Gentlemen,
Whilst drooling over the Pendraken website (it's how I get to sleep at night) I slipped into the Post War and Modern range. I stroked through the Falklands British and caressed the Argentine listings. However, there was something niggling, something not quite right, and this set me to thinking.
WarGAMING is about recreating in miniature man's worst invention (after X-factor and the colour taupe) for pleasure, and we, as practitioners must unconsciously have some mechanism about what we will and won't recreate. For example, I couldn't see a public participation game entitled "Escape from Dachau" being too popular, but "Escape from Andersonville" would be do-able, and "Escape from Stalag 17" would be a laugh.
We've all played the Viking raiders scenario, with objectives like "get a cow back to the longship 5points", "kill a priest 10 points", "steal a barrel of ale 3 points", but would we include "**** a Saxon maiden 2 points"? Odd that the murder of a cleric is heavily encouraged, but ****? Similarly, do your rampaging Soviets get extra victory points for gang **** in Prussia? (Please note: I can discuss disemboweling here, but r*pe is censored.)
So, where do we draw the line? Do we have different lines?
My pondering has led me to some consideration about how my lines are drawn:
Distance: This is distance in time, as well as space. I won't wargame Afghanistan or Iraq. It's too new. It's in the news. I'm OK with Korea (in fact when Pendraken put a Centurion on the market, I will be a happy bunny), and I'm quite happy with Viet Nam. However, I balk at the Falklands. I have several books on the subject, but a few years ago on a whim I bought some 20mm Falklands figures and they remained unpainted until the day I binned them. Now, looking at the Pendraken list I feel a pull, but I'm still a little uncomfortable.
Taste: We won't play "Escape from Dachau" because of the political overtones. Concentration camps weren't warfare, they were murder units. Stalag 17 is fair game because it's PoW's, it's a facet of warfare. Andersonville falls between the two. Similarly, I am reluctant to include flame throwers in my armies, and how many of us would drop Napalm deliberately on a Vietnamese village?
Reality: Whereas I eschew wargaming Afghanistan, I had in the 1980's a mixed force of Skytrex Chieftans, Centurions and FV432's that faced off against T72's and BMP1s. It was the Cold War and there was an interest in seeing whether or not a Soviet invasion could be beaten back. I could be persuaded to create an up to date North Korean army, but should war break out on that unfortunate land, I would not cheer to see if my rules for the P'okpung-Ho MBT are accurate.
I realise I'm a bit soft in some ways. A flash of a red coat and a tricorne in November will fill me up and I'll be fit for nothing. Am I alone? Are the rest of you all painting up your stripey uniformed inmates, and adding a +2 victory condition to your Viking scenario?
I hope not.
You're true.
There's definitively a line, but I don't know where it lies.
for example :
- in the boardgame "Ici c'est la France" ( http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/29379/ici-cest-la-france-the-algerian-war-of-independenc (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/29379/ici-cest-la-france-the-algerian-war-of-independenc) ) the French player may use torture.. I was always uncomfortable with that, although it was true.
- in a role playing game, ( based on "behind the ennemy lines") we were playing russians soldiers in 1941. We had to kill a prisoner to escape. Difficult choice.. But as Knight I can kill every body who's against my law.
You raised an interesting point !
widening it a bit further as a re-enactor I had similar thoughts....when is it too close to now to re-enact a period.
its okay for someone to represent a roman legionary but not the SS soldier both have less than a clean cut image. is it only down to time as you mentioned? or is it something deeper.
an interesting conundrum
As a reenactor of the past I think I would have found it difficult to reenact a period that people still remember as real life
Quote from: Fenton on 01 May 2013, 08:34:20 PM
As a reenactor of the past I think I would have found it difficult to reenact a period that people still remember as real life
This subject came up in one either WI or MW years ago, and someone in a letter said something similar as a wargamer - he didn't like the idea of wargaming any conflict in living memory.
