Into the Deep End (Part 1)

22 Dec, 2025

Into the Deep End: From Cataphract Newb to Referee

Ongoing series about the life of a gamer in way over his head from Cody Bechberger/ HelloYesToast

Part 1: Read the Rules

I can’t do war games. They just don’t seem to make sense to my brain. Some friends of mine got into Starcraft II, others got into Civilization, and the rest got into League of Legends while in university. I tried all of them and bounced off hard for arguably the worst reason… I always felt too stupid to play them. Watching people flash around the map managing multiple incursions while mining, or seeing a team coordinate a huge play while jungling always felt awesome and would make me hope that maybe I could do it. I’d try it again and come back with the exact same feeling; I’m just too dumb for these sorts of games.

Accurate photo of a university student (Photo by Paul Bill on Unsplash)

I know what you’re thinking. “That’s not true, you just need to spend the time playing it to get used to your hero/faction/civilization”, and I hear you. Truth is, I could never seem to put in enough time to get through that feeling, even though there have been times that I’ve made it through with other things.

When I was in my second year of university my roommate brought home a copy of this really strange looking game called Demon’s Souls. It was weird in all the ways I didn’t expect and it sounded so difficult that I didn’t even want to touch it. I thought, “What do you mean dying removes half your life? Who the hell would design that?”

But then I went on a work-term for a few months and watched the classic Zero Punctuation video for Dark Souls, Demon’s Souls’ spiritual successor. The game had been out for a few years at this point but hearing Yahtzee talk about pushing through the difficulty to find the story interested me enough to watch a playthrough. It was dark, horrifying, and deeply thematic with a vast amount of lore that needed to be parsed. It could be seen in glimpses in character designs and snippets read in item descriptions which would be taken and spun into these incredible stories by the likes of VaatiVidya. I needed to be a part of this. Needed to prove that I could make it through. After all, I was a gamer, and this was just another videogame. I just needed a map.

Hint of what’s to come… (Photo by Blake Weyland on Unsplash)

So I tried and promptly failed at my first attempt. I tried again following the example of the playthrough closer and I got a little further before running up against the extinction event that is the Capra Demon (if you know, you know…). This sucked. I watched the fight so many times. I changed my set-up and techniques to get past it, but nothing worked. And then miraculously, I did it! Somehow, I kept calm enough to get past the challenge and it felt electric. My body shook from the adrenaline as I sat and breathed for a full 2 minutes before attempting to push further. This was the first real challenge I felt I had bested in my gaming career and there was nothing that was going to stop me.

I pushed through, finishing the game a few months later which would not have been possible without the community that existed online. Here was this thing that felt nigh impenetrable, but was rich in story and absolutely dripping with theme (and slimes and frogs…fucking Depths). It was all accessible if you had patience and perseverance. Turns out, like Yahtzee, I liked taking the rakes and bashing my head against the wall. There was a certain satisfaction in seeing it to the end. The only problem is it taught me that the best way to push through difficult things is to keep throwing myself at them until I succeed.

This proved difficult, as in early 2020 (just before the start of the pandemic) I watched a video on YouTube from Magikarpusedfly in which he and his friends decided to get into Warhammer 40k. Now, I’m a nerd on the internet. There are tiers to the depths into which we exist that exclusively look something like this:

Up until this point, I was pretty solidly in the board gaming category. Which felt good and safe. Obviously a little while later I would traipse down into the RPG category but the drop below felt like looking into an abyss. The video didn’t help matters, especially since the first one is just “watch us spend a shit ton of money, but these minis are so cool looking and look how awesome they are after they’re painted!!!” He does lament at a certain point about the rules overhead, having to buy the core rulebook, faction specific rulebook, and yearly supplemental material with new information was a lot. I heard all of that, but all my brain would focus on was painting those freaking miniatures… So I found the rules online and became immediately confused. I understood that an army is made up of units and groups which have point values, but then you had detachments which they had to conform to and they could have different load outs and abilities…. My brain shut down. Where’s the start and where’s the end?

I never tried 40k. I think I could figure it out eventually but I’m not patient enough. I don’t have the time or energy to play every faction with every variable. I couldn’t convince anyone to fight through the extensive rules with me, and I was too scared to go and try it myself because I didn’t want to feel dumb.

