Wargamers bear a certain similarity to the knights of Malory's romance of the Roundtable. Every knight had to perform certain deeds in order to earn the esteem of his fellows. Among these deeds were various quests to reclaim the silver chalice of The Holy Grail, to kill the fabled questing beast, or to rescue some unfortunate being (preferably female). Wargamers delight in quests for scarce information, new data, a new rule idea, but they also have some quests that are no less chimirical than the pursuit of The Questing Beast.
You can always spot a "green" recruit to the hobby by his mad pursuit of reality. His rules are going to be absolutely realistic; no mere game for him. - Some gamers never lose sight of this blinding vision and their rules show it.
Most gamers whose eyes are fixed on the Grail of Reality become obsessed with not letting any fact, no matter how trivial, slip from their grasp. Rules cascade from their minds by the dozens, their rulebook grows like a snowball rolling downhill. They draw distinctions between spears that were 14'6" long and spears that were 15' long. They find differences between hussars and chasseurs a cheval that even the cavalrymen that rode under these names would not be able to find. Characteristics no bigger than a gnat's wing blossom into elephants in their minds. As their reality becomes more and more personal they see things that others don't (those fools!). As the vision becomes stronger they become almost evangelical, smiling warmly on those that they can convert, and casting those that disagree with them out into the darkness.
To suggest that any wargame can only show a slice of reality, or only a few elementary truths about warfare in a certain period does not dissuade them from their quest. To suggest that condensing all of the reality of a battle down to a table top is on the level with the Alchemist turning lead into gold only angers them. To ask if a set of rules that portrays the general problems lucidly isn't better than a set that attempts to illustrate every possible contingency in a muddled rambling interminable manner causes them to roll their eyes in anger. To even mention that they may be trying to capture lighting in a bottle is forbidden.
Surprising as it may sound they are the romantics of this hobby. They never see that the men are just lead soldiers,that the countryside is a ping- pong table, that the standards are only paper, and that wargaming is doomed to always be much more game than war (thank heavens for thati). They are never happy with illustrating the elementary problems of war through their games, but must foreverstrive for more troops, bigger campaigns, dozens of players. Games become defined not by. how enjoyable they are but by how many troops are on the table. How many times have we read wargame reports that gloat over the fact that 7,000 figures were in play? One of the reasons that the 30mm figure has declined in popularity is not that they cost too much as some gamers would have us believe, but that you can get more 25mm figures for the same cost. The latest development that is creeping up on the hobby is the 5mm figure which promises even more troops can be afforded and squeezed onto the table. In the mad pursuit of the "true reality" the questers feel they are getting closer.
But since every figure, no matter the scale, is defined by the rules of play; a 30 can be what we say it is every bit as easily as a 5mm. Are we indeed closer? With every dimunition of scale we are giving up detail of design, character of manner, and the color of uniform; and what are we gaining? Is not the end result thin tiny die-cut cardboard markers I that would be indistinguishable from the Avalon-Hill, S&T boardgames? Are they so blinded by the vision of reality that they will destroy everything that makes a miniatures game so enjoyable and aesthetically superior to boardgames?
Note that I am not berating those that pursue facts and data to insure an accurate historicity to their rules; only those that have lost a sense of proportion and balance. I am not criticising those that can find ways of game design that allow greater numbers of troops to be easily used in a game, but those to whom numbers and size become dominant to enjoyment and clarity. Bigger is not better, more rules and figures are not necessarily the only way to present neat problems to be solved. But most of all, I am very critical of those that equate wargame reality with complexity, these are not synomomous terms.
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© Copyright 1974 by Donald Featherstone.
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