I think everyone has different lines, but I don't think that's a particular problem, as long as we all respect each other's lines (which basically comes down to "don't be a dick"). My old club has a member who was on a ship during the Falklands War, and he wouldn't play Falklands games. Some other members did, and he had no issue with that, but he wouldn't play. It was notable that they asked how he felt about it before they bought the figures - I suspect they wouldn't have bought the figures if he'd had a problem with the games being played while he was around.
I couldn't imagine painting up a Mastiff whilst listening to the news yesterday.
I am still twitchy about the Falklands, but have no compunction about Viet Nam or the 1973 Arab Israeli War, both of which I remember vividly. Somewhere I have a scrap book full of clippings collected in 1973. Possibly because in the public consciousness Viet Nam is now a Holywood setting. We don't refight Viet Nam, we refight Apocalypse Now (who has "Ride of the Valkyries" on their Slicks?) or Hamburger Hill or Platoon.
The 1973 conflict was basically a military operation, and a long way away. I don't know anyone who was affected by this war, so it seems more arms length than the Falklands or Afghanisatn. Having said that I don't think I'd feel so comfortable with Lebanon 1982 or the Intifadah.
It's not jsut time. I'd not be happy with besieging a Cathar town so I could "kill all of them and let God decide", nor would Wounded Knee be, I would suggest, a popular scenario - unless I could rearm the Lakota with M16's and M60's.
I don't think it's a rational line we draw. I also think it's one we review and change constantly.
I've read too much history to be able to ignore the horrors of earlier periods. I can't pretend that distance excuses the treatment of Boer women in British concentration camps or that it was OK for Alexander to do things that we blame Hitler for. Pain was just as real five thousand years ago.
And, like many wargamers I know, I'm a pacifist.
I refer this thread to this previous thread http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,70.0.html (http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,70.0.html)
:)
At one time the club I was a member of wouldn't play anything that was within living memory. So that meant no WWI, WWII, Korea etc (the Falklands was going on at that time!). The current club I game with doesn't really have a great deal of interest in anything after WWII.
Personally, I was a bit uncomfortable when FOW released Partisans and Polizie (mainly due to a having a couple of partisans in the family!!) and the Warsaw Uprising stuff (I thought they went a bit too far with that one).
Quote from: fsn on 02 May 2013, 06:25:40 AM
(...) I don't know anyone who was affected by this war (...)
Part of my family suffered (and acted) during WW2, but I can play ( and I like) wargames from this era.
Fsn is right : it's not rational.
And I agree too with Fk :
Quote from: FierceKitty on 02 May 2013, 06:42:29 AM
And, like many wargamers I know, I'm a pacifist.
May be we learn/read about the horrors ?
As much as it comes to personal taste I would not game anything a clubmember has such a bad feeling about. Imagine you are playing the SS Division defending Arnhem and the guy next table lost relatives (on either side) there.
I would expect from a buddy to inform me of stepping over a line and in return would also expect my buddies not to step over my line. Gaming supposedly is about fun and simulation. Last year, iIrc, we had a thread about some company doing miniatures of football hooligans. Being German AND my father being in the police I really cannot apreciate such a topic. I can imagine we all have preferences and borders. Which means I certainly would not game the annihilation of the German 6th army in Stalingrad (my granddad missed that one by pure chance and a bad tooth - literally), hooligans (Daniel Nivel comes to mind).
I do not have a problem with "Fall Gelb/Red" or D-Day although rlatives faught there and I would not think bad of someone playing X because I dislike / distaste it. We are all old enough to speak, reasonably, with others.
I think what we draw from this is that we all seem to have self-constraints. It was interesting to hear from sebigboss79, as it puts another slant on the discussion. As a Brit, I feel a great distance from the Eastern Front. Somehow, T34's are less "real" to me than Churchills - perhaps a better way of putting it is that I have less of a cultural and national connection to Russians. I am more detached about their use on a wargames table.
