War on Hunger Debrief

 I have written here much less than I wanted to this year. I have been playing games, working on projects, and I am slowly progressing on Portcullis 3, but I haven’t had the focus or drive to write any posts. Earlier this year, my mom had a serious health scare that really rattled my family and I think it’s only now, after a few months of things going okay on that front, that I’m starting to feel like sitting at my desk and trying to organize my thoughts again. 

The coveted Golden Can along with the less-coveted Rusty Can.

Today marks a year since we held the first War on Hunger at the Crypt in Providence, Rhode Island. For the uninitiated, it’s a charity One Page Rules: Age of Fantasy Regiments tournament where players can make donations to a food bank in exchange for tickets spent on bending the rules of the game and all sorts of mayhem ensues. Things are terrible for working people right now and I feel we have a responsibility to address the historic levels of inequality in our communities. In the indie wargaming world, our actions have to reflect our ideals; simply sharing leftist memes back and forth and including “Nazi punks fuck off!” in our zines is not enough. This scene cannot be solely focused on escapism or it’s just a fashion-punk reflection of all we complain about in American society. Every change our scene wishes to see starts with empathy for our neighbors. 

The philanthropic generals of the first War on Hunger: Left to right - Blerz, Steve, Jesse, Ryan, me, Dillon, Seb, Jax, Alex, Brad.

Like so much in this hobby, this isn’t a new idea and in organizing War on Hunger, I am standing on the shoulders of other hobbyists. In the late 2000’s and early 2010’s, Warmachine gaming groups organized “Foodmachine” events doing exactly this event model. These independent events blew up quickly and dozens of clubs and stores started running their own. Within a few years, Privateer Press (the company who published the game) put together official event rules and promoted the idea on their site. It became a core part of the Warmachine ecosystem and tens of thousands of dollars were donated each year. For a number of baffling and silly reasons, Warmachine collapsed and this tradition was lost. I want to bring it back!

Steve and Alex battle in the semi-finals of War on Hunger.

Last year I reached out to Ryan at the Crypt and pitched my idea to take this concept and tweak the rules to work for Regiments. He enthusiastically agreed and I got to work ripping apart the existing rules and repurposing them. The Warmachine documents provided a great template to follow; a few stat increases, some temporary special rules, rerolls, etc. Coming up with cheats wasn’t a tough ask. If you know a system well, you can fill a few pages with fun ways to break the rules in about five minutes. I had a few of the local Regheads review them and help me narrow them down to a single page. Almost all of these first pass rules are what have carried over between each event. It helps that when things are explicitly pay to win, balance matters a lot less!

Blerz and Jesse play action figures at the Regiments event.

There was a great turn out for our first event and we donated 170 canned goods along with $250 to the Community Food Bank of Rhode Island! There was tons of laughter, a number of tense reroll fights, and an overflow of goodwill. Ryan loved what we were doing so much that the Crypt adopted a policy of accepting canned goods in place of table fees. What a guy! Alex slaughtered all in his path and was awarded the inaugural Golden Can, while Blerz won best painted with his giants that bore an uncanny family resemblance. On my way home, Steve  sent me a text telling me that it was Bryan Ansell’s birthday. Sometimes, the universe just lines them up.

Most, but not all, of the canned goods donated!

It has always been my goal to have War on Hunger be an annual event, but a few conventions changed their scheduled dates to early October so Ryan and I decided to give July a try. Turns out we scheduled it the same weekend as Ironweld, but what can you do? My pal Coleman  was kind enough to draw up a really sick flyer which led to much better promotion than the last time. It was incredible to see generous people from across the country send donations despite the fact that they could not play. We played with the same menu as the first event and this time we raised over $650! Brad  eradicated the competition with his mighty goblin horde while Alex took home best painted. 

A battle between Regiments titans Brad and Alex.

Chris from the District of the Damned made the trek up from DC to rank a few flanks for a good cause and a last minute drop put us at an odd number, forcing me to step in with the Barrow Legion so no one was stuck with a bye. This ended up being a great thing, as after the event, Chris and I were able to talk through how some of the rules played out and what behaviors they encouraged. There were some permanent rules for units that could be granted at the start of the tournament that had problems. Many of the players would forget these additional rules and they’d become tickets that didn’t actually do anything for them. Others saw them as the most efficient bonus they could get for their money and purchased them exclusively, meaning no tickets were being spent on forcing rerolls or unshaking units or any of the other cheats that create the big, exciting moments I was hoping to recreate from the Foodmachine events I had played in years ago. All of these rules got rewritten so that they granted the bonus for a single activation and had their costs adjusted, solving both problems. I cannot thank Chris enough for his thoughtful feedback and criticism. It’s something we need more of in the scene!

