Reply To: Is wargaming just "make believe" with dice?

[blinky465 17028xp 0]

@pagan8th – this is a great point and I think you’ve also hit upon my feeling “at odds” with the wargaming world, more often than not. For me, I’m come to realise that wargaming *should* RPG. (it’s also why I prefer skirmish type games over mass battle, learned to love “campaign” games and have never really understood the concept of “competitive” gaming).

Those little plastic guys on the tabletop are characters – they’re painted with personality, they have different weapons, they’re not just chess pieces. When kids play “make believe” they’re still playing a game, just as playing chess is also a game. So – for me – any wargame should be an RPG. It’s just a different type of game. After all, for a purely strategic, abstract way of “playing war” we’ve got… well…. chess! Those characters moving across the tabletop in my wargames are telling a story (and watching that story unfold is far more interesting than who “wins” at the end).

Personally, I find “trying to win” (at tabletop gaming) as tedious as “winning” when we were running around as six-year-olds, pointing sticks at each other and shouting “pew, pew”. Which is sort-of where this thread started – if we make wargaming more like “make believe games” and use the dice to determine the narrative, rather than pre-calculating the desired results needed to “win”, doesn’t that make it all the more enjoyable?

“Winning” at story-telling is just weird.