At the risk of becoming known as the David Frost of NHMGS, I have obtained the editor's permission to conduct another interview with a Wargamer. This issue the interviewee is Charles Sharp. Charles is that dynamic and tireless, silvered haired game host you see at every local and many national conventions. Recently he has been deep into 15mm WWII gaming but his interests do not begin and end in the 1940's.

He is a widely published author and lecturer on historical and gaming related topics, runs a painting service and is an active member of the Tacoma gaming scene. He is willing to share his wealth of knowledge and experience in a friendly and engaging way. How does he find time for all this? It must be that he is - dynamic and tireless.

I have used some of the same questions as in the previous interview with Ian Croxall so we can compare and contrast their views on hobby subjects.

Please give some background information about yourself.

I'm 54 years old, retired from the US Army 8 years ago as a First Sergeant, have a degree in history from the Pennsylvania State University, live in Steilacoom, Washington with a fallout shelter's worth of lead and too many books.

How, where, when and why did you become interested in Wargaming?

My first wargame, aside from Cowboys and Indians with cap pistols as a kid, was the old Avalon Hill 'Gettysburg" (the original version) in 1962. From that I got into board games rather seriously, until at one time I had over 150 games stashed around the place. In 1971 1 also got interested in historical miniatures, starting with converted Airfix plastic 20mm ancients, then 25mm metal ancients and 15mm Napoleonics (Minifig's first 15mm had just hit the market). A bunch of us started a club at Pennsylvania State University in the early 70s, just before I went into the army, where we played a lot of 15mm Napoleonics with Bob Jones' old Joi de la Guerre rules.

What periods, scales, rules do you use? What are the sizes of your collections?

My biggest collection right now is 15mm world war two, of which I have about 100 vehicles and 7-800 figures. I also have a few hundred figures each of 25mm ancients, 25mm Marlburian and 15mm Marlburian/Seven Year's War. In the past few years I've sold off a 2500+ figure Marlburian 15mm collection and several hundred English Civil War and Ancients 15mm figures. There's never enough room in the apartment to keep everything!

Are there any projects you are considering for the future?

Tod Kershner's Pig Wars are due out soon with an Ancient supplement, so I'm seriously considering painting up some 25mm ancients or dark age figures for those. I want to expand the 15mm Marlburians to do some games next year, and there are always more world war two figures and vehicles to paint.

Regarding scenarios, what do you think makes for an interesting game? There are a lot of different things that can make a scenario interesting as a game: exotic troop-types, a peculiar situation or strange tactical problem. I don't think balance is part of it, because very few real battle situations are balanced, and I usually like historical or historical-based scenarios.

What do you personally look for in a set of rules? What level of combat do you usually try and portray on the tabletop? Please relate your experiences in writing your own rules?

I collect all kinds of rules, even when I know I'll never play them - looking for ideas and different ways of solving rules problems. Most of all I look for rules mechanisms that are invisible: that allow you to play the game and fight the battle without constantly worrying about game procedures. I prefer tactical games which is probably a hold-over fr'~rn my days as a sergeant, and I've even played a few skirmish level games, but usually I like to be a step or two above the 1:1 ratio games - about the lowest tactical unit level: battalion/regiment in the 18th century or squad/platoon in WWII.

I don't think anyone really writes rules, we just borrow and recombine rules already written. When you look at the huge mass of rules written for board games, computer games, fantasy games, and historical miniatures over the past 20-30 years i just about everything has already been tried somewhere. It's more a process of discovering what works for you personally and your local gaming group than inventing something brand new.

In the last interview Ian Croxall stated that he felt there were three basic facets of this hobby., Modeling, Gaming and History - Socializing might also be added to the list. Which aspects of the hobby are the most important for you and which are the least?

The bulk of my friends are from and in the hobby, so the social aspect is certainly important, but history comes first - I've been interested in military history for as far back as I can remember. I confess I probably enjoy the researching of uniforms and scenarios as much as I enjoy playing the games!

Please tell us about the group you game with in Tacoma.

The club that meets in the American Eagles South hobby shop in South Tacoma was started by John Fernandes over 7 years ago, and we've managed to average at least a game a month or more every month since. We get a lot of transient members form the military bases in the area - Fort Lewis and McChord Airbase, so the exact number in the group varies, and what we're playing varies too. Right now we're doing a lot of WWII 15mm, some WWII air games, Full Thrust science fiction, some 15mm English Civil War, and Kevin Smythe has been dropping in after a long absence doing some Civil War naval games.

I know of at least one campaign that you have run, based in the early 18th century. Please describe your experiences and perspectives on running and participating in wargame campaigns?

Campaigns are some of my favorite kinds of gaming, because the campaign gives you a reason for the table-top battles you fight, and a whole new dimension of operations to play with that doesn't show on the battlefield directly. We've actually run several campaigns, including a Civil War campaign using a set of board game maps and Fire & Fury for the battles, the 18th century "War of the Slobbovian Succession", and Ken Cassady's Chariot Race campaign he tied the races together into a Racing Season and didn't declare an overall victor until winnings were totaled up at the end of all the races.

The principle rule in running campaigns is to keep the 'overhead', the administration of the campaign, as simple as possible. Computers are a tremendous help in keeping track of things, because no matter how simple you start out, people have a way of complicating things as they get involved in a campaign!

Will you compare some of the dfiferent wargame conventions you have attended around the country?

HISTORICON is the biggest, of course, and reason enough to travel to the east coast all by itself. The most dangerous place in the world for a historical wargamer is the Dealer Area at HISTORICON.

