# Recommended Games About Wars and the Wages Thereof ![[games_about_war_and_suffering.jpg]] tags: #articles I've been doing a surprising number of articles talking about games in specific niches and with particular styles as almost a buying guide. And since we're so close to Christmas, I figured I'd continue along that way with one of the most holiday--laden game concepts I could find: *The horrors of war and the emotional, psychological, and personal repercussions thereof.* I know when I turn on the Hallmark Channel, I expect to see **[Apocalypse Now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k26hmRbDQFw&pp=ygUOYXBvY2FseXBzZSBub3c%3D)** playing bright and steady. We aren't just going to leave that to the networks; we're going to bust out some games to enjoy it for ourselves. ## The Repercussions Let's start by talking about things that focus on the impact on characters and the world at large rather than fighting the war itself. There's a surprising number of games which treat directly with the emotional impact. In many cases, the emotional and psychological issues involved have a mechanical reification actually being manifest in the way that the characters interact with the world and vice versa. This can be unusual for people who are only experienced with more traditionally architected RPGs from a physically simulationist point of view, but it allows for a scope and scale of meaning to be driven home and for the things that are usually only internal to a character to be externalized in a way that represents an interface to the world and other characters. ### Twilight 2000 ![[Twilight 2000 (cover).png]] Let's open with a classic in the genre and something that is not going to turn the heat up to a thousand degrees right off the bat, but instead focuses on the material and situational experience and literal fallout after war: **[[Twilight 2000]]**. The latest edition, the 4th, is a magnificent and complex piece of game design, coupled with some extremely evocative art and design in the aftermath of a complicated conventional world war in the late '90s. Soldiers from all over the place are stuck in Europe without supply or backup and with the architecture of nations largely collapsed. What do you do when you're a soldier and the battlefield has disappeared under your feet? Do you spend your time trying to establish and support a new community, build it up from scratch, acquire resources to make lives better including your own, or do you take the opportunity to rampage at will and impose your cruel aims on whoever crosses your path? Maybe you have a tank and whatever fuel you can scrounge up to back up your iron fist. **Twilight 2000** gives you the tools to do any or all of the above, and the published scenarios which are available for it have some of the most intriguing pre-created situations I've seen, and I say that as someone who doesn't like scenario books. If you're looking for something with a good amount of crunch and really want to dig into the RPG side of war, **T2K** is a fantastic place to start. ### Heavy Gear ![[Heavy Gear RPG 4E (cover).jpg|400]] Maybe you're looking for something a little less immediate and a little further from home. Hundreds of light years should suffice, and that's where we find Terra Nova, the world on which the game **[[Heavy Gear]]** is set. Multiple wars have worked their way across the surface over the multiple editions of the game, including the primary political tension between the factions of the North and South. But there's also attempted colonization from Earth itself, and an isolationist faction, which oftentimes operates as a rogue cell (which often makes that oftentimes the PCs are assumed to be a member of) At this point, the setting itself is the product of the emotional and personal fallout from war and how it's changed not just individuals but the stance of nations and entire worlds. Plus you get the title drop Gears themselves, the relatively small piloted exo armors inspired by [VOTOMS](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Anime/ArmoredTrooperVOTOMS).^[Wait, [[VOTOMS - How Would You|was that VOTOMS you said?]] You *could* do that, sure. **Heavy Gear** is probably better overall in this case.] Mechanically, the game is solid and lets you put the emphasis wherever you want it in a real sense. Do you want to tell stories about characters on the front line of a new outbreak of fighting between colonial Earth and Terra Nova? You can do that. Do you want them to be gear gladiators in the fighting pits of the local equivalent of [Solaris VII](https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Solaris)? You can do that. Do you want to follow characters who have returned from the battle and are nursing their own personal scars and moments of suffering? You could do that, but this is probably not the ideal choice. We'll get to that sort of thing later. Like **T2K**, **Heavy Gear** is good at managing and playing out combat and providing situations for characters to react, grow, or break down in the aftermath. ### Band of Blades ![[Band of Blades (cover).jpg]] Now we're starting to get a little further off the beaten track. **[[Band of Blades]]** is a game of the *[[Blades in the Dark|Forged in the Dark]]* lineage, making it already a