The Way We Play Our Game

This world was born as the setting for our role-playing campaign in the spring of 1991. There were some magic users, and magic items, but for the most part the game was low fantasy. We had men and orcs, and these great orcish beasts known as urogs (picture a smart orc that never stops growing), and the occasional dwarf. We also had some Ral Partha and Grenadier 25mm figurines to use with our write-on/wipe-off battlemat.

During 1993, the game endured a great purge of magic (items and mages) as there was a dramatic change in story philosophy. Robert E. Howard’s influences plunged the world into a Dark Age setting. Tribal hatreds drove clashes between competing groups. The campaigns shifted focus to the Western Orclands where the dark factions of orcs and their armies fought for control of the lands. And we began to build miniature houses, towers, walls and cliffs. Our first apartment was soon furnished with a 4 foot by 4 foot permanent terrain table fitted to the gable window.

Around the turn of the millenium, we brought our world visually onto the computer. Digital pictures and photoshopped maps joined the prior decade’s word documents.  We painstakingly replicated my husband’s poster sized pencil maps with vector-based mapping programs.

In 2006, the campaign came back to the human lands of Gautria and its frontiers where we had a gaming revelation: we needed more figures. Our humans weren’t big enough in number to frighten the orc forces anymore. Thus began my husband’s mad quest to fulfill my vision of one mini for every character in the scene. Epic battles on modular terrain. Multiple factions represented in miniature. One-for-one. Absolutely insane.

He did it. By 2013 we had hills, sod huts, timber homes, stone houses, keeps, tents, trees, towers and boats in drawers and boxes and rows of painted lead on our walls.

At that point, he challenged me. He asked me to share what it is that makes our games so much fun. So here are our stories, our adventures, our many players. Enjoy the results of our years of hobby and imagination!