Reply To: Why do all our wargames rules have to cost the bomb?

[ced1106Participant 6224xp 0]

> when, how, why did rules become bloated with non rules stuff

Osban and Admiral summed up my thoughts, but I’ll add that, about the time GW was adding fluff (1980’s for me), so was White Wolf in their RPG splatbooks. At least with RPG’s, many players weren’t playing the game, they were reading the books. Dunno if this was the case with wargaming (although many people paint wargame models without playing them).

Trees don’t grow on trees (: so, of course, if you want physical product, you have to pay for it. Otherwise, you can certainly find a dice-based wargame for free, such as the previously mentioned One-Page Rules (which, interesting, because it is free, has supporters who are willing to pay as Patreons), and Mantic’s Kings of War.

Of course, some companies also try to get you to buy their proprietary miniatures (eg. GW), and some have a card-based combat system (eg. FFG) that requires you to buy proprietary physical components (eg. cards and models sold together). I blame the boardgamers for the latter. 😛 Personally, I like PDF’s (and no fluff) so I can print out only the parts I want (eg. rules, army list for my army, and a scenario), although I never play and do nothing but paint the miniatures. 😛