Thanks for the mentions, @limburger and @noyjatat .

I realize I may be in the minority here, but for me some kind of campaign setting is absolutely critical and in many ways the most important part of any wargame.    Without some kind of campaign structure, and this can very very very simple, I’m honestly not really interested.  It may sound like heresy, but wargaming just isn’t THAT fun, to pour in all that work and energy into what will be a one-off scrimmage game.

That said, this campaign game can take any number of forms and can be extremely simple.  Even when I’m running one-off games for an article series, the article series itself is the “campaign” in a weird, meta-kind of way.  Put differently, I don’t usually enjoy wargaming for wargaming’s sake – it’s gotta be building into something larger.

Needless to say, I’m usually not very much fun at tournaments.  🙂

Sadly, very few tactical games have GOOD campaign systems built in.  It’s understandable why, there are just too many directions that a truly free-flowing campaign could possible go, especially once the players get through a few games.  So you usually have either a scripted series of scenarios, where the results of each game may give the winner a few extra units or options in the next game … or a simple scoring system “Play these five games, and whoever wins more games wins the campaign …” maybe with the last game counting double for climactic effect or some such (or to avoid the campaign from being decided too early).

While there’s nothing wrong with these systems, they’re very simple, a little too “on the rails” for my taste, and not really campaigns.

This video talks about a few very simple ideas (holy hell, was I too heavy in these videos … ) 🙁

There’s also the idea of a “multilevel game” where players use tactical mini wargames to play out engagements that are taking place in a larger, operational-level context:

The Four Levels Of Wargaming Part 5: Multilevel Games

This is the “full monty” was of doing a campaign game, and may the gaming gods bless anyone who’s brave enough to try.  Just please be warned that these campaigns are a LOT of work, and my experience has shown that it’s absolutely essential to have some kind of “shortcut” system for when players can’t get together, or when there just isn’t time to play out EVERY tabletop tactical game that the campaign map may be requiring at a given juncture.