The Mind Of A Child: Simple Gaming Enjoyment
September 8, 2017 by crew
I believe that if you think back, we can all remember the moment when our love for hobby was lit.
I was nine years old and walked into a small local toy shop on a Friday afternoon after school. At the back of one of their shelves, I found a box of five Games Workshop single pose plastic plague marines. I knew nothing of Warhammer 40k at that time; my initial thought was they belonged to the Eavy Metal army.
None the less, it sparked a chain reaction and fire of imagination in me, that has lasted for coming up to 17 years now.
Now I have relocated to China for work where, unfortunately, there is not the abundance of hobby related material around that I have become accustomed to. I have grown even more thankful for the internet because of it, and have had to start living my hobby vicariously.
Before I left, one of my hobby send offs was to attend Salute 2017, where I dragged my father and we both had a great time. Whilst there I picked up the WWI Wings of Glory Starter Set for my youngest sibling, who recently turned twelve.
I have subjected her to my relentless hobbies her entire life, occasionally bribing her to go away with left over models; ranging from horses to elves. Later I'd find them incorporated into elaborate Lum band or Lego creations.
So while she has feigned some interest in my nerdy little world nothing has really come of it until Wings of Glory.
I do not know exactly why it is Wings of Glory that has caught her imagination but, I believe it is because it is the first game she has been able to see herself in.
Watching her experience this game has honestly reinvigorated the hobby for me, it has reminded me that sometimes we get bogged down in making everything perfect and we forget that it is there to be enjoyed.
I know I sometimes forget the enjoyment in the bullet point list of what I want. I cannot play because this unit is not painted, not the right force composition, haven’t got that terrain. The list of excuses I have given myself not to play is numerous.
Simplicity & Enjoyment
What has reinvigorated my hobby is what she has achieved with very little; it is this that is the beauty of a child’s mind, the green card for the ground, blue felt for water, brown pipe cleaners for a field, and my favourite...
...cotton wool clouds.
It is not some beautifully printed ultra-detail gaming mat. It is simple in its design, and elegant in its execution. It is a long way off the high standard we see from Beasts of War bootcamps, TheTerrainTutor or bombarded with from amazing miniature companies.
I want to illustrate to you the reader, that not everything has to be "perfect", to be fun.
It reminds me of my first experiences of playing; I remember building Lego brick walls for my troops to hunker behind, carefully arranging books and magazines for mountains my men can scour up, and playing on any surface that can fit all of my models, even if that meant base to base the entire game.
The below image, for example, she has done the same; an attempt to take a photo, as if it is in WWI. It has been done simply for the enjoyment of doing it.
Since these photos, she has added a couple more aircraft to her squadrons; shooting down our father who is her regular opponent with rather alarming efficiency.
I am helping design some printable transfers so that she may customise her planes. There is no hang up over whether it is realistic, or which plane is better. Everything is done for the simple enjoyment of it all.
I feel that we can lose the enjoyment sometimes and I know that I have, telling myself ‘I cannot pick "X cool unit" for this game despite just finishing building and painting it because it has the "wrong weapon loadout".
I think we sometimes give ourselves too many reasons not to play, or do something, and not enough reasons to just go out and do it.
Maybe we could try playing a game with the Mind of a Child, and then maybe, we will go back to the essence of what it is all really about for us.
Written by Tristan Cotterill (@Minigiant on BoW)
What was your first spark for this hobby and how do you keep yours going?
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"...not everything has to be perfect, to be fun..."
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Nice article 🙂
I was a voracious reader as a child. More so even than I am now when I’m essentially reading for a living. I reached a point where I’d read every book in my primary school and was allowed to bring books in from the local library. For me, I’ve never been into ‘the hobby’, nor was there a time where I discovered it. I discovered Fighting Fantasy game books at the age of nine and read every game book of any kind I could get my hands on. I quite quickly graduated from there to ‘proper’ rpgs, and back in the mid-80s, GW was the main place that did rpgs. From there it was a natural progression into playing minis games. I later picked up cards games as they didn’t really exist before Magic. Board games came later too. I’ve played lots of different games and lots of different types of games and I never run out of new ones to try. Had I *just* played GW minis games then I probably would have given up on tabletop gaming a long time ago, but 33 years later I’m going as strong as ever.
Yep, nice article. For me, my school teacher introduced a group of 6 of us to D&D in 1977 when I was 10. My God it was magical (pun intended). Every time I play a game I am taken back to the feelings I experienced all those years ago. Mr Craddock, what have ye wrought?
My first experience of ‘Fantasy’ was reading Redwall by Brian Jacques and that led me into all manner of other things.
I think my first ‘game’ was a Choose Your Own Adventure D&D sticker-book I used to play with my Grandad. The stickers were really old and faded and, well, crap, but it was awesome going through that with my brother and trying to beat the story…I don’t think we ever did.
It didn’t need to be professional for me to enjoy it, it was the act of telling stories and the stuff we made up which was important.
Miniatures-wise I remember it exactly. I was standing in the lunch line with my friend Tom (who I live with right now haha) who was telling me all about Eldar and Warhammer 40,000 and what the world was like.
I bought a few boxes of metal/plastic miniatures and we just set up some games in our art room and school and messed around with terrain made of rolls of toilet tube, hills out of books and I think a green mat one of the teachers had bought in for our ‘Warhammer Club’.
A big shout out to my Sister for allowing me to use her pictures
My grandmother helped make me a wargamer at the age of about 4 or 5. She had no interest in wargaming herself as far as I know, but she had what seemed an all consuming interest in playing any sort of game with me! I can still remember the feeling of excitement of a visit to her house.
So we used to spend a lot of time playing with toy soldiers, because I liked them. After a while she made up rules for the games, I guess to make it more interesting for her as an adult. I loved it. That started me on the route to wargaming with rules, rather than just moving soldiers around and making gun noises. I wish I could remember those rules now – they were created in a vacuum, so there was probably some innovative stuff in there!
There’s one photo that’s very special to me – it’s me as a five year old, with a great big bowl cut of early eighties brown hair. Most things in the photo are 70s/80s brown to be honest. I’m sitting at a table on my grandmother’s knee, busily putting little soldiers into a model boat, ready to launch an invasion. Set out on the table are rival towers and fortresses made out of stacked up blocks, soldiers manning the walls, assault boats lined up ready to go.
In the photo my nan is looking at it all with a half smile of infinite patience – in my mind the kind of beautific smile you find on the face of the Virgin Mary in a renaissance painting
End of my last post got cut off – my nan died many years ago now, but I give her my deep thanks for opening up the rusty old gate to the gaming secret garden for me. Love you nan.
@minigiant where about in China are you? There’s a good chance I may be relocating to China in the next couple of years. Though I visit every year, to see my wife’s family, I go to Shenyang and Beijing. I’ve seen quite a lot of stuff for 20mm gaming over there, and there are places to get GW and Warmahordes stuff. I believe there pretty gaming communities in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai.
I have only just seen this, my apologies. I live in the Shandong Province. I know there is ‘hobby’ in the major cities; Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. Smaller cities there is nothing, computer gaming is what has the hold on the youth.
Getting hold of products is relatively easy thanks to Taobao. I find it harder to get a glue that I like
While it’s nice to have superb terrain I am sure many of us get caught up in a game even if the terrain is simple as bits of felt for fields paper buildings etc and it’s just as effective and spending £100’s on MDF buildings etc Like many I guess it was timpo figures and a fort for them built buy my dad and then the discovery of Airfix figures that got me started
@minigiant There are a lot of good hex and counter solo games out there if you have a look. They might suit your needs if you can’t find opponents