Tales & Tactics

In this episode of Tales & Tactics Beyond the Book, we explore a question that sits at the core of tabletop design. Where should a designer place statistical prominence, in the warrior or in the weapon? We begin in wargaming, looking at how the scale of a battle shapes this decision. At the skirmish level, the individual soldier and their kit can be the focus, while at larger scales the training, morale, and cohesion of a unit often matter more than any single piece of wargear. From there we turn to roleplaying games and the very different design philosophies behind equipment first systems, where a character's power comes largely from what they carry, versus systems built around inherent abilities, class features, and innate talents. We discuss how each approach changes the feel of play, from the excitement of acquiring a legendary item to the question of whether a hero is still a hero once their gear is taken away.

In this episode of Tales & Tactics Rules as Written, we cover Fighting Formations: US 29th Infantry Division from GMT Games, designed by Chad Jensen and published in 2025 as a standalone entry in the long running Fighting Formations series. Operating at a scale of 75 metres per hex with turns representing approximately five minutes of real time, the game puts players in command of platoon, squad, crew, and vehicle level engagements as the 29th Infantry Division fights its way through France, Holland, and Germany.

This week on Beyond the Book, we go looking for the difference between bending a genre and breaking it. We get into why some blends are overloaded, with rules that make the two halves cost each other something, and why others are just a coat of paint over a system that would run identically without them. Occasionally the collision produces something that could not have existed any other way, and nobody can quite agree on why that one worked.

This week on Rules as Written, we crack open Shadowrun 4th edition and go looking into how it actually works. A game about people who sell off pieces of themselves to buy three seconds of being faster than everyone else. A setting that spent three decades insisting that magic, mega-corps and surgically wired reflexes all belong in the same rain slicked city, now in an edition that tried to make every bit of it run on one handful of dice.

In this episode of Tales & Tactics: Beyond the Book, we dig into how to start a new time period, setting, or subject in tabletop gaming, especially within miniature wargaming. We get into choosing models you actually enjoy working with, matching rules and scope to the kind of stories you want to tell. Managing time, money, space commitments, and reusing collections across multiple systems, all get explored. We range from Dark Age campaigns and WWII platoon games to RPGs, solo skirmish systems, and how to “tentpole” a local gaming community without burning yourself out.