Interview about Lion Rampant: The Crusader States

For today's interview we invited Dr. Gianluca Raccagni, Lecturer in Medieval History at University of Edinburgh to introduce to our readers his project Lion Rampant: The Crusader States. This supplement to Lion Rampant is written in cooperation with Daniel Mersey deeply specialize about gaming during Outremer Crusades will be published in late April 2020. 

Q: Luca, thank you for agreeing to answer our questions and welcome to our blog. Can you tell us something about you and your gaming history?

A: I consider myself primarily a historian of the High Middle Ages, and especially Italy, the Holy Roman Empire and the Mediterranean. I came across Lion Rampant soon after its publication in 2012. It helped me to rediscover my love of wargaming, which was an old passion of mine, but gave it a new historical twist, because my previous experiences of wargaming were mostly fantasy (Warhammer). I had certainly played historical boardgames, including some wargaming ones. Yet miniature wargaming is inherently more creative than them. It actually invites you to design your own forces, your own settings, and your own scenarios. I had already started toying with historical gaming before, but it was mostly role-playing games, and it had a weird twist, because the game was Call of Cthulhu. I was playing published material, but I increasingly liked to design my own scenarios. Lion Rampant produced a light bulb moment. Why don’t I use it to gamify my own historical interests? I organised a roundtable with game designers at the University of Edinburgh in 2016 with the help of the local branch of Blackwell’s Bookshop. It goes without saying that Dan Mersey was one of the invitees. The success of that roundtable led to the subsequent launch of the History and Games Network of the University of Edinburgh, which aims to bring together academics with the games industry, the heritage industry and gamers. Dan Mersey and I kept in touch after the roundtable, and we eventually came up with the idea of Lion Rampant: The Crusader States.

Q: Let’s speak about this new project Gaming the Crusades and Lion Rampant: The Crusader States game? Can you introduce it? I started to follow your blog when you were looking for the game system for Byblos Castle, but we want to know more.

A: By that time I met Dan Mersey, I was commencing an academic project on the Italian city republics and crusading, and we both agreed that the Crusader States were a great setting to explore. Lion Rampant is a set of medieval wargaming rules that is generic, flexible and easily adaptable. Those are its great strengths. Yet the Middle Ages were a very long period that encompassed many local differences as well. We decided to produce an expansion for Lion Rampant that is tailored to a specific geographical and chronological context, but is also sufficiently varied to ensure gaming remains fun and challenging. I had already started to explore the wargaming aspect of the Crusader States by reconstructing the Genoese Castle of Byblos (in Lebanon) with an Edinburgh company called Supreme Littleness Designs. Lion Rampant: The Crusader States can be described as a history wargame book. It includes an historical introduction, new upgrades (which also include what I like to call ‘historical battle magic’), a list of factions with their own traits and sample warbands, and a list of scenarios that re-enact or are inspired by medieval sources. Each of those sections is accompanied by a short historical introduction, which is meant to justify our design choices, but also to provide cues and ideas for readers to create their own warbands, scenarios and campaigns

Q: Are you still going around with this Display Board?

A: We are currently working on a new one for the UK Games Expo (May 2020), based on the siege of Acre of 1291

Q: Lion Rampant: The Crusader States is not a standalone project right? You need the original games. Do you incorporate Daniel Mersey into the development? How Osprey Publishing reacts?

A: Yes, it does not replace Lion Rampant, but it is a supplement, that is, a sourcebook. You cannot play our sourcebook without having or knowing the original book. Dan closely supervised the project, and organised workshops with my students, some of whom helped with some of the research that went into the project. One of them, Mathew Harris published an article on Wargame Illustrated on his experience. Osprey was incredibly supportive, helping with sourcing some of the illustrations and providing advice. If Lion Rampant: the Crusader States is well received, there might be other sourcebooks in the future.

Q: Why the Crusader States?

