Reply To: Inaccessibility of Historical Wargaming

[onlyonepinman 18062xp 2]

I did post this on the XLBS but will post it here to get involved in the discussion.

Ignoring the perception problems associated with historical wargaming/wargamers, and by that I mean the historical accuracey snobs (and speaking as someone who is not a hostorical wargamer, I really can’t say how accurate that perception is) I think the blocker to historical wargaming is setting definition. when you look at sci-fi gaming, you choose your game and everything you need is laid out and defined for you. Sure there’s “gaps” that you can game in but they’re usually purely aesthetic and don’t really change the rules. This definition has traditionally been less visible among historical games and you may well be required to go and do some research of your own to find out what armies within a given historical time period were like. Even settings such as “Ancient Rome” and “Medieval England” can have huge variations over that time period between the start and the finish (consider the Norman invaders predominantly wore chainmail whereas by the War of the Roses knights were wearing plate). You can’t necessarily choose a game and jump right in.

I do think that there have been huge efforts over the last few years to improve this with games like Bolt Action and Flames of War taking steps to define some sub-genres within their chosen settings (i.e. Early/mid/late war) and also providing supporting ranges of miniatures for those sub-genres. Also Saga has done something interesting by producing a kind of “historic lite” version of historical gaming which I think is incredibly accessible because it doesn’t focus too much on historical accuracey and is based more on historical legend (the clue is in the name, “saga”).  Saga, like Bolt Action and flames of War, does a very good job of defining the settings via their various setting books, which makes getting into it as easy as getting into something like 40k.

In summary, I think that traditionally historical wargaming has been less accessible but that many companies have put a lot of effort into making it much more accessible to the point where it is now it is not really an accurate assessment of the genre to say it is inaccessible, because I don’t really think it is less accessible than any other form of wargaming any more.