All right, all right. I have an incredible talent for saying precisely the wrong thing whenever I open my mouth, but I'm going to try this one more time because I think it's really important. When I criticized gamers for poor use of language (English, among others), this is how I should have said it:
I wish gamers would take more pride in their written work - as much pride as they take in their research and painting. The historical miniatures hobby encompasses an almost absurd surplus of talent: writers, engineers, scientists, lawyers, artists, artists, and more artists... But you'd never know it from looking at most of the written products we turn out. They're just sloppy: filled with errors and poorly edited, if edited at all. There are zillions of examples. I recently bought a scenario/campaign supplement for a popular rules set. It is written by a famous author and published by one of the major brand-names in our hobby. The author spells "Napoleon" three different ways on one page, and depicts French artillerists wearing red trousers. (They should be wearing blue.)
We would never tolerate tables and charts that read 2+2 = 5. Yet for some reason we don't mind poor writing.
Now I know, I know... most of these products are by wargamers, for other wargamers. There is no standard we have to live up to. But there is! Every time we turn around we hear somebody in-the-know saying that historical miniatures gaming i's "graying," and will soon go the way of historical boardgames, which are in the final agonies of a sk)w, ugly death. Where are the kids? Where is the new blood? Where are the new ideas?
Well, take a look at those products that the kids are buying. I'm not passing judgment on the quality of the rules themselves, or whether Orcs and Space Marines hold any interest for you. I'm talking about the quality of the products. The fantasy and sci-fi games are absolutely gorgeous. They're full of high-quality color photographs of brilliantly-painted miniatures. They encourage new gamers by giving them something to aspire to: an army to "collect," for instance. Kids are even more avid collectors than we adults are. I've seen them drool over the pictures as they plan their next painting session. The beautiful books and supporting materials have gotten the kids hooked on the products, and thinking in terms of collecting a certain army.
And these games are extremely well-edited. The rulebooks; are often 200-300 pages long, but you won't find sentence fragments or misspellings. Nor will you find fuzzy black and white photos, or endorsements that read: "the best ruleset I every played." No, these are first-rate publications, and they fetch a very high price, and they sell like mad. There is money out there, and it could be going into the historical hobby, but we simply aren't making the effort to compete at that level.
Every once in a while, somebody shows the way. Rich Hasenhauer's Fire and Fury comes to mind, as does Dave Waxtel's They Died For Glory, Arty Conliffe's Tactica books are classics. Now and then we really do one right. I wish all historical miniatures games could be as well-written and beautifully produced as Fire and Fury and as successful (sold out of three printings.) Well, why can't they be? For one thing, it's expensive.
You have to spend money to make money, as the old saw goes. It's expensive, sure, but there's gold in them there hills. There are advertisements to sell, new buyers to recruit, supplements and figure-lines to promote... all if you score a hit with a well-done game.
For another thing, it requires more than just one guy with a word processor. A professional game requires professional photography, professional art and layout, professional printing, lots and lots of editing and playtesting, well-done advertising in the right places, web-based support... In other words, it requires people.
We have so many talented people in the hobby that we could put together a database of what everybody does, and I'm sure there'd be plenty of expertise to go around. It's as simple as finding an editor to make sure that an author doesn't use the word "eviscerate" three times in one paragraph, or that he knows to make a plural using an "s," not an apostrophe-s. (Or that - as a self-proclaimed expert on Napoleon - he knows how to spell the man's name correctly.)
I know you're thinking that there is no necessary correlation between a quality product and increased interest. Nobody has proven definitively that the beauty of Tactica or Fire and Fury has ever recruited anyone to the hobby. All I know is purely anecdotal. I had never considered painting an ancients army before Tactica came out. When it came out, I painted three in succession. And Tactica armies are big! I must have spent well over a thousand dollars on miniatures and related books, all because of that one game. Ditto for Fire and Fury. I had never done any ACW figures until the arrival of those rules. When they came out, my whole gaming club took up the challenge to assemble the armies for Gettysburg that Rich included in his book. And we did it, too, and hosted a demo game at a local hotel. The advent of Napoleon's Battles not only made me re-base thousands of Napoleonics, but I also bought an entire collection of British troops to play the scenarios.
If we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that a gorgeous, well-produced game can seduce us into buying lots and lots of toys and encouraging others to play with us. Surely that is good for the hobby and those businesses which support it!
So what I'm saying is this: Let's take some pride and care in our work, and produce high-quality stuff. Let's take a lesson from the fantasy and sci-fi people and produce games that encourage people to collect new armies, to get into a new theme or period, and to encourage others.
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© Copyright 2001 Hal Thinglum
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