We also draw a distinction between "war" and "activities that happen during wartime". I give you again the example of Dachau as being totally unsuited to gaming, but so would be the barbarities of Spanish Guerillas in the Peninsula.
War is in some ways the ultimate human activity. It is fascinating and terrible. We study it and we play with it, but I think most wargamers are essentially anti-war.
Interesting notion there.
I have indeed encountered a few gamers that were a bit too fascinated by the "action" of warfare. Except for one they got cured through compulsory military service. That remaining one was enjoying himself on a "study holiday" in Iran/ Iraq in 2001/2002. Still fascinated by the "action" we deliberately showed him pictures and TV footage of the places he visited AFTER some armoured divisions of Republican Guard/ US Army went through.
As fsn put it we may be attached to some scenarios in a particular fashion but I think we can agree that no one of us would like ANY kind of scenario to happen while we take part in it. Strangely though I do concur with "the measured application of force" as Heinlein put it in many respects.
It might be a good yardstick in such cases to ask "Could I forgive this application of force ten years later if it were used against my own people?" But we're drifting away from the topic, I suppose.
I came back from 1st Gulf War in which the unit I was with lost 2 men to enemy action so imagine when I get home on leave straight after to find 2 members of the club I was with taking about Wargaming it to say I was not impressed would be un understatment the majority of the club where also not to impressed
Martin
I tend to steer clear of things in my living memory, so I'm not going to be playing the Falklands - I was in the RAF myself at the time and knew some guys who were there. That said I was happy to wargame the 6 Day War in the past and that was also in my lifetime! :-/
Unlike fsn, I find I am more drawn to the British in WW2, having "less of a cultural and national connection to Russians" seems to make me less interested in gaming them! :-\
An uncle in the Lancashire Fusiliers was captured at Dunkirk, but I'm more than happy to play 1940 games, other relatives served in Italy and later in Korea and I play both of them as well. Having the personal connection is what attracts me to the period/campaign.
As it seems with many others of you, there are so things I would steer clear of, as being in bad taste for a game. I did play in one game where one player was the Gestapo in France, but that was very "Allo, Allo" in style, so it didn't feel so bad.
I did know one guy who wanted to game insurgents in Iraq a couple of years back, which I objected to strongly. On the other hand I know a couple of squaddies who were painting Brits and Iraqis as soon as they were home from a tour, I guess it's a case of personal taste.
Related to this discussion, I've just put up a blog post defending wargamers and wargaming. It was prompted by someone commenting on a friend's Facebook page that they were a bit leery of historical wargames because real people died in real battles;
http://russellphillips.wordpress.com/2013/05/16/in-defence-of-wargamers/
I think the general public hold a lot of misconceptions about wargamers. Hopefully this will make a few realise that we're not a bunch of warmongering idiots.
Very well put, Russell. Agree totally.
Quote from: Russell Phillips on 16 May 2013, 08:01:12 AM
Hopefully this will make a few realise that we're not a bunch of warmongering idiots.
.. and any that disagree should be PUT TO THE SWORD!!!
If I might bring up a point here, which I hope folk won't feel is tasteless....It's meant as a serious question that I was discussing with Mart 'the vehicle' (Mart 678) a few days ago regarding wounded/dead figures.
A 'pose' that I was almost dreading to be asked to make for the Falkland's range was a wounded figure.....Or figures. (I wasn't anyway, so the 'problem' never arose.)
I'm sure it won't just be myself that would feel a casualty from a conflict of recent times just wouldn't be right to have portrayed as a model on a tabletop....To me it would be 'tasteless/offensive'.....But that's just my very personal point of view.
But then I realized that I had absolutely NO problem at all converting some dead/casualty figures from the 19th (?) Century......I didn't have any qualms about doing those at all ! :-\
Then I followed that with the thought that I wouldn't feel in the slightest bit guilty with doing 'the bad guys' from even more recent conflicts....But only them !!..NOT the good guys !!..... :-\ Very strange, or is it because I feel 'the bad guys' (In my opinion) deserve what they get.