little more player-authorial than the games which we've talked about up until this point. It has a fairly particular setup: You are what survives of an army in retreat after a major defeat. You need to make your way across an extant map fighting an enemy which is evolving as you go, supernaturally empowered undead led by fallen members of what used to be your own. The challenge is to make it to your rallying point in one piece and survive the final push. Good luck with that. It won't be easy. **Band of Blades** is particularly unusual in that you aren't just playing a single character. Instead, every player at the table has a member of the command team with a very specific role that they can use to do things between missions, whether that thing be recruit new cannon fodder for the front lines, research new technologies or refine the weapons and armor that you have, explore the limits of corrupted alchemy, or simply maintain the rolls of the dead and tell stories of the fallen in order to maintain morale. Additionally, there is a pool of soldiers of various sorts, from snipers to spies to simple grunts, which command assembles into combat forces and sends on missions, at which point the players take over those characters and try to accomplish the missions while resources are tight and soldiers are a resource. There is the expectation that some are going to die, and neither command nor they are particularly happy about that fact. This is a game very specifically about the fallout and toll of war, and the fact that it starts with the entire table trying to manage a retreat, which was extremely costly, to get back "home," puts its finger right on the issue and keeps it there the whole time. ### Starforged: Sundered Isles ![[Sundered Isles (cover).jpg|400]] I know, I know, I'm recommending **[[Ironsworn - Starforged|Starforged]]** all the time for everything. If you've been reading pretty much anything I've written over the last year, you're going to find a *ridiculous* amount of praise for a fiction-forward, generative, GM-less, solo play RPG, which I think captures some of the best feel of mechanics I've ever had the pleasure of enjoying. If you want to see all the times I've talked about it, go over to the Grim Tokens digital garden page, go to the bottom, and look at all of the articles and thoughts that refer to it. I know I go on at great length. In this particular case, I want to talk about the almost, but not quite, standalone supplement for **Starforged**, **[[Ironsworn - Starforged|Sundered Isles]]**, which is placed by default in a fantasy version of the 18th century Age of Sail with a focus on sailing ships, piracy, colonialism, and industrial exploitation — all of which we are *big* fans of. *"Why is it here in this list?"* you might be asking. For two very specific things about the way the game is designed and what **Sundered Isles** brings to the table. Firstly, one of the inherent means of advancement, important things to track and fascinating aspects of **Starforged** is that the bonds that you have to other characters, your emotional connection and interaction with them, is a mechanical first order element of play. By pursuing and enhancing the bonds between your character and NPCs, you can increase your Bonds track and directly get XP to enhance your character itself. You are directly rewarded for interacting with NPCs and developing your relationships over time. Those relationships can become strained. They can actually be broken by your choices and your actions. Sometimes you actually have to do things that your bonds don't like. Sometimes you have to betray them. Sometimes they can get over that, and sometimes they can't. Having first-class representation of relationships is a thing I quite enjoy in a number of RPGs, and here it's done particularly well. Secondarily, **Sundered Isles** brings a particularly intriguing faction generation system to the table, one which can be as close to outright bloody war with you on one side, the other, or a disinterested third party - or a *very* interested third party.^[What, me run a smuggler trading guns to both sides without remorse? I'd never do that!] It's generally assumed in the text that you're going to be on the side of the underdog and likely an independent agent, but nothing says you *have* to. The mechanics are there to engage in outright violence either as a result of privateering or joining up. You can take your ship into the thick of it if you feel like it. This combined with the bonds system leads to a lot of interesting possibilities. Having a character actively engaged in the prosecution of war while trying to manage and cultivate relationships both on the battlefield of choice and in their lives beyond that… that's juicy stuff. You might want to try it. ### Tales from the Cockpit ![[Tales from the Cockpit (cover).jpg|400]] Here's the first journaling game of the lot, and quite frankly, the only one. **[[Tales from the Cockpit]]** is a bit of a challenge to pitch to you, but not because it's extremely different from almost every other game you've ever played, unless you are into the journaling genre of game. That part is pretty straightforward. It's not because it is intended to be played alone and the process of being alone for a period of