The name of this blog has always been an indicator of its purpose: a place to offload writing in whatever form it may be. Originally a place to talk cycling, in particular the annual ‘Coffeeneuring’ challenge, but as time has moved on so has the theme, meandering into historical wargaming, where I seem to have picked up a little momentum, particularly around reviews.
Really though I find editorial writing the most enjoyable by quite a margin, and it’s the type of wargaming writing I seek out the most. There’s so much that can be said about the hobby beyond scenarios, rulesets, and historical summaries that warrants debate, and coming across it is always a boon, so much that I’d say the quality of opinion pieces in print determine the quality of a magazine much of the time. Sometimes an article will pop up that grates, and this post is a response to one such article. I won’t name it here – that seems in poor taste – but if you’ve read it you’ll likely recognise the themes, and really there is enough here to discuss without referring directly to the work.
A brief summary of the article is that simple games make for poor historical games, and that when you don’t do ‘The Work’ to enrich your hobby you don’t get the same level of enjoyment as those who do, ergo simpler games and not dedicating time to research is dull, reductive and will ultimately fail to captivate the gamer over any length of time – the metaphor of fast food is used in the article: you can eat as much of it as you want it but can’t sustain you. There’s a lot to unpick here, so let’s make our way through it as best we can.
Firstly, ‘The Work’ is a term I just made up, but I reckon it’s a good one. When I’m talking of doing ‘The Work’ think of it as doing the hard yards of the hobby. It’s the research behind the scenes in the name of authenticity and implementing this in your games, whether as a rules writer or as a gamer. This could be basing a scenario you’re designing on a historical encounter, or it could be converting minis so that their attire is theatre-correct. Typically we’re looking at research through reading literature, but it can come in other guises. A quite lightweight example of The Work I’ve done recently was, after being inspired by an image of historic British dyes doing the rounds on Twitter, colour-matching early medieval dyes with Vallejo paints. I don’t have a historic project I can use this for right away so I’ve been putting it to use on some fantasy RPG minis to see just how things look and having a lot of fun with it. It’s not yet complete but you can try them out for yourself here:
Doing ‘The Work’ is undoubtedly a valuable act, and it can enrich your hobby in unique ways. What I think deserves questioning, though, is whether doing ‘The Work’ is an inherently good thing in the hobby. There’s an attitude in some that really doing some serious graft through some historical research is a necessary endeavour if you want to be the real deal in historic gaming, and to do any less would mean that you wouldn’t get the complete historical gaming experience, you wouldn’t be as ‘into’ it as others. Yes, you can just play the games that don’t require that level of work, but really such a simple approach and simple rules will lead you singly down a path of eventual boredom.
What absolute nonsense this is, and nothing more than hobby gatekeeping, because that is all this attitude can ever really become. Historical wargaming is the act of playing wargames, and every other part of the hobby is an addition to that; if someone is playing historical wargames then they are as much a part of the hobby as anyone else. There may be parts of these extras that you enjoy more than others, there may be some you have strong opinions on, but it’s never going to be your case to determine whether someone else’s enjoyment is sufficiently meeting your own expectations.
Research can be enjoyable, and can add a lot to your games, but the key word is can, neither of those things are guaranteed, and research can also be difficult, grating, and potentially fruitless. You may delve deep, spending hours toiling through your sources, only to find they don’t apply to the games you’re playing or that there’s nothing there that you hadn’t already gathered previously. The reading may simply not be enjoyable – let’s not pretend academic writing is always particularly riveting, and that being a historian and being a writer are totally separate skills – or you may not even know where to start with finding the resources you need. This is nothing to say of the cost, as the more niche literature we’re likely going to need is seldom available in libraries, and tends to be expensive if in print. There’s a hearty chunk of time and effort needed just to get an appropriate book in front of you in the first place, then additional time and effort to read it thoroughly, and when time and available effort are limited commodities for many of us it becomes wrong to assume that every wargamer wants to spend their spare hours toiling away at a desk. This says nothing of those who may find reading difficult for a variety of reasons, dyslexia possibly being the most well-known. Now imagine being faced with a dense, dry text if you did find reading difficult, and being confronted with an attitude that skipping such reading makes you somehow less invested in your hobby. Reading between the lines of this there is a quasi-expectation that you should be academically-inclined if you want to be a historic wargamer. Is it any surprise to hear about the ‘greying’ of the hobby when these things are taken into consideration?
And let’s not pretend those playing sci-fi and fantasy games are not invested in the finer details the same way historical gamers are – go into any GW shop with space marines painted the wrong colour and see what happens. Attention to detail matters to many, but where historical gaming lags behind is in inclusion and presentation so that as broad a demographic as possible can access it. Want to learn all about a particular space marine chapter, or just who the different chapters are? Put their name into youtube and you’re guaranteed to find everything you need in video form, produced to a high standard and easy to digest. Trying to do that same research regarding a set of wargaming rules on youtube is much more likely to be patchy at best unless you’re one of the hobby’s big boys (Battlefront, Warlord Games).
Fantastic, community-led online resources are coming to the fore, however, and deserve to be celebrated. Storm of Steel is creating fantastic game summaries, how-tos and mini history lessons of his own, TooFatLardies have made some great summaries of their new games, and the work at Little Wars is at such a standard as to need no introduction. Away from the strictly wargaming world you have people like Military History Visualised creating superb video essays, and if we move away from video entirely and into the world of audio the We Have Ways of Making You Talk podcast is an invaluable resource that also raises the profile of more in-depth WW2 history. When the ability to research becomes inclusive and affordable like this we all benefit as the hobby organically creates room to grow further. Just this week on Storm of Steel we’ve seen an explanation of one of the mechanics for the game ‘O Group’ that focuses on the historic basis of the game, explaining it clearly with diagrams, and even links to free PDFs of the training pamphlet troops would have been given historically; what a fantastic piece of work for someone new to historic wargaming to come across, what a way to introduce someone to the hobby compared to, say, TMP’s antiquated layout that makes finding relevant info at best awkward. Video’s like Storm of Steel’s take hard work to create, and we should be doing our utmost to celebrate and promote them because they improve the accessibility of this hobby tenfold. Doing The Work is only a noble endeavour when it is entirely supplementary, and wargaming will lag behind until we reach a place where that’s true.
I’d wanted to cover both aspects of the magazine article here in one post, but on reflection I think I’m going to split it into two. Watch this space!
The Text Dump 