What colours should our SciFi and Space gaming be? Some interesting ideas from (possibly A.I.?) Tumblr adverts online that pop up on posts on my free WordPress blog:
Crossposted with colourful ad screenshots from my Man Of TIN Blog Two post https://manoftinblogtwo.wordpress.com/2023/08/20/tumblr-ad-graphics-for-outer-space-colours/
Following up my previous post on the influence on Donald Featherstone of H.G. Wells’ Little Wars rules of 1913 and how the worlds of fantasy gaming and historical wargaming developed and occasionally overlapped through the 1960s and 1970s, I wanted to read again and think about Gary Gygax’s 2004 foreword to a reprint of Little Wars.
Gary Gygax’s origin story as a miniatures gamer seems similar to many of ours of the Airfix generation that I have read online or Harry Pearson’s Achtung Schweinhund. However not many of us would go on like Gygax to co-author and develop Dungeons and Dragons!
His Wikipedia summary biography mentions:
“In 1971, he helped develop Chainmail, a miniatures wargame based on medieval warfare. He co-founded the company Tactical Studies Rules (TSR, Inc.) with childhood friend Don Kaye in 1973. The next year, he and Dave Arneson created D&D, which expanded on Gygax’s Chainmail and included elements of the fantasy stories he loved as a child.”
Gygax, Arneson, Kaye – all have Wikipedia biographies and their role in the cretinous of this game is widely covered in many of the footnotes to their Wikipedia entries. US Games designer George Phillies was also somehow involved. https://users.wpi.edu/~phillies/
If you don’t own a copy of the 2004 Little Wars reprint, the Foreword text by Gary Gygax can be found at:
https://d-infinity.net/posts/sponsored/gary-gygaxs-foreword-hg-wells-little-wars
Here is the Foreword written by Gary Gygax, creator of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, for the Skirmisher Publishing LLC edition of H.G. Wells’ Little Wars 2004.
Gygax writes: “Being offered the honor of writing this introductory piece was something impossible for me to refuse. Not only am I a fan of the science fiction works of H.G. Wells, but I am also a military miniatures buff familiar with his wargaming rules, the material contained in this book, Little Wars.”
I remember seeing this curious and striking photo cover design of the 1970 reprint featuring a vintage Britain’s style cavalryman, similar to ones that Wells would have used in Little Wars.
Gygax wrote about the Isaac Asimov foreword to this 1970 Little Wars reprint. I only saw the 1970 reprint once in a local branch library (it always seemed to be borrowed and out) but I was very taken with its charming marginal line drawings by J.R. Sinclair. I don’t remember noting the Asimov foreword (mentioned in the front cover) and hadn’t read his work at the time, but it must have made sense to have such an endorsement by one famous science fiction author to another.
With no easily available Little Wars originals or reprints in the 70s and 80s, I picked up the background rules to Little Wars when it was covered in the 1982/83 Wargames Manual article in Brian Carrick’s Big Wars article. The only further reference to Little Wars that I could find in Featherstone’s War Games which I could find in the branch library as a youngster. It was also the background to F.E. Perry’s Second Book Of War Games which I bought, but didn’t find the Little Wars based First Book Of War Games.
Gygax: “Furthermore, and as icing on the cake, is that Isaac Asimov, an author I much admired, wrote the forward to the 1970 reprint of this book. Isaac and I were going to be collaborators on a series of books based on a science fiction feature film, but the movie never got into production. By writing this prefatory essay, I am following in Isaac’s footsteps, so to speak, and paying him homage in posthumous fashion.”
Wells’ thoughts on Big Wars and Little Wars on the ethics of wargaming, something that I remember was around in the Cold War 1980s, resurfaced in the first response by many gamers to the Ukraine conflict in 2022.
Gygax: “When defending the hobby of playing military miniatures games, I have often quoted or paraphrased Wells’ statements — as I do now — regarding the fact that miniature soldiers leave no widows and orphans, and that if more people were busy fighting little wars, they might not be involved in fighting big ones.”
