There very well is a fantasy/sci-fi gaming community

[PatG]

I say that I am a wargamer. If pressed, I would side with “historical” only because that is the sort of game I play to learn about things or understand history. I am actually more invested in SF and VSF (which is aweird mix of colonials and fantasy) but see those more as my “fun” genres. You can of course learn about combined arms operations and the fundamentals of tactics through any game but it is simpler when constrained to real life scenarios and forces. SF is a little more flexible in that it often mirrors real life practice at the time the rules or work was created – vis Hammer’s Slammers.

[Patrice]

Most players I play with (and me too) consider ourselves 28mm wargamers (without more precision) and play mostly historical, but sometimes play fantasy, or sci-fi (Infinity). For fantasy the overall inspiration is “old school” – which for some of them means a Warhammer world with other rules, but for me and others who never played WH it means inspiration from AD&D (is that “old school” enough?)

And you can still be surprised. One month ago I ran a wargame table in a geek and mangas small convention; some guys watching us preparing the game table thought we were organizing a WH table – I talked with them, they were former WH players and didn’t know that other rules and wargames do exist (yes, it’s very easy to find other games systems on the internet if you look for them, but they never searched because they didn’t think there was any).

http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/

[PatG]

Patrice wrote:

Most players I play with (and me too) consider ourselves 28mm wargamers (without more precision)….

Now that is an idea I find utterly alien for two reasons. First because 28mm is not a “scale” though 25mm is (1/72) 😉 The second is because I think you should tailor the scale of the figures to the scale of what you are trying to portray. Skirmish games work well with 25-32mm figures, platoon sized games with fire team sized units work well with single based 20/25/28’s or multi based 15mm, Company sized games with section sized units can look good 15s but start to shine with 6mm.

The idea that portraying a Napoleonic infantry Brigade with one light figure, one grenadier, an officer a flag bearer and a lone musket man all on one base is to me ridiculous, though this kind of unit is very popular for historical gaming. Do it in 6mm at the same frontage and it starts to look good. Similarly, one 1/56 StuG representing an entire Gruppe is just as pointless.

I will admit though to having a Saga Welsh army – single based in 6mm.

[Patrice]

PatG wrote:

28mm is not a “scale” though 25mm is

Any “XXmm” is not a scale, properly speaking – although it can be, if you accept it and understand it as such. For me, 28mm is 1/56 scale (…although I scratch-built my houses and buildings at 1/60 for smaller space on the table, and I know that some people prefer 1/48 vehicles but I don’t).

And yes, I only play skirmish these days. 

PatG wrote:

I will admit though to having a Saga Welsh army

Now that’s another thing if you’re talking about true representation of an army. Very popular games (Saga, Muskets & Tomahawks, Triumph & Tragedy and its expansions, etc) allow to build small armies which are almost skirmish groups but include very different sorts of troops which would probably never have been together at 1:1 level. They have become very popular because players have the impression to manage different kinds of troops and still playing skirmish. And I’m not criticizing that; because, as I always say, the game table does not need to be proportional to reality. 

http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/

[Phil Dutré]

I’m coming  a bit late to the discussion, but want to comment on the OP’s original question whether there is a SF/F community.

I indeed think there’s balkanization in SF/F games, more so than historical games. The balkanization is not manifesting itself as disjunct player communities, but disjunct game systems. I see relatively few crossover effects between SF/F games, as there are between historical games. This effect is reinforced by tighter commercial products, in which background, rules, and miniatures are tightly interlinked.

Thus, it is easier to publish an article about “How to play the 30 Years War?”, and give some sound wargaming advice on how to approach the period . But how would you write something similar for a SF/F game with a self-invented background? Same for scenarios or campaigns. Most articles I have seen that cover SF/F usually are linked to a very specific game system, so much that it becomes more difficult to use it for a different setting. Historicals suffer less from this, because there is a  shared common ground. WW2 is one period, and a scenario for WW2 can be translated to many different WW2 rulesets. You can discuss things such as what rule system better reflects infantry tactics. But how can you do that in SF/F?  Historical wargaming is driven by the corresponding historical period. SF/F wargaming is driven by a specific gaming engine (with perhaps an added self-invented background). That’s a big difference in outlook. Perhaps if GW would allow other rules writers interpret their WH40K universe …

If there ever was a SF/F gaming community, I think it was during the heydey of roleplaying games during the 80s and 90s. Then, you could find generic articles published in the magazines on how to include new ideas in your sessions, and scenarios were very much system-independent. The reason was that roleplay scenarios are inherently about story, not about rule mechanisms. That’s the difference with (current) SF/F miniature gaming.

I would love to see articles addressing fantasy wargaming, not from a rules-specific perspective (“Here’s a new force list for Frostgrave!” — such articles are useless for anyone NOT playing Frostgrave), but from a background-driven perspective: “How to best include Mumakil in your battles?” “How to evoke Vancian magic?” “How to include Harry Potter-like spells?” “What ruleset is best is to play battles in the Hyborian universe?” Etc.

Back to articles in magazines: for me, a good article in a wargaming magazine is about a topic that transcends a specific game system. It might be described against a specific period or setting or ruleset, but the ideas or concepts should be usable in other periods or settings or rulesets as well. That is harder to do for the current SF/F commercial gaming landscape than it is for historicals.

(I play both historicals and SF/F, and I’m not a “youngster” – hitting 50 a few months from now. I started playing fantasy miniature wargaming during the early eighties (WFB1!), and only discovered historicals afterwards).