What do other members feel is 'the cut off point' for having wounded models on the table ?.....Maybe you don't like using them ....full stop !!....
Cheers - Phil.
I don't use wounded figures at all on the table top. I just don't like the look of it, much prefering small die to record casualties.
I only a injured/dead figure on the odd diorama style bases
Quote from: Techno on 19 May 2013, 07:59:29 AM
To me it would be 'tasteless/offensive'.....But that's just my very personal point of view.
Fair enough but i think i'd look to the dying Gaul as the model for why wounded/dying figures aren't a problem.
(https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTWBuWyd7Ez0NsSs97uetKJ6Avfm3Sw5yr37Ft3pHSOlZjgA2zWsw)
It, and by association they, represent the nobility of personal sacrifice in the most ignoble thing we do as humans - war.
Quote
But then I realized that I had absolutely NO problem at all converting some dead/casualty figures from the 19th (?) Century......I didn't have any qualms about doing those at all ! :-\
We forgive as we forget?
As to Russell's 'In defence' article, i understand the sentiment. For me however, its slightly pious and condescending to wargamers i think. For me, i think wargaming is just like every other form of civilian engagement with war (movies, books, documentaries, etc.) - in that its almost entirely disassociated. When i'm playing a WWII scenario, for me there's no solemnity, or 'honouring the fallen', or whatever. Its an interesting and fun pastime that allows me to engage in artistic creation (modelling/painting), male social interaction (through a cipher), and intellectual exercise in strategy/tactics.
I can understand the need to defend the hobby against detractors, but i think its as separate from actual war as anything else.
I do think however, that historical wargamers probably
know a lot more about war than the average person as we conduct pseudo-academic studies in constructing our armies, games, battles, etc. But most wargamers haven't served so don't really
understand the military and conflict any more than other civilians.
OT
For me personally, i can't think of much that's 'off limits' for the table top.
Quote from: Steve J on 19 May 2013, 08:25:09 AM
I don't use wounded figures at all on the table top. I just don't like the look of it, much prefering small die to record casualties.
Hear, hear!
I have enough to do painting living/unwounded figures without the added burden of casualties.
However, I can conceive of scenarios when the wounded become an integral part. One often reads of withdrawing units taking their casualties with them, or rescuing them. In Viet Nam the recovery of bodies was of great importance.
Generally however, I don't use casualty figures. They just make my table untidy. I know that's "unrealistic", but I agin' 'em.
Quote from: Techno on 19 May 2013, 07:59:29 AM
But then I realized that I had absolutely NO problem at all converting some dead/casualty figures from the 19th (?) Century......I didn't have any qualms about doing those at all ! :-\
Yes its a strange way we think.
Its perfectly ok to display an egyptiam mummy in a museum, or desecrate a grave from the middle ages, keep the bones of warriors in a lab for examination into the wounds suffered and how they died.
But iits not ok to exhume the bones of a WW1 soldier and keep him in the lab to see what wounds he suffered and how he died or display body parts in a museam - Look at all the controversy with Damian Hirst.
We are fickle creatures.
Quote from: Just a few Orcs on 19 May 2013, 09:42:48 PM
But iits not ok to exhume the bones of a WW1 soldier and keep him in the lab to see what wounds he suffered and how he died or display body parts in a museam - Look at all the controversy with Damian Hirst.
You can get away with anything in the name of "art". Biggest confidence trick in human history. At least, the modern version is. Tracy Ermin's unmade bed? You're having a laugh! >:( >:( >:(
Quote from: Hertsblue on 20 May 2013, 08:27:26 AM
You can get away with anything in the name of "art"(...)
I think it's the same subject as our thread. ;)
"Where's the red line ?"