A: We reached the conclusion that the Crusader States of Outremer were perfect as a setting because of their incredible variety. The Crusader States were a unique meeting point for people and military forces that came from all over Europe and the Middle East, but also from as far afield as Asia and East Africa. That can give plenty of opportunity, and a good excuse, for players to mix those cultures. As explained in the army lists section, in the Crusader States you could find Western Europeans fighting not only against but also alongside Byzantines, Armenians, Muslims, Mongols and Sudanese.

Q: Which Crusades and timespan is Covered?

A: The project covers the history of the Crusader States of Outremer from their creation around 1098-99 to the fall of Acre in 1291. The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia (which we can consider a honorary crusader state) lasted for longer, but the fall of Acre is generally considered the end of the classical period of the crusades. 

Q: Are there any major change of rules? Or you concentrate only on the army-building? 

A: We have not changed rules, but added new ones, mainly for army building. Each of the eleven army lists (but there are sub-groups in those lists as well) has some special rules (advantages as well as penalties) that reflect their own style of warfare. For example, the knights of the Order of St. Lazarus (who were lepers, and are a sub-group of the Christian Military Orders list) have less armour (here considered as general resistance), but have a free Fear upgrade; the Assassins (a sub-group of Muslim Syrian Principalities list) can perform assassinations, etc.

We also have many new upgrades, from Greek Fire to what I like to call ‘historical battle magic’, in the form of talismanic object and the participation to battles by ‘holy and unholy characters’. Medieval texts frequently mention magic and the supernatural in accounts of military events. Yet magic and the supernatural are usually left out of historical wargames. This empirical spirit is probably meant to distinguish historical from fantasy ones, but magic and the supernatural often did have a practical impact on the battlefield too. We tried to translate that into a purely historical setting. I was particularly inspired by the account of the siege of Jerusalem of 1099 written by William of Tyre a few decades after it, which mentions how the defenders employed witches who tried to cast spells against the siege engines of the crusaders, but were killed by lucky shots from those engines before they finished their ritual. You don’t need to believe in magic to see that the supernatural had an impact on all parties involved in medieval warfare, friends as well as foes. 

Q: Can you give us list of factions covered in the supplement? 

There are eleven army lists, some of which have sub-groups with special rules. I already mentioned how Assassins and the Order of St. Lazarus have their own special abilities, but there are also specific information on Sudanese troops under the Fatimid List that allows you to create an entirely Sudanese warband, if you wish, and so on. Each of the lists is highly customisable, offering a range of opportunities and boundaries, rather than a narrow set of rules. Yet for each of the lists we also provide a sample warband that you can use straight away. 

1. Western Crusaders
2. Italian Maritime Republics
3. Frankish Settlers (Pullani)
4. Christian Military Orders
5. Pilgrims
6. Marauders
7. Muslim Principalities of Syria and Anatolia, and Assassins
8. Fatimid Egypt
9. Saladin, Ayyubids and Mamluks
10. Mongols
11. Byzantines
12. Armenians

Q: Can we expect campaign rules? PC Game Stronghold Crusades pop up in my mind, or of course Outremer: Faith and Blood. 

A: At the moment we use the campaign rules as they are offered in the original Lion Rampant, in the sense that we offer 12 scenarios. They can be linked into a campaign. Each of them refer to a specific event in the history of the Crusader States, but they can be easily de-contextualised to create a narrative campaign. All of the scenarios are inspired by specific passages in medieval sources from Western, Byzantine, Armenian, and Muslim sources.

Q: What do you like the most in the Lion Rampant: The Crusader States?

A: all of it! Possibly the Army list, though. It was fun to explore the different historical settings, identify distinguishing features, and try to distil them into game mechanics. 

Q: What are your future plans with The Crusader States. Everywhere, the people ask about Northern Crusades and I, being from Lands of Bohemia Crown, could be interested as well. As with anti Hussites Crusades

A:  This is a pilot project. Let’s see how it goes. If it goes well, the possibilities are endless. There are a lot of ideas floating around, but we have not committed to a specific one yet.

Foto: Dr. Gianluca Raccagni, fotos from Events are from Claymore.