Wargaming as a Social Science

I have been reading (for no good wargaming reason, of course) Peter Winch’s ‘The Idea of a Social Science’ (London: Routledge, Keegan & Paul (1958)). Given that it is still in print, I assume that it is still regarded as a significant discussion of the philosophy of the social sciences, even if some of the detail or arguments might have been superseded.

My idea here, as a result of reading Winch, is that wargaming is based on something which is analysable by the social sciences, to wit, war itself. And war, by whatever measure you consider it, is a social thing; it is something that humans do in groups. Not only that, but warfare is often heavily influenced by tradition. This is why, of course, most armed forces, which consistently reinforce their traditions, struggle somewhat (at least initially) against ‘unconventional’ warfare, such as insurgency.

To examine this a bit more closely, Winch argues that epistemology is key. Our ideas about reality are permeated by our social relations. Indeed, I think I would go a bit further and argue that, given that most of our knowledge is held in common with our fellow humans, our ideas about reality are, more or less, coincident with our social relations, so long as by ‘social relations’ we include such things as reading a book. My idea of the social sciences and their relation to philosophy comes, mainly, from reading Winch’s book; that, in my definition, needs to be a social relationship.

Given that, of course, our epistemology and behaviour are closely linked. I expect certain things to happen. For example, in the UK we drive on a certain side of the road. In Europe, I expect that to be different. My reality is different in different parts of the world. That does not mean that reality per se is different, just that the world varies as we move geographically, as indeed it changes over time.

In terms of the military and warfare, there are some expectations. In the western military tradition, according to some accounts anyway, there is an expectation of a stand up, knock down battle. This, the argument goes, originates with the Greek city states, who could not afford to waste good agricultural time posturing at each other in the hills, so they found a bit of flat ground and sorted the business in a day.

However tendentious this account might be, it does seem to be the case that some military traditions have the expectation that the enemy will stand and fight. Through history, often this has been the case, of course.  Wellington fought Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo. Both sides had to, in some sense, agree to meet there. Neither general, I imagine, thought that not having a battle was the solution to the problem of winning the war. It probably was not even a question that could have been asked at the time. The situation was to be resolved by fighting, and there was an end to it.

Naturally, these decisions are not, within their context, blind. Campaigns are not conducted usually with the sole aim of the destruction of the enemy forces, but with the intention of achieving some strategic outcome, such as the capture of a city or the withdrawal of a nation from the war.  The fact that battles occur are, at least in part, a consequence of this activity, not a part and parcel of it.

Nevertheless, there is a tradition of battles. Even now, with more or less continuous front lines in the two world wars, we still focus on particular sets of events and call them battles. Conceptually, an attempt to change the position of the front lines seems to indicate a battle, a specific effort in a limited region of warfare.

In wargaming, we buy completely (or nearly so) into this concept. We fight wargames and a wargame is usually a battle. I have, for reasons of developing rules, fought Marathon several times. It is a distinguishable battle, reproduced on the wargame table. When we agree to have a wargame, we are bringing a set of conceptual and social expectations with us. We expect the enemy to stand and fight.

Conventional military systems, as I mentioned above, can have difficulties when their expectation of the enemy is not met. The seventeenth century Europeans in North America complained that the natives undertook a ‘skulking way of war’, which was not fair. By this they mean that the locals hid in ambush, aimed shots at specific individuals and did not hang around to be chopped to pieces by metal weapons. This did not reflect European norms of warfare at the time, and, for a bit, the Europeans struggled (we could argue that European diseases had more impact on the native population, of course.

The military imagination, therefore, expected certain behaviour from its enemy. Often, this was to be found. European armies operated within a given set of social expectations. Non-European armies might have done, to a greater or lesser extent and, of course, given that non-European generals were not stupid, they may well have decided to adopt certain tactics to avoid the strengths of their enemies. But sooner or later, they might be ‘bought to battle’, a potentially western (or Greek) idea of a decisive encounter.

As wargamers we enthusiastically buy into this idea. Wars are about battles, and wargaming reproduces these battles on the table. We expect, as I said, the ‘enemy’ to stand and fight and, if they will not, it is not a wargame. This is a convention, not something which is discussed or negotiated before a wargame is agreed. As generals ‘offer battle’ in a conventional scenario, so too do wargamers. We do not consider whether we want to fight a wargame, but only the nature of the wargame to be fought.