time while you're playing is integral to the experience. It's because at first glance this is not a game about *playing*. It's a game about *writing and feeling*. Writers ourselves will tell you that the process of writing is very much the exploration of a game space, if you catch one of us feeling prolix and with a background in game narrativism. Sitting down to consider how things have evolved and how things will evolve in the course of working out consequences of our decisions — well, it's not just a thing for writers. Everyone should be indulging in that particular pastime, but it's of particular importance for journaling games. **Tales from the Cockpit** does not provide you with a setting, except for the fact that there is a mech, and it has an extended existence. It's from the point of view of the mech that you play, not from the pilot. You will go through several pilots before the end, some of them may be good, some of them may be bad, some of them may replace their predecessor mere seconds after their passing, some may not come along to find you again for thousands of years, leaving you alone and dreaming, thinking, planning, being until that moment. Do you truly make a difference in the world? Or are you just one more thing that watches it go past? Who are the people who have piloted you? Who might they have been except for you? Who did they become because of you? This very well may be the most *introspective* game on this list because it is literally all about introspection and exploring the implications of being part of both history and lives, but only as an external viewer in the latter case. Even when you are the literal manifestation of history in metal and myomer. Pick up **Tales from the Cockpit**. Sit down one afternoon with your favorite journal or your favorite writing interface, whatever you've got, open the book and start playing. When it tells you to just stop, put down the pen and think about things. Do that. Don't just keep going. Don't let your excitement and curiosity overwhelm your self-control. Stop. Put down the pen. Put down the journal. Close your eyes. Think about what's happened so far. Once the appropriate amount of time has passed, pick up the pen and pick up the journal and wander forward into history yet unwritten. There's probably another war out there, but maybe there isn't. ### carry ![[carry (cover).jpg|400]] If you know me and my collection, you've been expecting to see this game on this list since you saw what it was about. Originally published in 2006 and revised in 2016, **[[carry|carry: a game about war]]** is simultaneously a creature of its time and a creature *out* of its time. The early 2000s were an extremely experimental period for the indie RPG hobby. Some of the best games of the modern era originated there. Some of the games which originated ideas which are in games published just yesterday came from that period out of a relatively small community of game designers and creators. **Apocalypse World**, **Blades in the Dark**, **My Life with Master**, **Sorcerer** - there's a vast seething cauldron of game design ideas which came out of a relatively tight group of people. This is another one of those. It has an absurdly specific structure: the players are members of a very specific marine squad, and when I say *very specific*, I mean that the character names, their personalities, and what they do is set before the players get there. There's a pool of about 15 characters that the players can choose from to make their personal Grunt. ![[carry - Jared Doc Trujillo.jpg|400]] This squad is in Vietnam on deployment on the front lines. That's not in debate. That is as set as the list of characters that you can choose from. What the players *do* get to determine is what the character's Burden is. What is the thing that they carry into war with them? What is the thing that empowers them and drags them down in a sense? What is it that makes them who they are and how does it do so? The creation of burdens at the beginning of the game is excellent, and I love seeing this idea that you get to choose something which is not strictly mechanical but descriptive and then pass your sheet to the person on your right and they get to add to it and then they pass it to the person on their right and they get to add to it before it comes back to you. Maybe your burden is that *you miss your girl back home*. Then the person on your right adds to that, *"So you compulsively seek comfort in the arms of whores,"* and then the person on the right of them adds, *"You're worried about catching a venereal disease and bringing it home with you."* There's a whole character concept that guides how you interact, particularly in R&R time, and ways in which other people might be affected by your life choices, good and bad. If you're out in town on a bit of R&R and you abandon your buddies at the bar to go get your dick wet, and they're looking for you, somebody needs you… Conflict is right there. **carry** is all about conflicts, and to that end, it goes hard in talking about one of my favorite things to come out of the period in which it was developed: *stake setting*. Being explicit and clear about what the stakes are at any given time for every given conflict and the ability for whoever you're opposing, whether it be another player or the GM, to set counter-stakes. Then the actual die rolling mechanic determines who gets their stakes. Those stakes don't have to be inherently oppositional. The GM can set the stakes that *there is a booby trap set in the jungle, which will hurt a marine*, and then I can state my stakes, which are *"The booby trap gets Bill, not me."