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
Scouting Wide Games in Art, on Postcards and in Role Playing Games
Happy Father’s Day to all!
My late Dad was an (Assistant) Scoutmaster for many years, who enjoyed Wide Games as a wartime child and as a Boy Scout, so I think he would appreciate this post.
Here below are a collection of links to some of my recent posts on interesting scouting paintings and postcard images, along with RPG elements, which have provided me with inspiration for gaming scenarios for my Scouting Wide Games for the Tabletop Project.
The Scouting Wide Games for the Tabletop Project started out in 2019 as a simple page and posts on this Man of TIN blog but has since grown to become an entirely separate blog.
Here for Man Of TIN blog (and Man of TIN Blog Two) readers are these links as a quick update on this ongoing tabletop gaming project.
Postcards
I own so far only a couple of these curious silent film type Davidson Brothers postcards (above) and have found more images online. I hope to acquire some more affordable examples over time:
The Wide Game and Scouts in Paintings
I have also enjoyed finding some fantastic scouting paintings such as ‘The Wide Game‘ by George Hillyard Swinstead from the Scouts Heritage Service online via Art UK:
There is an interesting detail of a wounded Tommy in his Hospital Blues in ‘The Good Turn’ painting by Swinstead, painted in 1916.
Scouting Photographs
These staged photographs and paintings capture a little of the outdoor spirit Wide Games from my original scouting photo snaps collection:
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2020/02/17/ww1-boy-scout-photographs-in-my-collection-1/
https://tabletopscoutingwidegames.wordpress.com/2020/02/20/more-early-scouting-photos-from-ww1/
All good inspiration for my Scouting Wide Games for the Tabletop Project.
Role Playing Game Characters and Badge Skills
With the help of Alan (Duchy Of Tradgardland) Gruber, I am thinking through how to add a Role Playing Game RPG / NPC elements of character ability (and badge skills) to the simple Wide Games and snowball fight rules.
My D&D / Stranger Things related blog post introduces this topic:
It could be The Shire, the Upside Down or a D&D scenario map? Your local woods transformed with The Cloak of Romance and a suitable Wide Games gaming scenario and imagination …
*
Scouting Wide Games – for Girls?
Along with uniform research for figure conversions on early Scout uniform and that of other youth movements such as Camp Fire Girls USA and British Camp Fire Girls, each having their own page on the blog.
Figure conversions from 42mm range of STS Little Britons Spencer Smith Miniatures LBB30 Boy Scouts to African-American Camp Fire Girls USA – work in progress
There – that brings us up to date with the ongoing Scouting Wide Games for the Tabletop Project. This also fits my DMZ Demilitarised gaming mood.
Blog posted on 18/ 19 June (Happy Father’s Day!) by Mark Man of TIN, 1970s British Cub Scout (Bronze Arrow, retired).
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
Dicing with Dragons – “Long before Peter Jackson made it respectable, teenage boys fought imaginary orcs and dragons”.
Writer and Presenter Kim Newman celebrates Dungeons and Dragons’ early days through interviews with Gary Gygax and others of the Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone era failing to get a bank loan for setting up Games Workshop. It mentions needing to buy the original Chainmail ancient Wargames rules as well as the early D and D books.
Repeat of a Documentary originally made in August 2004 – Radio 4 Extra Debut / repeat, find this at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0076mwd
Made in 2004 it speculates about when RPG gamers give up, along with the lack of women RPG players at the time. They do find and interview one female “Dungeon Master”. I imagine this aspect may have changed since 2004, as the few female gamers whose blogs I have come across tend towards Sci-Fi and Fantasy rather than Historical Wargaming.
Available online on BBC Radio Iplayer for about thirty days till late July /early August 2017, it may well be around in the BBC Radio Iplayer documentary section afterwards. This may not be available to some overseas readers.
Happy Listening!
Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN on July 5th 2017.
Man of Tin blog 