Pre-played miniature games

Forget about pre-paints - now you can have pre-played miniature games!

Using cutting edge bio-neural technology, pre-played miniatures exude hormonal triggers which fool your brain into thinking you just played a six hour long session of your favourite war-game. You might think its cheating, but pre-played miniatures are designed to randomly alternate between victory and defeat, giving you the full range of emotional outputs. They also give you that special head-ache you get after playing a game with too many special rules in it.

Kiss goodbye to space-occupying books full of hard-to-read rules. You don't have to learn a thing to get the most of out PPMs.

Gamers and collectors pushed for time, do not despair. This is straight-out-of-the box technology and the only effort you need exert is to open the packaging. Forget about pushing a disc into a game console. Forget about 'accessible' party games. The future of effortless gaming lies in pre-played miniature games, and you literally need not lift a finger to get the full spectrum of this megalithic consumer experience. Rock on!

Epic Battle Pics: Black-core legion triumph in the temple

Epic battle pics: Armoured spears versus Hoplites

How important is a well-written world in wargaming?

Mentor's Sigil: Wots this all about?

I'm sure you can guess from the title, dear reader, that I think good writing is highly important to my own experience of wargaming. That is why I posed the question! I am just going to be honest from the start and say it: I think good writing is very, very important. To me, and to many.

But maybe not to everyone. Some people do not care about the world-story behind a wargame; it matters not to them how Suphure Phoenaris lost his eye and gained that cool eye-patch! They just want a strategic experience and great models to push around the table; slick gaming mechanics and a whole load of fun. I do not wish to try and convert such people into 'fluffgamers'. Their reasons and priorities are as valid as anyone elses. However, I do wish to reveal the consequences of 'generic' wargames, and highlight the resonating depth of well-written worlds.

Lets start on a wargame without a world, something totally generic. I do not think this should be seen as a positive feature, just a neutral feature. 'Open' is a well-marketed way of saying 'blank page!' There is nothing wrong with being generic at all; some of my favourite games are totally generic. However, I think generic games should not market 'create your own world' as a big feature.

'Create your own world' is problematic for three simple reasons. i) writing is a skill in itself which requires time and patience; to do it well enough to be interesting is an arduous process ii) people bring pre-existing contexts to the table, creating a mish-mash world full of inconsistency iii) a blank page is not inspirational and it leaves us in existential confusion!

In terms of inspiring creativity, it is much better to give the players a context in which to play. This is much more effective then to expect them to create their own. A good world is closed enough to have boundaries and an equilibrium, but open enough to inspire players to interact with it. For example, a world populated by monastic orders of knights should give us some inspiring examples of these gallant warriors and their ways, but should not say 'you can't have knights with green shields and unicorns on their helmets - that is against the fluff man!' Such pedantry is the bane of inspired initiative!

In short, good writing in wargames is like fabric to be woven. A good world gives the player fabric, but leaves it open enough for them to spin patterns unique to them. The importance of the fabric, the shared context, is utterly essential. In a fantasy world for example, what magick is, what it can do, the limits and consequences of it, should be known by players in order to give them common ground. This kind of thing is incredibly important to those of us who want consistent worlds.

The best worlds take time, and their generation is an end in and of itself. The best authors are not in it for the dosh, because their work is a life-long project. The outcome of their creativity shines through. When you become familiar with a world, it enriches the plastic and pewter pieces immensely. You have something to fight for; a part to play in some epic, metaphysical struggle. It is an enchanting experience, for the power of the story-teller is as old as Man. This power captivates people, they want to be involved in the world because it gives them a sense of meaning - especially one which may be lacking in their own lives!

(Are you really just playing at being an troll warlord, or is the troll warlord closer to the real you, and your personality in the 'real-world' the actual fiction?)

I imagine that the best ideas and aesthetics generated themselves out of the cauldron of an author's world. Faction names, gods, characters: they generate themselves - the author just gives space to do so. Then there is the phenomena of meta-consistency which is beyond conscious thought. For instance, when creating names for characters belonging to a certain faction, once you start generating names they have a certain consistency which identifies them as belonging to that race or culture. For instance: Aerthur Cymbaelion and Suphure Phoenaris came out of some deep place inside me, linking them together with their weird vowels, and the almost 'crystal-like' aesthetic of the names. Very thematic, as they are heroes of the Aosaeril faction!

There is a very strong motive to spend real time on the writing. Good writing is essential to good art, and good art is essential to good miniatures. The problem I see with generic games is simple: what do you do if you want a miniature range, or fancy art done? How do you create a consistent miniature range which is recognisably in your style? A blank page cannot inspire great ideas, and in all likelihood you will create something which is, in reality, an amalgamation of former ideas. Nothing wrong with that, it just isn't going to create something unique. The awesomeness of a miniature created for a character, where the name meets the physical miniature at the pinnacle of artistic effort, is too great to be understated.

Is a well-written world essential to wargaming for you Mr. Mindstone? Transcendentally so.

WIP Rothians / Vikings

Finally, some mini-pics! These are my work-in-progress Rothians; a dark-age faction whose culture lies isolated to the harsh North-East of Goragaia. Rothians are big on shieldwalls, battle-axes and berserks - not so much on flexible battle-lines, tactics or subtlety!

These models are Gripping Beast vikings, and the cavalry are Conquest Games Norman Knights with viking heads. Those cavalry look great from any angle, like a rolling wave of charging steed! I can almost hear their Jarl crying 'Niflgard! Niflgard!' to the heavens.

Now, to start on all those hundreds of bases, argh!