When we started to wargame ("we" in the hard-core, historical board-wargame player sense), we did so for two basic reasons: games were fun, and we wanted to learn more about our interests. The interests in question were a love of military history. Games are and always have provided the fun-given that a person is playing the right game for his interests and ability- but what of the greater issue. Did wargames assist in sustaining and broadening our knowledge of and interest in military history?

I believe the answer is a qualified yes. The qualifications come from the vast difference found in the "learnable lessons" from game to game. The designer's knowledge and ability is at a premium as one attempts to derive lessons from a wargame. A game designed by a designer without either the skill or predilection to give an accurate model of reality will give incredibly inaccurate results. Games designed by those who are well-meaning, but who fall for the innumerable myths and inaccurate popular conceptions of either a given historical event or the conditions of combat at a time in history, are just as dangerous. Maybe even more so, because these games support previously held misconceptions-thereby 'verifying" them and perpetuating them for another design generation. These things all fall under the basic heading of distorted historical fact, and may quickly leave the player with a truly warped view of reality.

The worst case is when the designer deliberately designs a game to support inaccurate concepts so as to play to gamer's stereotypes or to perpetuate a myth. Luckily, cases of this are very few and, generally, pretty obvious.

Now that I've gotten the qualifications out of the way, let me finish the answer to the question of "did wargames add to our historical knowledge." First, garners tend to have an excellently developed sense of geography. Just try to compare a Fire in the East veteran's grasp of Russian geography with that of the average man on the street. I know, that's unfair. Especially since the guy on the street (in the good ole' US of A, anyway) might be lucky to locate the former Soviet Republic in anything but general terms.

That might be stretching it (haven't done any interviews) but not nearly as much as one might suppose. The gamer's knowledge of geographical detail is not only limited to place names and rough locations either. Given a good game, he will also have an intuitive feel for distances between locations and a good idea of what the ground is like between them. Trivia, you say?

Perhaps, yet I contend that this very gamer will get much more out of his reading about the Campaign in the East than one who has not developed the same sense of geography. Score one for wargames.

Next comes the details of the campaign or battle at hand. Once again, this presupposes a "good" game on whatever topic-when that is both accurate in the details and proper in its modeling of the interaction of them. That true, the garner will walk away from a game with a decent feel for the action and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the tools the commander of his side had at the time. Total accuracy?

Of course not, but he will be able to more accurately discern between potential courses of action and flights of armchair fancy when confronted in historical discussions. Like the geography issue, his familiarity will assist him greatly in envisioning the action when he reads about it later-that so and so was a dud, or a unit was particularly good or bad will pop out as additional depth when he reads. The units and commanders, their concerns, abilities, and relative merit will come to life in a better manner with the gaming intuitive experience behind him.

A skill which can add to the gamer's tool box in reading and understanding military history, is the use of the game as a "moving map." The gamer follows his reading with the game set up and moving the units about as he reads. This technique is very helpful in envisioning what all is going on when the historian gives only 4 few cryptic details. The living map is a skill which deserves a more detailed look than I can give here. It is a useful tool which all serious gamers can use to enliven their reading. It can also bring games out of the closet for use which involves no rules at all-set up and you are ready to roll.

In the end, given a decent game on a topic, a intuitive "grain of salt" acceptance of the game's "reality," and decent real historical works, games do add to the player's knowledge and appreciation of military history.

Certain dangers exist: the trivialization of the suffering of humanity ("its only cardboard..."), the substitution of game "history" for the real stuff, blind acceptance of inaccurate models of reality, the perpetuation of historical myth at the expense of fact and genuine analysis, but fortunately gamers tend to be bright enough (and cynical enough) to see through the smoke and mirrors to examine "game based reality" in the sort of uncompromising manner required.