* Then Bill's player can say *"I detect and disarm the booby trap before it can hurt anyone."* There are entire layers of possibility and narrative creation just in the interaction of these three statements of stakes for a given conflict. Truthfully, it's one of the best expressions of stake setting in RPGs that I can think of and it's worth owning the game for that alone. Putting your buddies through a particularly harsh take on Vietnam with the Hollywood scraped off is really just golden on top of that. ### Grey Ranks ![[Grey Ranks (cover).jpg|400]] We are not done with the grim realities of war yet, and by *"realities of war"* I mean real wars. Next up on the list is one of my favorites because it does something that I don't think anyone else has tried to tackle outside of carry, and even that was peripheral: child soldiers. In this case, Polish child soldiers during the Warsaw Uprising in World War II. If you aren't aware of the grim unpleasantness that was [the Warsaw Uprising](https://www.britannica.com/event/Warsaw-Uprising), then this would be a good time for you to go brush up on that bit of history and how unpleasant the German and then Soviet fist was when it came to Warsaw. If you think Vietnam was a bad time, the middle of Europe ravaged by war, and the Nazi war machine literally shooting people in the streets - men, women, and children, taking whatever they wanted in every sense of the word, it was a bad time. **[[Grey Ranks]]** puts the players right down in the middle of that as children in one of the worst places and times for children in modern history. This is not a game for the weak-willed or the easily offended. Because to do anything but be horrifically direct in the course of play would be to shortchange not just the players from the experience they could have but to dishonor your those who went through it and survived. As such, this is obviously *not a game for everyone*. It's full to the brim of broken people in a broken world who react in bad ways, and sometimes good, and will probably come to a terrible end no matter what. I *did* say this was a recommendation list of games about war, and the toll of war. I wasn't kidding. *"Why in the name of fuck would you ask anybody to play this game?"* I hear you asking. The answer is very simple. It's an amazing game that captures the mood and place of a particularly bad time and gives the players the opportunity to go in and explore that space without risk of harm to themselves, to get a little taste of real history. Is it fun in the traditional sense? No, *absolutely not*. You are probably not going to be hooting and hollering at the joy of sneaking through the rubble of the apartment you used to live in with your parents, looking for your lost doll so that she can hug it one more time before she dies of blood loss. If you *do* find yourself hooting and hollering, it'll probably be because you caught one of those filthy German soldiers with his guard and his pants down, and you're giving him what for with vicious reprisal just before you realize that it's a group of nine-to-fifteen-year-olds putting the boots to a 19-year-old barely older than any of you. And taking vengeance for a war that none of you had a hand in starting in the first place. It's a dark place, and I for one am here for it. This is the sort of thing that you put on your shelf, even if you never intend to run it for people, or never intend to play it with people, just because it's an absolutely worthy product in and of itself. Frankly, I'm proud it exists. ### Spectres of Brocken ![[Spectres of Brocken (cover).jpg]] You know, for a game that I have a host of issues with in terms of how it's presented, **[[Spectres of Brocken]]** comes up a shocking amount in my recent recommendations and references. I love giant robots. The art is beautiful if you like that heavily anime, stylized presentation which fits with the source material so very well. It is surprisingly strongly fiction forward and narrative for what it's actually about. There are lots of reasons for me to recommend this game even beyond my personal issues with the problems, which I've talked about before. It belongs here on this list because it is *very much* a game about war and the toll it takes on people. In fact, this may be the most specifically targeted game about that on this entire list, except perhaps for one, which will be named later. You'll know when it happens. The subtitle for **Spectres of Brocken** on the front cover really tells you exactly what's about to happen: *an RPG of ace pilots, broken friendships, and giant mechs.