tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post1095024217089709266..comments2024-03-17T04:35:24.517-07:00Comments on Polemarch: Communities of WargamersThe Polemarchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10958736917525649927noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post-69644580352910310522014-01-20T03:05:56.969-08:002014-01-20T03:05:56.969-08:00I do think that one of the functions of communitie...I do think that one of the functions of communities seems to be that of identifying them and us; part of the human condition, I imagine. We judge people by what they wear, own, look like and so on. If you don't have the 'right' toy soldiers, you are not one of us. I experienced this at a club with some snide comments about 6 mm models ('versatile' was the politest one). I didn't go back; I was not one of them.<br /><br />If you think that D20s are tricky to roll, try a D4. The term 'roll' does not really apply, of course, but when sliding they can knock models over and / or move them quite easily.<br /><br />Customised dice are a nice idea, but I suspect I'd change things too rapidly for them to be much use to me...The Polemarchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10958736917525649927noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post-34842280970501391102014-01-20T01:15:48.873-08:002014-01-20T01:15:48.873-08:00Of course Airfix and six sided dice are, in some s...Of course Airfix and six sided dice are, in some sense, contingent, but I'm not really sure if the hobby would have spread so quickly without them, or some sort of similar product. As it is, we had Airfix and dice, and I do suspect that the former rather defined the periods of interest for the hobby once they got going.<br /><br />I'm not sure about the advent of historical wargaming; history as we know it today is, after all, an invention of the 19th century. Before that most history was either moral philosophy or current events, so perhaps it is understandable that wargaming took a while to catch up.<br /><br />At what point does a hobby split? Good question. To some extent I guess it never actually splits as it is always possible to transfer from one community to another, but perhaps the overlap falls below a critical number of people doing so to keep them roughly in step?The Polemarchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10958736917525649927noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post-48991632548651954572014-01-19T12:30:49.865-08:002014-01-19T12:30:49.865-08:00Interesting post, as ever. I am interested in some...Interesting post, as ever. I am interested in some of the behavioural aspects of communities - firstly, a lot of communities seem to exist primarily to demonstrate their rejection (or exclusion) of non-members (golf clubs seem to exist primarily to tell people what they can wear while drinking, and to restrict where everyone can park their cars, and there is a big stake in excluding people that don't match the entrance requirements). Secondly, though in times of collective danger they may pull together and have common aims, this behaviour seems to change once their survival is not an issue, and the members of some communities invent detailed reasons to subdivide into smaller "chapels" - subcommunities? My favourite hobbyhorse group is that of jazz fans who - once the existence and validity of jazz is established - then fall out over factions and leading issues such as "that lot over there are enjoying the wrong stuff" and "what i listen to is the only true jazz". A particularly interesting aspect of this is that the splintering, name calling and umbrella-rattling has caused all the British jazz radio stations to close down, since the advertisers couldn't handle all the strife. That wasn't awfully smart was it?<br /><br />Wargamers have been known to do this as well - I have been an outcast for years because my battlefields are usually covered in hexagons, which are - to quote a correspondent - the spawn of the devil. Right. I probably also choose to ignore a pile of guys because they are blind followers of everything the Perry twins are involved with, or do something else which i can't quite identify with. The important point is - if it came to a war, I'd pitch in on their side. I take a pride in the broad church which is wargaming, but please don't anybody bother irritating me with their views on what i do myself….<br /><br />Less contentiously, I like the consideration of the 6-sided die. I have a bit of a resistance to 20-sided decimal dice, because they tend to roll for ever, and sometimes it is not clear if they have settled properly. True luxury is a special 6-sided die - Commands & Colors dice are good fun, and I used to be fascinated by the special dice required for Von Reisswitz's Kriegspiel game. I'm not sure why this is so appealing, but I do know that once you have used customised dice, the chore of remembering that a 4 is a hit unless the target is in cover becomes worse than any sensible consideration might suggest.MSFoyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14470241067504971068noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5185876513552272723.post-48365648920881862672014-01-18T06:24:38.101-08:002014-01-18T06:24:38.101-08:00Given that 6 sided dice, in their current configut...Given that 6 sided dice, in their current configutation of a cube with dots, are literally prehistoric in design, form and in a broad sense, use, it is not surprising that they were eventually adopted by wargamers. HG Wells did try flipping a coin to add a random element to deciding hand to hand combat but fell back on calculation finding the coin to be too luck dependent and Shambattle in tbe 20's used a spinner to do the same job but as we know, by the 1950's dice were commonly used.<br /><br />Similarly long before Airfix provided their cornucopia of figures, wargaming was rapidly spreading using either 'standard size aka 54mm' toy soldiers which were widely available in several periods, prepainted, or flats or the new tiny 20 & 30mm metal figures which had to be ordered.<br /><br />It seemd to me that as integral as airfix and dice are to the hobby as many of us came to know it, they are just a superficial aspect of one phase of it and not an essential part of the core or idea. Wargaming would not be exactly the way we know it without them but it would be recognizably the hobby if we were still using spinners and 54mm figures. <br /><br />Rather interesting to me is that none of the early wargames that I've seen, from before say the 1950's, were 'historical wargames'. Instead, they were based on contemporary warfare with no outside context. When I was introduced to the hobby historical and wargaming were generally treated as synonymous apart from those playing fantasy games. There has always been an undercurrent of fictional backgrounds, competition games and other non contextual games but usually without acknowledgement of the separation from actual history. I have been slowly exploring ths older aspect of the hobby overtly. At what part does a hobby split become two (or more) separate hobbies with a shared history?<br />Ross Mac rmacfa@gmail.comhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04053555991679802013noreply@blogger.com