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 ) 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

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