DrivethruRPG is having their “Christmas in July” sale and Rebel Minis, which publishes a lot of Two Hour Wargames material, is participating. I snagged a few things on my wishlist, including Colonial Adventures, Colonial Lemuria, Mission St. Mary, and Lovecraft’s Revenge. I have been a fan of colonial wargaming for many years now, originally discovering the genre from Major General Tremorden Rederring’s Colonial Wargames Page (link leads to a webarchive page–the original site is long gone). I have a smatter of miniatures for the era, both painted and unpainted, in storage in the basement.

I had this idea about doing a two-tier Colonial RPG/Wargame set in the same location, perhaps Lemuria or something similar, where you could have large-scale military action (via Colonial Adventures) and then smaller skirmish or RPG stories using Mission St. Mary and Lovecraft’s Revenge. I haven’t had a chance to delve into the details of the differences in the rules and how well they might play together, but I think I’d like to use the most recent iteration of THW’s combat rules (found in 5150 New Beginnings) regardless. If you have thoughts about this, feel free to comment.

The one reservation (I mean, aside from time, expense, etc.) is that the Colonial period in wargaming is a semi-fictional version of a not-so-great period in human history. A lot of European colonization was founded on the thoughtless exploitation of other peoples, along with a hearty dose of violence and racism, not to mention questionable theology. I have seen some attempts to sensitively treat this but the Tremorden Rederring page does tend to reflect a certain “Orientalism” bias. This might just be an aspect of the genre that has to be acknowledged and perhaps not amplified in undertaking a project, but I’m careful about how the subject might be handled. Thoughts about that are also welcome.