This is, of course, a social convention. Our reality is one of toy soldiers, dice and tables, but the agreement to wargame is a traditional, social and epistemological given and, to some extent, I imagine, derives from military social conventions.

Why We Cannot Wargame

I am sitting here by the woodburner with a head full of cold feeling a bit nihilistic. There must be a reason for this, so I shall turn my firepower, such as it is, on my hobby and see if anything remains after my feeble efforts.

Firstly, of course, we cannot wargame because that is not what nice, modern liberals do. We like to think that all our problems can be sorted out by sitting around a table, perhaps with a few bottles of nice pino grigio (for some values of the term ‘nice’, of course) and we can all be friends and find a way forward. I am sure the Napoleon and Wellington would have done better to have sat down with a few beers at La Haye Saint (or whichever one the pub was) and sorted things out. The worst of the arguments might have been over who was going to pay the bar tab, although, of course, then as now, the Germans would probably have landed up with it.

So nice woolly liberals do not like talking about violence and warfare, and, hence, as members of nice woolly liberal societies, nor should we. It does go rather further than that, of course. As nice non-violent types, we are, in fact fascinated by what some sociologist types call the ‘pornography of violence’. A society which has become much less violent is, in fact, deeply fascinated by that violence. Our news channels are full of it. Much of our entertainment consists of it and we have a deeply ambivalent attitude to this, let alone the violence we see, even vicariously and fictionally.

Of course, wargaming, by abstracting away all the nasty bits, attempts to make itself socially acceptable, but it can never really do that until any talk of death or destruction is removed from its discourse. Then, of course, it would be totally acceptable, but would no longer be wargaming.

Secondly, there is the issue of power. I have commented before that (from a certain perspective, of course) colonial wargaming could be construed as a re-enactment of the domination of the western powers over their less technologically advanced brothers in Africa and Asia. The exploitation is pure imperialism, the exertion of domination over others in the name of peace but by using violence and subjugation. Hence, colonial wargaming is simply an extension of that imperialist mind set, and so we cannot wargame.

Of course, bleeding heart liberals might argue that, say, the Roman invasion of Britain was much the same. To which the response might well be, fair enough. Any sort of invasion of one country by another is unspeakably awful, and therefore should not be wargamed. So kindly stop all ancient warfare, all medieval warfare and certainly any conflict after the end of the middle ages, where nice Enlightenment values should have permeated the body politic and rational thought have caused the avoidance of war.

A further argument against the wargame is that, usually, one side wins and the other does not. We are not, I think, permitted to talk about ‘losers’ in modern society. The top 0.1% of filthy rich are not to be envied or despised simply because they have won and we have not. They are to be welcomed as brothers (although they can buy the drinks). We have not lost, they have not won. Winning and losing is not politically correct. Children should be taught to collaborate not to be in conflict. Therefore, on the basis of not doing the ‘w’ thing, we may not wargame, as we may perpetrate inappropriate activity and cause psychological damage by branding someone a loser.

Next up, wargaming cannot happen in a conceptual sense. We cannot, on a table, represent the experience of warfare (nor should we try, see above). The wargame, therefore, does not represent anything in real life or in history. Thus it cannot inform us about anything, and therefore it is not educational and should be discontinued immediately. After all, our children now have to be educated 24 hours a day, except probably when they are asleep.  Any activity should, therefore, be an educational one, and hence wargaming, as not being educational, cannot be undertaken.

Furthermore, as not being able to represent battles (however regrettable the battle might be) a wargame is thus not real life and should be relegated to some sort of minority fantasy interest. We need, in this day and age, gritty reality in our austerity obsessed age. The Greeks would never have voted for a left wing party that promised jobs and an end to a dismal litany of cuts if they had watched our soap operas for long enough. Gritty reality, like those Scandinavian murder mystery films that are so rife these days, should make us happy to live in such an age. Wargaming is for fantasists who prefer the world as it used to be.

Finally, of course, wargaming is incoherent. If it were not, then they would not be these assorted rules for each period which give different results. The arguments about what happened in a particular battle would not occur as everyone would agree. The different sizes of the toy soldiers would not exist. Wargamers would agree and everyone would be happy. The apparent lack of coherence and agreement amongst wargamers must indicate a significant problem with the hobby. After all, most of society is happy to exist with a single set of rules (we call then ‘laws’) and professional people to discuss and describe the finer points thereof. The incoherence of wargaming must point to a significant immaturity, at least, of the wargaming fraternity.

