Reply To: "Golden Age of Wargaming"….perhaps not?

[koldanParticipant 364xp 1]

Really nice chat, but I disagree with some arguments, even though I understand  where they come from.

Yes for the some scales you have to search harder then for others. But still nowadays it is way easier then before. Especially the suggested 1970-1980 golden age, that is before the world wide web. Now that is a time when you had to know where to look.

Complexity of the rule sets: The old rule sets still exist, at least if noone used a time machine and erased them from history. And it got even easier in this digital age to find copies of old rules. So the overall number of complex rulesets can not decrease, it just grows drastically slower then the number of simple rulesets. And that just shows that it becomes more natural. Looking at board games for example, you will find more games as easy to play as Snakes and ladders, then games like Go. A broader spectrum of games for the masses, and then with increasing complexity the number of games and players decrease.

I wouldn’t call it a golden age, but right now the wargames grow in a good way. And with the 3d printers becoming better and more affordable, I think we are at the brink of a renaissance of the rarer scales and rule sets.

For me the biggest thing is, that in my generation and older most non wargamers know nothing about it, even warhammer does not ring a bell. But from my experience the younger generations have at least heard of it. At my work I have alot contact with the new employees directly from school or university and if we talk about hobbies, everyone seems to have basic knowledge about it, for warhammer as the big name, everyone even knew at least that much about the fluff that it has two settings. Some wanted to try it, so we had played after work test games in a meeting room. 10 or 20 years ago that would not have happened, I actually doubt I would have mentioned wargames back then