the event, and at times it seemed like many listened to my ramblings about history and tried their hand commanding miniature forces to see how they’d fare in this historical engagement. (_Spoiler Alert:_ In most cases the Patriots gave the British a sound drubbing, much like the historical outcome, though occasionally with a few close calls.) In my social media post an old friend, gamer, and educator commented: “Do you have a process for using miniature battles to teach history? Not just tactics, but also the commander's motivation, personality and the battle's likely alternate outcomes.” And it started me thinking about how I distill historical battles into miniature wargames, especially with my focus on using games for learning and introducing wargames to young people and newcomers to the hobby. I’ve been presenting and facilitating games for decades. My first efforts focused on roleplaying games, primarily convention demonstrations and scenarios for West End Games fare like the _Star Wars Roleplaying Game, The World of Indiana Jones_ , even the _Hercules & Xena_ game. As my situation and interests changed, I indulged in wargaming, mostly focusing on historical conflicts. For about 15 years now I’ve designed and published my own rules (notably _Panzer Kids_ and _Skirmish Kids_) and used those and other established rules to create public game presentations, mostly for convention events, but occasionally for educational venues like libraries and museums. Sometimes I create a hypothetical scenario to provide a sense of warfare in a particular period; but in most cases I’m presenting a specific historical battle on the gaming table. Ultimately the process boils down to researching a battle and adapting it to a set of rules. Much like writing and editing, I just _do_ it. I’ve done this enough times that I’ve internalized the process to a degree I don’t consciously think about it, at least in a way I can easily and clearly convey to someone else. Reflecting on my methods, though, helps me realize there is a process and I can distill it from the murky workings of my brain to an outline others might use to employ miniature wargames as games for learning. The work falls into two categories: research and rules, with a follow-up bit involving discussion. **Research** --- _The Library of Congress reading room._ As a writer the best advice I can offer is “Write what you know.” A challenge, really, in that if you don’t know something, you need to discover what you don’t know, research it, know it fully enough to become fluent in writing about it. The same applies to historical game design. Research your topic. Presuming you’ve already decided on a battle or at least a period to represent on the game table, you want to know everything you can about that event. The who, what, where, when, how, and why can all inform some part of the game experience. The rules you choose (see below) can help focus your research on elements necessary for a specific wargame scenario. Some of the more important aspects to note include their objectives, the number and kinds of units involved, the terrain over which they fought (preferably with a map), and their initial deployment. Examining these should lead to additional research asking more questions. How did the terrain hinder or help different units and influence the course of the battle? What issues did different troop types experience? How did commanders’ objectives and attitudes influence each side’s tactics? Does the historical record mention anything notable that might factor into a game? And ultimately how might a scenario and rules reflect this on the game table? Those interested in history no doubt have their own research resources. This aspect of game design can help reinforce research skills and build a foundation of knowledge for a particular period. I typically start from a cursory, broad perspective, then find references to inform my particular concerns and those most relevant to a wargame. In this regard I find Wikipedia valuable (though back in the last century I might have turned to one or more of the local library’s encyclopedias). For military matters the website summary sidebar does a nice job of breaking down the leaders and forces on each side. Depending on the article, one might find information on circumstances leading up to the battle and the effects of the aftermath. A general narrative covers, to varying degrees, the initial deployment, advances, retreats, and notable moments that swayed the course of battle. But this only represents an informed starting point. More detailed resources add depth to any wargame, confirming information previously unearthed and providing a more detailed look at elements to portray on the game table. My personal library contains reference works on most of the periods in which I maintain interest. Atlases of various wars can focus on battles as well as overall campaigns. Books on a specific engagement can offer details, including quotes from the participants (from generals to privates) to enhance the game experience. Military history books from Osprey Publishing and others give many battles comprehensive coverage, including information on the political situation, objectives, commanders, weapons, strategies, and maps (and older titles even offer notes on wargaming the battle). Local libraries, especially ones with a room full of regional history resources, remain good places to find detailed information on military action in one’s own town, county, or state. Not all the research makes it into the game itself, especially when paring it down for a non-wargaming audience. That said, research always helps in the pre- and post-game stages: discussing the context under which the battle occurs, and reflecting on how the game went, player experiences, lessons learned, the decision process, and whether the game served as a defensible model of evidence-based history. **Rules** Taking research information and adapting it to a particular set of miniature wargaming rules requires an initial decision: what rules to use? Certainly one can use any of the miniature wargaming rules on the market, adapting them to a younger audience unfamiliar with such games with enough “scaffolding” (an education term for providing additional support and guidance until one gains a better understanding to continue on their own). But finding a basic system can simplify the process converting a historical