Old School Photoshoot

For me, one of the appeals of this hobby is creating set piece scenes that invoke the sort of wander I felt as a kid flicking through the pages of White Dwarf. To that end, I really enjoy setting up my old school inspired miniatures and taking some shots. The results are amateur at best, but fun nonetheless!

Here's a few I've done in the last few days.

Above, a pair of Rogue Trader Dominators (they were in fact prototype Tyranid Warriors, sculpted by Nick Bibby but they feel like a species in their own right).

Space Slann, one of each, an unreleased one and a conversion.

Not Rogue Trader miniatures, but I hope in the spirit, some desert dwelling Technomads.

Old School gaming - my take

Thanks to Porky over on the Porky’s Expanse blog, there’s been a fair bit of chat recently about ‘old school gaming’, in particular as it relates to 40k, in the form of Rogue Trader. As someone who likes to mess around with this type of gaming, I thought I’d set down what it means to me.

Just to clarify, this is my own view of things, and not necessarily that of the other guys in the group who contribute to this blog. I’m sure they’ll be happy to chip in with their own views too. I’d also like to ensure anyone who cares that I play all manner of games, including the most recent editions of Warhammer and the likes, so I’m not preaching or trying to convert anyone away from their favourite game!

What I regard as ‘old school’ isn’t primarily about rules, miniatures or background setting, though these undoubtedly come into things with the type of game we play. To me, ‘old school’ is all about freedom and entertainment. It’s treating a game as a cooperative, story-driven activity, though one person is still actively trying to ‘win’ (because the characters represented by his miniatures are often fighting for their lives!). It isn’t competitive and it certainly needs no FAQs – the rules are just there to provide structure, not to confine the action.

I’d actually go a bit further, and make something of a leftfield suggestion. I’d say that we live in an increasingly technical, specialised society, and as such those who think primarily with the left hemisphere of their brains (that dealing with logic, reason etc) dominate many aspects of our world. ‘Old school’ harks back to a time before the rise of the ‘left brain thinking’, technological society, when the right hemisphere (that dealing with creativity and intuition) was more important than it is now. I’d back this up by observing how people fixate over the wording of rules, rather than over the possibilities they present, and how some people are always saying that ‘they’ understand the rule, but that ‘someone else’ may not.

So, to yank the steering wheel back and haul the juggernaut of nonsense back onto the hardpan, Rogue Trader is, for me, representative of everything I want from gaming. As a rules set, its all over the place, but that’s fine with me. It’s far from the most sophisticated of sets in content or execution, but its built in such a way that GMs and players can easily get under the hood and tinker to their heart’s content. Furthermore, the setting is incredibly open, relying as it does on familiar and well-loved archetypes, meaning that almost any cultural motif can be riffed off of, plumbing untold depths of creativity in us all.

For me though, the best thing about it is the way the rules continuously refer to this nigh-extinct being known as a ‘games master’ – a player who, because he actually wants to do so, sets aside his participation as a belligerent (for want of a better word) and assumes the role of ring master, entertainer, referee and conductor (as well as host and sometimes griddle cook!).

I’m a GM far more than I am a player, and I love nothing more hobby-wise than creating the whole set up for my mates to enjoy, including the table, miniatures, story and special rules. Fortunately, I have a small group of friends (and more on the interwebs) who feel the same. Other people struggle to convert their mates to this type of gaming, which is understandable, but worth pursuing. If you succeed, you’ll find this type of game is at once incredibly ‘grown up’, but at its source entirely childish, as you’re effectively entertaining, even channelling, the child within.

I may have strayed in preaching then, for which I apologise! Anyone have any thoughts on this issue?

Why We (still!) Play

We’re publishing this blog because it amuses us to do so - simple as that!

But just as importantly we’re doing it because we want to inspire other people to do the same sort of thing. We don’t plan to present a definitive set of rules or a system, because that’s not how we do things. This is old-school wargaming, how it always used to be played before everyone decided they couldn’t play without an FAQ and needed a scoring system to measure their worth as a gamer!

As with many ‘veterans’, we’ve developed our own gaming tastes over the years, and fancy trying out a hybrid of all our favourite rules mechanics. Many people look to gaming companies or to the web to provide rules specifically tailored to their own tastes, but fail to find them and end up getting bitter with those companies, who are just catering to the widest market possible. Some people even get so angry they try to set up in competition to the big guys, trying to publish their own, clearly superior version of the rules.

But the point is we do this for fun, because we want to, not because we’re angry about something! Wargamers have been making up rules to suit their own groups since the early 20th century, so there’s no reason we should lose this skill.

Anyway, we’re using a combination of the Necromunda rules, Rogue Trader, 2nd edition 40k and whatever else we fancy trying, and tweaking them all as we go along. We’re mostly using the Necromunda campaign system, because we know it works, but we'll mix things up as we go along, as we feel us appropriate.

We tend to take turns running games, with one person setting up a game and GMing it for their own and the other players' entertainment. But even if only two of us can get together, we'll still trust each other to throw in some random silliness, from a wandering Wild Grox looking for a mate to a sudden outbreak of 'MACS' (Mysteriously Aquired Crazy Syndrome).

Why We Play

We’re publishing this blog firstly because it amuses us to do so. But just as importantly we’re doing it because we want to inspire other people to do the same sort of thing. We don’t plan to present a definitive set of rules or a system, because that’s not how we do things. This is old-school wargaming, how it always used to be played before everyone decided they couldn’t play without an FAQ and needed a scoring system to measure their worth as a gamer!

As with many ‘veterans’, we’ve developed our own gaming tastes over the years, and fancy trying out a hybrid of all our favourite rules mechanics. Many people look to gaming companies or to the web to provide rules specifically tailored to their own tastes, but fail to find them and end up getting bitter with those companies, who are just catering to the widest market possible. Some people even get so angry they try to set up in competition to the big guys, trying to publish their own, clearly superior version of the rules.

But the point is we do this for fun, because we want to, not because we’re angry about something! Wargamers have been making up rules to suit their own groups since the early 20th century, so there’s no reason we should lose this skill.

Anyway, we’re using the Necromunda rules, and tweaking them as we go along. We’re also using the Necromunda campaign system, with some minor changes. To start off with, we’re simply counting the territories as their equivalent on Jeriko Reach. Each game we play we try out a new house rule, which we’ll post here for ours and your entertainment (and because we’d lose our notes if we just wrote them down).