Having played such games as Diplomacy, general games, board games, wargames, including miinatures, as well as unclassified variants, for over 11 years with many ages, categories, and groups of players and watched it change over the years, there are some problems with my fellow gamers that have come to my attention, as well as to others.
Most wargamers, to one degree or another, are weird, alienated, egotistical, and immature. I do not think I have to mention the weird sort; some are nice guys, some are just plain weird. Alienated; I remember one older man, who, if you disputed his rule interpretations or whatever, then you were seriously considered to be a Communist "pinko". My parents thought for years I was wrong to play games, therefore I did not receive parental reinforcement in my hobby. Egotistical: I was Le Grand Monarque at one time. We can all be bombastic in victory and a mere shell of our former selves in defeat. From egotistical to immature is but a short jump. One friend used to take a hammer to his die when a few bad rolls came up, and I've seen tears spill over some losses.
This all ties into the desire to win which is only natural. But when "at any cost" is added (which I may be natural??!) it certainly is not sportsmanship. Does total war, Potter's gamesmanship and I oneupmanship, and the use of rules as additional weapons have to continue to evolve, even if on a more sophisticated level? It is present today and getting uglier in my opinion.
From the days of SPECTRE on, the only cooperation I've seen is so one group could get together to clout another over the head, and a survey of competitional truce between the game manufacturers which is tenuous in the extreme.
Spartans and IFW do not get along, all the little clubs poke holes in the big ones, the two Diplomacy leagues badmouth each other and spread rumors, and I've seen very close personal friendships suffer grievously. Let me add, I've seen beautiful friendships evolve as well. All this to satisfy ego's, as opposed to advancing the hobby.
This contrasted badly with the several wargames I attended last summer in the United Kingdom (including their National Wargaming Convention).
Though there were bad points, there were fewer arguments, less hassles, and more examples of player X telling player Y why X's troops' morale was worse than Y thought and that X's troops were about to be routed from the field. This sportmanship appeared not at some Saturday frolic, but the "Big" championship finale for all of England. There was a sort of sportsmanship and code of honor present to a much larger degree than in the U.S. This tended to make the interest in the games greater both for the players and the observers (and maybe one day we could even charge television rights . . . ).
- "One of the guys in there is impossible to get along with, and no one will play with him because he won't follow the rules. He's a great admirer of the Nazis, and he refuses to accept German defeat. He has an idea that if he can just work it out, they can somehow still win the war."
What to Do?
So what is to be done? First, to make wargaming more realistic and enjoyable, advancements of the game are necessary. Such advancements include more give and take, less arguing, and a better joint understanding and acceptance on the rules before play. Most importantly, we must have less desire to win at any cost.
Secondly, advancements of the hobby must be made. We need a good conceptual format of the hobby as a whole, which, Strategy and Tactics, Panzerfaust, and others, have helped immensely by explaining the intemal workings of their companies as well as a better understanding of the past, present, and future of wargaming. But more is needed. Even Strategy and Tactics has an outlook and frame of reference which has clouded certain points in the wargaming world. We all are in the hobby together.
A professionalization of the hobby is important. We all can benefit from better, fuller, and clearer communication. The entire hobby can benefit from more effective and efficient companies and clubs. One good example of professionalization is the Spartan's use of bonded umpires, a set system of rules (still evolving) known in advance of the convention, and by the general promoting of the erowth of the convention system. I feel that conventions are one of the most important elements involved in wargaming. We bring diverse peoples together to promote the hobby. The convention becomes an exchange for ideas, fun, new friendships, and a "championship system."
However, this "championship system" should not be limited to individual groups, but instead should have some sort of supraorganizational influence over the different clubs which could run and handle the games and act as a final board of arbitration over any problems that may arise in the "championship system."
And, finally, there is a need to advance the philosophy of wargaming. I feel that we must play for fun as opposed to winning. Playing is a good chance for an exchange of ideas on strategy and tactics. We must reinforce our camraderie in our hobby, a young and still weak animal. We will all benefit through cooperation that promotes a larger and stronger hobby. We must aim for an increased sophistication in gaming, especially in the realm of military history and conceptionalization. This is opposed to the ability to remember and retain vast amounts of trivial data. We must be more open minded. Let us end the petty and harmful wars among wargamers and enter a era of cooperation, not competition.
- "Designing is an art, while researching is a science."
Time
The following was sent to me from my friend Andrew Smith, now in his last year at New College, Oxford:
Briefly, the free time of wargamers is spent on three forms of activity: playing games, writing rules, and obtaining information. The first activity involves the competitive simulation of a conflict situation, the second the relation of past experience of the first with the information available and one's personal opinions, and the variations on the third theme are extreme. The three activities are listed above in descending order of gregariousness.
Modern sociological study seems to indicate that people engage in group hobbies, or any hobbies, for two reasons: to associate with a group of like-minded persons, and to assert their own status within the group (they are abreast of what and whom they want to be abreast of). (Two notes on the last sentence: (i) wargaming is an interesting hobby, in that it ritualises a form of status-seeking competition, but all hobbies involve some sort of competitive behavior; (ii) the hobby must not be too complex for its aficionados, and similarly must give them some sort of refuge from the less satisfactory real world.)
