The timid Dorothy goes in front of the great OZ, wizard of all gamedom. "Please sir," she quivers, "can I please start a game club in Kansas?" "What???" bellows the great one. "Dare you intrude on the creative process of a genius? To gain my aid you must ..." Does this sound like the type of organization you would want to be involved in - for FUN. It may go over great in Hollywood, but when I leave the office on Friday I don't want to deal with this kind of schtick any more. Fortunately, though, the wargaming hobby is no where near this structured or controlling. So why then is it Important to know anything about how it is organized? The answer is quite simple. As with any machine, it works better if I know where the on switch is. Imagine for an instant that the hobby really was organized like the "Wizard of Oz." No little munchkin can get anything done without the aid of some "witch." All the power flows down from above. If the "Wicked Witch of the West" doesn't like my ideas then I can't get anything accomplished. It does not matter how good an organizer I am, or how many resources I have to contribute to the war chest. This is a problem of heavily hierachical organizations. Meanwhile, back In Kansas (or Indiana, in my case), the hobby moves on without the benefit of any "Wizards", "Witches", "Magic", or "Masters." Instead the hobby moves on due to the work and energy of a select group of people who organize things. It is these people who need to know about the hobby's organization since they are trying to harness the beast to try to get something done. Consider the task Dorothy has set for herself. "I want to start a game club." What resources from the hobby does she need to mobilize? A simple enough question. All she needs to do is bring together 1. a game, 2. some gamers, In 3. In a place she has arranged for. The first and third resources are easy enough. Dorothy buys a game in the local hobby store and sets up a time to meet either at her home or in a public meeting hall (like a library, for Instance). Now all she needs are the players. This is where a lot of potential organizers wish that tile great Oz would come along and magically fill the room with happy smiling people. But It doesn't work that way. The bottom line of power in the wargaming hobby is in the Individual gamer's decision to play a game. In other words, does he want to be part of the hobby or not (in a strange way playing a game is like taking communion reaffirms being a Christian). Dorothy can not force the Scarecrow to play a thought, any more than she can force the Lion to play a heroic fantasy game. All she can do is raise up her banner, sound the fife, and beat the drum. If people rally round her it is due to their own choise. Fortunately, by providing an example (sticking her neck out socially) players are almost always willing to follow. Which leads me to my first generalization about how the hobby works, which is that ... The many follow the few. Consequently, if you want to organize anything, you must first set an example. This means taking the initiative and leading. On the level of the game master, this may be no more than providing the game and encouraging the players to play. A club organizer has to add to that finding a public meeting hall and the financial problems that go with that on other levels the extent of action an organizer must take to harness this hobby horse becomes ever greater. As an organizer moves in to higher levels of the hobby. His attempts to manage is affecting more and more resources. Hobby stores and game manufacturers attempt to harness the spending power of hobbists. Convention organizers bring together gamers over wide areas. This obviously uses up a lot of resources (le time, money, etc.) Then there are the Association/Magazines which organize the types of games people are playing. In none of these cases do the organizers have the power to force players to follow them, but players do follow them because of the sacrifice they make in terms of time and effort. An example of higher level organization is the increase of Colonial Wargaming over the last ten years. In the late 70s a few people (the organizers) decided that they really liked playing games set in this period. They started 2 magazines dedicated to games of this type (The Heliograph and the Savage and the Soldier). Articles about games in the period appeared In other magazines (the first Courier), and a set of miniatures was published (The Sword and the Flame). Now after ten years of Interest and leadership Colonial wargaming is wide spread and leading to other games being put on the market (Science vs Pluck, etc). Ten years is a long time to work on a project, but with any less than many years work It seems unlikely that any endeavor will succeeding RPGs took about five years before they gained wide acceptance. Other projects are likely to take at least as long. This leads to my second observation of organizing, which is ... It takes patient, consistent work over the space of years to get the many to follow the few. Even after years of work a project is still unlikely to have influenced more than a fraction of the hobby. This means that no matter how popular the project becomes one does not suddenly become the great OZ (controller of gamedom). He doesn't exist now and God willing he never will. It seems more reasonable to expect that a one man project will only influence/touch about 100 people in two or three years of work. This is not many but do not loose faith, it is more important to consider who these 100 people are. If they are organizers then in a few years a project can take on a life of its own, beyond the original dreams of the first organizers. RPGs have done this, and I think Colonial miniatures are a similar case. Which leads to my third observation ... Projects take on a life of their own once other organizers are organized To me these observations are not academic since I am engaged in my own long term project. Matrix Games are not a major part of gaming today, but they are now a part of the hobby. In 1988 they were no more than a vague idea that came out of a weird conversation. What will happen with the project next? I'm not certain. But I do believe that by providing an example (writing articles, putting out EGG, running convention games, and organizing a local club) and being persistent that my project can take on a life of its own. Back to Experimental Games Group # 8 Table of Contents Back to Experimental Games Group List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1990 by Chris Engle 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