There was a time when you did not “build a list”. You turned up, someone at the head of the table set the scene, and the battle unfolded.

Halfway through the day, a storm rolled in. Cannon lost effectiveness. Cavalry bogged down. Infantry slogged through mud. You adapted.

No points. No balance patch. Just judgment.

Early historical games and the first wave of fantasy crossovers assumed something many players now struggle with: an umpire and a scenario. You declared intent rather than measuring movement to the millimetre. You tried things. Sometimes they worked. Sometimes they went wrong in spectacular fashion.

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Off the back of his epic two-part chat with Rick Priestley, Jason continues the narrative gaming thread with Gerry of OnTableTop/Beasts of War fame.

Warlord Games attempted to recapture that spirit with the first edition of Black Powder. No points values, just command rules and scenario play. Over time, points filtered back in because players demanded them. Many now find it difficult to play without a number telling them the game is fair before it begins.

That obsession with balance has reshaped the hobby. Tournament culture rewards predictability. Net lists circulate online. Optimised builds become standard. Players arrive already knowing what the “correct” army looks like. Surprise becomes an inconvenience rather than a thrill.

Historical gaming has not escaped it either. Systems such as the DBX family formalised army structures decades ago. Twelve elements a side. Prescribed ratios. Terrain determined in a controlled way. It creates parity, but it also flattens the unpredictability that defined the periods being represented. No one told the Mongols to rein it in for fairness.

Commercial reality plays its part. Games Workshop moved from broad hobby coverage to a tightly controlled ecosystem of its own products. Points systems standardise play and support organised events. They also make purchasing decisions clearer and repeatable. It is effective business. It narrows the lens through which many people first encounter the hobby.

The counter movement is not new. It is a rediscovery. Joe McCullough with Frostgrave and Oathmark leans heavily into narrative. Your warband grows. Your kingdom develops from the land you claim. Identity flows from story rather than a faction badge.

Moonstone goes further. Small model counts. Named characters. Rules freely available. The emphasis sits squarely on personality and evolving lore rather than efficiency.

The common thread is not the rule set. It’s attitude.

A good umpire or GM treats the table like a director treats a cast. Set the situation. Let the players act. Adapt when they go off script. Campaign play magnifies this. Commit too much force and lose it, and it stays lost. Your next game is shaped by that decision. Consequences generate tension far more effectively than a perfectly balanced 2,000-point reset.

Even historical refights benefit from this approach. Add character quirks drawn from film or memoir. Give officers a once-per-game ability tied to their personality. Let cavalry ignore the neat retreat clause if blood is up and history suggests they would. A little looseness often produces far more memorable moments than strict adherence.

Somewhere along the line, hobby time became serious time. Cost debates. Meta-analysis. Optimisation. Yet we are still pushing toy soldiers around a table. The value lies in the enjoyment and the stories that emerge, not the precision of the spreadsheet.

If you want to feel that older energy again, try removing the safety net. Run a scenario without points. Use an umpire. Allow imbalance. Accept uncertainty.

You may find the game breathes more easily without the numbers dictating every decision.

White Dwarf readers of a certain vintage will undoubtedly remember Fred Reed’s iconic Howling Griffons space marine army. Then-Games Workshop store worker Fred showcased the stunning force in issue 179 (November 94), and it had a runout in the mag’s battle report a month later.

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Fred’s army was a source of inspiration to many young hobbyists in the mid-90s and is still talked about more than 30 years later. One man who’s gone above and beyond in his nostalgia, however, is Jonny Watson of the Jonny Watson Gaming YouTube channel. Jonny did the ultimate homage to Fred’s Howling Griffons by assembling and painting his own tribute act:

I had the pleasure of chatting to Jonny about this project and the opportunities it brought him, from interviewing Fred Reed himself to being featured on the hallowed pages of White Dwarf. We covered his origin story, returning after the inevitable deep freeze, and how running a YouTube channel can supplement and enhance your hobby when you’re not playing the algorithm game.

As ever, be sure to subscribe or follow the Tabletop Miniature Hobby Podcast wherever you listen. And we’d love to hear from you in the Bedroom Battlefields Discord community while you’re at it!

When Rick Priestley casually says, “What you’re doing sounds entirely normal to me,” it becomes clear how strange modern wargaming culture has become.

On a recent two-part episode of the Tabletop Miniature Hobby Podcast, Priestley, co-creator of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, listens as Jason and Mark describe big tables, no points, Games Masters, imbalance by design, and campaigns driven by story rather than symmetry.

To him, none of this sounds radical. It sounds familiar.

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The Myth of the Lost Style

Narrative wargaming is often framed as a niche revival or a reaction against competitive play. Priestley rejects that outright. Narrative play is not a rebellion. It is the foundation modern wargames were built on.

Before points values and mirrored tables, games were shaped by scenario and judgment. Sieges were unfair. Last stands were desperate. Balance was not calculated. It was agreed.

Early British designers such as Featherstone, Grant, and Young did not rely on points systems. They assumed good faith, shared imagination, and players who wanted the game to be interesting rather than optimal.

So what changed?

When Balance Became an Ideology

Points values began as a convenience. They helped players build collections and find games quickly. Over time, that convenience hardened into expectation.

Modern balance culture assumes that a properly designed game should resolve to a near-perfect 50/50 outcome between equally skilled players. The result is list optimisation, meta-chasing, and games whose outcome is often decided before the first dice roll.

Priestley does not condemn this approach. He simply questions what it produces. Efficiency, perhaps. Predictability, certainly. But not always joy.

The Games Master We Lost

One of the clearest casualties of this shift is the Games Master.

In the episode, Jason describes running vast multiplayer games overseen by a GM who introduces events, resolves disputes, and keeps the story moving. Priestley immediately recognises the model. This was early Warhammer. Early roleplaying games. Early wargaming.

The GM was never a workaround. They were the engine.

Attempts to replace that role with campaign books and flowcharts were understandable, but limited. You cannot automate trust or improvisation. A referee works because everyone agrees they are there to make the game better.

As Priestley puts it, the only rule is that the Games Master is always right. Not because they wield authority, but because the group has given them responsibility.

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Rules as Tools

Another striking thread in the conversation is how casually the group ignores rules.

Forgotten mechanics are handwaved. Unclear outcomes are resolved with a roll and a decision. Priestley admits that even with systems he helped write, momentum matters more than correctness.

This is not carelessness. It is confidence.

Narrative players are not anti-rules. They simply refuse to let rules dominate the experience. Systems are scaffolding. If something blocks the flow of the game, it is removed.

In a hobby obsessed with precision and FAQs, this mindset feels quietly subversive.

Not a Rejection, a Reminder

Priestley is not calling for the end of competitive play. He is arguing for memory.

Narrative gaming never died. It was crowded out of the conversation. What groups like Jason’s are doing is not inventing something new. They are remembering how the hobby once worked and choosing to make space for it again.

The most radical idea in modern wargaming is not breaking the rules.

It is remembering they were never the point.

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