Some time ago, during a large meeting at a local wargame comention, I saw one participant stand boldly and caution against, as he put it, "allowing those fantasy and sci-fi types to run games at future conventions." Such exclusions, he believed, would keep "the hobby pure."

My goodness.

At that moment, I thought to myself that the rhetoric used by the gentleman approached the language often employed by racist groups. Of course, I am in no way accusing the gentleman of racism, for those who would not closely read this essay. Such an accusation would be silly. I merely found the dialectic interesting as the language of exclusion and disempowerment. As for the gentleman's point:

Having originally entering the fine art of warganung apparently through the "back door" of fantasy figure collecting, I pondered the gentleman's statement, which was roundly applauded by many at the meeting. It seems to me that a significant point has been lost here. While it is certainly arguable, as my fellow Lion's Den member Kenneth Van Pelt excellently states in his essay, that "history is being recreated upon the wargame terrain table-top," he also asserts quite clearly that "There is no way imaginable to portray real historical combat with model soldiers . . ."

Quite so. Furthermore, the creativity, artistry, and imagination which power an historical wargamer's recreations are exactly the same forces which enable the fantasy and science fiction wargamer to create his or her table-top productions.

However, both historical and fantasy/sci-fi are hobbies, and are, after all, only games played with dice. Those who deride quality fantasy and science fiction games reveal a deep insecurity, believing they must bloat historical wargaming into something it is not. I suggest that a fine fantasy or science fiction game is far more difficult to achieve than a historical game, and when achieved, more worthy of praise. Historical wargamers oflen use history as a crutch, and virtually plagiarize on the table-top what they have read in only one or two historical works. And really, what is history, other than one point of view, embellished to glorify a bloodthirsty, insane madman who calls himself "king" or "general?" And we recreate these slaughters in the name of history, whooping and cheering our table-top "kills." For shame.

Let us delude ourselves no longer. Much of what we call history may be more accurately termed fantasy. Homer's epics, possibly the first chronicles of war, were fantasies, or what J.RR Tolkien calls "the creation of an 'otherworld.'" Would we discount the achievements of Homer, Plutarch, Malory, Froissart, or Holinshed? Each created fantastic men and women of extraordinary stature and ability, as well as kingdoms which had no actual historical counterparts.

I should like to add to that list Herbert G. Wells, who, if I am not mistaken, published the first miniature wargame rules. Was he not as well the pioneer of modern Science Fiction? Perhaps he might have had a word or two for the gentleman who wishes to enshrine the "purity" of historical wargaming.

Those who believe themselves truly "accurate" in their historical re creations prove through their beliefs that they know nothing of a scholar s historical method. Historians have debated battles, annor, tactics, and weapons for centuries. Similarly, a plausible future or a believable, psychologically acceptable otherworld is certainly open to interpretation, but at its best can be no less fascinating than historical events.

Certainly, maddeningly rampant, unleased fantasy and science fiction enthusiasts mystify us with their incoherent, rambling concoctions of table-top nonsense, but foolish historical wargamers also bore us with their pretentiousness and pomposity. Just as Kenneth Van Pelt details the virtues and obligations of the historical wargamer, so must science fiction and fantasy wargame artists adhere to the same principles of integrity, unity, and coherence.

In closing, and to illustrate my argument, allow me to recall the English Renaissance playwright Robert Greene, an Oxford scholar who, after a young playwright's first effort, called the fledgling member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers."

The young playwright was, of course, William Shakespeare. The Robert Greenes of historical wargaming are indestructable, I'm afraid, and will no doubt continue to delude themselves and ridicule their hobby with paper cup villages, wrinkled ground cover, and half-painted figures, while they scorn the far superior achievements of those who construct breathtaking scenes from Middle Earth or the United Federadon of Planets.

I shall also, no doubt, hear echoes of Greene's own cawing and braying at the next historical wargame convention from the pickers at bones of long-dead historical fossils, who in their grisly enterprises deride vastly more original fantasy and science fiction games. The gentleman "purist" will probably lead the carrion.