Gygax: “There is no question that Wells wrote a ground-breaking work when he penned Little Wars, which started the hobby of military miniatures war-gaming. Had World War I not come hard on the heels of its first publication in 1913, military miniatures game play might have gained a far larger audience than it did back then.”
“As it was, the big war made interest in the book about little ones virtually disappear. For years, Little Wars was known only to a select few, mainly military miniatures gamers in the United Kingdom. Their pursuit and development of the hobby was considerable, but details of that activity remained relatively obscure elsewhere.”
Gygax goes on to describe how he emerged from the childhood soldier “shoot em up” games that we probably all did – matchstick guns, marbles, etc. – then made the discovery of rules.
Gygax: “My own experience with creating rules for wargaming began inauspiciously. I had no idea of the existence of Little Wars or the military miniatures gaming hobby back in the early 1950s, when my friend Don Kaye and I thought we could devise rules for playing with toy soldiers — my extensive collection of World War II figurines and tank models, and the many 54 mm Britians figurines from varying periods I had collected since that war had ended.”
“Unlike the wise Wells — who used toothpick missiles when he fired his miniature artillery pieces — we employed ladyfinger firecrackers, fuses lit, and those explosives proved to be detrimental to the toy soldiers. Casualties were high!”
Insert your own memories of decimating Airfix figures and planes with air guns, firecrackers and flames. Nothing so sacrilegious happened in my house!
Gygax writes about his childhood dissatisfaction about the randomness of coins rather than dice to resolve combat or Melee:
Gygax: “Worse still, our combat system — a coin flip — turned out to be even less satisfactory. It was boring. As typical of teenage boys, we gave up on the idea rather than trying other methods of resolving small arms fire and hand-to-hand combat. The toy soldiers were stored away, and we went on to other games.”
“What a revelation it was when another friend loaned me his copy of Little Wars in the late 1960s. By that time, I was a board wargame devotee and I had played a few tabletop games with military miniatures. To read the rules the author had established for resolving combat made me want to slap my forehead because we had not thought of them. What a joy it was to see the pictures of grown men in suits, with collars and ties, crawling about on the floor amidst toy soldiers as my friends and I had done as boys.”
“No wonder, then, that the book Wells wrote managed to create a whole new hobby in the face of the Great War and its aftermath. Nothing would do but playing the original wargame as set forth in the book. This was accomplished with fellow game hobbyist — and thereafter a two-time co-author with me of military miniatures rules books — Jeff Perren. Jeff and I fought several battles, and his accuracy with toothpick artillery rounds proved devastating. Even in defeat I loved the game.”
Image source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainmail_(game)
Published in 1971, the Wikipedia entry mentions: “The first edition of Chainmail included a fantasy supplement to the rules. These comprised a system for warriors, wizards, and various monsters of nonhuman races drawn from the works of Tolkien and other sources“. Chainmail is still available online.
Gygax: “Consequently, Little Wars influenced my development of both the Chainmail miniatures rules and the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game. For example, it established the concept of a burst radius for cannon rounds, an idea that was translated into both the Chainmail catapult missile diameters and the areas of effect for Fireballs in D&D.”
“Wells’ shooting/melee rules were simple but not particularly realistic, however, so wargamers soon developed more detailed means for resolving such combat, and I used the later developments in the hobby in those regards.”
H.G. Wells’ influential role on Gary Gygax is acknowledged, not just in Little Wars, but as a pioneering science fiction author of The Time Machine, The War Of the Worlds, The Shape Of Things To Come etc., along with Jules Verne.
Gygax: “Beyond Little Wars, Wells’ treatment of subterranean humans in the Time Machine certainly reinforced my concepts of underground adventure areas other than dungeons (as did Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth and a number of later works of imaginative fiction).”
“While military miniatures rules have come a long way since Little Wars was first published in 1913, the simple game presented in this book remains an unquestionably enjoyable one. Furthermore, when you read the work you will see that its basic concepts remain in many of today’s games. This book will give you the knowledge that there is strong fellowship between Wells and his wargaming companions and the military miniatures gamers of today. I predict that 100 years from now, readers will experience the same warm feeling across the centuries.”
