Beyond the Pale?

[Leon]

Essentially though, any game is based on events where people died.  The only issue I could see would be with current conflicts, or where the gamer has some personal connection to the game being played.  So maybe as you say, those feelings fade over time and we are able to see it from a more disconnected perspective?

[Paint it Pink]

Men are not so much bothered by what happens, but what they believe about what happens, to paraphrase a Greek philosopher whose name escapes me at this time.

[Last Hussar]

I definately wouldn't do the current ones.  I'd also feel uncomfortable with the Falklands.  Oddly I am mostly ok with WW2, though my home brew Battle of Britain can give me a pause and question myself.

[Jase]

Interesting discussion, and curiously one I had with a couple of friends not too long ago. I asked them more or less the same question, but also asked them why they are perfectly OK with gaming scifi settings with much worse atrocities than anything that has happened yet in our own history (40K anyone?). Their main argument was that those scifi and fantasy games are clearly just that, fantasies and thus misses the essential historical component to make them 'real'. Some of them had no problem with gaming anything up to and including the Modern Era (including Iraq and Afghanistan), but others don't like the fact that they would be using IED as some of our own countrymen have died as a result of those.

Personally, I think that as long as you can make a clear distinction between the game and the ideals of some of the factions you are gaming with everything should be fine. I'm painting up some Taliban for Ambush Alley games, but I see them as gaming pieces not as little tin manifestations of my approving the Taliban.

Are there things I wouldn't game? Probably, but not because I feel it's morally inappropriate, more likely because the period does not appeal to me.

Just my two cents.

Cheers
Jase

[Ben Waterhouse]

Didn't Don Featherstone or one of those Old Greats refuse to wargame flamethrowers for moral reasons?

[Paint it Pink]

Flamethrowers, pretty toasty. Again, unless I'm mistaken this is a game of people dieing in warfare. Dead is dead whatever the means.

[Ben Waterhouse]

Flamethrowers, pretty toasty. Again, unless I'm mistaken this is a game of people dieing in warfare. Dead is dead whatever the means.

Oh agree with you Big Cat, just thought it interesting that this has been debated for decades.

[kustenjaeger]

Greetings

I think I would theoretically be prepared to game any war but would draw the line at some things - I've had acquaintances and relations who were in some pretty unpleasant situations over the years (sniped in Belfast, terrorist attack on a farm in Zimabwe) and I wouldn't play those as it's too close for personal comfort. 

Also there are some types of scenario I won't play e.g. I'll happily play 1940 Blitzkrieg games but wouldn't include air attacks on refugees - they would take place 'off table'; the same is true of almost any targeting of/collateral damage to civilians - it's an undeniable feature of war but not one I will put in a game except where the potential for civilian casualties is acting as a brake on players' actions. 

Regards

Edward

[redrevuk]

Hi All

I share the general unease with gaming current conflicts, mainly because gaming is for fun and war isn't, and I feel that to game a conflict which is currently underway threatens to trivialize it. The only exception would be a proper simulation whose aim was to understand a particular tactical or strategic problem, but the reality is that this isn't the main reason why I game (although it is one of them), and most of the rulesets I use are not realistic enough to count as "simulations".

I think for me the issue is one of abstraction. The further away a conflict is in time, the easier it is to see past the human mess of it all to what really interests me, which is the mechanics of combat, the interaction of different systems of weaponry, tactics and military structures and cultures. The truth is that many of our games are actually quite abstract in that sense because we self-censor. Most wargames tables, for instance, are civilian-free, which is not the case in most wars. At our club we play quite a lot of AK47 Republic, but there are never any civilians on-table, which I know perfectly well is not the case in African wars. The fact is, we aren't gaming the conflict in all its aspects, but just in some. I think you need a certain amount of distance to make that abstraction possible without appearing insensitive to the mess and suffering which wars involve. It's harder to justify ignoring it when it's in your face, at least for me.

