Tales & Tactics

In this episode of Tales & Tactics Rules as Written , we cover Fighting Formations: US 29th Infantry Division from GMT Games, designed by Chad Jensen and published in 2025 as a standalone entry in the long running Fighting Formations series. Operating at a scale of 75 metres per hex with turns representing approximately five minutes of real time, the game puts players in command of platoon, sq...

This week on Beyond the Book , we go looking for the difference between bending a genre and breaking it. We get into why some blends are overloaded, with rules that make the two halves cost each other something, and why others are just a coat of paint over a system that would run identically without them. Occasionally the collision produces something that could not have existed any other way, and...

This week on Rules as Written , we crack open Shadowrun 4th edition and go looking into how it actually works. A game about people who sell off pieces of themselves to buy three seconds of being faster than everyone else. A setting that spent three decades insisting that magic, mega-corps and surgically wired reflexes all belong in the same rain slicked city, now in an edition that tried to make e...

In this episode of Tales & Tactics: Beyond the Book , we dig into how to start a new time period, setting, or subject in tabletop gaming, especially within miniature wargaming. We get into choosing models you actually enjoy working with, matching rules and scope to the kind of stories you want to tell. Managing time, money, space commitments, and reusing collections across multiple systems, al...

In this week's episode of Rules as Written, we cover Close Quarters Battles: Waterloo from Lock 'n Load Publishing, a small-unit tactical wargame designed by Andrew Glenn that brings one of history's most investigated battles down to the ground level. Rather than placing players in the role of Wellington or Napoleon surveying the field from a command post, Close Quarters Battles zooms in on the de...

In this week's episode of Beyond the Book, we dig into the nasty bits: why a villain has to be genuinely vile before stopping them means anything, why a setting needs real shadows before it feels like a real place, how much ugliness a game can carry before the fun gives out, and why playing the monster at the table doesn't make you one away from it. Along the way we try to draw the line between da...

In this week's episode of Rules as Written, we dig into Fairy Meat. In 2000, the publishers of Knights of the Dinner Table put out a wargame about fairies, the cute, glittery, storybook kind, with one twist: they've all become cannibals. The miniatures are life size, the battlefield is your kitchen table, a forest preserve, or the food court at the mall, and every battle runs on an ordinary deck o...

In this episode of Tales & Tactics Beyond the Book, we tackle a question that sits at the heart of every hobbyist’s collection. What actually ages a game? We explore whether it is the mechanics themselves that date a design, as newer systems offer more refined or efficient solutions to the same problems, or whether a game’s age is better measured by the moment its developer withdraws support,...

In this episode of Tales & Tactics, our Rules as Written series covers Crossfire, the 1996 company level World War II miniatures game designed by Arty Conliffe. Born from a challenge issued at Historicon in 1995 to design a historical miniatures wargame without two features present in most rulesets (rulers and fixed game turns), Crossfire remains one of the most distinctive and quietly radical...

In this week's episode of Beyond the Book, we discuss the early introduction of the role playing hobby to Japan. With titles such as Traveller and Dungeons & Dragons being translated and even works of Tolkien being introduced in the 60's showcasing western fantasy to a new audience. The gamebook boom that taught a million readers how dice and stats work, the computer magazine commission that a...

In this week's episode of Rules as Written, we dig into Sword World 2.5's Power Table and its runaway criticals, its faction based combat, its firmly centralized GM authority, and party roles gated so tightly the rulebook explicitly closes the loopholes you might reach for. We also trace what survived from the 1989 original which turns out to be most of the arithmetic and almost none of the combat...

In this Beyond the Book companion to our Repent! Ye Foolish Gods episode, we look at how roleplaying games and wargames borrow from each other, going both ways. First we ask whether you should bring miniatures to your RPG table. Models make positioning, line of sight, and area effects clear, cut down on rules arguments, and look great on the table. But they also cost time and money to collect and...

In this episode of Rules as Written, we dig into Repent! Ye Foolish Gods, the 2026 skirmish game from Snarling Badger Studios by Adam Loper and Vincent Venturella, in which a four model warband of cursed and discarded mortals fights its way up the divine hierarchy with the goal of killing a god. We break down the roll under D12 engine, the Supremacy and Deficiency mechanic that drives most tactica...

