A few weeks back I hit on the idea of keeping a hand-written, pen & paper record of the campaigns I was running. This has been adopted for a few projects of mine, which at present stand at the Aschenbach/Luftberg campaigns (fully detailed here, obviously), a refight of the Wars of the Roses (covered on my other blog), a fictional-setting American Civil War campaign (also on the other blog) as well as a planned Sci-Fi Campaign (not blogged at all, but a lot of groundwork getting done!) All this is pretty busy stuff, and I find it takes up a lot of time. However it's a lot of fun and highly rewarding, plus it carries two advantages which are not instantly obvious.
First is that the written record performs much like the blog on a specific topic - it makes you regularly act on it! Most wargamers will, I believe, only have a general-purpose wargaming blog and while this compels them to wargame if they want to keep posting, they can flit from idea to idea/project/scheme at will, and so a few can fall aside. By writing it out as a dedicated record, you're likelier to keep at it!
Second is that while all this has made my work slower and progress more gradual, it has made it far better. Take Aschenbach & Luftberg, for example: I fought out and posted on the Battle of the Steenwijk recently, and haven't done much since due to other projects getting in the way. It used to be this would mean forgetting what was happening & losing interest, or having to stick with something when my attention had moved elsewhere temporarily, causing irritation & more loss of interest. As it is however I opened my Campaign journal and found an instant reminder of where every battalion was and what each commander was doing, so I instantly resumed the story from where I had left off.
Anyway, I feel a small announcement is in order to mark the spectacular victory gained by Luftberg over the Aschenbach enemy that has triumphed more often than not in pitched battles. The Elector Von Luftberg finally has a subordinate who can win clear-cut victories in the field against the enemy king, which is no small matter. As such, the Elector of Luftberg has announced that Felix Von Hentsch is to be promoted to a Marshal of Luftberg, and issued with a jewel-encrusted baton immediately so as to display his prestigious new rank. Sadly the expense of the jewelled baton means reinforcements will be a bit delayed, but no doubt Marshal Von Hentsch will understand...