* Yes, we are about to talk about child soldiers again, but probably not in as bad a situation as those in **[[Grey Ranks]]**. Instead, we are going into a game structured around a two-phase experience. In the first, we are in academy together. It's school time. Perhaps it's a literal high school if you're going with a very over-the-top anime theme. But by default, it's a mech pilot academy, a military academy, if you will. You establish relationships with the other characters, figure out where your points of commonality and where your frictions are, and build the relationships that will be broken in short order. After the academy phase, there is a series of interludes where you drift apart or come together and then on to the conflict phase in which ace pilots meet on the field of battle, sometimes on the same side and sometimes on opposite sides, where their relationships are tested. An enemy is not always an enemy forever and a lover is not always loved forever. **Spectres of Brocken** is fond of using soft language. That is, they don't like to state things directly and for the most part everything is written in a sort of fuzzy, hands-off, don't be too intense kind of way which seems to shortchange the underlying themes and messages. But we all know that I'm not a fan of soft language. In particular the obsession with safety tools while simultaneously doing everything within the text to remove even the hint of a sharp edge or unsafe thought whitewash puts the whole thing into a weaker place than it could be. In the context of **carry** or **Gray Ranks** I can actually see some potential use for light safety tools, but here the authors have gone out of their way to make everything inoffensive and unthreatening so the constant admonishments and reminders end up being mildly annoying and insulting. But let's talk about the good stuff. In the conflict phase, we get a new mechanic. *Blood*. For the first time, it's something with a name with a little bit of edge. We decide on the factions that are involved, and you know how much I love faction systems. The traits and bonds that were established in the first academy phase start being polished and refined. Sides are chosen and then conflict begins. When I say that *conflict begins*, I mean you have a list of conflict moves and one of them is as follows: ![[Spectres of Brocken - Wars Toll.jpg]] (Anchors are people and things you care about, by the way.^["Oops, I just stepped on my buddy's sister's apartment building, and she's splattered against the sole of my mech's foot. I can hear the echoes of her last scream."]) Honestly, this is where the game gets good and where actual risk is on the table in a very literal sense. There's blood all over it. Your giant mech combat is happening right here. And through the medium of the conflict, relationships become critical because the elements that you have banked during the course of play are the ones that you call on to give you leverage in resolving a conflict in your favor. The last bit of the game is something I love to see wherever it shows up and that is the players going around the table and narrating an epilogue based on prompts. With the events of the game fresh in their mind, when it's your time to speak and someone asks you, *"What major change in the world have your actions led to?"* that's an opportunity I love. That kind of mechanic. **Specters of Brocken** is a great game, and the expansion for different world tendencies or settings is full of really interesting material. I just wish that it had been presented by someone with enough balls to let the chips fall where they may, because it has the potential to be a very dark, very powerful experience. But it's hamstrung by the presentation at every turn. If you're looking for a game that is capable of keeping up with the interpersonal narrative complexities of **[Evangelion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neon_Genesis_Evangelion_(franchise))** with flawed characters in bad situations, this might be what you're looking for. War will have a toll, and it won't necessarily be in bodies, but it probably will. And someone is going to come out traumatized. In an ideal situation. ## The War Not every game about war and the suffering inflicted thereby focuses on individual characters. Some of them focus on battles and war itself, the violent action from which these inevitable consequences descend. Sometimes you just want to shoot things in the face, and only later think about what it actually meant. I'd never want to take away the opportunity for that self-reflection. So the games in this section of the recommendations are going to focus on the crunchy, punchy bits first and foremost, but not without reification into character consequence. Well, they won't be quite as heavy as **Grey Ranks**, there's meat to be had and you should seek it out because it's tasty ### Home: Mech x Kaiju ![[Home - Mech x Kaiju (cover).jpg]] There are some games that I just love and immediately loved upon seeing them, and **[[HOME Mech x Kaiju|HOME: Mech x Kaiju]]** is just one of those games. It is deceptively simplistic on the surface. It literally bills itself as a map-making RPG, and it's not wrong. The process of play literally demands that you create a map and put on it things that are important to your character. Gameplay is short and sweet, typically lasting 90 or so minutes even with four players (as long as people don't ramble on too much, unlike me). It's extremely clear and forthright about what it is: a science fiction monster story. Though you start getting the first hints of how it made its way onto this list when you notice that in the statement of tone it adds *"serious, exciting, and maybe sad."