reference

This Is How We Play

Aron Clark3 Comments

My return to RPGs in 2012 started w/ Dungeon Crawl Classics, struck out into the OSR frontier, explored three little brown books, revisited “blue box”, and have generally been rambling around the DIY indie scene. All this I’ve done as both a DM & a PC. There have been successes and failures on both sides of the screen.

I recently joined an Old School Essential (OSE) campaign run by Jason Hobbs. Part of the introduction to the campaign was a review of Jason’s house rules, those variants & rulings Jason uses in his game. This reminded of a similar compilation of my own.

I’ve re-organized my own house rules, which I consider a living document. Sharing those here as an example of the concepts that I find interesting or helpful in a game like Dungeons & Dragons.

To the Strongest

Aron Clark1 Comment
Athens wrestlers – Prizma Gothic filter

My wargaming continues on the virtual tabletop – most recently & successfully with Table Top Simulator playing in the To The Strongest 1066 tournament.

Snapshot of completed TTS on TTS

For those not familiar with To the Strongest – it is a British rule set published in 2015 – covering ancient through medieval wargaming. This game is a played on a grid, uses playing cards instead of dice, and very well suited to Table Top Simulator.

I’ve played a bit of To the Strongest on the physical tabletop, struggled with some of the basic concepts, and wrestled with army lists that assume some basic knowledge of the rules. All difficult points when learning a game. Settling into the 1066 tournament with group of seasoned players was a challenge. Falling back on my go to strategy of creating reference materials I refined the quick reference sheet for clarity & made reference materials out of the army lists themselves.

A Clark TTS QRS & 1066 Army Lists, hope they provide you with a way to explore To the Strongest as well.

  • Revised QRS, adds: mono pallet, addtn’l detail for both easy & difficult activations, simplified terms, generals’ wounds, march rules, evade test,
  • Revised army list, adds: simplified color pallet, reduce number of columns, core rules to each unit

Post script – there are now 3 exceptional TTS modules covering 1066, War of the Roses, & 2nd Punic War.

Post post script – when I first experimented w/ To the Strongest I created to counters to replace cards, they are also available for download.

4 colors available

Update – September 14

Have pulled together an introduction to virtual wargaming with To the Strongest using Tabletop Simulator: TTS on TTS. Hope it will inspire some to try miniature wargaming in a virtual space.

Update – March 21

Recently I recorded an actual play session. This might be a good way to learn how to play or at least gain an understanding of the game mechanics

Update January 29

Have updated my QRS, cleaning up the evade section and the “advance & throw” along with “fire & retire” being restricted to Light Units.

Update April 9

Have updated my TTS QRS to support Even Stronger v12. Also removes the unit type specific details from the melee and shooting modifiers. Instead those modifiers moved to the Streamline TTS unit summary, preferring that such modifiers be included in an army list rather than QRS.

Links
– Updated QRS
– Streamlined TTS Summary here