Chris and TJ duke it out at War on Hunger 2.

Both events had done well and I felt like I had a good handle on how to run this kind of tournament. I wanted to build on what we had done and get more people involved, so I signed up to run a version of it at Under the Dice Fest. Adapting it for a convention was daunting because of the challenges presented in that environment. How many people want to be stuck in one event for a full day? What the fuck do we do with cans? How can we give people who can’t commit to the tournament (or don’t know what Regiments is) an opportunity to participate?

Some solutions came pretty quick. To solve the can issue, we decided to only accept cash donations. This happened at WoH2 organically and it was great not having to think about storage or figure out who was doing drop off. After talking to a bunch of people and getting their suggestions, I decided this would be a doubles event. It allowed for more players with less rounds, reducing the time commitment. It also could allow for pairing an experienced Regiments player with someone new to the game to keep things moving and free up my time during the event to handle the newest War on Hunger feature: the audience menu.

Hundreds of people go to Under the Dice Fest and many of them do not sign up for events. They want to wander the hall and see all of the cool shit people have put together, check out vendors, and meet up with friends they only see a few times a year. I wanted those people to be able to get a 5 minute War on Hunger experience as they walked by. I wanted to show as many people as I could this idea so that they left with it and maybe tried something like it themselves. To accomplish this, I created a menu of abilities that anyone passing by could purchase with a donation. Each would affect a game or team playing in the event. For $10, a team of the donor’s choice would have to play a turn as a two-headed ogre. For $20, a passerby could become a team’s co-general for an activation. And for $200, a fool could unleash an ancient evil from it’s sorcerous prison to terrorize the living once more. Conventions want big moments and spectacle so these rules really tried to make those happen.

The billboard from UTDF with Audience Menu.

Absolutely gigantic thank you to Chris once again. I was stumped on these for about a month, with a list of rules that ended up feeling mean-spirited and overly technical. He was listening to my thought process and just dumped about twenty insane ideas into our chat, one of which was the co-general ability we used. He was coming at it from a totally different axis and captured all the fun I wanted the abilities to have. 

War on Hunger at UTDF in progress.

The event went great and the audience abilities were a huge hit. I built a model of the Dread Lich Nagillum Nai that, with the blast of a horn from benefactor Kyle , entered play on the finals table as an interactive scaling debuff. Joe  acted as co-general once and "accidentally" caused a team to lose! Several people I had never met gave generously to cast weather changing spells or invoke Library Rules to prevent teams from communicating. We were able to raise $750 for the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts when the dust settled. Brad and Ben took home the Golden Cans and Yoel won best painted. Ryan was unable to make it to the convention but he still showered us in prize support and let me borrow the Crypt’s fantasy terrain to run the event. 

Left to right: CT, Dom, Yoel, Austin, Will, AJ, Ben, Brad, and me.

As I proofread this, I noticed how often I used the word “we” at times. I organized these events and created the rules, but they could not exist without contributions from many people. Emily, my wife, has  organized the chaos and kept each event running smoothly and mostly on time (among many other things). Ryan and the Crypt have done so much, I don’t know if any of this could happen in a meaningful way without him. Ryan needed near zero explanation before committing 100% and has never stopped. Every single person who has shown up to an event or made a donation is also a part of this. Your enthusiasm, generosity, and thoughts you share are integral parts of War on Hunger. 

An ancient, necromantic evil comes face to face with... a crustacean. 

It’s been great hearing the positive response from players. We’ve had some incredible moments like a reroll fight between Jesse and Blerz as their giants faced off and Ben buying a second combat with a block of orc boys to secure the center of the table against all odds, before being struck by chaos dwarf immortals who gave themselves the fast rule! The thing that has made me feel happiest, though, has been seeing other people adapt this format for the games they love. ThaBenMan saw the first War on Hunger and organized an AoS Spearhead version. Steve reached out to me to talk about adapting this for Commander and Sterling ran a version of that at Under the Dice. I’ve had conversations with many others on Instagram about events they want to run. Like I said earlier, very little of this is mine. I borrowed and hacked and reskinned. Please do the same. I will share anything and everything.

If you give people a chance to do something good for their neighbors, very few will shy away from it.