Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group

A Little Bit of Bread and No Cheese, Onside Review by Nick Luft

Game Synopsis The game is intended to be a club-sized game for between 4 to 10 people. The game is about medieval farming, the struggle to survive, the conflict between the villagers, and the conflict between the villagers and the manorial Lord. I was inspired to design this game after being slightly dissatisfied by other […]

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Quality v Quantity – onside report 

I ran a tryout of a set of rules that attempted to address the noticeable quality differences between some armies in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Design Intent What I was after was a set of rules that could be used in a mini campaign that had a reasonable speed of resolution but […]

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A Little Bit of Bread and No Cheese

Synopsis This is a game that recreates the struggles of a medieval village to work together, to farm together, and to raise their families. It is a game about survival. Game Aims I wanted this game to achieve two things. The players had to have their own skin in the game. If they did not […]

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Megagame Design Debate – a new way of designing megagames

Onside Report on the Megagame Design session at CLWG on Sunday 6 August 2017 – By Tom Parry First, we would like to thank CLWG for inviting us to discuss megagame design. We had a very enlightening discussion, and we now have a much firmer grasp on the philosophy behind most megagame design. There is […]

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Cobre, Vacas y Cucarachas: Mexican Revolution 1913

Onside report by Jonathan Pickles This was a follow up to my game design session from October. The game revisits the many games I ran on the 1913 Mexican Revolution culminating in the megagame in 2004 The aim of this revision is to try to use far simpler mechanisms to deal with the operational side […]

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Copper & Cows – Onside Report by Jonathan Pickles

Copper & Cows was a design session and tryout run by Jonathan Pickles at the CLWG Conference in October 2016. Copper & Cows covers one of Jonathan’s obsessions, the Mexican Revolution. This design session was trying to get a realistic campaign system. Copper & Cows Mexican Revolution (again) Onside Report I wrote some design notes for […]

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Adlerangriff – Manual Real Time Game – onside by Jim Wallman

Adlerangriff was a design session for a manual real time Battle of Britain game run by Jim Wallman at the CLWG Conference in October 2016. Adlerangriff being the German name for the operation that we call the Battle of Britain. Onside Report of Adlerangriff by Jim Wallman Following one of ‘those conversations’ with Rob Cooper a […]

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Revolutionary Warfare – Onside by James Kemp

Revolutionary Warfare in France 1789

Another post from the Archives, this is James Kemp’s onside report of Revolutionary Warfare from January 2003. It was written for milmud and archived on his website at http://www.cold-steel.org/2003/revolutionary-warfare/ Revolutionary Warfare – Onside Report by James Kemp When I played Andy Grainger’s A Month in Country I immediately thought of some of the parallels with my Revolutionary […]

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Viperous Worm: Gaming popular opinion, 1450

Onside report by Nick Luft, from June 2016 Session I wanted to design a game that reflected how popular opinion was formed. The rival players would promote their cause and the neutral players would provide a commentary and analysis that would create the game’s popular opinion. The neutral players would have their own agendas and would be able […]

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The Bastard Comes game design preview

Andrew Hadley writes about his latest megagame idea The Bastard Comes. A megagame of the aftermath of the Norman Invasion of britain in 1066. The Bastard Comes game design preview a Megagame of British resistance to Norman rule post-Hastings Main concept Various English groups resist or collaborate with the extension of Norman rule, with the […]

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