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to have a lie down. 

The Chains of History

I am still, bravely, struggling through Gadamer’s Truth and Method. It is one of those sorts of works that it very interesting, at least in the bits I understand (which are rare, to say the least). I think I might be sort of seeing what he is trying to say. At least, I am starting to work out how he links into other writers that I have read and who use some of his works. I my poor benighted mind, of course, these things have a tendency to be linked back to wargaming, largely because that is my hobby, but also, partly, because I think wargaming is a human activity that is actually sufficient complex but bounded to be a useful test case to the wild and wacky ideas of philosophers.

Anyway, one of the things I think Gadamer is trying to get at is that we do not start from neutral ground or a level playing field when we read something. Mostly, by ‘read’ Gadamer means texts, but I do not think that it has to be limited to texts. We can just as successfully read pictures, statues or artefacts from a past age. That is, we come to a text with a set of what Gadamer calls prejudices, or at least that is how the word is translated. However, the word is not used in a prejudicial way. It is simply the way the world is, or at least, simply the way our world is.

To try to explain: when I read a text I cannot simply merge my mind with that of the author (either the real one or the implied one). I am bringing to that text a whole sheaf of prejudices. That is, I am reading the text as someone situated in a historical context (we could call it ‘now’, but that eventually simply adds to our difficulties). I have interests, such as wargaming. I have a history of my own, the things that have happened to me either generally or specifically to bring me to the text at this time. I live in a culture which might be more or less formative of my views, interests, outlooks and worldview, depending on how much I accept, reject or try to ignore them.

In short, by reading a text I am not just reading a text. I am engaged in something far more complex, something in a situation, informed by other things, and so on.

I have a feeling that I might have banged on about this before, and seem to recall some difficulty in comparing accounts of the Battle of Waterloo as to what time it actually started. Thus, if I read a text about Waterloo, I am bringing to that text a memory of all the other things I might have read about the battle. Not only that, I am bringing the sorts of things I might have read about armies in the Napoleonic Wars. I might also bring some ideas about the politics and culture of the day. And so on.

But I also bring my current day to the text. For example, my view of Napoleon might well depend on whether I am French or English or German or Russian. It might also be mediated, say, by my view of the European Union. If I am a ‘little Englander’, than I may well believe that Napoleon was nothing but a Corsican ogre. If I am an EU fan, then I might regret that Boney did not go a little further along the union of European nations, and even suggest that if he had, World War One would have been unnecessary.

Of course, as wargamers, we ask slightly different questions from most politicians and historians. We would like to know from our accounts such things as how many cavalry the Prussians had, or what time the battle really did start. But even these questions arise from our own background as wargamers, mostly amateur historians and, naturally, the culture and society we spring from.

And here, to some extent anyway, lies the rub. It is really difficult to analyse the prejudices we might suffer from as a result of our existence in a certain time and place. Even in a more limited sense, we can bring our biases to a historical account of a battle. It is really easy to fill in the blanks in an account from what else we know. We do not even necessarily notice that we are doing it.

As an example, on my way to work I have to cross a certain set of traffic lights. Because I have seen what happens, I know that there is little point in jumping them when they turn, because, just around the corner there is another set phased to change slightly sooner that the first one. I know this; it is part of my mental equipment, so I do not even think about it. However, some other drivers either do not know or do not think very much (oddly, many of them drive BMWs). They steam along the road jumping the lights. I then catch up with them at the next set. I often consider giving them a friendly wave, but decide against it as they seem stressed up enough as it is.

But the point is that, in my experience, history, whatever, I have reached a certain conclusion about those sets of traffic lights, and I do not even think about applying it. It just is the way it is. If they come along and change the phasing, I would be confused, at least, but generally I would probably still not jump the lights as they turned. And if I read an account of, say, the Battle of Waterloo which ignored the arrivals of the Prussians, I might well simply mentally add them, rather than wondering about the text I read. The human mind is very good at doing that, and we really have to be paying attention to spot the errors.

So our history and experience can change or augment the texts that we read. We make assumptions which can be invalid. Our only defence is that we cannot help it.

