The Ash, the Elder, and the Hen Elm

  For those not familiar with the practice of a slush pile in TTRPG blogging, it's basically 'throw all the stuff you've lost motivation to write/found wasn't worth writing about out there so people can pick through the ruins.' For various reasons - possibly I'm not naturally as productive as I was in 2024 over long periods, possibly just a tough few months - I have a fair old bit of slush this season. I hope you find something worthwhile in it! NOT SLUSH The following projects are still ongoing. Slowly.  What Interesting Terrain Looks Like, where I argue for a change in the way people approach exploration play in games towards the mundane difficulties and small scales rather than the weird and grandiose Folkloresque-Ritterian North West Mageckrawl, Part 1, in which I'll go through the placement of sites of power, nodes, ley lines etc. over which our mages and other supernaturals will  compete . This is the thing I've done most writing on this season, i...

Here's a system I used to play a GMless Warhammer Fantasy Battles (8th ed) campaign in 2023. I quite like it, and I think it'd be useful for others too. It has the advantages of not requiring a GM and reflecting the progress of each army whilst still producing thematically coherent outcomes. It's not going to be as in-depth as a GMed map campaign probably, and it needs exactly four fairly committed players (well, I'm sure you could make a triangle or hex variant tbf), but what can you do? Although built around Warhammer, it should be workable for any wargame that uses points and has scenarios - you may just need to find a suitable way to replicate the massacre/major victory/minor victory/draw distinction WHFB makes. My experience has been that it's played pretty quickly and produced plausible, fun results. (Rules which didn't do this were smoothed out over time). There's a bit of a death-spiral, but it's not so quick that people can't make a comeback...

If you're at all interested in Warhammer Fantasy Battles, you've probably been pointed to this before, possibly by somebody currently in the process of losing a game to you: Dr. Luke Blaxill, wargamer, historian and (thereby) unknowing instigator of the most entertaining late essay of my first year at uni, describes Stillman as something of a 'grail knight' or cloistered monastic figure, somebody to be respected for their commitment but not necessarily somebody to be - or who can be - emulated. I'll let you watch the video rather than spoiling the conclusions - it's a solid analysis of the points, well worth it. If you'd like to know more about Stillman and his work, I can't add much to this  article . 1 Watching Dr. Blaxill's video got me thinking though - I certainly can respect the dedication of the analogous religious ascetics without believing the same things as them, and I can draw inspiration from that dedication in pursuing my own convictions...