After action reports (AAR)

[kcdusk]

Why arent there more AAR's on this site, or others?

I see lots of huge, orders of battle, detailing how many soldiers and tanks and stuff is at hundreds of towns. I admire the passion and effort involved. But i get so much more out of reading an AAR of a groups day or outcome of an engagement.

Perhaps most people are "world creators" rather than playing the game?

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by kcdusk

Perhaps most people are "world creators" rather than playing the game?

Yep, certainly the case for me. I'm pretty sure I've stated on a number of occasions that I haven't played a FTF game of T2K (or any other RPG for that matter) for years (over ten now). So I write material partly because I enjoy doing so and partly in the hope that those who are still playing the game can find a use for at least some of what I write.

[James Langham]

Originally Posted by kcdusk

Why arent there more AAR's on this site, or others?

I see lots of huge, orders of battle, detailing how many soldiers and tanks and stuff is at hundreds of towns. I admire the passion and effort involved. But i get so much more out of reading an AAR of a groups day or outcome of an engagement.

Perhaps most people are "world creators" rather than playing the game?

I have to admit that I spend more time creating than playing. My other reason for not working more on AARs is that I find that the material I create is harder to develop and hopefully of more use to people. In addition I do try and make them less dry statistics and more "human interest." I can try and write some AARs if that would interest people.

[kota1342000]

AARs sound like a good idea to me, maybe I should write some up on some of the games Ive run and played. A tiny part of me is hesitant since it may be a bit of a spoiler if anyone on our forum plays one of the scenarios....and then I think "what the hell". Besides, a scenario can be tweaked twenty ways around the block so its not a big deal.
Another cool thing about KC's idea is getting to brag about some of the stuff Players are able to pull off.

[Olefin]

I am currently invovled in an online game with several members of this board. Were you thinking more in line with the viewpoint of one person's AAR or a party as a whole?

[M-Type]

I'd be more than willing to throw up an AAR of my proposed/'hopefully going to run' July 18th game. Just have to remember to take good notes!

[kcdusk]

I visit a particular wargame site, and maybe 30% of their work is AAR's. Theres a few DnD "journals" which are pretty similar to being AAR's. And then it occurred to me we (T2K) dont really (to my knowledge) write many up.

Maybe the wargaming crowd do so many because their game involves tactics on a board for specific scenarios, so people can re-create or learn from them more than a RPG crowd where it can seem "every scenario or Ref" is different. And so AARs dont apply as much.

I could see AAR's being the actions and results of the small skirmishes player groups have along the way. Or even non-combat related encounters (negotiate with an unknown party, cross a flowing river with no bridge present, wild dogs keep rummaging through the camp each night how do you stop it ...).

AARs need not be spoilers for current games. AARs could lag 6 months for example (ie be 6 months old).

I guess i saw AARs coming from a ref. The encounter i had planned was "this". The players did "this" or "that". Due to the players decision i decided the OPFORs reaction would be "X" and the final outcome was "Y". I could see the AAR being entertaining, helpful for players, and instructional for refs in that they could see players in other games dont always do the obvious and see how other refs handle on the fly decisions based on what the PC enounter party is (ie not just Refs aiming for total party kills). For non-T2K players its a chance to see how the game runs/works.

Players could write up a similar thing. I have just been reading the DnD Dungeon Master and Player guides and it has examples of game play, that peaked my thoughts as well.

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by kcdusk

I visit a particular wargame site, and maybe 30% of their work is AAR's. Theres a few DnD "journals" which are pretty similar to being AAR's. And then it occurred to me we (T2K) dont really (to my knowledge) write many up.

Maybe the wargaming crowd do so many because their game involves tactics on a board for specific scenarios, so people can re-create or learn from them more than a RPG crowd where it can seem "every scenario or Ref" is different. And so AARs dont apply as much.

Funny... I'd always seen this board's fixation on OOBs as indicative of the fan base's heavy roots in wargaming rather than roleplaying.

- C.

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by Tegyrius

Funny... I'd always seen this board's fixation on OOBs as indicative of the fan base's heavy roots in wargaming rather than roleplaying.

- C.

Certainly not the case for me...I've never played a wargame in my life.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

Certainly not the case for me...I've never played a wargame in my life.