“There is nothing more I can say — other than to enjoy your ride in this gaming time machine!”
Gary Gygax, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, March 2004
*
Gygax died in 2008 aged 70; both Dave Arneson and Don Kaye have also passed away. Gone but definitely not forgotten …
Blog posted by Mark Man Of TIN, 30 April 2023
Crossposted from my ManofTIN Two Blog
When Stranger Things meets The Brontes…
When Hawkins, Indiana meets Haworth, Yarkshire …
Crossposted from Man Of TIN Two blog:
Most. Bronte. Ever!
With thanks to the Bronte Babe Blog. (Cross)Posted by Mark Man Of TIN, 20 August 2022
A repost of a December 2019 “clearing the drafts” blogpost about Escape from Kraznir that I reread recently as I try to work out more RPG / narrative and fantasy elements into my Scouting Wide Games Project:
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2019/12/23/man-of-tin-blogvent-calendar-day-23-kraznir-revisited/
August 2022 Update: New Post with the original Kraznir scenario and map which I have crudely denamed, the characters made gender neutral and differently classed or with more generic, updated character types to suit a wider range of periods:
https://tabletopscoutingwidegames.wordpress.com/2022/08/15/kraznir-denamed-and-rebooted-2022/
Blog posted by Mark Man Of TIN December 2019 / August 2022
The Lost Snow Patrol Defrosted – early Girl Scouts versus Mutant Snowmen c. 1909 / 1910
The frozen North, 1909/1910 somewhere in Britain or Europe.
The mystery of a missing Boy Scout patrol. A Girl Scout patrol caught in a snow blizzard up in the hill forests. Lashings of hot chocolate, quarter staff fighting, fire arrows and some carrots …
Cross posted by Mark Man Of TIN (not Man of Snow) from my Scouting Wide Games for the Tabletop blog https://tabletopscoutingwidegames.wordpress.com/2022/07/30/the-lost-snow-patrol-defrosted-early-girl-scouts-versus-mutant-snowmen/
On their way in the post, I have on order two packs of 28mm “Little Wolves” (Amazons range) from Annie Norman at Bad Squiddo Games.
These will represent each of the three Bronte sisters in combat “role playing” in their fictional ImagiNations of Gondal, GlassTown, Angria and Gaaldine.
This will provide me the three sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne – and one spare (a friend?)
This should give me a focus for #FEMBruary 2022 – Each February, miniature or figure painters and gamers choose to paint or model believable female miniatures as part of a challenge by fantasy gamer and modeller Imperial Rebel Ork.
I will look around for a suitable brother Branwell 28mm figure, once I have ‘met’ his sisters. To me, he is usually portrayed on screen as Naughty Norman Price of Ponty Pandy, straight out of Fireman Sam.
Being a figure converter and tinkerer, an improvised tissue paper sash or two might feature to flesh out the girls’ ImagiNations uniforms, inspired by Isabel Greenberg’s Glass Town.
Isabel Greenberg’s superb Glass Town graphic novel shows the Bronte sisters and brother in their ImagiNations uniforms.
Not just a diorama piece?
I can use the three duelling sisters (and brother and friend) with the ‘parry and lunge’ duelling rules from Donald Featherstone’s Skirmish Wargaming:
These simple duelling game rules can be found at:
I can easily see these fighting sisters being up and at ’em, duelling against other fantasy or historical figures in roughly 28mm scale – zombies, skeletons, regency dandies and assorted Bronte ImagiNations bad guys in Pride Prejudice and Zombies style – as this slides into gothic, RPG or fantasy gaming…
Bad Squiddo Figures
I have previously enjoyed painting Bad Squiddo figures of Land Girls for my ‘boycraft’ entry for my local flower and veg show, crafts section in 2019.
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/huzzah-for-boycraft-flower-show-craft-success/
Blog Post Script
There are just five days left to raise the rest of the £25K needed to save some precious Bronte Manuscripts through Just Giving
https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/honresfield-library
***** Three days to go and we smashed it! Well past £25K! Thanks to all my fellow gamers and blog readers who contributed!