* That is *very much* the case, especially once you've run through your first game or two and you really start to feel the possibilities for going another step further. This isn't a tactical game even though as it's here in the war section. It is very narrative, but the process of play is quite extensively focused on the war, and the map-centric engagement means that it belongs here. In the course of playing **Home**, you are going to see things be destroyed. Not just cities, though those are going to go down like dominoes, but mecha and pilots. You can't have a story about loss without actually losing something. You very much can lose everything in this game, not always in a way that stops the story; your experience can continue. A new pilot can jump in the mech. A new mech can be provided to the pilot. Cities can be built. But the cycle of loss continues. The default setting for **Home** qualifies it to be referenced in [[Recommended for the Discerning Feudal Fantasy Mecha Enthusiast|my article on mecha settings which are feudal/fantasy]] because by default it's actually quite fantastic with regions such as the *Minean Empire*, the *Eda Shogunate*, and the *Kingdom of Thea*. Like several of the other games I've referred to, **Home** has an epilogue phase called the Finale. Having watched cities be destroyed by giant monsters that you may or may not have been able to stop, and thought about the loss of your connections to your homeland, your family, and your people, you probably have some thoughts. At its core, *this* moment is what the game is about. Sure, there's a lovely pile of things about putting things on maps and drawing lines and diagrams and rolling dice to see if you can survive and protect the things you care about, but ultimately, closure is attained when you reflect on what was lost and what was protected. **Home** is like 36 pages, its impact goes for a bit further ### 3:16 - Carnage Among the Stars ![[Three-Sixteen (cover).png]] There are certain games that I have no hesitation in running in a convention setting at all. No concerns about randos joining the table. No concerns about people missing the themes. No concerns about people not having fun. No concerns about teaching them how to play within 15 minutes. **[[Three-Sixteen - Carnage Among the Stars|3:16 - Carnage Among the Stars]]** is on that very short list of games that I can break out and throw on the table and be ready to go no matter who comes by and no matter how they want to play. They will immediately grasp what's going on and what they should be doing, and once they've been nudged in a little bit of the feel of the mechanics they won't have a problem with those either. At first glance, it is a very lightweight GM'd game about taking space marines to space to fight vast hordes of unsightly aliens which want to destroy humanity. The table has some lovely range bands on it which characters can move between and there's an implicit competition for getting the most kills in order to have the best, most positive attention from your officers and a potential promotion. It's effectively **[Helldivers 2](https://store.steampowered.com/app/553850/HELLDIVERS_2/)** **: The RPG** except **3:16** came out in 2008, but much like **Helldivers**, **3:16** has shadowy, unwholesome depths that, once you begin to understand them and see them surfacing in play, make the experience so much richer than it appears on the surface. There's an explicit endgame for this reason and I'm not going to spoil it, but it is part and parcel of the setup and an evolution of gameplay which you experience at the table. The mechanics subtly influence the mindset of the players in a way that takes them along the path that the game wants the characters to travel as well. In a sense, you can only really do it once and experience the surprise. However, in practice, even watching it play out, even playing it out yourself at the table with rotating GMs, it never seems to get old. Watching these characters take this path and deliberately choosing it even though they come from different places and start with different mindsets is amazing. Needless to say, it is an outgrowth of the setting setup that the evolution of characters involved in this ongoing grinding war against what seems like an infinite variety of aliens tracks into the same space that is critically involved with the idea of war and the repercussions. Saying more would be to give it away more than you will enjoy by reading the rulebook for the first time and looking forward to running it for your friends. I hope you do; it's a game that deserves more time on the table and in front of people who will enjoy it. The process of play is very much a tactical exercise. It's the things that happen between missions to kill aliens and sometimes opportunities to kill aliens that provide the hooks in the meat of the ongoing metaplot in the moment at the table. Most of the time you're interested in putting weapon to chitinous head on a regular basis as hard and fast as you can go. Weapons are rated not in their damage but in how many aliens per attack they can kill. It's that kind of game. If