Packing A Battle in A Small Box

 “Though she be but little, she is fierce.”

— William Shakespeare

A package recently arrived with a wonderful little game in a small tin: Battle Box: Napoleonic Wars from Feral Wizard in Manchester, UK. It’s the size of a mint tin (do they still put mints in those?), a compact 4 x 2.5 inches, easy enough to fit into a large pocket, a purse, go bag, or backpack. I’ve occasionally dabbled in Napoleonic gaming, though it’s by no means one of my core wargaming interests. But it promised a compact yet entertaining experience with a far smaller tabletop presence than many such games, either board wargames or miniature wargames. I was curious how the combination of wooden bits, map tiles, and rules for, essentially, a Portable Wargame-style game, would deliver. I was not disappointed. It offers a complete Napoleonic wargame in conveniently extreme miniature, with optional rules and solo play rules, that satisfied a number of my criteria for an enjoyable game.

Roleplaying the Dog

 “You cannot share your life with a dog, as I had done in Bournemouth, or a cat, and not know perfectly well that animals have personalities and minds and feelings.”

— Jane Goodall

Someone in my social media recently mentioned my Heroes of Rura-Tonga sourcebook as a resource for pulp roleplaying in the style of the early 1980s television show Tales of the Gold Monkey. The short-lived series (lasting only one season, a whopping 22 episodes) followed a band of characters flying around the South Pacific in 1938, with all the international tension and intrigue that implies. No doubt fans had their favorite characters among the regulars, guest stars, and the secondary inhabitants of the home base island, “Bora Gora.” Among my favorites were the spunky one-eyed dog Jake and the Grumman G-21 Goose enabling everyone to fly off on various adventures and rescue them from tight spots every week. The show, along with my interest in World War II, inspired me to develop Heroes of Rura-Tonga as a more historically based pulp setting with a host of adventures to demonstrate the genre. I started writing it after completing my other period piece, Pulp Egypt. But my first dabblings with it came as a few convention events I ran using West End Games’ adaptable and cinematic D6 System. As I do for convention games, I created a group of appropriate pre-generated characters, many of whom emulated roles seen in Tales of the Gold Monkey...including the dog. And inevitably, even when I still (rarely) run Heroes of Rura-Tonga games today, someone, if not several people, enthusiastically want to play the dog.

Bibliography Validation

 “The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.”

— Rene Descartes

Every so often I feel inspired (compelled?) to revisit topics I’ve explored in the past. My latest? Bibliographies, which I last featured in July 2024 in “Inspiring Citations.” That piece mostly focused on sources listed in bibliographies sending readers off to learn more about a game subject, whether for their own edification or incorporation in their hobby activities...a process that perpetuates itself as readers look at the bibliographies in those subsequent resources. And I’ll touch on that again here. But lately I’ve been finding bibliographies also give my frail self-esteem a sense that my past intellectual explorations have merit when I find sources I’ve read in the past listed in more current, relevant work. Bibliographies can send us off in new, exciting directions of personal and professional research as well as validate our past readings to remind us we’re on the right course.