As a gamer with a love of toy soldiers and ImagiNations gaming, I have a lot of time for the Brontes and their intricate fictional Regency and early Victorian worlds of Gondal, Glasstown, Gaaldine and Angria.
If you don’t know them, check out the excellent recent books based on these tiny Bronte manuscripts – Celia Rees’ Glass Town Wars and the graphic novel Glass Town by Isabel Greenberg.
You might also know them through the 1960s children’s fiction book The Return of The Twelves (or Twelve and the Genie) by Pauline Clarke, based on the Bronte children’s original wooden toy soldiers.
The Bronte sisters Emily, Charlotte and Anne and brother Branwell created childhood and teenage imaginary Napoleonic worlds (paracosms) in tiny handwritten books of poetry, prose, drawings and fictional newspaper adverts in the 1830s and 1840s in Yorkshire.
Were the Bronte children some of the first wargamers, ImagiNations gamers and Historical Fantasy RPG players?
I have been playing Bronte inspired ImagiNations games for a number of years now – check out my page for them on my blog here:
That is why I am supporting the campaign by UK libraries and The Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth Yorkshire to keep some of these precious manuscripts of the Law Collection in the Honresfield Library in this country and at their birthplace, rather than disappear into private collections after auction.
https://www.bronte.org.uk/whats-on/news/242/save-the-honresfield-library
You can easily donate here https://justgiving.com/campaign/honresfield-library
A small amount has been anonymously diverted from my Man of TIN hobby ‘war chest’ and ImagiNations defence budget towards saving these precious manuscripts.
Go on – dig deep. Surely worth a tenner or more of anyone’s hobby budget?
This is part of our fantasy gaming, wargaming, toy soldier and RPG origins as well as literary heritage to preserve for all, not a privileged few.
One day I look forward to travelling Up North to go and see the Bronte tiny books and manuscripts at the Bronte Parsonage Museum.
* Dear blog friends and readers, please forward and repost / reboot this post this post to others.*
We only have five days left to raise the £25K needed.
Arise, Angria!
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, 26 October 2021
“And one of the greatest helps to a small, inexperienced traveller in this sometimes dusty way is the likeness of things to each other. Your piece of thick bread and butter is a little stale, perhaps, and bores you; but, when you see that your first three bites have shaped it to the likeness of a bear or a beaver, dull teatime becomes interesting at once. A cloud that is like a face, a tree that is like an old man, a hill that is like an elephant’s back, if you have things like these to look at, and look out for, how short the long walk becomes.” E. Nesbit, Wings and The Child, 1913.
Was Tolkein influenced by the work of E. Nesbit and her “Accidental Magic” stories?
“A Tree Like a Man” by George Barraud, drawn for E. Nesbit’s Wings and The Child or the Building of Magic Cities, 1913 – contemporary with H.G. Wells’ Floor Games of 1911 and Little Wars 1913.
Some draw a line of gaming descent through Little Wars and Gary Gygax to Dungeons and Dragons and fantasy gaming.
Crossposted by Mark Man of TIN on 27 January 2021 from my Pound Store Plastic Warrior’s Blog – this one’s for Mr. Gruber and his Ents –
B.P.S. Blog Post Script – there’s a face in the clouds!
An enchanting little story, of book nooks, an idea that could well grace a military or fantasy modeller’s book shelves? Lots of examples of these on Pinterest. Lots more pictures and links at this BBC article including Harry Potter style Diagon Alley type streets between books:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-50840434
This is a different idea from the Railway Modeller book ends that I featured on my Sidetracked blog:
https://sidetracked2017blog.wordpress.com/2017/07/29/tunnel-bookends/
Book Nooks and Book Ends – an interesting modelling idea to keep an eye on.
Trenches, tunnels, streets … lots of modelling ideas here.
I wonder what the fantasy gamer or modeller, the military or aircraft modellers etc would make of these novelty book nooks or book ends?
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, 20 July 2020
Man of Tin blog 