The recent articles in these pages about gaming with children and bringing younger blood into the hobby has set me to thinking about my own upbringing and my attempts to get my children into the hobby. My father has always been the sort of fellow who revels in history, and I was raised on a steady diet of classic military films Gunga Din, Four Feathers etc., and we stood in line to see Khartoum, Zulu and the Sand Pebbles. While he has never been strictly speaking a wargamer, he did make while in high school and college, armies of "figures" by taking stiff card ( appropriately colored ), and sticking a straight pin through it to make it stand. He had hundreds of these, and in fact still had them when I was growing up, so the transition from those pieces to figures was a natural one for me. I have played with toy soldiers as long as I can remember, and can vividly recall waiting quite impatiently to see what Marx Playset would be waiting under the tree on Christmas morning. While in high school I discovered Airfix figures and ultimately "real' wargaming. Through the friendly folks at the long gone and missed Tom Thumb Hobby Shop, I found out about Scruby, Stadden etc.
Encouraged by my father, and guided by a couple of established gamers, I began ordering figures from Jack Scruby. I managed to get my father and a couple school chums to play several games with very primitive rules, and the rest as they say, is history!
Now onto the actual topic at hand. I am the father of three daughters, ages (by the time you read this), 22, 17 and 9.
Naturally, from the start, I had to deal with a certain amount of reverse sexism, you can't expect girls to be interested in soldiers, after all ! Not to be easily dissuaded, I have over the years, played wargames with all three girls, ranging from HG Wells style set'em up and knock'em down games to DBA. The older girls quickly lost interest / found other interests, but the young one is another story.
Victoria has been "Daddy's Girl" from the start, and as soon as she could handle a rubber band gun, we were playing games with 54mm figures on my gaming table. About 2 years ago, when I felt she could understand the concepts, I started teaching her the fundamentals of DBA, and letting her push around my regular figures, and a couple games, we let her throw dice in our bi-weekly games. At this past summer's Historicon, I picked up a new Milton Bradley / Hasbro game that I had heard about called "Lionheart". The game is a true cross between Chess and a DBA style game, with a grided playing field, and Games Workshop style medieval figures.
Victoria took to it immediately, and generally manages to beat me at the game, by going right for the "King". Recently, I have been buying Renaissance figures for DBA / DBR from Games Workshop, and found that they will actually fit into the bases provided in the Lionheart game.
I've taken the basic rules of the game as she now understands them, and pulled a bit from DBA, and a couple other ideas to produce a hybrid game that really plays quite well. I have also made up a larger surface, using green felt. She doesn't quite grasp the subtleties of strategy yet, other than going after the king, but I am certain that it will be developing quickly. Our gaming group already has a father and son in it (the son around 13 ), and it is not too far fetched to expect Victoria to be joining in when she turns 12 or so.
In conclusion, it is definitely vital to the survival of the hobby that we encourage kids to join in our games, so long as they seem to have the acumen and true interest to grasp the concepts of rules. Thanks to rules like DBA, it really is easy to introduce kids to gaming concepts painlessly, without throwing them immediately into the tables and charts of WRG ! And then of course, for those who like me are the fathers of girls, there are always the boyfriends and ultimately, sons-in law.
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© Copyright 1999 Hal Thinglum
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