Wargaming

Tony Bath's Ancient Wargaming including Setting Up a Wargames Campaign

This book is amazing

Fuck Dungeons & Dragons and fuck roleplaying games, true tabletop gamers play wargames.  This book contains all the material that's also in the original Dungeons & Dragons LBB, and then some, but written by someone who could actually write a coherent system. The book is divided into three parts, the first section is a straight set of rules for war games set in the ancient era, the second section is the meat of the book and describes the creation of wargame campaigns, and the last section gives a sample setting called Hyboria and discusses fantasy wargaming. In effect, everything that was covered in original D&D is also here, just much more fleshed out, coherent, complete, and sensibly written.

The byline for 0e D&D was also "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures".  Did Gary Gygax read Tony Bath's Ancient Wargaming, and if he did, did he assume that his audience was familiar with the material and so didn't belabor it in his own book?  I think the further that D&D strays from its wargaming roots, the less real appeal it has.

The real bonus in this book for me is the section on creating and traversing a hex map, which is explained in much better terms than in either OD&D or AD&D, and hexcrawling isn't even mentioned in later editions.

Donald Featherstone's Solo Wargaming

Wargaming also lends itself more easily to solo play, and to faciliate that I've also picked up another book.  This one is more focused on playing single battles solo, so is more focused on mechanics. Maybe when I dive into it more fully, I can incorporate more ideas for my own solo play.