Almost the same here, I've had some minor experiences with wargames but that was about 10 years before I got into RPGs and I haven't touched any since.
In fact most of the people I've met through T2k have been RPGamers rather than wargames come to think of it. It sounds like there were perhaps some crossed wires with 93 Games' impression of the T2k fans? I mean to say, we all know GDW made wargames but it doesn't mean all of us liked GDW for their wargames.

[Tegyrius]

Please don't turn this into a 93GS thing. For the record, that particular opinion of the fan base dates back to my first experiences on the old Yahoo mailing list around 1999.

- C.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I had no intention of doing so and for what it's worth, it seems that there aren't too many of the yahoo T2k group here and vice versa... which is probably not a bad thing

[Adm.Lee]

Originally Posted by Tegyrius

Funny... I'd always seen this board's fixation on OOBs as indicative of the fan base's heavy roots in wargaming rather than roleplaying.

- C.

That was my impression, too.

FWIW, I have put up AARs for my convention events and the summer campaign I ran since I joined here. IMO, I find most game reports hard to read, so I don't read them often, and I try to keep mine short & sweet.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

I can post up some AARs as you like.

[kota1342000]

As a disclaimer for any other attempts at AARs now and in the future, keep in mind that most of what Im writing down is from memory.

Date; 2007
Location; Southern Alaskan AO
Unit; 10th Mountain Division

Neal 5x5 on here ran this game for a fairly large group of us, packed into his MUY COOL gaming cave. Its also one of the first times I had played instead of running in friggin years
Our group was part of a task force ordered to protect the flank of the Division, and with the offensive season coming up (springtime, lots of patchy snow, huge amounts of mud), we were some distance from the main body which was able to make better time than us.
We started getting hit from the east, by what we later learned from a prisoner, was a Canadian based communist militia trained by the KGB. The initial defense that we mounted was to protect a small community on the road (cant remember which; town or road). Once we were able to force the Red Canadian Militia back, we pushed our luck and attacked. Part of this push involved having to pass a minefield; I had asked James about halfway through the work if he had found any mines, which he responded "Havent blown up yet!"
The counterattack against our push came with armor, but just a single T55 if I remember correctly. Several of us wounded, vehicles hit in several places, and set the 2 1/2ton carrying a lot of our ammo on fire. I remember a couple of us fighting the fire expecting any moment to roll new characters. We fell back to the town and made another defense at which point I fell on my face...one of the townspeople asked what had happened. My character, wounded blackened and tired replied that we had been attacked by tanks, Tanks, TANKS!....and they were coming up the road.
Funny...we hadn't expected the town to be completely empty for the last battle of that day LOL

[James Langham]

I have to admit to being both a wargamer and an RPGer.

[kota1342000]

Date; 2004 (Tacticon)
Location; North Korea north of DMZ area
Unit; 7th Light Infantry Div

Ive posted the scenario for "Bridgework" before here, this AAR is the first time I ran it at a convention.
Only two players, it was a slow Thursday night for Tacticon, but had quite a bit of fun running it. My two players were a married couple, and both played engineer NCOs with the task of helping to get the division south of the Yalu river. The remainder of the engineer battalion had no heavy bridging equipment left, and only several sets of various tools and explosives.
Being north of the Dandong/Siniuju area, the Yalu had several possible crossing points, and the first thing the players did was drop a set of high tension power lines across the river to be used as improvised rope bridges for most of the people on foot.
For the divisions vehicles, the players built a ferry out of some heavy logs felled nearby and stretched more salavged heavy wire across the Yalu. Highlights of the crossing here were tired and radiation sick motor transport drivers nearly missing the ferry, almost sinking the ferry, or nearly running over the players. There were also some swift water rescues from others falling off the rope bridges upstream.
All it took to make things really interesting was to flood the Yalu and have some North Koreans attack. After an hour of fighting back and forth (NPC infantry did most of the fighting except when players had to defend the bridgehead) the players were finally getting desperate to get the last of the vehicles across. They finally decided to strip and booby trap one of the two last vehicles and bring the other 2 1/2ton across on the last ferry run. They pulled the truck onto the raft, anchored the heavy wire to the raft and cut the line from the starting shore. The current carried them across, and then it was a much simpler matter to get the truck back on shore.
With their job finished for the moment, it fell to the rest of the division to take up the work of getting out of a series of messes.