[Rhoderic]

 

Phil Dutré wrote:

I would love to see articles addressing fantasy wargaming, not from a rules-specific perspective (“Here’s a new force list for Frostgrave!” — such articles are useless for anyone NOT playing Frostgrave), but from a background-driven perspective: “How to best include Mumakil in your battles?” “How to evoke Vancian magic?” “How to include Harry Potter-like spells?” “What ruleset is best is to play battles in the Hyborian universe?” Etc.

Yes! And it doesn’t just have to be conceptual subjects as in your examples, there are plenty of concrete “indie” products that would make for good magazine content, too. There must be at least 100 reasonably noteworthy companies that produce miniatures for fantasy, sci-fi or other fantastical genres (horror, steampunk, pulp, superheroes, post-apoc, etc) in a way that isn’t primarily brand-led or game system-led. On top of that there are at least dozens of companies making rulesets that aren’t primarily meant to go with proprietary miniatures ranges or settings. This is what I refer to as the indie scene, much like how RPGers often speak of “indie RPGs” in contrast to the major game systems from the bigger brands. And I keep wondering: Where’s the magazine content about that part of the F&SF market? On top of your examples of articles we might add ones such as “A comparison of platoon-level generic sci-fi rulesets”, “15mm elves showcase”, “What to do with the Heresy Miniatures monsters”, and so on.

To draw a parallel, that bit about 40% of Salute being F&SF… I don’t visit shows or conventions (I live in the wrong part of the world) but I tentatively assume that a sizeable portion, maybe even a majority, of that 40% is more-or-less indie. I mean, it’s not like there are 40K and WarmaHordes tournaments going on at Salute? So, assuming there’s a fair deal of indie F&SF at the big shows and conventions, it confounds me this isn’t reflected to a greater extent in magazine articles. Granted, there is some – right now I’m reading WSS 85 (the horror-themed issue) which is a particularly good issue in that isolated respect – but I still feel it’s underrepresented in the big picture.

All of that being said, I don’t believe it would be ideal to exclude all game system-specific content from a “generic” magazine. IMO it would be preferable to channel as much content as possible into the broader community (so long as no one game system gets preferential treatment), and not encourage narrower “in-house” publications devoted to specific game systems or brands. In-house publications would likely just lead to more fragmentation, not less. The ideal magazine in my mind would have a healthy mix of indie content (on both conceptual subjects and specific products) and diversive game system-specific content from those companies that don’t mind setting up their stalls alongside each other. A place for everything to mix and mingle.

Even more ideal would be several magazines that go different routes, a bit like how each of the three extant mainly-historical magazines has its own style and philosophy. Then, one magazine could be more indie-oriented and another more of a grab bag of game system-led content (not too much rules, though – there’s plenty of other ideas for content that would appeal to a larger reader base, such as AARs or terrain-building articles). But I’m getting well ahead of myself, here. We’re still waiting for one good F&SF magazine to come along. (Harbinger didn’t count – it faltered too much on the “good” part.)

[PatG]

So we should ask Michael if he is up for generic f/sf articles for the articles section here.

[Mike]

I am!

[John Treadaway]

Some very interesting points raised here: personally, I’m very much in favour of looking at the smaller manufacturers and their outlook and impact on non-historical gaming. For what it’s worth, I haven’t reviewed an item from the GW range (WHFB or 40k) since the nineties (possibly even the late eighties!).

I figure that Games Workshop probably doesn’t need (or want) my opinion or the column inches I might generate.

The concept – as was mentioned earlier – that intelligent adults with access to a computer linked to the interweb was unaware of product other than that produced by GW is – quite honestly – frightening.

I mean, not just for wargaming, but for humanity as a whole!

John Treadaway

www.hammers-slammers.com
http://www.hammers-slammers.com

"They don't have to like us, snake, they just have t' make the payment schedule" Lt Cooter - Hammer's Slammers

[Patrice]

Phil Dutré wrote:

I would love to see articles addressing fantasy wargaming, not from a rules-specific perspective

Yes. I’m always surprised when people say: “I want to build an army for XXX ruleset”, “I’m buying miniatures to play XXX game”, etc…

IMHO my miniatures exist as human (or humanoid) beings as soon as I have bought and received them (or as soon as I have painted them). They don’t care about which ruleset they will been involved in. They are here to live their own lives, the ruleset happens later.

http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/

[Rhoderic]

John Treadaway wrote:

Some very interesting points raised here: personally, I’m very much in favour of looking at the smaller manufacturers and their outlook and impact on non-historical gaming. For what it’s worth, I haven’t reviewed an item from the GW range (WHFB or 40k) since the nineties (possibly even the late eighties!). I figure that Games Workshop probably doesn’t need (or want) my opinion or the column inches I might generate.

I don’t think GW even warrants much contemplation in this respect. It has its own in-house publication and isn’t interested in “mingling”. The same goes for Privateer Press, even if it maybe isn’t quite as far-gone as GW (or maybe it is, I don’t know).

However, what does warrant contemplation is the slew of newer “intermediate size” companies that have begun to exist in the same space as GW and PP, going a similar system-led route. Warlord Games, Mantic Games, Corvus Belli, Hawk Wargames, Spartan Games and (to some degree) Osprey Games come to mind. There might be others that have slipped my mind right now, and judging where to draw the cut-off line for “intermediate size” is very iffy. Even below that cut-off line, there are maybe one or two dozen other companies – particularly but not exclusively in the “boutique game” segment of the industry – which, for all that they are much smaller, are nevertheless marketing their products in a system-led manner.

I imagine (as someone with no expertise whatsoever in this subject) that handling these sorts of companies in an independent magazine can take some finesse, so that they are neither excluded outright nor given too much leeway to enforce their own system-centric paradigms or overshadow the more indie-oriented content. Firm but fair.

[Author]

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