engagement to a playable experience, especially if one is intimidated by the prospect of learning and comprehending a more complex rule set to then adapt to a streamlined experience. Some of my favorites for introductory level miniature wargaming experiences suitable for kids and newcomers to the hobby. _****_ _****_ _**One-Hour Wargames:**_ Neil Thomas’ book offers rules outlines for numerous historical periods, all relying on core concepts of movement, shooting, close combat, and morale. As each unit sustains 15 hits before elimination, one can represent forces using individual or based figures, keeping track of hits with dice, notes, or by removing pieces. The information on 30 different scenarios can help interpreting situations and terrain, and the “Background Reading” appendix offers additional ideas for rules to use. _**Big Battles for Little Hands:**_ Miniatures rules by John R. “Buck” Surdu and Rob Dean frequently used by the Harford Area Weekly Kriegspielers (HAWKS) in convention games for young people. A bit more involved that I personally would like, but it covers all the essentials and some aspects of the hobby at a far more basic and understandable level than many more hardcore rules on the market. Perhaps best used by adults seeking to guide kids in fighting tabletop battles, both large scale actions and skirmishes. _****_ _****_ _**The Portable Wargame:**_ If you don’t mind using a grid over the battlefield to delineate “spaces” Bob Cordery’s core rule set balances authenticity with a tolerable dose of complexity. (I’ve found newcomers to miniatures battles prefer game “spaces” over more freeform measurements with ruler.) It relies on strength point values for units along with the usual stats for movement and combat. I particularly like the concept of the “exhaustion point,” about one-third a side’s total strength points which, when reached, requires the side to abandon advancing attacks and pursue a defensive strategy (until, of course, the other side reaches its exhaustion point). The main _Portable Wargame_ title provides enough to work with most eras, but additional titles customize the game experience for different historical periods. _**Skirmish Kids: **_These rules and fare like _Panzer Kids_ work well in specific instances, in this case, small-unit action (and World War II tank battles). Because I can’t resist I’m also developing _Kids in Command!_ to cover larger battles specifically with a younger audience in mind. They’re all purpose-designed for staging miniature wargames with kids and newcomers to the hobby. I mention them here for shameless self-promotion purposes and because they’ve proven to work well adapting to historical battles and introducing kids and newcomers to miniature wargaming. Ultimately choose something you enjoy, can adapt to historical scenarios, and can distill to the level of your intended audience. With a game system in mind one can start adapting the historical specifics into tabletop realities. How does one represent units as game pieces? How far do they move and shoot? Which units were more prone to dissolve or flee in the face of combat losses? What role did the presence of leaders have? Much of this amounts to interpreting historical elements into existing game mechanics. If in this process the rules raise questions one can’t answer, go back to the research step and find out. My past articles outlining my work developing theBattle of Great Bridge game offer an example of how to research and design a historical battle game, albeit with my own even more basic rules than those mentioned above; notably “Gaming Great Bridge II:Battle into Game.” **Discussing the Context** After the research and the rules and playing the game, one can always tie everything together with context. Some of this we naturally present before the game: the historical events leading to the battle, objectives for each side, the peculiarities of the terrain, the forces involved and their advantages or disadvantages. Other topics emerge afterward after participants have played through the engagement: historical outcomes and counter-factual possibilities, political, military, and societal factors affecting the battle and the implications of its outcome in those areas, considerations in this kind of warfare, the process of and reasons for distilling history into a playable game format, and accurate versus defensible portrayal of history as we understand it. At the Great Bridge event, before I even dive into the game rules, I outline the situation or “scenario,” noting the reason two armed forces clashed here, their objectives, which units they fielded (and their advantages), and the terrain they fought over. For those unfamiliar with the history it provides a solid overview. After running the game we talk about how the battle really fared, casualties, and the greater implications of the aftermath. I invite participants to ask questions about the battle, the research, the situations before and afterwards, and any other things they want to know that I can capably answer. For many it’s just one of several immersive experiences they take in as they go on to shop at sutlers, watch period artisan demonstrations, and ultimately see the battle portrayed by uniformed reenactors using firearms in about as realistic portrayal as we can safely manage today. All of this — learning the rules, meaningful play, discussion and analysis — forms an important process tying together games, history, and learning. It reflects Dr. Jeremiah McCall’s “Cycle of Gameplay and Analysis,” something that’s become a core part of my ideas about games for learning. And certainly using miniatures battles to teach history, for audiences young and old, new and experienced, at reenactments, libraries, museums, even schools (if they dare!). Anyone involved in teaching (however you define that) hopes to engage their audience, share knowledge, and inspire them to seek further knowledge on their own. Games of any kind, even miniature wargames, can accomplish this. Framed in a historical context game participants have the opportunity to learn something beyond the board, ask questions, interact with a model of an event, and perhaps better appreciate how history emerges from an occurrence in the here-and-now we look back on when it’s long done and seemingly nicely sorted out into a clear, digestible narrative. As games play out, we might realize the many possible ways an event might have occurred, the numerous factors that, had they been different, could have affected not simply the outcome of that one event, but the resulting actions and decisions people made in the aftermath. “ _**There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.”**_ — **Harry S Truman**

