Monday, April 6, 2015

Rules? Who needs rules?

I grew up in the 1970s devouring the wargaming books by Donald Featherstone and Charles Grant , My first wargaming rules homemade, based on the Lionel Tarr rules published in Featherstone's Wargames. As 10 or 11 year olds my friend Ian and I hand typed them out and changed them to meet our needs (the book was a library book and we didn't have any access to photocopiers) on his mum's old typewriter. We spent days, and lots of correction tape, single finger typing. When we got to high school the school had a copy of Gavin Lyall's Operation Warboard and so we got out the old type writer and hand typed those additions to "our rules". I guess back then players were encouraged to make rules their own, tweak and adapt as they liked. How different it was from the modern approach where rules are yet another consumer package with everything you need provided for you.

Fast forward 30 odd years and my son has just hit high school. Wargaming hasn't been a bug for him the way it was for me, but he does occasionally show flashes of interest. At school a couple of weekends ago they had an open day and he was asked by one of his history teachers to bring some wargaming stuff along and set up a demo game. I had work to do down at the bach so set him up with some of my 28mm WWII collection- some Perry 8th Army and Germans.

He had arranged to do the demo game with another boy who plays 40k. I gave him the Bolt Action rules in case they wanted to do something structured but what happened next was something that gave me hope for the future of gaming. He and his mates got together and ironed out some rules for the day, divvied up the forces then 6 of them spent about 3 hours gaming their rules and having a blast, so much so that they are now thinking of forming a club at their school!

So what where the rules they used? These:


To me that is the future of the hobby, not the modern rule sets with their attitude of "thou must not tinker with our masterpieces." These kids didn't need any rulebooks, they simply used their imaginations and came up with something that worked for them.

 Finn came home absolutely fizzing about the day, and afterwards sat down and typed out his rules, not as Ian and I did on a trusty old typewriter but a slightly more modern way- on my laptop!

Craig

13 comments:

  1. I think some of my best memories are back in the late 60"s with homegrown rules. Good on those guys for using their heads!

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  2. Great story - good to hear of the lads' initiative and ingenuity. I prefer my own version of rules - albeit tinkered from existing sets. Mainly I simplify them...a lot :)

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  3. This is fantastic! It's what wargaming is all about. I get so sick of all the complaining that goes on about rules and games and everything else. If you don't like it, change it! We had no problem with making it up as we went along as kids, and we had a great time. It seems the older you get the more "serious" it gets. Great to see the old DIY spirit is alive and well :-)

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  4. Very interesting! Considering that many young people are into video games

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  5. Great to see. Not only did they have a blast but they took it upon themselves to be responsible for their own fun. There's little that is more satisfying IMHO. Lets hope they continue!

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  6. Finn is still video games mad- what kid isn't these days? But video games are passive entertainment, there is no creativity on the behalf of the player and they don't utlise their imagination to anywhere near the same degree. I'd much prefer he got into board and wargames that encourage spatial, and logical, thinking and the use of ones own imagination, not some game designers.

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  7. Great to see! One thing about their joint creation of their own rules, is that all of them would know from the start how they were supposed to work, and so there would be little enough time wasted trying to get the hang of them. This 'old school' type of system is very easy to understand anyway, and leaves little room for argument.

    For most of my projects I write my own rule sets, and no longer really care much if no one else is interested...But I will give commercial sets a go...

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  9. Inspiring. I glad you posted. It is always good to see stuff like this, imagination running wild and not running with the herd; and you must feel good he is one of yours!

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