Quote from: Luddite on 19 May 2013, 09:39:24 AMAs to Russell's 'In defence' article, i understand the sentiment. For me however, its slightly pious and condescending to wargamers i think.
I'm sorry you found it condescending, that certainly wasn't my intention.
Quote from: Luddite on 19 May 2013, 09:39:24 AMI do think however, that historical wargamers probably know a lot more about war than the average person as we conduct pseudo-academic studies in constructing our armies, games, battles, etc. But most wargamers haven't served so don't really understand the military and conflict any more than other civilians.
I tend to agree, though I think we may disagree on details. I think the general public (or at least the media) sometimes forget that war leads to deaths. I think wargamers are less prone to forgetting that.
I guess the 'red line' here is death and the many and varied ways war has of bringing this about.
We live (in the UK) in a peculiar country where Christianity has given us a very twisted relationship to the dead. Even those of us who've gone through the loss of a loved one, the relation to death and the funerary practices is oddly disassociated. Our loved and lost are taken from us and handled by proxies (the government, the church, the funeral directors, etc.)
I think this and particularly the poisonous religious aspects make this subject in general a very difficult one.
To divert slightly, in a previous career I was an archaeologist with a special interest in Anglo-Saxon 'burials'. In most cases we're excavating the remains ahead of construction work that will destroy the site. I've had some particularly tetchy debates with Christians demanding all sorts for the excavation and treatment of the remains of pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon bones and grave goods, and I've been abused and on one occasion physically attacked by these people. I find it particularly odd coming from these, what shall I say, people (I wanted to say religious nutters) given the Christian practice of inhumation clearances from graveyards into an ossuary – something I've seen done with considerably less care than that taken during archaeological excavations. This is further complicated when we know that pre-Christian societies (and possibly early Anglo-Saxons) lived with the bones and relics of their dead in their dwellings in what is likely to have been a far more emotionally healthy way than we do today.
The point I'm crudely trying to make is that our individual and cultural attitudes towards death are oddly problematic.
Translate that over into wargaming and I think it adds the further complication of our cultural disassociation and disengagement with the reality of warfare. We live in a culture that sends our young men to fight, kill and die on foreign soil, but our media replaces images of the results with the 'burned out car'.
For me, wargaming has almost nothing to do with warfare and any attempt to link the two is largely false. For me wargaming the 101st Airbourne's attack on Foy isn't linked in any meaningful way to the actual event, and I find a suggestion to the contrary baffling. Pushing toy soldiers around a table has nothing to do with the sacrifices and traumas that real soldiers throughout history have faced.
To borrow a well-worn phrase; 'war is hell'.
Wargaming isn't (although a string of '1's' can make it seem like it!).
Wargaming is a fun pastime where we can indulge our creativity, socialise with like-minded chaps, and play games of strategy and tactics. I've never once thought while advancing the Triari to plug the gap punched through my lines by a band of Gauls, 'how dreadful; this is such an homage to the suffering of these men. I must roll these dice in the solemnity their sacrifices deserve'. I'll be so bold as to suggest – neither have you.
So...where's the 'red line'?
There isn't one; or at least not a rational one. Lets take a traditionally contentious scenario: The Escape from Sobibor.
Would you wargame the breakout of Jewish prisoners from a Nazi Deathcamp? Probably not, but why not? It'd have some really interesting challenges.
OK, what about The Escape from Colditz?
Would you wargame the breakout of a bunch of jolly good British chaps from a Nazi POW camp?
I'll venture there are a fair few here who already have.
It's the same tactical scenario though, and I bet if I wrote it up as a sci-fi Firefly 'Escape from Robibos', with a group of Browncoats breaking out of an Alliance prison you wouldn't even question it.
For me, this is wargaming and any interesting tactical challenge is on the cards. While researching a historical period or scenario, I may be given pause to consider the realities of what I'm reading, but ultimately when it hits the gaming table, its just a game.