Models, Articulations and Wargames

I have written rather a lot over the years of the blog about models and modelling. In short, we need models in our rules to wargame at all. We hope that, somehow, the outcomes of these models might be similar to the outcomes of the real life situations they purport to model, and hence that our wargame might, in some way, bear some resemblance to the original.

The danger of using models in wargaming is that our thinking about historical battles or other originals can become constrained by the models themselves. That is, we start to think about the battles of the original that we attempt to wargame using the model. The model becomes the battle and its interpretation is through the model.

Of course, this is a fairly inevitable way of thinking. We have something which, we hope, functions as a reasonable model for what we are trying to recreate. Even if the wargame has no specific historical precedent, we can still try to recreate the flavour of the period. The models in the rules must try to achieve this. We cannot separate the wargame, the rules and the models out. They are all one ‘thing’, even though they are conceptually separate.

We can turn this way of thinking around, however, and I suspect that many of us actually do so. A quick scan around the various wargaming blogs suggests that many bloggers like to report on their wargames, and many blog readers like to read such reports. I suppose that we like to wargame vicariously as well as in ‘real’ life. The thing is about a wargame battle report is that we use the models in reverse. Instead of attempting to model the ‘real’ world using a wargame, we report on the real world (at least, on the wargame as embedded in the real world) and use the models and rules as a mode for articulation of the wargame.

The upshot of this is, that if you read some of these ‘after action reports’ they tend to explain what happened in terms of the rules, that is, the models used to describe the real world. Thus, for example, the rules say ‘Russian infantry are shaken by French cavalry if within 300 yards if not in square’. This is an attempt to model a historical situation (I presume; I think the rules in question were WRG 1680 – 1850, or whatever they are). The after action report might read ‘the Russian infantry were shaken by the approach of French cavalry’, which is an articulation based on the model.

The articulation of the wargame is thus controlled by the models we use in the rules, and hence our understanding of the wargame is moderated by those same rules. The rules then are intended to work ‘forwards’ in that we hope that they reflect as historical period, a flavour or the action, and ‘backwards’ in that they allow us to speak about the waqrgame in terms of understanding what happened and why in the wargame.

Without the models, of course, there would be no wargame at all. But, additionally, there would be no means of describing the wargame either. Our descriptions of our wargames are constrained by the models we use to construct the wargames, the dynamics of the actual game, and so on. But we can only understand the game by establishing which particular model or set of models was in use at a given (perhaps critical) point in the game.

For example, we have some cavalry charging infantry in square. The model which underlies this interaction will probably indicate that the square, unless formed of really shaky troops, will probably stand and the cavalry flow around it. The model, of course, can be plugged back into the historical situations from which is arises. We can produce (or someone can, hopefully the rule writers, at least) historical evidence for the model and descriptions of the course of events when cavalry charge infantry in square. The rules can thus be justified ‘forwards’.

We can also describe the path through the rules to obtain the result. We can describe the morale checks, combat rolls and whatever else is required to obtain the outcome from the model or models of the situation. This is the interaction of the models in the rules and the concrete situation on the table. The pathway proceeds, more or less, automatically to obtain the given outcome. This is what we might call the rule mechanics, but it is simply the interaction of rule models.

Finally, we reach an interpretation. The square has broken. But the work of the models and pathway has not finished. We need to know (or want to know) why the square broke. After all, our models did plug back into reality and most squares, most of the time, did not break, at least, not when simply charged by cavalry.

This is where we need to models to enable us to be articulate about the events modelled. We can say something like ‘the square broke because he rolled a six and I rolled a one’. This might be a mechanical explanation of what happened. However, we can, and most of us would, go further. I might say ‘I rolled a one on the morale roll and my square ran away’. This is then interpreted as ‘the square had poor morale or was formed of poor quality troops’ or something of the kind. We are thus starting to make interpretations of the events in terms of the reality presented by the models but in the context of the rules, the period and the reports from which the models arise.

Of course, we cannot interpret the real world along these lines. Squares were not broken because Napoleon threw a one. We cannot easily get from our wargame outcomes back to the real world. A model, as a model, only captures some of the behaviour, the inputs and outputs of a given situation. We do make a mistake if we try to interpret a real world battle entirely in terms of our wargame models and rules.

New Year’s Day Parade

One of the things that has been said, over the years, about this blog is that it cannot be a proper wargames blog because there are so few pictures of my toys on it. And it would be a fair criticism, both of my camera skills and my ability with a paintbrush.

