https://wp.me/pae4WL-dd1The official Operations Order for the 2026 ACDC. Note that this is a virtual convention that is held entirely online
Situation
- Weather – It depends entirely where you are in the world, but it rarely rains in the house, so let’s stay inside and play games!
- Enemy Forces – In-laws, Christmas music before Thanksgiving, and apathy, in roughly equal measure
- Friendly Forces – Friendly forces for this mission include all Dragoons, with additional reinforcements being coordinated
- Attachments & Detachments – None at the present
Mission
The Armchair Dragoons and other friendly forces conduct online/virtual game convention operations beginning with event submission (16 November) and badge registration (approx 30 November), before culminating with the execution of the Armchair Dragoons Digital Convention (The ACDC), from 16-18 January 2026.
Operations
Commander’s Intent
The Armchair Dragoons maintain their tradition of excellence in virtual wargaming event planning & execution, with our annual mid-January digital convention. The Armchair Dragoons provide wargamers with an excellent convention as we come out of the holiday season, and give players an opportunity to meet, play, and congregate in an online/virtual convention, in lieu of traveling at a challenging time of year
The Armchair Dragoons intend to offer a mixture of larger events, quick/casual games, opportunities to learn from/play with designers, a robust seminar program, and a variety of industry-focused talk shows.
Additionally, this year is the first transition year from the old ACDC organizing team to a new set of volunteers. Please contact the organizing team at armchairdragoonsevents – (AT) – that ‘gmail’ thingee if you’d like to volunteer to help plan & organize future ACDCs.
Concept of the Operation
The ACDC will focus on the following 3 features:
- Wargaming Events: the primary activity will be wargames played through virtual tabletop systems like VASSAL, Rally The Troops, Tabletop Simulator, and Tabletopia.
Registered players may play in any number of non-overlapping events for their $4 registration cost.
The GMs will ensure the appropriate game-specific modules are available for the players joining the game.
- Topical Seminars: Both wargame-related and more general military history seminars are planned, including formal presentations, industry interviews, and talk shows.
- The Convention ‘Community’: There will be additional channels opened up on the Discord server to create virtual ‘meeting places’ for attendees to congregate between games for any sort of community-building discussion.
- The ACDC will also include several “pick-up game” voice/chat channels for use by players who decide to join in any impromptu or unscheduled games they organize between themselves.
Note that these pick-up games are not official ACDC events, and will not appear in our schedule nor will tickets to those events be required (though you will still need a badge for the show for access to the channels on the Discord server).
Subordinate Tasks
- Organizing Committee – Update/create relevant SOPs in advance of detailed planning for this ACDC, to include participant help guides
- GMs – prepare, present & supervise games played during the convention
- Players – Ensure you have the correct platform software (VASSAL, TTS, etc) loaded and functional before registering for any games
- Seminar Speakers – Prepare & present content for online audience, including participant Q&A.
- Editorial Team – ensure content is captured during the event to most accurately capture the convention for follow-up articles.
Coordinating Instructions
- The ACDC has a cost of $4/attendee for a weekend badge.
- Only ticketed attendees will be given access to the ACDC Discord server.
- Event schedule will be posted at the Dragoons site, for you to recon before registration opens.
- All times for events are listed in US/Eastern time, but the Tabletop.events registration site converts to your local time zone.
- YouTube streaming, including (especially!) seminars & talk shows, will be through unlisted Youtube links, with URLs provided to attendees. This will allow us to still leverage YouTube chat during the livestreams while still limiting the audience to registered attendees. Streams will be made public after the convention is finished.
- Individual event tickets are needed to play in the games, but not to watch. While we hope to stream many of the games through YouTube, many of them may only be made available to registered participants through the screen streaming function on Discord.
- All GMs will make every effort to stream their games through the Discord screen sharing, and through publicly-viewable channels (YouTube, Twitch, etc) when possible.
- New Dragoons swag through our soon-to-relaunch online store will be available
- There is an option to print your badge, if you want it as a keepsake. Obviously, we don’t need no stinkin’ badges for an online convention.
Service Support
Support Concept
Armchair Dragoons will provide the scheduling & registration framework, as well as the online ‘anchor’ presence for the convention using Discord, with announcements through our site and social media channels. As the central clearinghouse for information, Armchair Dragoons will take the lead in supporting convention attendees.
Technical Support
- Armchair Dragoons can offer limited technical support for the registration / scheduling software through the tabletop.events platform
- Armchair Dragoons makes no promises, guarantees, warranties, or assurances that the platforms used for this convention (such as TTS, or VASSAL) will load and function correctly on your individual machine.
In short: it is your responsibility to make sure your computer works with the platform for the game(s) you want to play this weekend.
- Armchair Dragoons will be publishing a few “tips & tricks” guides for specific platforms, but these are in no way intended as any sort of guarantee of success nor an implied offer of universal tech support.
- Anyone wishing to volunteer as a GM is instructed to submit the event through the event submission link
- Anyone wishing to volunteer as a seminar speaker is instructed to contact the convention team at armchairdragoonsevents – (AT) – that ‘gmail’ thingee. Please include a draft outline of the content to be covered and include at least 2 options for times at which you can present. Note that whenever possible, we will try not to schedule multiple seminars at the same time.
- A bank of images is available to freely share over at the Dragoons site
- Everyone registering for/attending the ACDC is asked to share information about the convention through their social networks; the more, the merrier!
Command & Signal
Command
- Armchair Dragoons will lead the effort, with assistance from other organizations as needed
- Questions or concerns should be communicated to armchairdragoonsevents – (AT) – that ‘gmail’ thingee
Signal
- We will use online comms for site administration and other coordination
- All games are played online through virtual platforms like Tabletop Simulator, VASSAL, and Tabletopia.
It is the player’s responsibility to ensure the appropriate software is working on his/her own computer.
- Games will operate with online voice channels, such as Steam Chat or a Discord server. The GM will communicate to the players which channel is being used, but it is the player’s responsibility to ensure the audio is appropriate for the game.
- While some GMs prefer Steam Chat for their voice comms, the priority will be the dedicated Discord Server available for that weekend for both voice and text chat
