WARGAME DISCUSSION GROUP FORMED By Paddy Griffith "Wargame Developments" is an association of wargamers who want to discuss the hobby in an in. telligent manner, and find new ideas for improving it. We conduct our activities through the pages of our journal, "The Nugget", and at our annual weekend residential conference. We feel there are a number of new features about this association, and American readers may be interested to hear about them. TALKING, NOT PLAYING GAMES In late 1979 a number of factors came together to convince me that the wargame hobby was missing something. It didn't seem to know where it was going, and had got rather bogged down by routine. The articles in the wargame press all seemed to be rather basic and repetitive. The games being played all fitted into one of four basic structures (Skirmish game with figures, division level game with figures, boardgame, D & D-style fantasy roleplay). There were plenty of wargame products being churned out by "the trade"; but there didn't seem, to my jaundiced eye, to be as much innovation and experiment from private individuals as there used to be some years ago. As a professional historian, also, I felt that a lot of things going on in wargames were unhistorical or only half-historical. There didn't seem to be much point in painting up every minute item of uniform on your model Chasseurs a Cheval de la Garde Imperiale, if you then played with them using a set of rules which made them behave like Second World War armoured cars. I was lucky in having an opportunity to run a residential weekend conference at Moor Park college near Franham, Surrey in May 1980. This chance came at precisely the right time for the way my thinking about wargames was going; and so I combined the two to make it a wargame conference. The idea was to bring wargamers together to talk rather than to play wargames: all the other wargame events I've heard about seem to get it the other way round. We would spend the weekend discussing the hobby and what, if anYthing, we could do about it. BETTER REALISM AND BETTER PLAYABILITY In the end I collected about 40 wargamers, either people I knew who were interested, or writers in the wargame press. It was exciting to put faces to a lot of names which were well known in the hobby, and the weekend got off to a sociable start. We quickly found that an event of this type, where talking was the main activity, really could be highly enjoyable. Predictably, of course, a number of small wargames did creep into the proceedings at odd moments; but most of the time we were just chatting, in big or small sessions. We found there were a lot of points at which more realism could and should be brought into wargames, especially in areas such as concealed movement, command reactions and combat psychology. As an example, we discussed the way in which wargamers usually take decisions as if they individually command every one of their units directly. TheY do not do what real commanders in war have to do, which is just write general orders for the subordinate units and leave the details to the subordinate units themselves. This poses a big problem for the ruleswriter, and some of our members felt the best way round it was to reduce the importance of rules and rely more on an active umpire or games master. Others felt that there were good mechanisms for solving the problem, which only required players who were willing to accept the limitations to decision-making would be involved. We also felt that most games which try to be realistic seem to take an awfully long time to play, which makes them boring and over-complex. We looked at ways of speeding up games without losing their historical validity. One can raise the level of command, for example, so that a player has to operate three army corps rather than twelve separate divisions, etc. This means using simpler but different "army corps" rules instead of more complex "division" rules. Once again, the active umpire can help a lot with this problem. We discussed a lot of other aspects of game mechanics, such as the ratio of real time to game time; the techniques used in diplomatic or military "professional" wargames; the time players should spend on preparation as compared with actual play, and so on. We stirred up a lot of old ideas, and added a few new ones of our own. In particular we came to the conclusion that there seemed to be two types of wargamer -- the "mains/reamer" who liked competitive games, and the "non-mainstream wargamer" who preferred to take more time over the history, and didn't mind if he lost. A lot of our members turned out to be the second sort of player. A FORUM FOR IDEAS IN THE HOBBY After looking at game structures and mechanics, we turned to the hobby as a whole, including its morality and its relations with other hobbies such as historical re-enactment. Finally we decided that we should organize ourselves as a continuing forum for ideas in the hobby, with regular conferences each Year and a journal for the exchange of views. Unlike many other wargame associations we're not restricted to anY particular period of history or type of game, although in practice we seem to have concentrated on all types of wargame except boardgames and fantasy games. Also unlike many other wargame organizations, we do not have much to offer complete beginners in the way of an introduction to the activity. We see our job as the exchange of good ideas between people who already know something of what the hobby is all about, and who have something to