I write this article with trepidation because whenever I speak out I seem to lose friends and influence people against me. However I see a dangerous trend arising in our historical miniatures hobby. Those who know me know that you will be hard put to find a person more against fantasy-role playing games of the magical sort. However my gripe with them is not their hobby, but their sources. I find most fantasy novels at best inane, and the rest of them a cesspool or depravity, violence, and sadomasochistic sexuality. I find them dangerous because young people read them and consider their heroes and heroines as role models for behaviour. The thought of a generation of youth accustomed to viewing men as killing machines with rippling muscles and bulging jock straps and women as overly endowed sex objects in chain mail G-strings, is more chilling than Mein Kampf. Besides . . . all that leather and metal must be very uncomfortable to wear . . . think of a cold dayl Now while the sources may be awful I don't find too much fault with the hobby. I don't play them . . . I don't have any desire to play them, but I think they deserve an "A" for imagination, and many of the fantasy figures are excellent in detail and animation and I unabashedly use them (when at all fitting) in historical armies. For example I recently bought several hundred Ral Partha elves for an ancient army. Though I don't like fantasy games I do not think we as historical miniatures gamers can afford to ostracise them. While most fantasy games are "inane and pointless" ttwo epithets I have heard cast at them with regularity and abandon by miniatures gainers) so is wargames . . . and baseball . . . and football . . . and scrabble . . . As Christopher Lasch wrote in The Culture of Narcissism, games derive their strength from the lack of purpose. Their erection of artificial obstacles with no other purpose than to be overcome and the submission of the players to their rules create an illusion of reality and give a substitution of ideal conditions for the normal confusion of ordinary life. They recreate the freedom, the remembered perfection of childhood. He makes the point that when games lose their artificiality and are put to the purpose of utilitarianism, or uplifting of purpose, they lose their appeal. It is the element of daring, risk, and uncertainty which has no place in modern industrial activity that is appealing. Society and industry seeks to precisely control and eliminate risk. Games thus assume an even greater import . . . There was a movie -- "Anzio" -- a rather offbeat one, but one in which a war correspondant at the front finally understands why men go to war, and he says "It is because in the moment of danger; the moment of death you are never more alive." People need risk. I feel that historical miniature gaming enthusiasts are committing a grave mistake in sneering at the fantasy gamer. There is not much difference after all between a man says he is a tenth level magic user, and a person who commands an army of Roman Legions. Neither of the gamers is what he says in real life. Both are playing make believe. You may not know it, but many fantasy gamers look up to miniatures gamers with awe. Our massed armies of well painted figures are iike a dream to them, and they dearly would like to have such armies of their own. We command respect in their eyes. I have, at conventions listened to groups of fantasy gamers talking (I was eavesdropping actually) and they, in between their talk of their own games always mention reverently "Boy did you see the collection of figures at the painting competition. . . I think its great but I can't get into that". There is always a ring of untruth and not a little wistfulness to the last part. So tell me what hope we ever have of encouraging them to get into our part of the hobby if we sneer at them. Many years ago I joined the Model Figure Collectors of America. I joined because I was desperate for association in the hobby, even though the M.F.C.A. was essentially a collectors group and a two hour trip away. At the first meeting new members were asked to introduce themselves and give their preferences and areas of interest. My announcement of my wargaming proclivities brought not only looks of disgust, but groans and even curses clear enough for all the room to hear. I stayed on for a couple of months, always being derided by the collectors until I left. They obviously did not consider wargamers worthwhile and told me so. They resentedwargamers coming to their conventions and "spoiling their hobby." Well . . . I don't see a lot of collectors around today. I guess they forgot that it was not their hobby, but OUR hobby. Most of the people in fantasy games are young, and being young they do not have the time with school, work, etc., to paint vast armies, and certainly they are hard pressed to get the money for them, especially at the in" flated prices of today. Little wonder they go to fantasy games where small numbers of figures are needed. Further, rules today and their insistence on historical proportions to armies severely limits the ability of a player to "paint what he likes". After