Thirty Years War RPG + More? (repost from P&S)
Posted: Thu Oct 01, 2026 2:13 am
First time poster, longtime lurker and downloader of mods
I've been running a Thirty Years' War campaign for a while now — alternate history where Saxony did things a little differently, played as a Saxon cavalry officer named Gerhard von Falkenreid, commanding a dragoon company nicknamed "The Elector's Greyhounds" that do a few things tactically that have been interesting by my own strategic and tactical mind. It started as a solo RPG with AI serving as GM, tracked in a proper campaign database. Court politics, command chains, family back in Dresden, the whole weight of the period. Sixteen sessions deep. Every decision sticks and nothing gets taken back.
The thing I kept running into was battles. You can narrate a skirmish. You can roll dice for an ambush. But when the campaign reaches a real engagement — tercios in the field, cavalry on the flanks, guns finding range — narration doesn't cut it. The battle has to be fought, not described. So I started clumsily started building the campaign's battles as Pike & Shot scenarios. Custom BSF scripting for the AI, phased approach plans, generals with command ranges(great mod!), faction skins, the works from many many great mods that are fantastic and I will make sure to credit if there's any interest in what I'm doing. The outcome of each scenario becomes canon in the campaign. If the Greyhounds break, they break. If Gerhard's unit routs and he is killed, that's what happened by my(his?) own hand. The wargame is the authority on what happens in the field, and the campaign is the authority on what it means leading into the fight and after.
It's more work than I expected. But the result is something I haven't seen anywhere else — a living campaign where the battles play out at the tactical level they actually happened at, and the consequences carry forward into a story that doesn't forget anything.
If anyone finds this interesting, I'd love to talk about it more because I shouldn't be the only one enjoying this or I don't think I should anyway.
-GFM
I've been running a Thirty Years' War campaign for a while now — alternate history where Saxony did things a little differently, played as a Saxon cavalry officer named Gerhard von Falkenreid, commanding a dragoon company nicknamed "The Elector's Greyhounds" that do a few things tactically that have been interesting by my own strategic and tactical mind. It started as a solo RPG with AI serving as GM, tracked in a proper campaign database. Court politics, command chains, family back in Dresden, the whole weight of the period. Sixteen sessions deep. Every decision sticks and nothing gets taken back.
The thing I kept running into was battles. You can narrate a skirmish. You can roll dice for an ambush. But when the campaign reaches a real engagement — tercios in the field, cavalry on the flanks, guns finding range — narration doesn't cut it. The battle has to be fought, not described. So I started clumsily started building the campaign's battles as Pike & Shot scenarios. Custom BSF scripting for the AI, phased approach plans, generals with command ranges(great mod!), faction skins, the works from many many great mods that are fantastic and I will make sure to credit if there's any interest in what I'm doing. The outcome of each scenario becomes canon in the campaign. If the Greyhounds break, they break. If Gerhard's unit routs and he is killed, that's what happened by my(his?) own hand. The wargame is the authority on what happens in the field, and the campaign is the authority on what it means leading into the fight and after.
It's more work than I expected. But the result is something I haven't seen anywhere else — a living campaign where the battles play out at the tactical level they actually happened at, and the consequences carry forward into a story that doesn't forget anything.
If anyone finds this interesting, I'd love to talk about it more because I shouldn't be the only one enjoying this or I don't think I should anyway.
-GFM