Drawing inspiration for wargaming campaigns

Most of us began wargaming with one or the other ruleset, started a single battle (or series of battles) with our friends on a weekend. Next weekend: Rinse, repeat and play again. After a while said ruleset becomes kind of stale and boring and you move on to the next game system. Well, have you ever wanted to keep your favorite system interesting? Spicing games up and playing a full scale campaign might do the trick: epic space battles, daring assaults from orbit, large scale land warfare and special ops for key objectives. What's not to like? 

Enter: Jon Tuffley's rules-set (Full Thrust, Dirtside II and Stargrunt II by Ground Zero Games) allows you to play a scenario-driven full spectrum sci-fi warfare campaign which makes it possible to play battles from the largest, most epic to the very smallest. (Yes, I admit ... I am a fan boy.)

Much inspiration for such campaigns can be drawn from real life military history. A short while ago I found the Kings and Generals channel on Youtube which focuses on military history throughout the ages. One sub channel covers the Pacific War between Japan and the allies. Much of the PW campaign is - of course - about naval warfare but it also covers ground combat (after all: only boots on the ground can conquer territory) and airborne operations in island hopping battles.

This brings me back to the above mentioned rules and campaign settings. You can have fleets of space ships duking it out over small specks of dirt (planets, asteroid bases or orbital ship yards) which must be conquered by drop troops and regular infantry. The similarities are stunning. So, if you are looking for ideas and inspirations for designing a full fledged wargaming campaign, have a look at the K&G channel. IMHO it's absolutely worth it. A nice side effect is learning about military history.






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