Simple and Precise

War I love the concept of wargaming. When I was a kid I used to think I'd go to West Point. Kids sure are crazy. Of all strange things to be interested in, military strategy has always been one of mine. I used to read military strategy books, military history, play Total War, Europa Universalis IV, and the like. So when I started to get deep into the TTRPG hobby, war games such a Chainmail obviously sounded appealing. Upon trying them, however, I found them tedious, boring, slow, and not even very representative of real combat for all the work it involved. Maybe a day will come where I come around (I still haven't tried Warhammer), but until then I've looked for alternative ways to scratch that itch. I've come to realize that, in a TTRPG context, I actually enjoy the consequences and big-picture of army versus army more than the minutia of playing out every single order. Enter BECMI's War Machine! I read these rules a...

  Back again with some simple and precise AD&D 1e content. There are a lot of DM screens and reference sheets out there. Here's one I made for my game. I also made a handwritten, one-page version of this which unfortunately wouldn't upload well as a resource to others.  I usually hew close to by-the-book... unless I don't. I'm not trying to be as dogmatic as people like Anthony Huso (which is totally fine for him, by the way; trying to express yourself with a common language of rules is exactly why rule books are made to begin with!). The changes are very minor and usually made to facilitate faster play at the table. I only made changes when they personally slowed the game down too much for me. One notable exception for me is the reaction roll. Personally, I prefer the B/X 2d6 reaction roll; it's much more decisive and makes interpretation in the moment much clearer than d100... but isn't a big enough hill for me to die on to change ...