Thus most wargamers concentrate their efforts, like good hobbyists, on the group situation of playing games, which must involve at least one other person somewhere. Excursions outside this activity are often necessary, to collect minatures and check orders of battle; but most wargamers do not indulge in either writing rules (as distinct from rewriting others') or intellectual research. On the whole, this means that the group's intellectual ability is limited by the sum of what its members have read, more than by their intelligence, and in the average ability to handle masses of information (hence status-seekers can use complex rules as weapons).
Members do not seek information or rules; they let these commodities be thrust on them by others, either complete outsiders or by the more capable of their own number. This acceptance facilitates the optimal (play) situation, since the activities all require a great deal of time. On the whole, the providers of predigested information, either rules or books, are t reated as magi, and are rarely "challenged" except by other magi (status-seeking function) in public (private acceptance of revision of the works of the great magi amongst sub-groups is frequent, but the cure is often more dangerous than the disease, and the majority prefer to use interpretation of the rules as they slated as a means of alteration, since this asserts their status more generally).
Wargames rules tend to be judged by a criteron known as "playability". Playability is often found to be equal to the lowest ability, within the group, to handle masses of data, or by the speed with which the group plays using them, rather than by the potential speed at which the game could be played. Playability is used as a shibboleth to excuse the absence of realistic simulation of the conditions of warfare, since it derogates from the status of all members of the group to admit that they are either too stupid to use the rules, or too stupid and/or too idle to write them. Playability does not conflict with realism, but it certainly conflicts with complex rules. More, or less, intelligent members of groups eventually split off at all levels, and use more, or less, complex rules (usually more, since ability to handle wargame data tends to increase slightly after one has played for sometime).
Why do people become magi? Because their interests are not in the game alone. They have discovered that they can handle data on the scale to write articles, edit magazines, and compose rules, and that this gives them greatly enhanced status within the group when not practicing their mystery. Magi predictably tend to have had higher than average education and to possess greater intelligence than the rest of the group. They have read more widely and remember more of what they have read; they are less easily crushed by contradictory information or its interpretation, something which produces crises and personal conflict at a lower level of sophistication. At lower levels, heterodoxy is very dangerous (hence magi are never heterodox, since they impose what they think as othodoxy).
When the magi clash, the tribe are never much dismayed; either they wait to see who has the most juju and the favour of the gods, or (if the clash is between magi or different groups), they are mobilised in the struggle or else never hear of its existence. A magus wields certain totems and fetishes: these are the books and rules which the group use, and he is characterised by the fact that he can, like a good fundamentalist, cite more of them than anyone else. Like Lenin, he wins at party congresses because he knows Marx backwards, better than anyone else in fact. A good tribesman doesn't want to know about other totems; a naughty one is probably about to become a magus. Truth is always revealed by the magus, unless it doesn't clash with the present corpus.
To be fair to the magi, they exhibit scholarly tendencies, and are often very interested in chasing points, though they can sometimes be mesmerised by their own totems. The typical magus is abreast of the modem literature on his subject in his own language. That is as far as an analysis of the pure wargaming community can go; to some extent it can be called self- sufficient.
One other category of persons is involved; it is disputable whether these are great magi or the inhabitants of a spirit world which only the magi can commune with. They know a great deal about naval and military history (relative to the tribesman), and know much better than magi where to look for information. They deal mainly with the magi, though they occasionally drop tablets inscribed with letters of gold from the heavens (vice my forthcoming ordnance articles, which like as not will be the U.K. standard for 10 to 15 years).
On the whole, they are not very interested in the tribe, though they claim to monitor its behavior (not difficult). They lack direct involvement, and resolve problems (whether of information or rules) because they want to, and not because the magi ask them to -- the magi do not always know what to ask for, or ask them for. So much for structure.
The solution to the problem lies with the magi, not the spirits. If some aberrant magus was to convert a group to amateur scholarship, the breakthrough might be made; but it seems unlikely. Wargaming already has a bureaucracy here, not self-perpetuating. Even wargamers recognise that conventions and even joint club meetings are a good thing.
On an immediate level, if you are an intelligent wargamer aiming for realism, I should mobilise all your and your acquaintances connections -- somewhere between you, you may find an Italian translator and an expert on the Rumanian Navy, even if neither is a wargamer themselves. It is unlikely that anything will change the hobby; in the U.K. there exists a sort of pa rt-time think-tank called Wargames Research Group, which produces sets of rules well worth looking at, but its members also have tribal affiliations. Wargaming breakthroughs tend to be technological, though some (e.g. 5-mm World War II models ) have enabled more realistic small scale games. You can't change the hobby situation. Become a magus and form a tribe round you instead.
Sportsmanship
Sportmanship: the tribesman is concerned with status, the magi game less frequently than others and prefer to play slanted games with their peers, which they claim to be more interesting (cynics would see this as a desire not to lose face). Spirits hardly ever play at all, but if they did or when they do they too play hard if not dirty. The only way you will get people to avoid getting cross when they lose is to recruit saints or else put them in a position where they don't want to alienate their opponents because these people mean something to them. The group is unstable unless it has a family or friendly base; otherwise people will do everything bar overtly cheat to win, within, parallel to, or outside the rules.
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© Copyright 1973 by Dana Lombardy
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