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Interesting debate. First I’d like to express that I’m sorry you felt that way and hope that you’ll find a way to enjoy the TFL games and community if you wish to give them a second chance.
My experience has been a bit different. As I’m not from UK, I haven’t participated in Lardy games days, so I can only talk about the “online experience”. So far, in the about 4 years I have “mingled” with the Lard Community pretty much everyone I met has been extremely welcoming and helpful. Obviously there may always be the rude outlier or someone with a big ego, but I feel that happens pretty much in every social group. In general, most Lard fans I’ve seen tend to be really passionate about their projects, and open to share their fun with others.
On the Army lists subject, I’d say the general spirit is that the TFL rules are base guidelines one can build upon. A bit like LEGO bricks. For instance, as CoC models real full historical platoons, one can simply research on their own whatever platoon structure from whatever obscure real life force one wants to represent/simulate/game. Or even invent them if need. There are wild modifications for most TFL games that include stuff like Lord of the Rings, Cuthlu myths, Star Wars, etc. heck there’s even a FB group for CoC in the 40K universe. The authors even release a yearly magazine with all kinds of crazy stuff made mostly by fans (mostly historically themed, but there’s also fictional content).
As the main goal of their games is to have fun -and not be a tight competitive ruleset- one is allowed to tune their rules as one wishes (from adding to deleting rules, to theming them in any way one wishes, and all that is encouraged by the authors and the community). Basically the spirit is “the World is your oyster”, and you should not expect hand-holding. Although when asking for advice, I usually find many useful replies and suggestions.
I play many of the Lardy games as I like their focus on leadership and how much verisimilitude is found in many of the gaming situations they generate. But I also play other games from other companies / authors. And I have 0 issues of ignoring or modifying any rule I dislike, after all that’s the strong point of tabletop wargames for me -as I’m not a competitive player-. In fact, I’ve seen that many other Lardy fans like to play different game systems from multiple companies. Not only that, but thanks to the suggestions given by the Lard community I discovered many great wargames (historical and not historical) like Frostgrave, Rangers of Shadow Deep, Battlegroup and such.
A quick look at my Twitter feed shows that right now many of the Lard enthusiasts I follow are working on Saga, Space Hulk, Hero Quest and Battle Mech projects. So I wouldn’t call them “zealots” of a game system -I’m not saying that “only TFL hooligans” don’t exist, but they are certainly the exception not the rule-. In other words, variety is the spice of life. And while the TFL authors obviously promote their own stuff through social media, they also tend to encourage people to be nice and social and play whatever game system one is offered.
