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Friday 2 January 2015

Why do we do this ??? Part 1

 So here I go again . Pondering on the motivations for various chaps indulging in this hobby  with all its multitudinous facets. Are my or indeed your motivations the same or even similar ?  What are the motivations of the fantasy dudes- which - to believe the magazines -we are in the same hobby as?. And which  again if we accept the maketing is a far far more numerous hobby -even excluding GW than we mere underling historical chaps with our dusty books and actual knowledge. Now the fact that the Fantasy hobby is indeed larger is almost beside the point - but not quite. There was a time that even I  the"Arch- Historian "  was known to fiddle with Dwarfs and the like but what put me off was not only the relentless childishness of many of the other participents. Also he incredible lack of humour- their games had no jokes in despite the fact that it was all made up !  They were so bloody SERIOUS .Man, get a life ! To some of thse dudes the phrase "Get Happy" seems to mean beating up a Dwarf!. Jokes- even bad ones were thin on the ground. I remember in the 1990s when OGUK  carried a lot more Fantasy stuff than I do now  organising a small Dwarf Army for the display case. For a laugh I put them in 7  figure units with Seven in Roman Numerals on their flag . The number of Fantasy dweebs  who asked me
"Why have those Dwarves (note the tolkinesque pronunciation)  got the Number Seven on their Flag ?"
 Ans
 "What else do Dwarfs come in but sevens!!"
 It has to be said that most of the Historical chaps saw the bad joke immmediately . but more than anything else it was the  total humourlessness of so many fantsy and Sci-fi (especially GW ) players that put me right off.
 History had more JOKES!!
Now if we are supposed to do this for FUN surely there should be a few Laughs ! 

6 comments:

  1. "Why do we do this ???" well the simple answer is ... 'because we do'.. there is no single answer... one of the joys of the hobby really!

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    1. "Because we're 'ere lad." Now button that collar and get back to work. :-)

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  2. i do it cos I always have and its been a big part of my life, and its fun, stimulating and the gaming bit is or can be very sociable.

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  3. More Hi Ho than Ho Ho then? I would be no good as a fantasy player then because I would have laughed at your display case too!

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  4. Andy,
    What would we/you do if you didnt wargame?
    I think if wargaming hadnt been invented/discovered I would still have found a way to read military history and paint figures.
    My life would have been very empty in a lot of respects without wargaming. One can only play violent sports for so long, and I hate golf.
    By the way you cant call dwarves dwarves anymore, its official. Its PORG.
    rOBBIE.

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  5. The point is I want to know why. -This will appear periodically as I answer my own questions. I agree more or less with all the points- facetious and otherwise. But I never needed wargaing to make me read military history or to paint or collect figures.
    Part of my discussion arises because of the dominance of "gaming" and games in our magazines rather than wargaming.
    After the recent issue of WS&S - which for my money was - unusually -pretty poor not because of the subject matter of its main articles but becasue of two awfully sycophantic articles- one on DBA in which the quote "it was truly one of the greatest gaming experiences of my life" appeared- so that I didn't know wether to laugh or spew (I laughed - the poor lad . I can think of lots better games- and most don't involve little lead men!!) and far far worse a piece entitled "Warhammer is my first love " - apparently it is so wonderful that "you get the best people in the world wanting to take part in it"-and their were "the best minds in the Wargaming world" this chap is anadvocate of the niow often seemingly endless "supplements" to various rule sets supposedly an idea orgigonated by Warhammer- the bugger obviously has shares or writes the bloody things-
    leaving adise the mnor facts that Warhammer and its historical derivatives were essentially a 1960s featherstonian ruleset with added twiddly bits. this kind of drooling sycophantic drivel is not the sort of stuff we - or at least I expect an adult to write. At first I thought he was taking the piss but there were not enough jokes- or indeed any.(except perhaps in the Editors picture captions).
    I have real difficulty grasping the need for such lightweight tosh- especially when it isn't funny

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