Of course, the blog is designed to consider more the idea and concepts behind wargaming, rather than pictures of wargames real estate. Where else, for example, could you find such considerations of the use of models in rules, or the ethics of colonial wargames? Still, it might just be worth trying to convince any passing viewer that this actually does connect, in my life, anyway, with some wargaming.

Another issue is that I am on record as having written that I do not like painting, and this is true. Painting, to me, is a necessary chore to be done before a wargame. However, for someone who does not like painting, I seem to spend a lot of my time doing it. Actually, the purpose of this post is to show off the painting that I achieved in 2014. Not, I hasten to add, because it is particularly good, nor because the camera ability is up to much. My hope is the one will obviate the other and you will simply receive a nice, if somewhat blurred, impression of what I have done.

First, a general view of my New Year’s Day parade. Of course, the review was not carried out on New Year’s Day precisely. This is, after all, a militaristic dictatorship, and in keeping with most totalitarian regimes, it ran late. Not that the above bases were not finished by New Year’s Eve, of course. It was just that the propaganda unit was not charged up until well afterwards. Still, in keeping with the rules of dictatorships the world over, I have simply decreed that the date of the parade was New Year’s Day, and run with that.

Now, you can perhaps see the reasons why I am rather over-pleased with myself. In the photograph there are 116 bases of soldiers. Yes. One hundred and sixteen. For me and my painting speed, that is a lot.

From the left, there are five bases of Early Persian Immortals, and then two of cavalry. Next are the Macedonians in all their glory, thirty three bases of them. Then the Later Persians, another thirty something bases (34, I think, but I am not going to count them again). Finally, to the right, are forty two bases of Indians, including twelve bases of those pesky chariots.  

Now, there is one thing. A Polemos: Greeks army is twenty bases. So, by a bit of dodgy maths, I should have five armies, and nearly six. So how come there are only three armies in the picture? I suppose the true answer is that I simply painted what was in the box, which in each case was a Baccus 6 mm, 15 mm ground scale DBM army (which are no longer produced). I actually have a load more Macedonians, but I am sure you get the idea. The rational answer is that with the rules in development I like to have a fair bit of choice about what goes into an army, so I tend to ‘over paint’ to coin a phrase.

Now, for those of you who can stomach it, some more detailed views:

The Early Persians flanked by the Companions and then other Macedonians. I painted the Immortals because you cannot really have an Early Persian army without them, even though they were not at Marathon.

A slightly fuzzy shot of some slightly fuzzy Macedonians.The pike blocks are sixteen figures to a base, which is a huge number for me.

Some equally fuzzy Later Persians. They would, of course, make up the numbers with Hoplites, as, indeed, so would the Macedonians. Still, the rear ranks seem to be in focus.

Finally, some of the Indians. The blocks to the right are those chariots. Remind me not to try painting such again. Not only were they fiddly, but I almost permanently attached myself to them with superglue.

Overall, I have calculated that I painted 768 objects last year, plus, in fact finishing off two Roman villas and a Roman marching fort. I have not counted infantry, cavalry, chariots and elephants separately because, I fear, that counting the finished bases  is sufficient obsessive / compulsive behaviour for one year. Nor, in fact, do I have any idea how this quantity compares with previous years, because firstly, I did not count, and secondly, I cannot remember.

I suppose you are all now (those of you who have made it past the dodgy pictures; I suppose I should practice a bit more) wondering what this year has in stall. Well, I am not wholly sure that I know myself, but it does involve Seleucids, and a return, hopefully, to the doubling project for my Roman era armies. I did briefly flirt with the idea of Punic Wars, but the estimable Mrs P advised that I probably had enough on my plate as it was, what with work, commuting, rule writing, painting and blogging all going on.

Which reminds me, I wonder if I could create a mobile painting table for use in the car, when stuck in traffic?

The Edge of the World

A comment a post or three ago by Mr Foy raised a question to which I gave a probably too short an answer, so I thought I would have another go here. The question was about the ‘edge of the world’ syndrome. In case of point, it was about how Mr Foy’s  original Napoleonic Peninsular campaign had focussed on the Army of Portugal, assuming the other fronts were simply ‘busy’, and then finding that this was not sufficient for the needs of the campaign. In short, the edge of the world was not where the conceptual edge of the game was to be found.

