Saturday, March 2, 2013

Old Stuff Day: Gaming Scenarios

I came to know of the "Old Stuff Day" from reading a related post by Sean. As I am slowly approaching 200 posts in the blog, I was inspired to take part in this and revisit some older posts. It was only then that I noticed the decline in the number of my posts about gaming scenario ideas.

In 2011, I posted the solo ambush for Song of Blades and Heroes, which is still one of my top viewed posts. The Grey City campaign also featured scenario rules for each of the episodes. The Wasteland Wanderer "combo" of multi-part solo scenario and narrative battle report was an interesting experiment. There was even a set of house rules to add firefighters/EMT to Chain Reaction.

On the other hand, in 2012 there were no scenario posts. I can attribute this to two factors: the overall reduction in number of posts during last year and my shift in focus to the narrative interpretation of battle reports. The funny thing is that I do like tweaking rules systems and even making up my own, as I suspect most solo gamers do, and scenarios and battle reports do not have to be mutually exclusive.

This year I have posted the Alien Bug Safari mini game but at the time I had not even realized the one year gap in such posts. Now that I have, I intend to add some scenario posts to the mix over the year.

I would also like to ask others what they think about tabletop gaming scenarios and house rules. I will start by giving my point of view: sometimes I find it hard to completely reproduce others' scenarios in order to play them, due to terrain and miniature requirements. Still, I like reading them because I often can adapt some idea for my own use -- especially in the case of solo scenarios.

2 comments:

Fitz-Badger said...

Regarding scenarios and house rules - I often find them interesting, sometimes entertaining even, sometimes a source of inspiration. I agree that it can be tricky to adapt them to one's own miniatures, terrain, background, other details, etc. They can be useful as sort of more concrete examples, sort of like examples of combat in a rules set. Sometimes they can be sources of ideas for solo mechanisms, too.

Sean said...

I'll read them. I think they are/ were a nice feature of your blog.