you've never seen **3:16**, trust me, this is a thing you should pick up and put in your library and carry around with you wherever you go. Find a regular group and play it once every couple of weeks, just enough to keep them on the edge of remembering what's going on but not so often that you get tired of it. It needs to be a treat. Then watch the evolution occur. Every time a little bit further. Every time a little bit more. It's glorious. ### Five Parsecs from Home: Tactics ![[Five Parsecs from Home - Tactics (cover).jpg|400]] Here's the relative newcomer to the list. I could have easily put **[[Five Parsecs From Home]]** here instead, because as an adventure wargame, it is *more* than qualified to be part and parcel of games recommended to share more and the consequences thereof. In fact, you *have* to live with them because it is an ongoing series of adventures which chain from one to another with the necessary resource investment and evolving storyline. In **Five Parsecs from Home**, you can be part of a war that is raging all around you - but you can't really *wage* it. You're limited in scope to effectively skirmish scale. Similarly, your consequences are limited in scale. And that just wasn't good enough. But then came **[[Five Parsecs from Home - Tactics|Five Parsecs from Home: Tactics]]**, and things changed. **5PT** upped the ante by putting real scale in the setting of *Five Parsecs* . Rather than skirmish scale, the rules are streamlined and focused on slamming together multiple platoons, or even companies, if you are feeling particularly ambitious and have enough space. Even the skirmish scenario suggested size is about 15 figures and a couple of vehicles. Digging in and getting dirty, then using the overall campaign mechanics to figure out what's going on is meat and potatoes wargaming. If I have one hesitation about this game, it's that it leans more heavily in the direction of scenario based gameplay than procedurally generated gameplay, like the original **5PFH**, while it does include tables and directives which can help you generate objectives and responses on the fly. In many ways, **5PT** harkens back to the GM-driven game experience you might find in traditionally architected RPGs and classic wargames. This isn't usually my bag, but when it's well presented and well handled, I'm willing to accept the underlying idea. The built-in allowance for solo wargaming and solo play helps push it back into the running and gets it a position on this list. ### 5150 ![[5150 - Star Army - Total War (cover).jpg|400]] I feel a little bit guilty about putting *5150* in here because, in a very real sense, it's cheating. 5150 isn't a singular book. It's an entire line of games which go from **[[5150 - New Beginnings|5150: New Beginnings]]** at the bottom end for doing very RPG-heavy wargame-light play (which focuses on characters and procedurally generated situations) up through **[[5150 - Total War (wargame line)|5150: Total War]]** on up through **5150: Star Navy - Total War**, with multiple turn-offs along the way to cover specifically **Star Marines** and taking a ship by force and specific bits on fighter and carrier operation. Basically, what I'm saying is that it is a ground to sky solution for doing adventure wargaming at whatever level of focus that you're interested in, but it's that ongoing fingertip touch with RPG-style continuity at one level or another which lets me put it on this list. While it doesn't focus on emotional attachment between characters to any significant degree, you will feel the impact of loss and observe the side effects of widespread warfare if you play enough 5150 campaigns. This is definitely on the far end of the spectrum, focusing on the war rather than repercussions, and in that sense, is perfectly positioned here at the end of this article. ## Exunt There you have it, an entire article full of recommendations appropriate to Christmas time and ready to be picked up at your leisure. It's getting close to the holiday itself, so if you're thinking of picking up anything on this list, go ahead and order it from most of the sites where they are available, and you can typically have a PDF immediately even if the hard copy itself doesn't get here until after Christmas Day. Have it printed at your local copy shop on spiral bindings for that lay-flat experience, and you can have something under the tree for that gamer you love to wake up to. Let's be honest, who doesn't like getting a book for Christmas? And if it's a book that can engage you intellectually and provide an experience you wouldn't otherwise have, you've just given someone a gift not that they will look at it for five minutes on a shelf but something that will become important to hours and hours of their life. They will also forever after associate you with the suffering and misery of warfare. But for some of us, that's a serious turn on. Go out there. Get yourself and your loved ones some games you'll enjoy. And stay tuned to the [[index|digital garden]] here because more things are growing and you never know what's going to pop out next. **[Merry Christmas!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgeb-LvYB-g&pp=ygUYY2hyaXN0bWFzIGF0IGdyb3VuZCB6ZXJv)** ![[anime_Christmas_on_the_mecha_battlefield.jpg]]