In August 2001, HMGS East announced that the theme of Historicon 2002 would be "1812: Russia, Spain and North America." This inspired me to build a 25mm War of 1812 project and run a series of games depicting the 1814 Maryland campaign. I would need to be playtesting by March, clearly a lot of work to be done in a short time. In addition to selecting rules and buying and painting figures, I had to do the detailed research necessary to design the scenarios and paint the units. Though I was familiar with the 1814 events in my home state in broad terms, I had a lot to learn in a short time to reach the point where I could present three convention games.

Web and library searches turned up a lot of good sources, but some unit organization and uniform questions persisted. One of the useful web sites was the Fort McHenry site (httD://www.bcDl.lib.md.us/-etowner/patriot.html). I emailed the webmaster to ask if he could answer my questions or point me to more sources. He recommended going to the fort and asking the official historian, Park Ranger Scott Sheads. I contacted Scott and made an appointment. He gave me an entire December afternoon shoving books at me, answering all the questions he could and pointing me to sources for others, while I told him about miniatures gaming and showed him some War of 1812 figures (mostly unpainted at this point). Finally, as I was about to depart, he said, "Our big event here is Defenders' Day in September. If your guys would like to do some kind of exhibit, I'm sure we can make some arrangement." Defenders' Day is a Maryland holiday marking the repulse of the 1814 British invasion. I told him I liked the idea and we'd probably be in touch. For some time, the HAWKS (Harford Area Weekly Kriegspielers) had been poking around for sites where we could do a gaming demo -- mall, library, something like that. Fort McHenry was clearly a great opportunity.

I returned in April. I showed Scott some figures, now painted, and pictures of the Battle of North Point game that I ran at Pointcon. He introduced me to Ranger Vince Vaise who is in charge of living history at the fort and coordinates the Defenders' Day events. Vince was positively jumping out of his shoes at the prospect of a Battle of North Point game at the fort. We discussed some preliminary ideas and made a plan for a group of the HAWKs to visit the fort and work out details. Vince showed us the room that would be available to us. It was a little small and needed some additional lighting, but it would serve. We asked for tables, skirts, stanchions fans and chairs. Vince said he could provide all. I'd feared there would be some administrative problems or paperwork to deal with (this is the federal government, after all), but that was it, we were done. The only proviso was that Vince needed to see any signs or handout literature in advance. I returned in August with all our papers for him to review. This was just a check against gross impropriety -- Neo-Nazi recruiting pamphlets or the like -- not a microscopic PC screening.

We planned our presentation over the next few months. The first decision to make was how long we'd run the demo. The rangers offered to let us run the demo both Saturday and Sunday. Since this is a new thing for us we chose to be conservative and just do Saturday -- this year. We needed to address several objects -exposing and promoting the hobby, promoting the club and teaching some history (that's what the fort gets out of this gig). In addition to running a demo game, we had to have literature to hand out that explains the hobby and provides contact information for interested visitors to follow up. We made up some signs and handouts to accomplish this. Two guys wrote up a nice introduction to the hobby and we collected contact names for a local clubs list.

The scenario we chose to run was the Battle of North Point -- a delaying action in the defense of Baltimore that preceded the more famous naval bombardment. Because we would be participating in a historical commemoration, we thought it appropriate to prescript the maneuvers and tactical decisions to match the historical events as closely as possible. This would be a hybrid combining properties of a game and a demo. We'd have HAWKs playing the game, each with goal of replicating the decisions of his historical counterpart, while the rules and the dice determined the results. A week prior to the event, we had a rehearsal to walk the players through their parts and get all the rules discussions done before hand. At the fort, we'd encourage any interested visitor to step into the game and play as much or as little as he wanted. Visitors in the game would be allowed to make the decisions of their own choice as a gamer normally would. The rangers found this "interactive exhibit" aspect particularly appealing.

We arrived at the fort at 8:30 AM on Saturday September 14th. Vince had everything he'd promised in place when we arrived. We set up, paused for the 9:00 flag raising ceremony, and got started. The available room being a bit on the smallish side, I scaled the convention game down to a 5'x6' table. Four HAWKS were players (Todd Harland-White, Kurt Schlegel, Patrick Chambers and myself), two others (Rob Dean and Buck Surdu) were on duty to meet the public and answer questions, while Chris and Jenn Palmer took pictures and gave general support.

We blocked the game off from direct access with a rope, giving the visitors a 50 yard line view. We had a small table to one side of the door on which we had a display case with a selection of figures designed to visually show the rich range of figure sizes and periods that the hobby has to offer, and the signs and handouts described above. Included in the literature, were fliers for Barrage VII, Gamecon 17, and Fall In!, area conventions coming up over the next two months.

In the time we were there, we ran the game and then reset the figures to the start point and ran it again. During that time about 3000 people visited the fort grounds and close to 350 visitors came in to take a look, a good showing according to Ranger Vaise. Most of the visitors were from Central Maryland, DC and Pennsylvania. As each group entered, we gave them a quick summary of what was going on and answered their questions. There were a lot of questions: about the demo, gaming in general, the club and the history. In general, people seemed very interested. We estimate that 10-15% took one or more handouts home. Many told us of friends or relatives who might be interested, so we can expect to reach a few potential garners second hand. Three youngsters took us up on our offer to test drive the game for a turn or two each.

Many groups of re-enactors were involved in the fort's activities. They were very interested -- especially those whose units were on the game table. One of the rangers saw what we were doing, left the room and returned with a stack of pictures of his 15mm Napoleonic games. At one point Ranger Sheads brought a Harper's Ferry ranger along to see us. She said she'd like to have an ACW demo out there sometime.

On the whole it was a great success. One of the project's goals was to promote the hobby. We don't know if we made much of an impact. Time will tell. We may have some new garners coming around for game nights or our convention. But whatever the impact we had a BLAST! It's hard to imagine what can beat the experience of playing a War of 1812 wargame 10 yards from the Fort McHenry flag staff with a full sized reproduction of the 42x30 foot Star Spangled Banner flying in the breeze.

The probability of a return in 2003 is very high. The park staff was pleased and hopes we'll be back. Vince Vaise called it a "great addition to the program." We learned a few lessons to refine our act, but just in the details really. The bottom line is that we've proved to ourselves that a public demo at a historical site is worth doing, even if just for the fun alone, and now we have a workable model for what a wargame group can do to expose the hobby to the public in an entertaining and informative way. We'll do it again and investigate expansion to other sites like Harper's Ferry. If you are in a gaming club near one or more historical sites, we highly recommend that you give this a try. We'll be more than glad to share what we've learned.

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