This is, on a smaller scale, a problem for wargames as well, not just campaigns. A cavalry unit pursues off the edge of the table. In game terms there are in some sort of ‘nowhere’ limbo. Similarly, a division is engaged in a flank march. It is nowhere until some mechanism permits it to appear suddenly, on a table edge. I suspect (although I am not a wargamer of this ilk, as you are probably well aware by this time) that this gets worse the more modern the wargame. In the World Wars, after all, most of the damage was done by artillery, and you would need a very big table (or a very small scale) to place the heavy gun batteries on along with the front line infantry.

Now, in my response to the issue I noted that most wargames do actually acknowledge some sort of external context. Even a simple ‘capture the crossroads’ sort of game gives a context. The crossroads are important to someone, and that someone is not necessarily part of the game. An even simpler ‘destroy the enemy’ has a context; that context may be simply that the other side is the enemy and is, therefore, to be destroyed, presumably for some larger purpose. Very simple scenarios such as these are, in fact, embedded in some larger wargame ‘reality’.

I recall, in the dim and distant past, one of the naval wargame books observing that while in figure gaming, it was fairly easy to identify an objective and fight over it (such as the strategic crossroads in the middle of the board) in naval wargames this was a fair bit harder, and usually was easier to identify in the context of a campaign game. Thus this set of islands, or the movement of this fleet in that direction is better placed in the context of an overall series of events.

The problem is that it is very hard to decide exactly how wide this context is to be drawn. In the Peninsular war example, we can start with the Anglo-Portuguese forces, then expand to the whole of Spain as the fronts were not independent. But then, of course, this starts to ask questions about, say, naval deployments and blockades, as well as the global assignment of forces between, say, the Spanish Ulcer and the invasion of Russia.

Now we can, of course, arbitrarily cut off the rest of the world. Any troops moving off the edge of the table are lost. In this case, beyond the edge of the table is limbo land, a wargame ‘nowhere’. In a campaign game the effects of other fronts, of grand strategy and a distant high command can be modelled with chance cards or with dice rolls giving reinforcements, demands for troops to be redeployed or removed or whatever. This can require a fair degree of imagination from the wargamer, of course. The fifth time that high command demands a battalion of infantry for another front, when you only started with four anyway might stretch our narrative credibility just a little.

I think, however, that this might give us a hint as to how we might handle this. A wargame, or a wargame campaign, is a narrative. That, after all, is part of the attraction of wargaming. Thus, we can, if we so desire, have an overall narrative of the bit of the world we are actually interested in, and, embedded within that, have a rest of the world narrative as well. This latter could be based on the historical world. Thus a major victory for the Spanish in the Peninsular could require the diversion of an extra corps from the Grand Armee to restore the situation, meaning that they are not available to invade Russia and thus, indirectly, leading to the problems that Napoleon had there. With luck, and a bit of imagination, the narratives can be persuaded to coincide.

Of course, with less historical context, we can make our narratives what we want. My Fuzigore campaign is a case in point. There is no “real” world context, so I can really make it up as I go along to get the next battle. Fuzigore also shows up the reverse side of the problem, however. I did (as recorded somewhere here) spend some time setting up the context of a local campaign, including more detailed maps, map moves, couriers and so on. All that effort and the battle, when it came, was so decisive that that was the end of that. One side triumphed, one side surrendered. And my carefully made campaign aides were stuck back on the shelf.

So I suppose that there is a balance to be struck, here, between the quantity of context required and the time available to the wargamer(s) to develop the game in that context. Fuzigore is, as mentioned, a virtually context free zone. The context that does exist is firmly in a scribbled map and my head. The more historical we go for, the more pointed the local and larger contexts become. Unless the campaign is set up fairly carefully, the players can be dominated by external events. Conversely, the French may triumph in Spain to the extent that Wellington simply remains at sea, looking thoughtfully at what might have been.

I realise that I have not supplied any solutions to the issues here, but I think that identifying such issues is a helpful thing to do. The edge of the world syndrome is something which does affect all wargames. My own solution is to deploy relatively small forces on the table, so the players can never rest a flank on the edge of the world. 