I've always tried to tell people that, as the (original) _Discworld Roleplaying Game,_ hereafter "**_DRPG_** ", is all about roleplaying on the Discworld as published, any canonical(-or-thereabouts) published material relating to the Disc can serve as source material for the game. So, obviously, that principle must apply to the new **_Discworld: Adventures in Ank-Morpork_** RPG, hereafter "**_DAiAM_** ". (And, likewise, the older RPG can serve as source material for the new one; see my post on Adapting my own Discworld Roleplaying Game Scenarios.) Having now looked through the new game, I'll say that it absolutely does. How _much_ use it is will be determined by individual GMs and the nature of their campaigns. Okay, to start with - much of **_DAiAM_** consists of basic introductory material about the Disc and its inhabitants. This is absolutely **not** a criticism; the same would go for any half-decent published Discworld roleplaying game, and certainly goes for my own - anything else would be crazy. However, that means that anyone who's happy with the **_DRPG_** and on a budget may wish to think about their priorities before buying the new game. You won't get a huge amount that isn't in the _DRPG_ or the _Discworld Companion_ (let alone, of course, the novels); it does go into quite a bit of detail on Ankh-Morpork, but I think even that mostly comes from the street map and _The Compleat Ankh-Morpork_. Still, it's nicely presented and amply illustrated with colour Paul Kidby art (if not very many new images that I can see), and anyway, well, Discworld completists will be completist. Which said, I think that the main reasons to buy the new game and its supplements, from a **_DRPG_** GM's point of view will be the scenarios, and also some random scenery and item generation rules (basically numbered tables of one-line ideas or descriptions). This is good - new sources of scenario ideas are always welcome, especially to GMs who find themselves scrabbling on the edge of burnout - but quite how usable these scenarios will be will likely vary a _lot_ from GM to GM. (From a _player's_ point of view, an additional use for the new game would be as a source of prompts when stuck for ideas in character generation. ** _DAiAM_** character generation basically involves generating and then answering a bunch of questions about the character's past, which can be a good approach when coming up with a new character in any system. ** _DAiAM_** just has tables of ideas to roll dice against.) The point being that the Discworld is a _world_ , which means that there are countless locations and narrative niches that could be used in campaigns - along with enough blank spots on the map and unexploited plot possibilities that enterprising GMs can jump into. I emphasised this in the _DRPG,_ expending a few pages on the Brown Islands (barely mentioned in the books) as a campaign location, and a few more on other possibilities, from Klatch to Fourecks. As the title suggests, _DAiAM_ focuses much more specifically on Ankh-Morpork ("Lancre and Uberwald" will be covered in a whole new game in the near future), but even there, it points to a whole range of game possibilities, working for various groups such as the various guilds or the Watch, or playing supernatural beings. That, by the way, is _scenario_ possibilities, not _campaign_ possibilities; _DAiAM_ is open about its intention to support one-off games and scenarios rather than continuing campaigns. This vastness of possibilities is a wonderful thing about the Disc as a game world, but makes the idea of using _any_ published Discworld scenarios for _any_ system in an on-going campaign a little tricky. With the best will in the world, the chances of any given published scenario fitting into any given campaign are going to be a little slim. At a guess, the single most likely campaign framework to show up might be an Ankh-Mopork City Watch game, which fits with some of the _DAiAM_ sample scenarios, but I wouldn't bet on even that being especially common. But enough negativity; the real question here must be "How easy is it to convert _DAiAM_ scenarios to the _DRPG_ in some form?" And the answer is "Quite easy, really", but as in all RPG system conversions, there'll be some work involved. Still, the _DAiAM_ system means that there won't be an _excessive_ amount of number-crunching - because _DAiAM_ barely counts as a system at all, to cranky old-school tabletop roleplayers like me. Characters, both PCs and NPCs, are defined by a short list of descriptive phrases, and that's it. To "convert" them to the _DRPG,_ all you can do is take that brief description and any accompanying notes, and, umm, create a _DRPG_ character from scratch that fits that description, in whatever level of detail is useful. Scenarios then consist of a bunch of objectives for PCs and scene descriptions, and it's up to the GM and players to make things happen within that framework. Given that (a) _DAiAM_ characters are defined entirely by their personal foibles, and (b) the resolution mechanic is quite heavy on randomness and seems actively designed to lead to a lot of chaos, I suspect that a lot of scenarios run under those rules will go way off the rails very quickly, and that this is pretty much intentional. Different groups will probably have different opinions about this. But still, these scenarios can certainly be run using the _DRPG._ There's nothing wrong with the idea that a GM should just start with a loose framework and improvise a lot as required, and the GURPS rules mechanics permit that; the GM just has to be ready to invent a few appropriate numbers (NPC skill levels and stats, difficulty penalties, and so forth) when required. To get technical for a moment, it might be worth pinching the "Basic Abstract Difficulty" rule from _GURPS Action_ ; the process of subtly choreographing an action movie scene isn't that different to that of running a comedy scene, after all. Which I think covers the theory; my next post will run through the _DAiAM_ scenarios published to date in terms of their possible usefulness to a _DRPG_ GM.