On Campaigns

Or: BRO you don't know shit about Military Theory

As always when speaking on a subject it is helpful to define certain things, I’m sick of the Motte-and-Bailey fallacies running rampant among the deficient.

This framework applies at any scale: nations, factions, warbands, or a party of idiots with a grudge.

Now I’m not going to start quoting Clausetwitz to halfwits but a CAMPAIGN is a connected series of operations designed to achieve a strategic result within a specific theater.

It is larger in scope than a battle, which is a tactical exchange, but smaller than the ENTIRE WAR, the grand strategy part.

Now we don’t need to go through the entire Art of War to define the basics. A Theater is a defined physical or logical space of conflict. Fast forward to the modern day and let this armchair general give you the shortcut to total war. LOGISTICS LOGISTICS LOGISTICS. Maneuver? Also Logistics, believe it or not.

https://www.mca-marines.org/wp-content/uploads/Irion-Schultz-NOV25-WEB.pdf

https://www.mca-marines.org/wp-content/uploads/Logistics-as-Maneuver.pdf

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1176532.pdf

Now I could keep pulling up military writing for days but I’m just going to skip to the objective. The objective is a target that the operations are driving towards, in pursuit of the grand strategy.

Fuck is an operation? Well you could read a field manual(s) https://archive.org/details/military-field-manuals-and-guides/%28Vehicles%29%20MCWP%203-12%20Marine%20Corps%20Tank%20Employment/

I’m just going to paraphrase FM 3-0. Honestly Pentagon speak is fucking wordy.

Multidomain operations are about exploiting relative advantages across all domains (Gold, Steel, Information, Etc) What is an Operation? It’s the act of turning a PLAN into a RESULT through the grinding gears of Logistics.

You got 50 men and 10 days of food? Doesn’t matter how many orcs you kill if your operation isn’t over on day 11.

We can surmise that a campaign exists because the results of Battle A dictate the starting conditions of Battle B, if you reset to zero/full every time, then it’s not a campaign; you’re running a series of isolated skirmishes.

As such there are three elements that factor into what makes for an operation. Connectivity, Constraints, and Scope.

Connectivity is the ledger the world keeps whether the GM intends it or not. Battle A’s outcome is the starting condition of Battle B. Full stop. You burned the granary? The enemy is negotiating from hunger for the next three operations. You bought out half their garrison? Their commander is now running an underpaid, undermanned post with a morale problem you created. Connectivity is what separates a campaign from a series of tangentially related combat encounters with the same characters. If the world resets between sessions, you don’t have a campaign. You have a series of isolated problems wearing a campaign’s coat. The ledger tracks everything. Resources spent, alliances shifted, information revealed, terrain changed. The GM who ignores the ledger isn’t being narrative. They’re hand waving the world.

Constraints are what make Objective Selection actually mean something. You have 50 men and 10 days of food. That’s not flavor. That’s the operational reality your plan has to survive contact with. Constraints are the limits of “reality” applied at the campaign level. They are the reason you can’t simply choose the optimal objective every time. They are the reason the brilliant plan dies on day 11. A campaign without genuine constraints isn’t a campaign. It’s a guided tour of foregone conclusions. The constraints define which tools are actually available to you right now, in this operation, with these resources. Ignore them and your strategy becomes decoration. Honor them and suddenly every decision carries weight because not every objective is achievable from your current position.

Scope is where most campaigns get quietly murdered before the first battle is even fought. The obvious definition is the physical theater. The map. The territory. Most GMs stop there. The more dangerous definition is the logical theater. The information domain is a theater. The economic domain is a theater. The diplomatic domain is a theater. Scope defines which of these theaters your campaign is actually being contested in versus which ones you think it’s being contested in. The enemy who is running an information operation against your faction’s external alliances while you’re planning the assault on their keep is operating in a theater you haven’t defined as part of your scope. Which means you’re losing a battle you don’t know you’re fighting. Define the scope wrong and your brilliant tactical wins are building toward a strategic position that was undermined in a theater you weren’t watching.

Here’s the practical problem. Modern play tends to compress scope to the point where a genuine campaign cannot exist within it. The theater becomes the session. The map becomes what the GM prepped this week. The conflict becomes the head to head clash that fits in four hours. That’s not scope. That’s a diorama. For a campaign to function you need sufficient scope across all three theaters simultaneously. Physical scope large enough that logistics create genuine constraints. Temporal scope long enough that Battle A’s outcome has time to become Battle B’s starting condition. Logical scope wide enough that at least two DIME levers are actually available to the players. Compress any one of those below the minimum and you haven’t limited the campaign. You’ve ended it. The players are now operating in a space too small to contain the thing you’re calling a campaign.

A campaign is not multiple battles. It is a system where outcomes persist and constrain future action. Most games don’t fail at tactics. They fail at state continuity.

To function, it must operate across multiple levels simultaneously. In practice, there are five, you must hit at least the first three to have a campaign.

1. The Tactical Moment

2. The Operational Sequence

3. The Strategic Goal

4. Objective Selection (the practical expression of Grand Strategy)

5. Policy.

Most tables operate at Level 1.

Some reach Level 2.

Almost none consciously engage Level 4.

Hey Punk, what exactly is Grand Strategy?

It’s how a faction uses all instruments of power to secure long-term outcomes.

Objective Selection is choosing the specific targets that advance that strategy.

In practice, they collapse into each other.

Choosing the objective is expressing the strategy.

People screw this up by calling it policy.

Tactical: How do I take this hill?

Operational: How do I supply the three divisions taking this sector?

Strategic: How do I collapse the enemy’s ability to wage war?

