One Favorable Moment

"In war there is but one favorable moment. The great art is to seize it!" - Napoleon Bonaparte

D&D's origins as a wargame have been exhaustively recorded. From Dave Arneson's Blackmoor setting (which devolved from a medieval wargame into dungeon-crawling) to Gary Gygax's Greyhawk (where setting up a domain and commanding armies was part of the ongoing high-level game), the old school was vehemently engaged in wargame campaigns. In fact, this is the origin of the term "campaign" for an ongoing series of adventures. 

The first D&D settings in fact made no distinction between wargame and roleplaying. Maneuvering armies impacted Blackmoor and its surrounding Northern Marches as much as the dungeon delving beneath the eponymous castle. There are accounts of no less than three campaigns in Dave Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign, wherein lawful forces of civilization battled the chaotic beastmen and the ominous Egg of Coot. The saturday-afternoon wargame ran concurrent to the delves in Blackmoor's dungeons. In fact, Arneson's players became so caught up in dungeon delving that they paid no heed to the conquering armies aboveground, resulting in the occupation of Blackmoor by orcs!

Castle Blackmoor replica

Gygax similarly set up World of Greyhawk to engage in war campaigns. The original Folio-edition of Greyhawk contained details about troops and armies of the political domains of the campaigns world. Gygax expanded on these figures in a series of Dragon-magazine articles called "Greyhawk's World", detailing troop movements and accounts of battle.

I have long wanted to engage in such a campaign, games of miniature battles determining the grand course of history in the campaign, with the players hearing about these battles and experiencing their consequences at low levels. At high levels, players themselves command armies and are at the heart of campaign-shaking events.

Flintlock Fantasy chronicles a campaign set up in this style. The armies of the young Burgundy Republic clash with the royalist forces of the Alliance - old monarchies battling to contain the revolutionary ideas spilling forth from the fledgling nation. Adventurers start out as familiar dungeon delvers and wilderness explorers, gaining ever more power and widening their circle of influence, eventually gaining command of the Armies of the Republic. Until one of them is strong enough to stop the continent's decline into chaos and founds a new Empire, espousing ideals of liberty and equality, eager to dethrone the old monarchs and enlighten their subjects.

Warmaster Wood Elves? Or the forces of the Kingdom of Silvanor?

Battles will be fought utilizing a combination of rules copied and pasted from Black Powder, the scalable gunpowder-era miniature game, and Warmaster, the game of brigade-level fantasy battles. Black Powder provides the skeleton of the rules, Warmaster adds familiar fantasy races and magic spells. I will have to come up with campaign rules as well, facilitating the strategic level and maneuvering of the hundreds of thousands of troops around the continent.

Black Powder French Infantry? Or Burgundy Republican forces?

Have you ever tried to combine wargaming with D&D adventures? What do's and don'ts did you take away from it?