Serious Playing

For reasons I am still unsure about, I have started reading Hans-Georg Gadamer’s ‘Truth and Method’. My only defence is really that the choice was Kant, Heidegger or Gadamer, and I chose the middle length book. It is still a hefty 600 pages or so, but Kant was 700 and Heidegger a mere 500. In keeping with my experience of most continental philosophy, it refers to philosophers I have not (and probably cannot, for lack of language skills, let alone time) read and is high on the denseness rating. However, Gadamer keeps cropping up in my reading of assorted bits of recent writing, and in keeping with my reputation as the only postmodern wargamer, I thought I had better give it a go.

The second chapter of the tome is about play, which rather surprised me. Continental philosophy, for all its claims to playfulness, has, in my view, a tendency to take itself far too seriously. I mean, someone like Derrida can claim, in a book, that the author does not exist and that all there is in the text. Does he really mean that? If so, I can just ignore his text, surely.

Still, Gadamer does talk about play, by which he means playing in its widest sense. In fact, he is trying to get a handle on art and the aesthetic, but I am going to try to ignore that for as long as possible. But already he has observed some interesting things.

Firstly, play is not about the players. Play is, in itself serious, and someone who is not taking the play seriously is usually called a ‘spoilsport’. The aim of play, albeit as recreation, is in itself a serious aim. We do not play (and children do not play) for frivolity. Play works because we lose ourselves in the play. Hence, a wargame works because we lose ourselves in the narrative, suspense and uncertainty of the game.

Next up, I suppose rather obviously, the play is part of the players, but is not the players. The game, clearly, would not exist without the players, or at least a player (fortunately for me, solo wargamers are not excluded), but the play is not subjective, that is, the game is not wholly a subjective experience of the player(s). The game is a presentation through the players, but not wholly of the players. I am sure this is a bit clearer in the original German.

A characteristic of play is its to and fro nature, even when there is only one player. Gadamer says that play is without strain, without effort and is experienced by the subject (the player) as relaxation. The structure of the game absorbs the player into itself. So, again, the wargamer is part of the game, not simply an external operative of the game. As a player, the game takes over and relieves us from the strain of making decisions.

I am not entirely sure I agree with that in the context of wargaming, as wargamers, of course, are constantly making decisions as part of the game. On the other hand, if we admit that wargamers as players of the game are absorbed in the game, then the decisions that have to be taken are decisions within the game and as such part of the play. I suppose we could easily get from there to the idea that no intra-wargame decision is a serious, and thus stressful, decision. Not metal widows and orphans are going to be created by out in-game decisions.

Now clearly, in a wargame, there are outcomes and, ultimately, winners and losers. This is a part of the to and fro process within the game. A move produces its counter move, and so on. As engrossed in the game, we can be a victor. That, Gadamer says, is the risk of the game. We have a freedom of decision within the game, but that freedom is limited by the game, and the game, or the other players, can out think us within the game and we can lose. If we do not make such decisions, we cannot play the game; we are not playing seriously if we refuse the decision making and the consequences thereof.

The consequences of this sort of view for wargaming should be, I think, fairly clear. It certainly seems to chime in with my experience of the hobby as a whole. It is a hobby, a recreation, for one thing, but something which is taken with great seriousness by its participants. I suppose that, say, football is another such example. It can be taken with great seriousness by its participants and by spectators, but it does remain, consciously, as a game.

However, it is probably with the seriousness in mind that we object, just a little, to describing the hobby as ‘playing with toy soldiers’. I have used the expression myself to remind myself that the hobby is a game, a recreation, and is not, in that sense, serious. But ‘playing with toy soldiers’ may be taken as an expression of not taking the play seriously, of being a spoilsport. I think the reasons the expression works as a reminder of the hobby aspect of the occupation is the various meanings of the word ‘play’.

Gadamer, for example, reminds the reader that the waters of a fountain can play, as can the sunlight on water, children with sticks and mud, and so on. Cats and dogs also play. These various meanings and nuances of the word ‘play’ inform our use of the term ‘playing with toy soldiers’ to remind us of various aspects of a wargame. As with the fountain, the wargame can be an aesthetic experience, and also a dynamic one. As with the stick play, the wargame has artefacts and can reduce to simply throwing mud at each other. As with animals and humans playing, the play can be part of the joy of co-existence (even for us solo wargamers – when I am grumpy with painting, the estimable Mrs P. will tell me to go and have a battle), and also, perhaps most importantly, the game is an end in itself, not something designed of some further or future purpose.