The 4th Level (Objective Selection): Why am I taking this hill, and does destroying this enemy actually lead to a stable post-war reality that aligns with my side’s values? Can I take this hill through irregular means in a non-kinetic domain? Is this pass worth more? How do I maximize my ability for irregular warfare to secure advantages and minimize disadvantages

If your battles don’t connect to objectives, you’re skirmishing.

If your objectives don’t serve a strategy, you’re improvising.

If your strategy doesn’t achieve your policy, you’re just busy.

The 5th level, Policy is the high level often aspirational decision to pursue a specific goal or state of being. Amounting to a statement of intent. The Why. But I’m going to be real, policy is where operational efficiency goes to die.

Never mind that players are going to player. Policy might be peace right until there’s a tavern to burn down or whatever. Policy is what is said. Play is what is done. The gap between the two is where most campaigns actually live.

If Policists are overly focused on the 5th level at the expense of reality then Proceduralists are obsessed with Level 2 (Logistics) but have no idea how to handle Level 4 (Objective Selection).

The fact of the matter is that most GMs set the objectives and the players pick which to pursue and how. The railroad to sandbox spectrum is a separate question entirely and deserves its own treatment. The short version for our purposes is this:

Railroad is set objectives, set approach.

Sandbox is no set objectives, no set approach.

Everything else lives somewhere between those poles.

Here’s why it matters, and why it doesn’t.

It matters because the delivery mechanism affects how the five levels express themselves at the table.

It doesn’t matter because a campaign can exist anywhere on that spectrum. You can railroad a genuine campaign. You can sandbox a series of disconnected skirmishes.

The spectrum describes how objectives are presented and pursued. Not whether the ledger is being kept.

A GM who keeps the ledger honestly is running a campaign regardless of where they sit. A GM who ignores it is running skirmishes, no matter how much freedom they offer.

This article isn’t about who sets the objectives.

It’s about whether outcomes persist, constrain, and accumulate.

So ask yourself: if your last three sessions had gone differently, what would actually be different now?

If nothing changes between sessions you’re resetting the board. The fix isn’t more content, its tracking consequences and letting them stick.

Military theory gives us the DIME.

D (Diplomacy): Managing external systems. In a game, this is your Faction Standing. It’s the question of who will trade with you and who will stab you. It’s not talking; it’s resource alignment.

I (Information): Managing the knowledge of the theater. This is scouting, rumors, encryption, and magic. It’s the Intel Layer. If you have control over the “I” lever, you are manipulating the enemy’s response/options before the fight starts.

The Russians call their fancy theory of this reflexive control. Everyone else calls it something equally as dumb or straightforward if they call understanding that your opponent has a theory of mind as well anything at all.

M (Military): The kinetic lever. This is the combat engine. It’s the most expensive and high-risk lever in your tool bag. OSR quoters aren’t wrong when they say combat is a fail state, they just over state.

E (Economics): The logistical fuel. Without the “E,” the other three levers eventually lock up, but man there’s nothing as funny as buying an opposing force out from under an enemy commander. Should have paid a fair wage, mfer.

See Objective Selection is the calculation of which levers are the most effective at cost to secure the ‘policy’ win.

If a “True Campaign” is a connected series of operations, we have to define how those operations interact with the world.

Conventional warfare is pretty fucking straight forward and well if you’re playing a TTRPG you understand the gist of conventional play, which is symmetrical attrition. Destroy the enemy’s M using your M. High risk, high vis. Tends to eat a lot of logistics in the form of healing resources, don’t even get me started on my oil and arrow budget. Of course if your campaign is nothing but conventional conflict it’s really more just an anthology of skirmishes even if you aren’t resetting units in between.

Then you have irregular warfare and thus irregular play. Some might call this clever roleplay. In short, eroding the enemy’s Will and Resources or gaining an advantage for your own side. In the year 2026 I shouldn’t have to be explaining irregular warfare theory. This isn’t about being clever. It’s about where you apply pressure in the system.

To sum up, DIME are your tools in their most basic form, Conventional and Irregular War/Play is really just about picking the right tool for the job.

If the enemy soldiers just exist as stat blocks in a vacuum, the only lever the player is allowed to manipulate is the Military one and you can maybe pick the irregular flavor of it sometimes.

This means the GM can’t be a “Lazy GM” about their world and that it must be ran with verisimilitude. I’ve come to use the term Hard Surface in place of the word verisimilitude as I’ve run some trippy settings. Basically the logistical and mechanical constraints of a game world (Time, Resources, Physics, Math) that remain constant regardless of narrative intent. It is the floor upon which agency is built.

Pulling from my solo AD&D campaign where upon hearing (Information) that tensions were running high in the enemy stronghold due to the commanding officer not paying his soldiers.

This isn’t just flavor text; it’s the discovery of a vulnerability in the enemy’s logistical chain.

The Warband hired many of the opposing force before conflict exited the gray zone of deniability/unknown movers and entered into open conflict. That would be using Economics obviously, it’s not roleplay, it’s out-bidding the competition in a resource finite world. A touch of Diplomacy for sure, but that’s why understanding the DIME levers is important.

The sabotage and cloak and dagger removal of enemy command staff right before the conflict escalated would be the irregular application of the Military force. Not the destruction of the army, but the collapse of the Command and Control of the opposing force.

The operation to secure dominance in the theater was a success that minimized military losses for maximum gain and achieved the selected objective which was taking the keep. They didn’t win the battle, they removed the need for one.

A GM who ignores the ‘Hard Surface’ of their world isn’t being ‘narrative’, they are being a bottleneck to player agency. If the enemy soldiers are just HP sponges in a vacuum, you’ve turned a campaign into a corridor no matter how much you dress it up in procedure or world building. To allow for ‘True’ play, the world must track like a ledger, even if it looks like a dream.

This isn’t complicated. It’s just unforgiving.