An introduction.

On the surface this might appear to be yet another blog by an ageing miniature collector detailing his hobby. A bit of scratching below the surface will hopefully reveal that is exactly what this blog is all about. You see I do aim to use this to detail my hobby, a hobby that basically separates me from most people my age and indeed many of my friends, but I also want to try and get across what I see as important to me in the hobby and why I get satisfaction from collecting (and badly painting) small figures as well as being able to occasionally play games with them. It is the narrative of these games and trying to bring a narrative to life through the representation of characters.

Like most people my age (39) involved in what can broadly be based as wargaming, I started in roleplaying games and progressed from there. My first experience was aged playing Dungeons and Dragons, the grandfather of roleplaying games. Here I had fun with friends playing simple adventures with friends using very basic characters we developed. We did use citadel miniatures that we all first heard of years before through older brothers, hobby shops, the back of Lone Wolf books (40p a model if you could find them) and so on. But the figures were only used to illustrate the characters, the fun was in the game and playing your character as he tried to get some where. Basically the story, the narrative was the game and the rules came secondary to what you wanted to do and represent.

It should be noted that although I have chosen this as the starting point, the interest in Dungeons and Dragons came from an interest in narrative roleplay books such as the classic Lone Wolf books and Fighting Fantasy. Here the story was once again most important, not the actual game and it's mechanics. I also had  toy soldiers since I was about 7, as any boy in the 80's did. I played with them to act out stories, not for a super balanced tournament. But I digress, I might put blog posts about this in the future. For a simple introduction I'll say it all started with Dungeons and Dragons and of course an interest in this game was fueled by an interest in fantasy.

Dungeons and Dragons did not stay as the only fantasy roleplaying game that I played. Games Workshop and it's various managed to replace it. As I have mentioned, Citadel Miniatures were already known and as I got into the hobby their production levels seemed to be greatly increasing, but I think Games Workshop gained a dominance for a number of reasons. This was partly through the dominance of it's magazine White Dwarf (and only promoting Games Workshop products through this) and partly through the increase in Games Workshop stores and their promoting of the hobby amongst under 16's. But I also think it was the fact that they were selling interesting games with a strong basis in characters and story driven events.

While Dungeons and Dragons allowed you to play characters such as Dwarfs and Elfs (later allowing these races to have specific jobs with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons), it was very generic. The world building of  Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay allowed you to built characters with a background and previous careers in the Warhammer world. It appeared to be trying to build more than a collection of statistics t role a dice against. This rich background then expanded into other games. While it was entirely possible to play the games produced by Games Workshop while ignoring the background, this appeared to be against the aim of the games.

However time appeared to change. I would say the big change came with what became one of my favourite games: Epic. Or to be precise Space Marine (2nd. edition). The big difference was that this game was written to be based upon pick  up games with modular armies and the same scenario for each game. As players we didn't care. The background that was shared with the Warhammer 40K universe and was both rich and already spread across numerous games. We simply saw the games as using that detail and enjoyed the tactical challenge of a well written wargame.

The problem was this represented the new marketing strategy of Games Workshop. Games Workshop, as a company functioning in a capitalist world, had to sell the commoditys it produced at a profit to survive. The basic equation is commodity plus labour power equals a new commodity that can be sold at profit. The first edition of Warhammer was specifically designed to get the roleplayers Games Workshop sold  games to, buying more Citadel Miniatures instead of being happy with the small (or non-existent) number that were being used as an optional extra in roleplaying games. Since the second edition of Warhammer, every edition has encouraged ridiculously high miniature numbers despite the fact that this does not necessarily make a better game, increase the enjoyment or allow carefully painted models and details to shine through and rise above being a simple blur. Eight edition took this to ridiculous extremes by having a rule that actively encouraged players to field regiments of 50 plus models of extremely similar models which would be quickly swept off the table in a blur of dice rolling. I presume,since I never felt the need to play this version of a game that I owned three previous and very workable and enjoyable older editions, reduced tactics to setting up what were called on forums tar pits and smashing these into each other before hoping that your horde dice rolls wore down the other hordes dice rolls more quickly. But I digress.

To continue to sell games, they had to be easy and quick to play. Having to emerse yourself in background and then theme your army around this, while trying to come up with a way to win the unusual scenario and find an opponent to do the same, might work for a lot of people. yet it got more people into gaming by having simple set up games that had easy victory conditions and to worry about narrative details later. The games increasingly followed this format. This did not matter that much, since as I have mentioned, a well written set of rules could be used as a tool to put your narrative ideas into action. No one was stopping themed armies, complex scenarios characters, campaigns and so on. In fact they were still encouraged. It was just the main marketing of the actual games was the quick sell followed by the sell of even more miniatures with a few more of them on top.