all, what is the sense of painting it if you can't use it. Unless you have a whole army, and a big one, you don't get all the interesting stuff, like Cuirassiers or Elephants. While you say this is not historically realistic, I say so what. It is this persons hobby, after all. Also, many rules are very prejudiced. WRG Ancients, for instance, are good if you like Macedonians or Byzantines, but not if you like Egyptians or Persians. The model soldier makers don't give two hoots if a figure is of a Byzantine Super Heavy Infantryman or a light disaffected, unhappy, unarmed peasant scum infantry; It's 60 cents. Obviously, unless you are rich, you go for figures with "more bang for the buck". Even if you paint up the masses of humanity you need, you have the wondrous pleasure of seeing them break and run at the first roll of a die. Realistic, Yes! Historical, Yes! Fun, NOT! We perhaps begin to see why many young gamers are turned off. Remember, when we entered the hobby most of us used rules by Featherstone, Tony Bath, or a home built set . . . and had the time of our lives. It is only recently that we have begun this craze for absolute realism (which is nothing more than a craze for detail and complexity for its own sake). I don't know anyone who painted well at his first try and if he or she says they did I suspect their honesty. I still don't paint expertly and I have been at it twenty years. However I am far better at it than when I started. Here again we fall into the trap of smugness and pride. We are putting perioratives on lesser paint jobs. How many times I have heard it, and the wargaming friends I have, are starting to sound like those old collectors. That is simply not right. I am not saying that we should accept sloppy painting, but the draw of miniatures is that it is also an art form as well as a game. We create things of beauty for our use. It does no good to intimidate others less talented just as it does no good to intimidate and belittle beginning artists. I HAVE HEARD THIS COMPLAINT FROM FANTASY AND YOUNGER GAMERS MANY TIMES, that miniature gamers tend to get a little snooty about painting. Sure, be proud of you paint job, but don't measure a person by how well he paints. I think our conventions are partially to blame, we give oodles of prizes for best painted everything . . . perhaps we should give prizes for best effort or something like that. Some say that fantasy gamers and board gamers would never get into our hobby. Rubbish! I know of two board gamers and two fantasy gamers who are getting into our hobby in a big way. The board gamers are painting figures furiously in the E.C.W. period. They are doing so because a friend of mine, John Casazza, is helping them with the painting and detailing problems they have and showing an active, personal interest in getting them started in our hobby, in addition to board gaming with them. I feel if more of us held such an open commendable attitude we would get a lot more adherents. The worst thing we can do is to close our minds and say "This is the way it MUST be done, there can be no other." Remember the article in THE COURIER on Jack Scruby. Give them your ideas, show how it can be done, but always encourage them to try their own way. This was the great strength of Jack Scruby's Table Top Talk, and his view of the hobby. It is the way most of us got into the hobby, and let's face it, isn't it the way it should be? Now I see the hobby being forced away from this emphasis on individual effort and virtuosity into the straight jacket of conformity. This can only kill our hobby. We cannot afford the conceit of an orthodoxy. When a person is young, he craves the individual daring do and swashbuckling of heroes. When I was young, there was no Dungeons and Dragons, but there was the Sword and Sandal Epic, like "Hercules Unchained" or "Seven Against Thebes." I thought they were the best thing since sliced bread . . . and I see them each seven or eight times . . . so did you . . . don't lie. Today they don't make movies like that anymore, and our young people do not have the derring-do brought to them by M.G.M. Therefore the appeal of fantasy games. They are the Sword and Sandal epics of their generation. So be a little more tolerant of the fantasy gamer. The sources are atrocious, but they have contributed to our hobby, though you might not like to admit it. If you don't like them coming to conventions dressed as their persona in robes and with wand and magic items . . . well . . . to be frank I see no difference between them and the blithering idiots who show up in various shreds and patches or real uniforms, and ostentatiously parade about. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, n'est ce-pas? Hobby Views Introduction by Dick Bryant Square Bullets by Samuel T. Gill Exhortation and Warning by Otto Schmidt II Responses: Letters to the Editor Vol. II No. 6 Responses: Letters to the Editor Vol. III No. 1 Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. 2 #4 To Courier List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1981 by The Courier Publishing Company. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com