But this? This is a Cataphract series, so we should talk about that instead. Do Cataphract rules make me feel dumb? Jeepers, I hope you all thought “no, he must be a pro.” Anyways…

As I mentioned in my last post, a lot of us left Over/Under with a hole in our social lives and many people wanted to jump into the game that inspired it: Sam Sorensen’s war simulation called Cataphract. Meant to simulate medieval warfare in the 1300s, the game is played online in pseudo real-time with messages and troops moving around a map and in-game contact between players only allowed if they're in the same place or via letter. I initially joined a game called Vanguard, but wasn’t sure how to get started and felt scared off by the rules (the Southeast Asian theme also kinda confused me, and I was pretty sure I was going to feel lost…), so I left the server after a few days of inactivity. Not long after, a few friends mentioned they were playing a version with wizards and shit which really spoke to my fantasy sensibilities, so I jumped in for a second try with Vanitera - 450.

I’ve been thinking of the appropriate way to describe what stepping into a Cataphract game is like for the uninitiated, but it’s a wholly confusing experience. It’s like stepping onto a construction site of a reasonably sized building, getting in an elevator to go to the top floor, only to step out and realize that the actual building you were looking for already exists on top of the one being worked on… Oh, and now you’re a thousand feet in the air and the door requires the blood of a virgin to open. But once you’re inside… You find a bunch of people sitting in individual rooms occasionally moving around, chatting periodically, sending messages to each other, and then sending memes out the windows to make each other laugh. Does that work? I don’t know, but it’s the best I can do.

My points of that weird digression are many:

1. Cataphract has rules. Like, a lot of rules.
   For you to turn a rock over in game, there has to be a rule. There are the main rules, there are faction rules, rules for traits, rules for how to submit orders. The worst part is that only part of those rules are even written down, and a bunch of them are going to differ game-to-game depending on the team building the system and running the game. You could enter a server and never even figure out how to sign up for a game. Now, most players are very nice and will definitely help you out (as happened with me), but it still seems pretty crazy to me that step 1 is figuring out where to go to get in line. The comparison to 40K is pretty apt, in my opinion, as ultimately the player who will win is the player that is able to figure out all of these different rules the quickest and be able to find the exploit to meet their victory condition.

2. The game runs on people
   The referees do everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. Want your piece moved? Submit an order and the refs move them. Want to forage for more supplies? Submit the order and the refs will tell you how much you get. Want to be able to talk to someone in the same location as you? You guessed it, the refs will open that up for you and then close it as soon as you leave. We run around executing orders, answering questions, and trying to resolve disputes quickly all while keeping the massive machine of the game lurching forward. It's a lot to keep track of and the fact that it doesn't come apart at the seams is frankly astounding.

3. It’s a lonely game when you’re in character
   I say this having never played a character but if you're marching cross country on your own and only receiving the occasional letter, it must feel like the game is happening everywhere that you aren't. Some of the letters are fun but the best story moments happen when characters are together and talking. Diplomacy works wonders and watching the players embrace their characters is always entertaining at the very least. Just remember that those moments are usually rare, sprinkled between long periods of marching or sailing in isolation.

4. The funniest things are happening out of character
   As a referee, you get to see everything. You're in every channel, every discussion between players, and you get to see all the notes between the referees as well. I don't know if this is consistent across all games (could be some opsec reasons to limit visibility) but at least that's how it is in Vanitera. The best posts and comments always come from either a character's individual channel where they can talk to us, or in the myriad of out of character locations where players blow off steam. It is a war game, afterall, so it kinda makes sense.

So what was the point of all this? I started writing this post intending to relay my introduction to the game and the world of Vanitera but that didn't feel right. It came off as a whiney and confused mess, so I figured it makes more sense to step back and instead try to analyze what Cataphract actually is, how the game works, and where the fun exists from the perspective of someone who doesn't really get war games. Reading this over again it still feels a bit whiney and confused but maybe that's fitting based on the story above. I can do the work…but understanding the rules takes time. Hopefully as this blog series progresses I can document my process of coming to grips with all the various parts, and maybe I'll end up being a decent referee too.

Hopefully as this blog series progresses I can do enough dishes to earn my wife as an editor. She’s the pro at dealing with my whine, maybe with wine… But she’s not a miracle worker, just incredibly good-looking. (Wait a minute...)