In yesterday's post I made a reference to Gary Gygax, major Von Reiswitz and Phil Barker. I'll explain, as promised.
More about this below...
As I discovered megagaming in 1993 I also came into contact with Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group in London and became a loyal but not very active member. But at least I get my copy of the club magazine, Military Muddling with reports on design sessions and I occasionally go to meetings, like the annual picnic or games weekend.
At the games weekend there's two days of game design sessions, with the evenings available for after dinner games. One of the few times I was around (in 1996) it was a good session of Four Men in a Balloon, where all the passengers had to make their case not to be the one thrown out this round. In this case the passengers were Don Featherstone, Gary Gygax, major Von Reiswitz and Phil Barker arguing their value to the wargaming hobby. And I represented the latter.
Phil was the second to be released after the major, but in the end Gary Gygax survived rather than Don Featherstone. It was something to do with polearms, I believe. I think that is a good indication of the mindset at Chestnut Lodge, with a heavy emphasis on role playing even in a miniatures game.
The guys even autographed my copy!
But the best after dinner game was the bard competition we had afterwards. The idea was that we were given an episode of the life of Harald Hardrada and then turn this into Nordic poetry, so with lots of alliteration, reference to mythical animals etc. Jonathan Pickles put up a copy of Snorri Sturluson's King Harald's Saga for the winner and that proved to be me.
I never read the full story, but it is obvious that Harald was a bit of a poser. He traveled around much of the known world, but always seemed to get into trouble and be forced to move on rather in a hurry. In the end he lost the battle of Stamford Bridge against Harold Godwinson a few weeks before the latter was beaten by William of Normandy, later known as the Conqueror, at Hastings.
Harald's predicaments were of course part of the amusement, as the ´bards´ had to gloss over these inconveniences and portray them in a more positive light. In most cases I opted for outright lies rather than spinning the evidence. I suspect that my reward was more out of kindness to the foreigner who had come so far to join in the proceedings than on the basis of my superior poetic skills in a second language.
But coming back to yesterday´s theme it is interesting that although my memory is hazy, these games I remember much better than many regular miniature games. Just like I remember the Peasant´s Crusade game that Graham Hockley put on that weekend, which was a string of grown men weaving around a playground à la Polonaise, with every break in the chain signifying losses to the expedition. You can imagine that once we´d crossed a few obstacles our chances of ever reaching Jerusalem, let alone ´liberating´ it, were null.
It's all very tempting to look back these days. There was 100 years of H.G. Wells' Little Wars, then Willem Schoppen, the ´Dutch Donald Featherstone´ was taken into hospital and then The Donald himself passed away. It feels like the end of an era.
Welsh Guards (Wargaming Miscellany: Bob Cordery)
Given the massive outpooring of reminiscences in the blogosphere, it feels like in a sense we are now paying our last respects to the last wargaming pioneers. Wells who made the transition from an officers' teaching tool to a civilian's game, Featherstone who popularised it in the Anglo-Saxon world, Schoppen who popularised it in the Netherlands.
Look at the sense of novelty and pioneering this old hand describes in his memories of wargaming in the 1950s and 60s. Or read Achtung Schweinhund by Harry Pearson for a more elaborate depiction of those years. There is a recent spate of books on wargaming, boardgaming and roleplaying history. But of course, the pioneering era ended some decades ago already. Don Featherstone has already been 'succeeded' by others.
Okay, no Featherstone, but I do have some gamer cred
I just found out I actually have no book by Featherstone at all! I always took him as an icon whose designs had been surpassed by new generations of writers like Bruce Quarry and Stuart Asquith, of whom I have several books each.
Starting wargaming with Hinchliffe miniatures, I was then totally overwhelmed by Foundry's Franco-Prussian range. Just like Magic: the Gathering was a watershed in terms of visual appeal and gaming tension. I remember coming back from a games show and teaching all my friends how to play the next week and then buying them all starter packs the week after that.
Willem Schoppen and his wife from a Dutch popular science magazine in the early 1980s
To me, Willem Schoppen and his Boutique La Grande Armée are natural points of reference, but they are meaningless to most Dutch gamers of my age and younger. Donald Featherstone means nothing to tens of thousands of kids in GW stores worldwide, and neither does Gary Gygax, Von Reiswitz or Phil Barker (I'll share that story with you tomorrow). And they don't have to. Just like you don't need to have heard the Beatles to appreciate One Direction or to have read Marx to appreciate Lenin's writing.
And now there's discussion of a Golden Age in wargaming and boardgaming and on the other hand one of 'the hobby's dying out'. Lots of new stuff is happening. In terms of boardgaming the mechanical revolution has passed from the German/euro style games to wargames and Ameritrash. In wargaming the revolution is now mostly in highly thematic skirmishing rules after a period of highly formated competition rules. And design and marketing have received a welcome energy by crowdfunding schemes in the middle of a general crisis for gaming companies.
But as ever, there is a process of creative destruction going on. The success of Too Fat Lardies, Bolt Action and Flames of War will mean the quiet disappearance of other rule sets, just as Avalon Hill was eaten up by Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, Peter Laing and Minifigs have become memories of the past. Hinchliffe was sold to Skytrex and now Skytrex itself has gone into administration. Those that see only growth, just don't notice all that we leave behind.
There are counter movements though, like the one sparked by the Little Wars anniversary. I see a dozen gamers with a sense of nostalgia buying up their 54mm toy soldiers and playing Old Skool on their brittle knees in the garden again. I guess there is an age between 13 and 50 where you feel too serious about this kind of thing, just like you feel to serious to play monsters battles with Play-Doh. Wrong!
Grown Men (Hail! Hail! Freedonia: Jim Wallman)
Maybe we all just got old
And maybe that is what people yearn for the most when they hanker back to the good old days of Wells and Featherstone. A period when they were young, when it seemed the whole world was still there to explore and map and everybody was enjoying it. It all became more complicated with time. Wargaming became work, with lots of accounting and legal prose. Maybe as the world was mapped and better understood, players lost the freshness and joy in arguments over rules, regimental lace and the intricate mechanisms of phalanx combat.
We need to find back, bring back and/or keep alive that sheer fun of the game. I used to get up early to get to the club in time to play four games of Napoleonics for a club competition. I played 24 hour RPGs marathons. It was the best thing I could think of doing then and even though life now gets in the way much of the time, it still is one of the few ways of spending my time now totally engrossed, immersed, occupied and happy.
If you want to honour your heroes, if you want to keep this hobby alive but you worry about the fact that we can't get the youngsters in anymore, or if you just want an opponent for your dust covered Royalists, do it by playing. With anyone, anywhere, in any way possible, because mechanisms and realism and correct painting schemes don't matter. Just play that game with the same intent and joy as you played when you were playing with the Don.
