Saturday 4 March 2023

Up and Down the Scales

In the unlikely event that this blog is known in the wider wargaming world at all, I suppose it would be known as a ‘6 mm’ blog, that is, a blog that features 1:300 scale figures in its wargames. Many wargamers, I suspect, might read some of the text, and even appreciate some of the wilder ideas about wargaming, but, on the whole, are not too impressed with the eye candy (can you have eye poison?) on show.

It probably only goes to show that taking photographs of 6 mm figures is a lot harder than with larger scale figures, and also that neither my painting skills nor my ability with a camera are up to snuff. I shall, therefore, keep wargaming with the small stuff and taking bad photographs. All I can say in my defence is that both my painting and photography have improved over the years, from the dreadful to the merely awful.

Anyway, as the astute reader of the blog might have noticed, occasionally larger-scale figures make an appearance. I have, in one of my boxes of shame, a stash of old (over 20 years) English Civil War dismounted cavalry and infantry figures, along with a few French King’s Musketeers types. These were purchased, I imagine (you really don’t think I can remember that far back, do you?) for my forays into role-playing games.

I started role-playing games as a teenager, of course. One of the difficulties was the fantasy setting, and the other was the lack of figures. The former meant that many hours were spent poring over books of rules and cults, trying to figure out how it all cohered. It was only many years later that I worked out that the setting did not need to be more than immediately coherent.

The other issue that I never solved for Runequest (for indeed, that was the RPG of choice) was the lack of figures. Naturally, I could (and did) get some ancient figures. My own was a Spartan Hoplite which, my friends complained, was not actually carrying a weapon, as he had lost his spear somewhere along the way. Anyway, we cobbled together some figures, some appropriate and some not. But unless one of us had a vast sum of money, which as ‘A’-level students was distinctly unlikely, we were never going to get giants, dragon snails or trolls.

Later on, I discovered the delights of FGU’s Flashing Blades game. Remarkably, this is still in print, along with all the scenario books. I have discovered over recent weeks that I use it a lot for Seventeenth Century background and ideas. Refreshingly, as I may have remarked before, it is set not in the France that was, but in the France that should have been. While the sword combat system is a bit complex (I don’t think I have ever played it correctly) a lot of the other stuff is a rollicking good adventure RPG.

Those of you who have read so far will have divined the next step. The large ECW figures are for Flashing Blades and similar systems. I also have in my pile of books the GURPS Pirates modules, and a few renaissance era skirmish type sets of rules – Peter Berry’s Once Upon a Time in the West Country and Once Upon a Time in the West Indies, and someone’s Have Pike Will Travel, which in the best traditions of my wargame stash, is in the ‘it's around here somewhere’ category.

So far as I recall they were all quite fun, in different ways. Flashing Blades was a real role-playing game, with adventurers with attributes like charisma, which could get the young ladies swooning, or at least intrigue the barmaid sufficiently to show the party the back way out of the pub. The others are slightly higher (or lower) level games. There is a lot less characterisation and the scenarios are more wargames, such as escort the wagon across the table, rather than intrigue and scandal. Still, with secret missions and occasional random events, they could be jolly fun games.

Meandering towards the point here, I suspect that often these sorts of games have been compartmentalised, perhaps almost totally, away from serious or proper wargames. In the latter, we conceptualise a few figures as being a battalion or a brigade, or perhaps a company or platoon. There is not much individualisation, there are few fun chance cards, and, hearkening back to a post a while ago, the chance of comedy narrative arcs is fairly small.

It has always seemed to me that there is a good opportunity being missed here. Why not mix the levels of wargaming up? After all, a lot of historical novels count on some individual action in saving the day: retrieving the Queen’s jewels which she has inadvertently given to a rather sweet English ambassador, for example. A more political plot could be ensuring the ambassador and a signed treaty get through hostile land to the destination. The really astute reader may recognise the Corbie battles and skirmishes here.

Without wishing to belabour the point, has anyone any ideas about this? Have you done it, mixed the levels of wargaming, so that the outcome of a skirmish game determines the circumstances of the next full-scale wargame? Does it work?

My own thoughts on the matter, having tried it out a bit, as just noted, is that it can work, but it can be a little difficult to decide on when to switch back to the other scales. I think particularly, given the options for identification with individual figures there are in the RPG and skirmish level, it is hard to get back from that to the army level operations.

On the other hand, Tolkien managed it in The Lord of the Rings, of course. The battles are only really sidelines to the progress of the fellowship of the Ring, or latterly Sam and Frodo to the Crack of Doom. But I have not seen many wargame campaigns that take this line. Have you?

7 comments:

  1. The old Braunstein campaign was reputed to alternate significant battles with multi-player role-playing skirmishes, where each character had referee-assigned goals to achieve (or prevent) within the city

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I can see that that would work. I suppose the RPG / skirmish would need specific goals to achieve or prevent to determine the next wargame.

      Delete
  2. Yes. Arthur Harman used to make a bit of a speciality out of this IIRC in early issues of Miniature Wargames and perhaps up until Wargames Illustrated. A couple of ones that spring to mind involved generals who had close shaves or indeed got killed at key points in the fighting. Although not quite to the degree I think you mean here, THW do it with Nuts! - lots of the patrol type missions are set up for squads and if that is successful it might lead to a full reinforced platoon attack in the next game. I think it was also a kind of implicit feature of the early Grant & Young type 'Big Battalion' games - part of the point of having those 50+ stron individually-based battalions was that you could have a smaller skirmish with the same figures.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good points. Certainly the Grant games I have seen had a fair quantity of officer personalisation in them, including one officer ('Cary Grant'? ) being shot down in the water in a D-Day style game. I guess the difficulty with the Harman idea is you have to freeze the wargame while seeing whether the officer survives to command again. You'd need a rapid determination of outcome.

      Delete
  3. Not used RPG but more skirmish games played in advance of a larger tabletop game where objectives included destroying a bridge to stop enemy reinforcements or gain a special weapon in sci-fi themed games.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have not incorporated RPG style games into a campaign, only skirmish games leading into a larger end of campaign battle. Where victory in the skirmish games such as blowing a bridge denied the opponent their reserves, or capturing a powerful weapon to be used in the sci-fi battle. It sounds like an interesting idea and certainly helps personalise the campaign.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you. I can see how these would work in C20 games - the patrols and targets for demolition would give good skirmish games affecting the overall wargame. I suppose it is a bit hard to keep balance, though - if the sci-fi weapon was too powerful the wargame could be rendered meaningless. Still, there are possibilities...

      Delete