Diegetic Advancement Blog

TOG Part 2 - Chainmail 4

26 Feb 20258 min read

Okay we're back with the next installment of the read through. This week we will be taking a look at some optional rules for Historical Characteristics and Weather, and then taking a look at how to run Sieges. It should be interesting.

Apologies for the delay, I've been all sorts of busy.

Battle of the Five Armies

Continue Reading...

TOG Part 2 - Chainmail 3

7 Feb 20259 min read

Little bit slower than my weekly schedule, you should know by now there really isn't a schedule. This is both a boon and a bane, I've found the relaxed schedule a bit easier to actually achieve, but I do have to remind myself to keep on top of things to not let it go too far. Maybe dropping to a fortnightly format will be good at some point. I wasn't helped by a busy week at work; anyway, lets dig in to some Chainmail. This section should be interesting, looking at Melee and Morale, two sections we have a few questions about.

Answering Feedback

If you want to hear feedback, and the contributions of The Pink Phantom check out the podcast, you're probably missing out just reading this. But I got a call from Mirke this week that is worth mentioning on the blog. The gist of it was “How would you run the Battle of the Five Armies in Chainmail?”. Well I didn't provide an answer, we're lucky that Gary himself has given us the answer in issue 60 of the Panzerfaust fanzine as reported by the excellent Jon Peterson.

Continue Reading...

Updates from DA 2025-01-30

30 Jan 202516 min read

Well I've been slacking on these, my last update was 2 months ago. There was a break for Christmas in between so not so bad, and I've been making other posts - so I'll forgive myself. Anyway let's get into the updates.

No RPG Theory this time around, I'm expending most of my thought in that direction on the Chainmail deep dive. But I'll be talking about a hexcrawling supplement for Shadowdark released by Todd of Hexedpress, talking about my recent games and closing with some content shoutouts.

Of Wood and Wold

Continue Reading...

TOG Part 2 - Chainmail 2

22 Jan 202510 min read

Okay lots of rules and tables in this one - I'm not sure if that means I'll have more or less to say. Lets start with Terrain then.

Terrain

Okay there are two sections here on Terrain, the flow is a bit weird in this section - but I believe this is placed here as it relates to the next section “Movement” and hopefully we learn more about Terrain later. The part that makes the flow weird is a section on randomly selecting Terrain for a battle. Anyway, onto my thoughts.

Continue Reading...

New Years Resolutions

16 Jan 20256 min read

Not the usual resolutions regarding Health, Family, Work etc. that everyone tends to say they'll do and only sometimes half achieves. Instead, today I want to talk about my Hobby and Gaming resolutions. I wasn't going to do this by I was inspired by Mirke and Evil Jeff both putting out interesting episodes covering there resolutions. And then half way through drafting this post, Joe announced the Anchorite APA which aligns really well with the goals I was setting for myself. So what are my plans and aspirations for 2025?

Anchorite APA

But first, a quick comment on the APA. First, if you don't know what I'm talking about go and watch the episode that Joe recorded with Jason where they discuss what its all about or visit the website.

Continue Reading...

The Original Game Part 2 - Chainmail 1

15 Jan 20257 min read

Okay so I'm going to start my slow read of Chainmail, today focusing on The Introduction and the Turn Sequence. Lets jump in.

So I got a call from the Pink Phantom, which I'll play on the podcast and might mention throughout my analysis, thanks for the listening and your input. As they mention, the introduction really should be split into two sections. The first being a prelude introduction to miniature wargaming and the next being the actual introduction to Chainmail.

Prelude

Continue Reading...

The Original Game Part 1

24 Dec 20243 min read

So in my initial Intro post, I mentioned wanting to take a deep dive into Original Dungeons and Dragons, so lets explore what that is going to look like.

Over on the Audio Dungeon discord they've been running a Hobbit Slow Read, following on from doing the same with the Lord of the Rings. I've fallen off the wagon reading and probably won't join back in but the Lord of the Rings slow read was very fun and a very different experience from simply reading the work. If this sounds interesting, then you should listen to Mirke's excellent podcast episodes where he and his daughter share their thoughts on the current chapter: here

I'd been toying with doing a similar thing with RPG products (game systems and modules) but then I stumbled across this reddit post titled 'Complete Reading Order Question' and that gave me the inspiration for this series. I'm going to work my way through reading each entry of this list, slowly section by section, sharing any insights that I gain from the activity. Its a very long list, so for now I'm going to put an arbitrary stopping point of 1975 (with the release of the Blackmoor supplement).

Continue Reading...

Bolt Action Showcase - Early War Japan

4 Dec 20245 min read
Bolt Action Miniatures - Imperial Japanese Army

So I wanted to put up a post on the blog just showing off some pictures of the units I built and painted for the event I mentioned in my update post. Just a showcase is probably not terribly interesting though, so I'm going to talk about the methods and products I used as well.

I'm pretty proud of these, not because they are particularly good - but because I finished them. Before playing Bolt Action I had been playing Warhammer 40k sporadically, I had a lot of models most of them built and I even did some conversions, though nothing terribly elaborate, just using different weapon kits or merging two different units together. Here is a pic of my most fun one:

Continue Reading...

Adventure Design for Game Completeness

4 Dec 202411 min read

In the last post I mentioned some frustration with prepping Shadowdark, so I wanted to dive into that a little bit more: Is adventure design guidance required to make a game complete? And what does good guidance look like?

But first a comment on feedback.

Feedback

Continue Reading...

Updates from DA

26 Nov 202410 min read

Okay lets jump back into that old format. I'll mostly be talking about wargaming in this post as thats what has been consuming my time. We'll cover Bolt Action, Frostgrave and a newish game called Hobgoblin. But don't fret, there will be some RPG talk, first up...

RPG Theory

So I've recently moved my group from a Shadowdark game to Dolmenwood; I had been waiting for physical products for Dolemnwood before diving in, but I got the exciting news that we're expecting our second child in April so that timeline doesn't work out. I also found that Shadowdark lacked enough meat on the bone which added to the burden of actually running it.

Continue Reading...

Intro

18 Nov 20244 min read

Hello, and welcome to the Diegetic Advancement blog. I'm Riley.

The Plan

Just over a year ago, on the 12th of September 2023, I released the first episode of the Diegetic Advancement podcast, and over that year, I published 40 more episodes (and some short daily episodes during RPGaDAY). So why are you now reading a blog post?

Continue Reading...