In this Beyond the Book discussion, we explore the role of crunch in tabletop gaming. We discuss why some of the hobby's most beloved games are also its most complex, what makes players embrace or reject heavy rulesets, and how designers balance realism, depth, accessibility, and player engagement. Whether you love lightweight narrative games or thousand page rulebooks, we tackle one of tabletop g...

In This week's Rules as Written episode, we dig into BattleTech: A Time of War's detailed character creation, sprawling skill system, tactical combat, and tendency toward troupe style play. We explore a functional and ambitious RPG whose greatest strength and greatest weakness may be the same thing: its determination to provide rules for nearly everything. A Time of War sets out to let you play al...

In this episode of Tales & Tactics: Beyond the Book, we step back from any single title to take a broader look at the tabletop industry in our Wide World of Games discussion. We examine the growing influence of live play shows and roleplaying media on the hobby and how actual plays and streaming content have brought an enormous wave of new players to the table, while also instilling habits and...

In this special 100th episode of Tales & Tactics, our Rules as Written series turns to the world’s most played tabletop roleplaying game: Dungeons & Dragons 2024, the significant revision to fifth edition released by Wizards of the Coast as part of the game’s 50th anniversary. Our verdict is one of measured appreciation but honest critique that D&D 2024 is a polished, accessible, and a...

In this episode of Tales & Tactics Beyond the Book, We ask one of tabletop design’s oldest questions, how do you capture the chaos and decisiveness of close combat at the table? Inspired by the charge and shock mechanics of GMT’s Men of Iron: Norman Conquests, we explore how wargames and roleplaying games have approached this challenge from fundamentally different angles. From the momentum dri...

In this episode of Rules as Written we ride into the age of Norman expansion with Men of Iron: Norman Conquests from GMT Games. Covering battles from Civitate in 1053 to Evesham in 1265, the game explores the rise of the Normans and the military legacy they left across Europe. We examine the Men of Iron system's approach to command, activation, shock combat, morale, and battlefield momentum, and d...

In this episode of Beyond the Book, we look at a growing trend in tabletop gaming: the rise of the "vibe game." From art punk RPGs and rules light indies to beautifully designed passion projects, vibe games prioritize mood, aesthetic identity, and emotional experience over complex mechanical systems. But where is the line between elegant minimalism and incomplete design? At what point does a game...

In this episode of Rules as Written, we dive into MÖRK BORG, PIRATE BORG, Forbidden Psalm, and the rise of the modern “vibe game.” These visually striking indie RPGs helped define a new era of tabletop design built around mood, aesthetic identity, and fast improvisational play. But beneath the doom metal art, apocalyptic prophecy, and brutal minimalism lies a major design question: how much proced...

In this episode of Beyond the Book, we dive into what happens when players must commit to plans before the action begins. From classic hex and counter simulations of naval warfare and air force games to the game Diplomacy of 1959 and more modern board games, pre planning systems force players to think like real commanders. Orders are written, actions are locked in, and once the turn begins, events...

In this episode of Tales & Tactics, our Rules as Written series covers Talon from GMT Games, a tactical sci-fi fleet combat game pitting the human Terran Confederation against the alien Talon Empire across a series of ship to ship engagements. We discuss how the game’s impulse based turn structure creates a tense and interleaved flow of action that will feel familiar to veterans of Starfleet B...

From dugouts and playbooks to stat sheets and dice rolls, this Beyond the Book episode dives into the world of tabletop sports simulation. We look at how designers have tried to capture the drama and strategy of real world sport without requiring players to throw a single punch or swing a real bat. From classic replay games to modern fast play designs, we explore what makes a sports sim feel authe...

In this episode of Rules as Written, we step up to the plate with Deadball by W.M. Akers, a fast, elegant tabletop baseball game that turns statistics, scorekeeping, and a handful of dice into a tense pennant race drama. We dig into the history behind the term Deadball, explore the real life Deadball Era of baseball, and look at how Akers translates that low scoring, small ball style into tabletop...