It doesn't detract from, or honour the reality of the suffering and sacrifices of Varro's lost men, or the chaps left face down at Dunkirk, or the Brits/Argentinians killed on an icy windswept rock in the South Atlantic, or the Flower of French Nobility cut down at Crecy and Agincourt.
So why would there ever be a 'red line'?
EDIT: Just checked the 'latest posts'
[General Discussion] Re: ... but I won't do that! by Luddite Today at 11:45:08 AM
[Firelocks to Maxims (1680 - 1900)] Re: Inniskillings etc at the Boyne by Alan Today at 11:35:54 AM
[Photos] Re: SYW Piccy request by clibinarium Today at 10:56:36 AM
Given the devastation wrought on Ireland as a result, can you think of a more 'inappropriate' or contentious conflict to wargame? Yet who here would or has would questioned it?
If this isn't a 'red line', what is!! ;)
:-\ :-bd
To bad we do not have one for applause.
Luddite, in my eyes correctly, re-emphasises that in the end it is a personal "red line" and none that can be with 100 % accuracy be described.
Nonetheless it should be understood that no one should deliberately cross someone elses red line(s). On this forum I have little doubt that we are all mature enough to respect that and any transgression is not coming in bad spirit.
I game for "fun" and it stands to reason that some non-wargamers would consider me "twisted" getting fun out of war. Yet I must add I am not having any kind of fun when even watching a documentary about some long gone battle. War and violent death it incorporates are something that -on the scale involved- is nothing I desire anyone to experience. That does not mean I am entirely non-violent but I think you are getting my drift.
=D> (= D > no spaces)
I tend to play Films or Books; not history.
Quote from: sebigboss79 on 20 May 2013, 11:06:27 AM
Nonetheless it should be understood that no one should deliberately cross someone elses red line(s). On this forum I have little doubt that we are all mature enough to respect that and any transgression is not coming in bad spirit.
Absolutely!
I certainly understand why people might have personal red lines.
Our club has ex-servicemen and they certainly get a bit vocal about 'modern' stuff, so when (as this coming week) we put on something like a Force on Force bash, we generally refer at the table to 'western forces', and 'insurgents', rather than something more accurate.
War is hell.
Wargaming is fun.
Anything that confuses the two is best left at the forum door i say.
:D
I've just read through this thread... I've just started painting my LOA British British Irish forces with French allies and my LOA British Dutch British forces with Danish mercenaries and French allies. Which ones are over the line and which ones are okay? Is there an order for me to sling them in the bin? ;)
Frankly, I can't wait for people to do modern (well 20 years ago) Balkans. A bad career choice let me spend some time there and I can point out which bits are painted wrong!
It was the historical study around wargaming that kept me from ever joining the services. the way troops were used for diversions, last stands, no chance assaults. made me wary of allowing myself to be under military orders. although i have very many friends and relatives who have served in war zones, i have never and would never ask them about their experiances to use in a wargame .could that be my red line?
Quote from: Alan on 20 May 2013, 09:07:02 PM
Which ones are over the line and which ones are okay? Is there an order for me to sling them in the bin? ;)
;) ;D
I think if anything this thread has proved something that we probably all already knew.
We all have differing 'lines' which we feel at least uncomfortable with if they happen to be crossed.....But also respect that others' views are just as relevant to our own.
Very good and interesting points from everyone !
Cheers - Phil.
Quote from: Techno on 21 May 2013, 07:01:07 AMI think if anything this thread has proved something that we probably all already knew.
We all have differing 'lines' which we feel at least uncomfortable with if they happen to be crossed.....But also respect that others' views are just as relevant to our own.
Exactly. I find it interesting to see where different people draw the line, though, and why.
I find precisely the same thing Russel. ;) ;D
To the extent where I'll ask myself (for example) "Why do I find 'A' funny/witty/hilarious and 'B' ......in very bad taste."
Especially when A & B aren't, in truth, SO far apart.
Very odd ! ;)
Cheers - Phil.