Reply To: Inaccessibility of Historical Wargaming

[limburger 21708xp 0]

@piers :

There is nothing wrong with doing research … if that is your thing.
The ‘problem’ / challenge is that wargaming can cover a lot of ground (even if you’re not doing historicals!) :

• researching the subject (sons of horus/40k or 101st US Airborne/WW2 or any other unit/period … )
• building the armies in the physical domain (as either miniatures or counters for strategic level games)
• building the terrain
• creating a campaign system
• playing the game
• applying the results of that game to a campaign

Not everyone has the time or resources to spend on every level.
Not everyone the interest required to want to spend time at every level.
And every single step is optional in the grand scheme of things (although the ‘playing the game’ step is kind of critical for a gaming hobby ;)).

That’s why there is a need for shortcuts so people can skip the ‘boring’ stuff and get to the bits they like best.

And that may be why non-historical wargames can be (more successful), because they already offer those shortcuts out-of-the-box. It’s also why many systems then add background for those wanting to do reseearch (the various novels for 40k are an example of ‘history in reverse’ as they add background after the game)

I love the fact that people have done the job of doing a lot of the research already.
That doesn’t make live any easier though. I still end up buying gaming materials across multiple systems, but that’s more because I like to see what the various systems show in ‘game ready’ format.

As an example … I’ve got books that cover Market garden for Flames of War (3rd), Battlegroup and (soon) Bolt action.
I’ve yet to collect a force or play a game, because I’m ‘stuck’ at the research level already with the help of these ‘shortcuts’.

From a hobby/community perspective this is kind of ‘bad’, because I’m not helping to grow the community as I’m too busy just reading that I don’t get any actual games in …
And I kind of think that games need to have people out there actually playing instead of merely talking about background (as fun though it may be) in order to lower the barrier to entry.