Resetting Fantasy Wargaming… and finally going SOLO

Fantasy Warriors Box cover from 1990. 102 Miniatures, Rulebook, Counters. Back then a good start into Fantasy Wargaming.

To be honest, if I could go back in the fantasy hobby, I would continue at the point where I was around between 1992 and 1995. What I didn't know back then: we - my wargaming friends and I - already had everything. Or let's say almost. The little that was missing would have been easy to get, the bits that were annoying us would have been easily changed. A little bit of planning, a minimum of investment and a manageable amount of effort would have closed all the gaps and would have ended all the problems.

Back then, for example, we had a somewhat messed up set of rules - which no one knows anymore because it was only printed in the form of a series of articles in the in-house magazine of a local games store - which we could have adapted to our needs and findings. And that would have produced a set of rules that could have been used ever since. But we didn't. We went to Warhammer, another mess, but in color.

And if we had adapted the obscure combat rules in the role-playing game we used at that time to our needs, this would have opened (literally!) a whole world of fantasy gaming with hundreds of adventure modules, several big and legendary campaigns, novels and even some computer games. But it was not meant to be. However - to be correct - our 90s role-playing game actually came to an end on an evening when the game master at the time was so extremely inflexible and stubborn and behaved so strangely that nobody wanted to play the RPG anymore after that.

And that brings me to the points that have always bothered me in the hobby (and sometimes people in general) : obedience to given systems, inflexibility and a lack of focus. A lot of people cannot approach things in a relaxed manner, can't focus on one thing at a time or concentrate their effort so that things go ahead. 

Roleplaying started again more than ten years later and I was part of several long running roleplaying groups, but I haven't had any real fantasy wargaming for a long time now. And my last roleplaying group broke up in 2019 because one of the guys moved away - right after the end of the best campaign I ever had. The pandemic that followed shortly afterwards and the long period of isolation then did its part to seal the situation.

That was 5 years ago now. Time flies. For me, it's now the time to finally bring my activities in the fantasy area into a stable and sustainable state. And the only way seems to finally admit that solo wargaming and - if I can manage this - solo adventure gaming is the only really reliable solution. Dependence on others always carries the risk that everything will fall apart and I really have had enough of that. I had this too often and not only in the hobby. It is actually unbearable that external factors, most of which don't have anything to do with my life, keep interrupting my hobby activities. In other areas nobody would accept that. And I am no longer willing too.