Last night, a bunch of us played a game of Trafalgar. The game is the first in a narrative campaign called The Enbevian Endeavour. For those of you unfamiliar with our use of the term ‘narrative campaign’, allow me to explain a bit.

Over the years, like many wargame groups, we have played a few full blown campaigns, some successful but most, as usual, foundering after a few moves. As with most game groups, we find that the high level of commitment needed for playing in and especially running a full featured campaign is often difficult to achieve. However, campaigns do give a large added value to wargames, so to still capture some of that we have been doing these things we call ‘narrative campaigns’.

A narrative campaign is essentially a series of linked scenarios, often involving the same two (or more) antagonists in every scenario, but only linked in a general overarcing story line, not through any campaign system or rules. We find that a narrative campaign gives the added value of a rich context to the individual games, without the attending overhead of an actual campaign. For those familiar with the recent publications by C.S. Grant and Phil Olley, The Raid on St. Michel and The Annexation of Chiraz (get them from Caliver Books ), the scenarios in those books can be played as simple linked scenarios and are thus very similar to our narrative campaigns. We stand in the shadow of giants!

Anyway, I’ve currently got a narrative campaign underway for SF space (and land) games (The Beryllium Wars), and have yesterday started one for Napoleonic age games. This one features the nations of Enbevia and Posch-Enhausen, going to war over a seemingly innocent proclamation involving beer. The first game in this campaign, The Pilsen Prerogative (I’m big on alliteration :) ) is a naval game using Trafalgar rules. You can download it here (warning: big 6.3M file):

The Pilsen Prerogative

A full battle report will follow, but as a teaser I can tell that the Posch-Enhausian navy managed to score a hard fought victory. Many ships were left ablaze and/or sunk.