# Adventure Wargaming tags: #reference #game/adventure-wargame **Adventure wargaming** is what happens when a wargame and a role-playing game stop pretending they aren't related. It's the solo- and co-op-friendly tabletop space that grafts story and continuity onto what would otherwise be a tactical exercise — dynamically generated storytelling applied to the process of running a mostly coherent narrative through little plastic figures. As a catch-all it stretches from the one-trooper skirmish to the full army, but the connective tissue stays the same: missions and moment-to-moment tactics, with RPG-style decisions and ongoing, continuous play binding it together. It's the term the hobby keeps reaching for to describe the hybrid country where "wargame" and "RPG" overlap, and it refuses to be cleanly either one. It's also, in this library's tag taxonomy, its **own category** — `adventure-wargame`, deliberately distinct from a plain `wargame`. The distinction runs on solo-and-co-op campaign play with procedural generation and evolving characters, versus the pure competitive contest that a traditional wargame is. ## A spectrum, not a dividing line The clearest way to see adventure wargaming is as the middle of a spectrum rather than a neat category. On one side sits the pure tactical skirmish, focused almost entirely on combat and victory; on the other sits the pure narrative RPG. Somewhere between them the adventure wargame lives — mechanically a wargame, but offering the player something more enticing to pursue than simply winning the fight. Modiphius, one of the publishers that championed the term, frames it as a wargame where formal victory conditions may still be present but are no longer the game's main offer — the "make it fun to lose the battle" philosophy. That's the heart of the thing: the loss is part of the story, not the end of it. That spectrum runs in both directions, but the label sits most comfortably on the wargame side. **[[Five Parsecs From Home]]**, for example, is mostly about working the levers of skirmish warfare, with its solo campaign mechanics laid over the top. The further a game drifts toward the narrative-RPG pole, the less it has to do with adventure wargaming at all. ## Examples The field's spine is the **"Five X"** lineage — the solo/co-op campaign wargames by Ivan Sorensen: - **[[Five Parsecs From Home]]** — the sci-fi archetype: a ragtag crew, procedural solo campaigns, and skirmish missions. *[[Five Parsecs From Home - Planetfall|Planetfall]]* and *[[Five Parsecs from Home - Tactics|Tactics]]* extend the line. - **[[Five Leagues from the Borderlands]]** — the fantasy cousin: procedurally generated campaigns, a growing map, and skirmishes against monsters, humanoids, and everything in between. - **[[Forgotten Ruin - The Adventure Wargame|Forgotten Ruin: the Adventure Wargame]]** — modern Rangers stranded among orcs and sorcerers; the same engine pointed at military-fantasy. The deep lineage, and where I first got hooked, runs through **Two Hour Wargames** — the granddaddy of solo-friendly, story-positive skirmish: - **[[Warrior Heroes - Adventures in Talomir|Warrior Heroes]]** — the classic THW adventure wargame. - **[[5150 - New Beginnings]]** · **[[NUTS!]]** · **[[County Road Z]]** · **[[Battlespace]]** · **[[Red Ops 5]]** · **[[FNG]]** — the THW family, ranging sci-fi to military to survival horror. And the edges, where the category presses against the mainstream: - **[[Twilight 2000]]** — a military-RPG sitting in adventure-wargame territory. - **[[Paranoia - Five Clones From Alpha Complex|Paranoia: Five Clones from Alpha Complex]]** — alone among the *Paranoia* line this plays as an explicit adventure wargame; everything else in the franchise is an RPG. ## The contested term None of this is settled, and there's a legitimate argument that the label is doing more harm than good. In my own writing I've made the case that adventure wargames and so-called "combat RPGs" are members of the same spectrum rather than two different kinds of thing — and that once you draw a terminological border between them, you start hunting for differences instead of appreciating the likeness. By that reading, some of the best adventure wargames don't even need the name; they just are. It's a useful shorthand, and it's also a small fight the hobby is still having with itself. ## References - [TTRPG or Wargame? — Thoughts on "Adventure Wargames" (Rocky Mountain Navy Gamer)](https://rockymountainnavy.com/2022/10/13/ttrpg-or-wargame-thoughts-on-adventure-wargames-inspired-by-five-parsecs-from-home-modiphius-2022-and-twilight-2000-freeleaguepub-2021/) — the spectrum framing, inspired by Five Parsecs and Twilight: 2000. - ["Make it fun to lose the battle" — welcome to the age of adventure wargames (Wargamer)](https://www.wargamer.com/adventure-wargames) — Modiphius's adoption of the term. - [Is the Combat RPG a Useful Designation](Articles/Is the Combat RPG a Useful Designation.md) — my own argument that adventure wargames and combat RPGs are one spectrum.