I've been painting toy soldiers lately while watching the news on all the new electronic geegaws that are available. Cheap digital cameras, computers, web pages...hummmm. An idea! Many of us are historical miniatures players from old. We have large collections of little men and pretty terrain. In recent years, people have postulated that computer games will do in miniature gaming. "The graphics are better. There is no painting time." They say. I do not agree. We have had movies and animated cartoons for a century but people are still fascinated by puppets. I see this every time my wife takes her little stringed wonders out. I've also noted how people love to see and play with my little guys when they go out. That only leave the gap between the table top and the internet. When I look at gaming web pages, I love to see pictures of miniatures games. Especially close up of action! They are clearly not realistic (which is what computer graphics can do). They look like toy dioramas. I've seen whole games displayed in this way. All after the fact. So here is the idea… Why not combine miniatures and terrain to make dioramas for an ongoing game? A digital camera, a web page and writen captions under each picture would make the game come alive. They would even be interesting to people just browsing the web! Figures, pictures and an evolving text would be a compelling combination. TECHNICAL PROBLEMS Here is where the whole is. Those with the little men and terrain are generally older and thus less computer savvy. Those who know how to do it easily don't have the little men! ARRRRRR!!! We need to create partnerships between tech guys and figure guys with a new cheap camera to get these web pages going. I've got the little men. Anyone want to partner with me to do the web pages? Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #22 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 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