contribute. We aim to offer wargamers a more varied diet of games and game ideas than they might otherwise encounter, and we hope to generate circulation of unpublished rule-books between members. A lot of good ideas never see the light of daY in the "glossy" printed rule-books of the professionals, so we hope to give these ideas a little more life. Anyone interested in learning more about "War game Developments" should write to Bob Cordery 79 Combwell Crescent, Abbey Wood, London SE2, England. He is the subscription and membership secretary and will be happy to answer queries. The annual membership is £ 3, which includes three issues of "The Nugget" journal. ORIGINS'81 We will at least match the 800 player spaces for miniatures games at Origins'80, and that we will probably, with some manufacturers' aid, top the 1,000 mark. In fact, though many manufacturer's are still putting together their convention plans, I'd like to publicity commend MIKE'S MODELS, RAL PARTHA, THE CHAOSIUM and THE COURIER for already having offered prizes. Some of the miniatures names' that might be familiar to your readers, who've already agreed to host events at the convention are Lynn Bodin, editor of SAVAGE & SOLDIER; Brian Stokes author of TANK CHARTS; Charlie Tarbox, co~ author of ARMIES ON THE DANUBE, and BarrY Gray, designer of BATTALIONMASSE. In addition I'll be having some VIVE L'EMPEREUR games. Jim Vidlak will also be there with his 1 SMM ANCIENTS. There will of course be tournaments; WRG Ancients (25mm and 15mm), Renaissance and Modern. I might add that while there will be a fee for games pre-registered by mail, there will be no charge for miniatures games signed up for at the convention. I'm sure the attendees will think of some other way to spend their money! -- Ned Zuparko TSR ANNOUNCES SPONSORSHIP OF GENCON XIV GAME CONVENTION TSR Hobbies, Inc. has announced that it will sponsor the 14th annual GenCon~ Game Convention and Trade Show on August 13th- 16th, 1981, hosted for the fourth consecutive Year by the PAW gaming group at the University of Wisconsin -- Parkside campus at Kenosha, Wisconsin. This year's special guest will be renowned fantasy artist BORIS VALLEJO. Over 250 events are planned for the convention's four days, including two ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS tournaments for approximately 1200 players, scores of smaller events, seminars, demonstrations, and the annual Trade Show on Sunday. ANCIENT PERIOD BOOKS Ares Publishers Inc. have moved to 7020 North Western Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60645. This company publishes a huge number of books concerned with all aspects of the ancient period, many of which would be of interest to the ancient period wargames. For the current catalogue please write to the above address. FIGURE FAINTING BOOK THE COURIER has received a letter from Mr. Allan Abramsley on the subject of miniature figure painting. Mr. Abramsley is in the process of writing a very comprehensive book on the subject that will cover the painting of both display figures (54mm and up) and the painting of miniatures of smaller scale used in wargaming. The book wil be entitled "The Complete Guide to Painting Military Miniatures" and the author hopes to include information gathered from hundreds of miniature figures artists throughout the world. INTERNATIONAL MILITARY ENCYCLOPEDIA John Sloan is beginning a several years long effort to write a military encyclopedia. Anyone who has expertise in some area of the military, military history, weaponry, etc. is asked to help. GLEANINGS SAVAGE & SOLDIER ($8.00 for 1 year, $15.00 for 2 years, 4 issues per year). Volume XII No. 4, Oct. - Dec. 1980 has articles on: the British Campaign in Bhutan, 186466; and an attack on an American outpost in the Philippines in 1901. This magazine caters exclusively to those wargamers and others whose interest" lie in the "colonial period" of history (the latter half of the 19th to early 20th century). Apart from articles on the subject of various colonial campaigns and skirmishes there is also a review of current book magazines and figures related to the colonial period. MILITARY MODELLING ($26.00 for 12 issue published by M.A.P Ltd, P.O. Box 35, Bridge S Hemel Hempstead, Herts., HF11EE. The February 1981 issue has articles on: Painting tartars, The Second Battle of St. Albans; British Light Cavalry equipment; The Battle of Majul and many other features as well as the regul departments. This issue is rather heavy on modelling and light wargaming articles. However, since December's issue was devoted almost entirely to the gaming side of the hobby, we cannot complain too strongly. Always the magazine is beautifully presented; the color photographs in M.M. have always been superb quality and in this issue they are particularIy fine. In general the standard of the photography in M.M. is the finest of any of the wargaming/miniature magazines, and seems to be constantly improving. This, added to the large number of line drawings (both in color and black and whi throughout the magazine, make it the standard against which all other hobby publications shotuld be measured as far as presentation is concerned. Of the regular departments, Wargames Briefing and Uniform info are of direct interest to wargamers, and new books and figures are regularIy reviewed elsewhere in the magazine. After THE COURIER, this is the magazine for wargamers. Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. 2 #5 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