Step back for a minute. Have you ever been struck by the sheer oddness of wargaming?
Middle aged men (others are possible) painting model figurines, then playing games of war on tabletops with them?
We can all identify supposedly questionable hobbyists like railway enthusiasts, but never grasp (or perhaps never acknowledge) the ironies of our own hobby.
That’s only the start of the madness.
When we proclaim historical accuracy (whatever that is) and snigger not a bit, yet deploy 24-model soldiers to represent a battalion… isn’t that certifiable? Six mounted models are a cavalry regiment? Really? 12 or 24 is still arbitrary, isn’t it, but it is slightly more visually pleasing…
These 24 ‘soldiers’ are now ‘firing’ about 12 or 18 inches, possibly less. Would a real musket ball go further (assuming the figures are to scale)?
How do we rationalise the conventions? Why do we?
We put on wargames, but is anyone sure why we are doing so?
Do we do it for pleasure, for company, for history, to learn something, to pretend to experience something? Because we like it, feel compelled to do it?
But each game, while different, if often very similar to previous ones.
We deploy, advance to contact, conduct ranged fire, lay down artillery barrages, partake of melees, pass through woods, occupy towns, crest ridges, hunker down tanks, retire behind ridges, mount flank attacks (some players only do this…), pull out to the cover of woods, cross streams, kill generals, laugh at 1s rolled (well, Rob's), charge in, side-step, echelon, pivot, wheel, fire machine guns, let loose arrows, fix bayonets, follow up won melees, fail to control chargers, and disappear off table…
Yes, it’s still bloody good fun. But what would a psychiatrist or sociologist say?
Are these deep-seated repressions we let loose, as we symbolically slaughter our opponents? (Which club member(s) do you secretly wish to rout or obliterate – in a wargame - of course? If any?)
Are we, as the shrinks claim, play-acting and sublimating our inner 'fascist', or 'bolshevist'? Acting out ritually and safely aggression too uncivilized for the real world of office, supermarket, and family…?
Is it power-hunger canalised into symbolism? Or symbolic violence ordering the power-relations between players and club members?
Are we post-modern cavemen, building a community in order to survive in this hostile world, a band of brothers unconsciously assembled to provide free stress-relief and custom-enacted male bonding at low cost? (How much do our clubs save the NHS budget for men’s health?)
Are we competing to have the best figures, most ingenious rules, most easy-going personalities, or most voracious appetite for Doritos (ahem)?
The wargames rules are nothing but codes and conventions to order our games, conduct, civility, and expectations, are they not? Why do we keep reinventing the rules, when we’ve seen them all before – at least in pieces – yet never stick with any of them? Are we rule breaking demons yet rule-making gods – if so, whence the deep-seated need?
Are we seeking 'reality' or 'fun'? Both, neither? But if the models and measurements are ‘virtual’ reality representations of actual warfare, can any set of rules ever be more than the author’s personal intuitive interpretation?
Not that there is anything wrong with any of that.
All wargamers both know that the game is just that, yet still hanker after some representational veracity, and some visceral exultation. (Routing the Russians, Royalists, or British Imperialists, for example…) Other historic bogeymen are available...
Most wargamers would say that wargaming is a bit of fun, with a few key elements: figures, rules, terrain, people, taking part, talking shop and having a laugh. Each player will have a different expectation, preference and abilities, but will identify with one or more of the variables on offer during each game. Not all games being either great or particularly successful in all the potential criteria… (much like blogs!)
In short, wargaming is a strange phenomenon when you really think about it. It is full of rituals and conventions, pleasurable moans and cheerful groans, enough to delight an anthropologist and interest the scholastic theologian: rolling dice and complaining, expecting biscuits but never buying any, nit-picking rules we do not understand, changing dice colours to make our own luck turn…
Like all real activities, however, it is the taking part and not the chin-stroking analysis that counts. If we don’t like it, there is no point. If we do like it, the point is beside the point.
So what are we doing when we are wargaming?
I don’t know. Personally, I set little store by top-down psychology: Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich tell us more about their own issues than ours. Perhaps the better question is: what would we be doing if we weren’t? Twitching? Morris dancing? Fishing? Philately?
None appeal to me, so it’s wargaming, after all. No reason(s) required...
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