Regards

[Luddite]

The further away a conflict is in time, the easier it is to see past the human mess of it all

Why?

[redrevuk]

The further away a conflict is in time, the easier it is to see past the human mess of it all

Why?

Good question. Not sure....

Perhaps because there is less at stake for me ethically and emotionally. The stock response of liberal western culture to the suffering and pain of others is compassion (at least, that's what we're encouraged to aspire to), which requires a degree of emotional investment and sense of ethical involvement. This can lead to feeling conflicted about conflict, especially if we have an active stake in it. I think this is what lies behind a lot of the "not in my name" rhetoric which surrounded the Iraq war - people felt bad about the idea of unpleasant things happening to people they were seeing on their TV screens, and weren’t anonymous or faceless. Certainly it's difficult to have an objective, rational conversation with people about any conflict which is currently underway, because the empathy with those suffering is so strongly embedded in our culture. For me to game a current conflict is to declare an interest in it â€" which is to say I get something out of it, namely the fun of gaming it â€" and that involves me ethically in a way I find troubling.

I think a war which is safely in the past doesn't confront us with the reality of suffering in such an immediate way and doesn’t imply the same ethical stake, partly because the thing is over, the main interests have been at least partially resolved, and I am not implicated in the suffering involved because my interest and the suffering itself does not coincide. Hence, if I were to game the current  Afghan conflict I would feel ethically accountable in a way I don’t when gaming the First or Second Afghan War â€" and the more remote from me the conflict is, the less ethically involved I am because the gap between the interests involved in the conflict and mine is bigger. That's not to say that one doesn't feel empathy or sympathy - WW1 has always fascinated me partly because of that, as does the Congo in the 1960s. For me, part of the draw of military history is what it reveals about the extremes - both heroic and despicable - of what human beings are capable of. But the empathy is just that bit more generalized and detached, and confuses some of the other issues (like tactics innovations and challenges) less.

Sorry if that went on at length, but it was a challenging question which I will go on thinking about!

[Paint it Pink]

(snippety snip)I think for me the issue is one of abstraction. The further away a conflict is in time, the easier it is to see past the human mess of it all to what really interests me, which is the mechanics of combat, the interaction of different systems of weaponry, tactics and military structures and cultures. The truth is that many of our games are actually quite abstract in that sense because we self-censor. Most wargames tables, for instance, are civilian-free, which is not the case in most wars. At our club we play quite a lot of AK47 Republic, but there are never any civilians on-table, which I know perfectly well is not the case in African wars. The fact is, we aren't gaming the conflict in all its aspects, but just in some. I think you need a certain amount of distance to make that abstraction possible without appearing insensitive to the mess and suffering which wars involve. It's harder to justify ignoring it when it's in your face, at least for me.

Well, when I start playing AK47R at home, it will be set in Somalia and it will have civilians too. While the scenario won't necessarily ask players to shoot civilians, the civilians will respond to how the militia and Western intervention force acts, and can start to riot, end up looting and killing each other. I rather like games where the players get put into dilemmas that they have to solve as best they can, it teaches us about the realities of life.

[huascar]

It's a game! For the same reason I don't feel a need to question my morals when I send some to jail in monopoly or kill my opponents pawns in chess, I would not consider any period as ‘beyond the pale’.

Apologies if this seems dismissive, but I really think it is that simple.  I am more interested in why miniature wargamers seems to spend so much time agonising over this issue, when the general population consumes so much violence through computer games, TV and movies with nary a second thought?   When was the last time you heard a hex & chit wargamer raise moral questions? As a community we seem strangely sensitive to this issue (particularly since no one outside the hobby ever seems to raise it).

Peter W 

[Ben Waterhouse]

Still, Elizabeth's Irish wars are always beyond the pale....

[Jase]

Elizabeth's Irish Wars? What so tricky about them then? Never heard of them (in that terminology at least).

I have to agree with huascar. A game is a game is a game to paraphrase Gertrude Stein.