A Wargame without War: The Role of Unused Rules

As mentioned in a previous post, I played a lot of Baseline Drift. I expect lots of other bloggers will be sharing their thoughts (I know Kati is working on something, and Yakamo wrote a retrospective from the referee side), and here are a few more of mine. Like Over/Under before it, Baseline Drift was a wargame with a layer of Live Text Roleplay on top. Most players had very limited interaction with the wargame rules, essentially limited to exchanging currency with each other, spending it on their lifestyle, and joining the wargame factions and thus enabling them to raise troops (a faction could raise 1 unit of troops per 5 members). The exception to this was faction leaders, who could directly engage with the wargame: moving around troops to do combat or conquer territory, fortify their territory, and conduct operations (including assassinations, for the Major factions). Play Context: A Recounting For some context on my place in the game, I started as a normal "denizen" player and…