By 1992 Games Workshop had got rid of it's roleplaying games and had changed the style of the miniatures they sold. In order to sell quickly and attract younger gamers the models began to resemble cartoon parodies of fantasy and sci-fi heroes. They were less something that brought your heroes to life and more something rejected from He-Man for being over proportioned. I lost interest in the hobby, although not in fantasy and science fiction. Although to be fair, my life had moved on and I had other interests and no real time for such a hobby. If this rout had not been adopted I would of probably still have dropped the hobby, but perhaps more gradually and without the feeling that I was definitely too old for it.

The internet is full of lots of blogs with similar tales and details about how a previously loved hobby went wrong around 1992-1993 due to changes in marketing and style of games and hideous cartoon miniatures with terrible paint schemes. Collectively this is a central ethos of the Oldhammer movement. I suppose this blog is an Oldhammer blog. However there is more to it than that.

Between 1992 and 1997 I basically played no games. I did nearly participate in a vampire roleplaying game at university with a house mate and her friends, biut never got further than rolling up and developing the basics of my character. I'm not sure if the game ever started, I just happened to be around when the characters were being prepared and was interested but not really that into the idea of trying roleplay again. after leaving university and living away from London, in a dull job and back home, I did notice that Games Workshop released a new version of Epic; Epic 40K. It looked good and gave freedom to develop detatchments as opposed to company cards which were all the same. I bought it and loved it for it's simplicity, the  freedom it gave you to develop scenarios and the way the game played like you were commanding an army, rather than getting stuck on detail or bound up in complex rules that simply slowed down the game and moved away from the grand narrative. I also did not have to worry about the cartoon miniature design that Games Worshop were still producing. In 6mm it does not matter. I agree with the designers, Jervis Johnson and Andy Chambers, it was the best game that they have produced. Sadly the rest of the universe disagreed and the game sunk like a stone. This was coupled with Games Workshops belief that anything that didn't sell (28mm) Space Marines was worthless and did not warrant support. I didn't care and started devising ingenious ways (previously occasionally tried as a teenager) to play solo.

I ended up putting it on the back burner for a couple of years but kept an interest and discovered a couple of things. Despite the marketing there was still a lot of potential for narrative gaming with Games Workshops products. Inquistor, Battlefleet Gothic and  even Warhammer and 40K had a big amount of narrative support helping to expand the background and mean that fantasy wargaming was about playing out events rather than simply lining up rival, nameless armies and playing by strict rules to score points. The other thing I discovered was that a lot of the company and the people who bought their products, were not interested in this.

Games Workshop stores became scary places to enter, full of teenagers talking about best combinations and statistics, while the store staff gave you the hard sell and looked at you sadly if you suggested that you played anything other than Warhammer or 40K and might want to use rules and armies in different ways. Epic was eventually remade into a neutered version which had over detailed rules, modular armies and one scenario written for tournaments. On the plus side, the 28mm miniature ranges were improving and although I didn't play, I rediscovered how relaxing it can be to paint a figure. This was coupled with looking at the more interesting bits of background and narrative that escaped the corporate hard sell.

I now am at a point where I have started collecting armies and playing games. However the I also recognise that the company that produces the models for this is in no way providing what I want with its current rules and background. I have already mentioned some of my thoughts on eight edition. I also reject the majority of internet gamers who play as a means of competing and are obsessed with strict rules and tournaments. One word that particularly somes up the problems with a lot of modern gamers is 'fluff'.

A quick internet search gives the definition of 'fluff' as entertainment or writing perceived as trivial or superficial. Basically it refers to the background and most current (internet) gamers consider it superficial and unimportant. yet the whole point of playing a wargame is to act out an event, not to take part in a competition. You carefully assemble forces to represent something, not to be an unbeatable combination (although that could be the elite army you aim to represent). You then see how it acts in a narrative situation. This is how I want to paly my games and collect my models. If I was into long distance running I would say I do it to run interesting routs and see scenery  while experiencing running. I would not be doing it to run round a track and be faster than other runners doing laps of a track. I feel that is a metaphor for how separate I see myself from the majority of the internet gaming community.

I feel that there are plenty of good miniatures available now, both old and new citadel as well as those produced by other companies, to not to have to over fetishize the models that were produced in my youth. I aim to collect what I like and even play with counters if it suits what I want to do with a game. I want to play games again, but not have to stick with the rules if it impedes the narrative. For now I'm going to bbase things on Warhammer third edition with ideas grabbed from the 6th.edition and my head. But I also want to play and collect for other games that I can use to present events and show caharacters interacting. These games I aim to play include flames of War, Blood Bowl 2nd edition, epic 40K (yes Epic 3rd. edition), Battlefleet Gothic, Inquisitor, 1938 A Very British Civil War, Warhammer 40K, WFRP, Aeronautica Imperialis and anything else I can think of. I want the games to be part of an unfolding story that I have developed the characters for and I want to enjoy myself. I might only get as far as painting some miniatures but I want them to represent a story! That is what this blog will be about.