Second most dangerous is the bar at Historicon, where you can get into wild conversations on almost any aspect of the hobby and the history, and the next thing you know it's 3 am and you've got a scheduled game at 9 am! ORIGINS is primarily a fantasy-card game convention, but in the past two years a lot of historical miniatures games have been added. It's now the third largest historical con in the country, behind COLD WARS. COLD WARS is HISTORICON on a diet, but still the second-largest collection of historical games and products in the USA. The best small conventions (less than 100 people) I've ever been to were the Seven Year's War Association conventions in South Bend, Indiana: a great gentlemanly bunch of people and some of the bestpresented games of any convention anywhere.

You have been working with Rich Hasenhauer, play testing his forthcoming set of WWII rules. How did you connect with Rich and can you give us some insight into the play test process?

I got into one of the playtest games several years ago, when Rich and his friends were testing the rules using Western Desert (1941-42) scenarios. I liked the rules, but I told them that they had to do the Eastern Front, since that seems to be the most popular single area for WWII games - gamers like to play with the big tanks, and they don't get any bigger than King Tigers and IS-Ils in the East! Since I'm also an expert on the eastern front, they co-opted me and I've been involved ever since.

It's important to test rules with a number of different groups. Rich has run games at all the eastern conventions, I've run them out here, we've run games with several different people interpreting the rules, and run the same scenario several times with different people and different versions of the rules. The more testing the better, because even the simplest rules have a lot of things they have to cover, and any gap in the coverage will come back to haunt you when you go public and aren't there in person to explain things to the customer.

In this past year we've gotten down to where games were run just to check little 'bits': the basic rules haven't changed in over a year. That's a good sign that it's time to publish, because the 'game stoppers' have all been found and corrected.

You have published many respected books and articles in historical and wargaming magazines. Please describe your experiences as a writer, how you got started and any advice you might have for would be, historical authors.

Don't expect to get rich. Don't even expect to break even all the time! For me, the hardest thing about writing is not the writing itself - like any skill, that gets easier the more you do it. My problem is that there's always more information that I want to research and include, and sooner or later you just gotta stop researching and publish already.

I actually got started writing for boardgame magazines, and doing research on orders of battle for board games like the "Europa" series back in the early 80s.

Much of your written work is associated with and published by George Nafziger, the author and publisher of many books on Napoleonic and WW II history. How did you become associated with Mr. Nafziger?

I was at one of the big East Coast conventions and followed the sound of a computer printer. At that time, several years ago, George's main business was selling Orders of Battle from archive material, which he had on disc and would print out as required from a booth at the conventions. We got to talking about Order of Battle material, I sent him some WWII Soviet stuff, and we went from there. George is one of the hidden assets of the hobby, because he makes a wide range of source material readily available to gamers through his books and OB material.

Among your many activities you operate a painting service - Ares Resources. This type of service can be time and labor intensive. Can you tell us about the service and how you got involved?

I consider myself a good wargame quality painter, the product of 15+ years' of painting experience. A couple of years ago I worked out a fast method of painting WWII figures using a combination of paints and ink washes. The technique cut my time down to less than 10 minutes per 15mm figure, and as little as 6 minutes each for some. People liked the look of them in 15mm, and I started getting requests from people on both coasts to paint some for them. I guess I've painted about 2000 15mm WWII figures for people over the past 2 years, so it's another 'business' where you aren't going to make a lot of money. This year I've branched out, applying the ink and paint technique to 25mm figures and other eras, like 18 1h century, Napoleonics, and ancients. WWII still provides the bulk of my work, though.

What are your thoughts as to the direction that the hobby is taking? Do you see a potential for growth in the number of gamers?

Of all the parts or aspects of the adult gaming hobby: board games, computer games, card games, fantasy and historical miniatures, historical miniatures is second only to computer games in the overall health from a business standpoint. I've gotten a chance to see all the parts of the hobby at ORIGINS over the years, and our manufacturers, small though most of them are, are much healthier financially than the boardgame or cardgame groups, where 'boom or bust' is the rule. We recruit from fantasy players, while few historical players turn completely to fantasy, so there's no question that we have growth potential.

I'll make a radical prediction for the hobby direction, based on what has happened over the past twenty years. Figures can't get much better: you can't see all the detail on all of them now. They can't get any smaller, unless our collective eye-sight improves. I think we're going to see more figures to order, personalized figures, and 'one off' specialties. There is a manufacturing technique in use now that uses a sintering technique directed by computer to form 3-dimensional parts. When that becomes cheap enough that small companies can afford it, you'll be able to get a disc with the program for a figure on it, have it modified as you like, and a small number or even one figure produced for an affordable price. I predict something like that will be available within 10 years. We will also inevitably see a lot more computers everywhere in miniatures: laptops and portables are used for some rules now, and that's going to increase as the machines get smaller and cheaper. Especially since some types of rules, i.e. for steam and twentieth century naval and modern air battles, seem to be excessively complicated to handle with paper only.

Finally, is there any subject relating to the hobby that you would like to comment on?

Every once in a while I see someone at a convention or gaming session who forgets that it's all just a game. None of us are real generals, only egos get killed or wounded, and there is no reason for some of the arguments that take place over the table. Throw a die or dice to decide the argument, move on and discuss everything after the game in the bar. The main purpose of any hobby is enjoyment and fun, and we should all keep those goals in focus in our games. As Pogo said about Life, "Don't take it so serious, it ain't permanent."