--- title: "Wargaming with no story" subtitle: "No story, no problem" author: Seth Kenlon publish_date: 2025-06-28 08:00 date: 2025-06-28 08:00 hero_classes: text-light title-h1h2 overlay-dark-gradient hero-large parallax hero_image: miniature-roman.webp show_sidebar: true show_breadcrumbs: true show_pagination: true taxonomy: category: blog tag: [gaming, wargame, meta, rpg ] --- I have fun playing wargames as campaigns and even as solo roleplaying games. There are lots of great ways to turn a game of 50 miniatures battling it out into a story, including making decisions based on key character models and just pausing to conceptualise why certain events during the previous round happened the way they did. However, there are also lots of great ways to not care about the story, and to enjoy a wargame for just being a wargame. I often find myself treating my wargames as roleplaying games. The connection is real. The combat systems of many roleplaying games are literally wargame rules (original D&D was essentially an expansion set for the [Chainmail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainmail_(game)) wargame). I only discovered wargaming after years of roleplaying, so it feels natural for me to impose what I enjoy about roleplaying onto my wargames. Worse yet (or better still?), the ratio of roleplay to combat in a wargame is often the perfect balance for me, so playing a wargame with a little roleplay is appealing. But when faced with a wargame, some RPG players I've introduced to wargaming have been confused at the lack of "real" roleplay. For some people, the way to enjoy a wargame is to abandon all hope of roleplay or story (because the small nods to roleplay I incorporate in my wargames don't feel like real roleplay anyway) and embrace the wargame as a wargame. Here are 3 ways I approach a wargame without roleplay elements being involved. ## 1. Think in numbers I once asked a real live British person how they could possibly enjoy Cricket, and she said "I'm mostly fascinated by the statistics." I don't know anything about sports, so maybe that's a normal answer, but it struck me that even to people who hate math, numbers are fun. Most everyone plays games these days, whether it's a mobile game, or puzzles in the New York Times, triple-A video games, or tabletop games, and we're all well conditioned to believe that a big number is inherently better than a small number (except when a small number is better than a big one). We do everything we can to adjust numbers for ourselves. A wargame has lots of numbers. There's a number of troops. There numbers on dice, and numbers for how many of each number you roll. There might be resources to spend, and victory points to earn. Focusing on numbers can be a surprisingly engaging way to go to [miniature] war, especially when you combine the numbers with model soldiers. For me, numbers are most noticeable when there's an extreme involved. A lone goblin separated from his squad manages to endure 4 powerful attacks, and get a few kills in himself. A marine with explosive rounds attacks 10 times through the course of the game and scores zero kills against unarmoured rebels. A big battle mech storms onto the battlefield and crushes everything in its path. I notice the numbers the most when they either surprise me or solidly confirm my expectations. I don't usually do anything with the numbers. I don't track them in a spreadsheet, but I let them form impressions on me. Sometimes I use these impressions as guidance when building an army, and other times I treat them as a bug to be fixed with new or modified rules. Interacting with the numbers of a wargame can be a lot of fun. It's one of the driving forces behind many of my solo wargame sessions. I enjoy testing an army at its current configuration, I enjoy testing it against different foes and in different situations. Of course, there's dice involved so the perfect designs of pure numbers battling pure numbers never manifests. But that's the beauty of playing the numbers. It's impossible to ever see the numbers in a perfect state, so the interactions are perpetually surprising. ## 2. Switch sides and break emotional bonds I play favourites, and I don't care. When I play as the goblins in [Battle in Balin's Tomb](https://mixedsignals.ml/blog/blog_review-balins-tomb), I know I subconsciously pull my punches for fear of being responsible for the death of a member of the Fellowship. (Except Boromir. That's just forcing the hand of fate.) In solo games, I always want Rome to win when I play Rome against Carthage. Egypt must win against Hattusa. The Adeptus Mechanicus must win against Genestealer Cult. I have emotional bonds with my miniatures, either because these models look cooler than those, or because I prefer the mythos and lore around one over the other. A strange thing happens when I switch armies, though. The emotional bond shifts a little toward the miniatures on my side of the table. And the tactics necessarily change too, because most armies are different enough in weaponry or configuration that you have to think about even a familiar battle from a new perspective. If you don't understand wargaming because there's not enough of an emotional investment, try accepting it instead of resisting it. Undermine your own expectations by playing an army you don't care about, and see whether playing the hand of god for an army of doomed soldiers is of interest. Can you swing a surprise victory for your group of abhorrent invaders? ## 3. The role of the impartial observer I think the thing that fascinates me the most about historical wargames is that they tend to be focused on an event rather than on a general or an army. Obviously the army is there, but most historical players I've talked to are primarily interested in the environmental situation of a battle. It makes some sense. Historically, we know what decisions famous commanders made in the heat of battle. It's a matter of record, so there's no room for roleplay or interpretation without branching off into alternative history (which is fun, but different). Within certain bounds, it doesn't make sense to put yourself in the shoes of a historical figure, because to roleplay accurately you'd have to make the same decisions under the same circumstances. The real variable is the perception of the battle conditions, the terrain, the enemy's behaviour, your army's priorities, tolerable risk, and so on. What if the enemy went east instead of west? What if we ambushed them in the town instead of meeting them at the perimeter? What if we enlisted the undead for help? Those are decisions you can make on a tabletop battlefield regardless of character motivations or history or lore. And you can make different choices every time you play. ## War never changes War never changes, but wargames can. You can introduce all manner of variations into your wargame, and it's perfectly acceptable that there's not a shred of plot in sight. Sometimes, it's fun to leave the story for the roleplay game and let your plastic scale models of angry soldiers do what they do best: hop around the battlefield 6 inches at a time and roll dice at each other. If you're new to the concept of wargaming, be sure to read my post listing [5 boardgames that introduce you to wargaming](https://mixedsignals.ml/blog/blog_boardgame-wargame).

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