The Empire Responds to the invasion of the Uruk Hai

It was done in two parts here’s the links. At the bottom is a write summary done By Mathew on the Bedroom Battlefields discord and podcast.

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.

Join the Bedroom Battlefields Discord

Too much happened to recall it all.

Here is 3 highlights,

Jeff, Jeff and more bloody Jeff! The interdimensional, time hopping, galaxy spanning, quantum leaping, nomadic moron of a wizard arrived through the stargate. We didn’t know his purpose in today’s game so we asked the little 4 year old girl who rolled the D20 for his presence what he was here to do.

She said, marry the queen.

That’s right, our dear Jeff had to twiddle his moustache and cover his body odour in such a fashion that the queen in her carriage would marry him and allow him to jump to his next task.

He attempted this, he split into two 3 times meaning there was now 2 good Jeff’s and 2 evil Jeff’s all wanting to get with the queen.

🫣🫶

They attempted to get to her and in so doing stripped her of all her clothes and carriage in an inadvertent spate of miss casts.

The naked queen ran off the board and was one of the very few survivors of the empire. Next game is now a siege on the dwarf hold to try and marry off the queen before the empire relief force arrives.

One undead general had a secret mission. His chosen necromantic character was the father of the captured Witch in the wagon train. If he could free the witch and get her off the board,using his witch king , he would steal victory not only from the empire but all his fellow evil players too. Only I knew this as the GM.

On turn 3 he was within 2 inches of the witch with his character and no one suspected a thing. A rock lovber shot scattered and the Center directly landed on the young witches head……..there wasn’t enough left to fill a Canopic jar from the Khemri Pyramids gift shop. And it all happens in front of the father’s poor eyes. How the hell does that kind of nonsense happen!!?!?!?

Lastly, the Cromwell steam tank was held aloft by the hand of Gork for two turns until that spell was destroyed. Then the orks chose brain bursta on the steam tanks engineers, rendering them immobile and without driver but intact as a tank, until that spell was destroyed too. The Dwarf airship valiantly offers to let the remaining engineer on foot, right at the back of the column, rappel up to the airship and get dropped off at the head of the column and get the steam tank rolling again. The brave engineer failed his rappel test twice, two ones in a row, and killed himself trying to climb up the rope.

😂😂🤣