Another one to boost replies for compulsive posters

[FierceKitty]

Myself, I have very little interest in fantasy, but no real complaints about Jedi and goblin wannabes. I pray to Mars for their conversion, but that's another issue. There is, however, one thing which seems to me to be a wanton stagnation of the gin-clear waters of the chalk-stream that is wargaming: the "imagi-nations" game.

There are doubtless large double-shotted guns being aimed at me already, so let me give my reasons, if only so the gunners have targets:

i) The invented histories of these states of CharlesGrantia are without fail less amazing than the real ones that in our age are so easy to read up on. Why do people bother? Rupert of Henzau is Coronation Street next to the Pragmatic Sanction or the Wars of the Roses. Endless "Magnificent Samurai" skirmishes are downright tedious beside Operation Woodpecker. Is it just about being too lazy to look up the real thing? Prejudice that assumes that anything dressed in coats and wigs/tights and codpieces/tunics and turbans/Hollywood sandals is automatically stuffy and boring?

ii) There's often no way of checking if the rules one is using mean anything. In wargames based in reality, if skirmishers in good going regularly face and beat good charging cavalry, there are chapter and verse instances making it clear that rewrites are called for.

iii) These games often parasitise on real figure ranges by concentrating on the exceptional, so there are armies where every footsoldier is a grenadier, every horseman a cuirassier, and even the emergency levies are fanatics.

OK, throw your glove down, whoever wishes.

[Steve J]

I have an Imagi-Nations setting planned which should start to bear fruit soon. Why? Well really a chance for me to use a mix of figures I like and to give greater scope (IMHO) to my games than a historical setting could. Others are more than welcome to disagree with my approach.

As for your points ii & iii, mine will certainly not be going down that route I can assure you!

[Leman]

It's not something I do myself - there's so much rich history out there. However, I am involved in a friend's mid-C19th imagi-nations campaign and he, at least, has the background knowledge to field many rubbish troops in these armies. His version of Prussians are nowhere near as efficient as their historical counterparts.

[fsn]

Why Imagi-Nation?

Firstly they do, as Friend J states, allows one to mix units that otherwise would not be able to fight.

My 1920's in the Desert allows me to pit hard-bitten French Foreign Legion against doughty topee wearing English yeoman whilst circling are the patient Bedouin.  Did it ever happen? Nah. But I grew up reading Beau Geste and stories of the Empire between the wars. Those grainy photos and the stirring tales from the Victor comic have been an undercurrent, a low thrummed theme which resonates even now. It no worse than AVBCW or those Far Easten adventures. In some ways it in cinematic. In fact, I can imagine my FFL being led by Basil Rathbone with a sneering German accent, my Brits by John Guilguid suppoirted by plucky Richard Attenborough, whilst that renowned Arab, Laurence Olivier plots in his tent. At one point I did consider painting all these figures in greys to get that cinematic effect but a) I'd need to do all the scenary too and b) I ain't that good. I've also got the same place being battled over in 1960.

My third Imagination in from 1705. Two small states bickering a snapping at each other. Why? Well, I like the warfare of the early C18, but I don't love it. The wars of Marlborough's day seem to have a lot of coalitions and principalities and dragoons in bedsheets and whatever. It's too much. I'm not prepared to invest in the large number of figures that the WSS deserves. I'd much rather devote my time to Napoleon, but I can have as much fun with a couple of little armies. There is the element of containment. I can't adequately mimic Blenheim, but I can model both the North Pendrakenland and South Pendrakenland forces perfectly well. (OK, that bit probably lack a little iamgination.)

I have drawn a map for these two. They sit somewhere in the North Sea on an island somewhat like a cold water Hispaniola. They are influenced by the Swedes and the French and are wealthy because of their strategic position, herring and a thriving market in C18 aphrodisiacs. I have designed uniforms, flags and street plans. I've created histories woven in to the history of the time, and I created armies that are balanced but different.  You know what? Using that amount of imagination is fun.

I suspect some peple may also use imaginations as a defence against the nit-picker. "On that Tuesday the standard bearer for the 3rd Grenadier Zu Pferde de Lorraine was left handed and yours is right handed so your entire army is invalid." It's one of the reasons I stopped going to games clubs. They banned me because I kept pointing out the innacuracies in others' forces.

Yes, I value true historical gaming. I can tell you the facing colours of most of the infantry regiments of the British army in 1812. I can describe the evolution of German tanks from the Pz I to the King Tiger. I can even describe the composition and method of fighting of a Republican Roman legion, and the effect of the reforms of Marius.

Sometimes though, it's good to set oneself free of the shackles. People are attracted to SF and fantasy because there isn't a right or wrong - whatever Games Workshop may say. If you want to paint wood elves in pink and yellow, then in your world, wood elves wear pink and yellow* and no-one can tell you otherwise.  If you want to have set yourself up a contained campaign using some made up forces, that is Jake with me.

After all. It's meant to be fun, isn't it?


*To be fair, it's more a pale russet and a sort of orangey yellow that the deciduous wood elves wear in Autumn (Fall to the US subscribers.) Their numbers have been much depleted by their habit of going naked in recent very cold winters. They are much laughed at by the Coniferous Wood Elves.  

[Chad]

FSN

+1 

[Wulf]

While I haven't joined in the Imagi-Nations idea, my reason would be that I just don't care about the history...

For instance, I love the rules and flow of play of Sharp Practice, but I have virtually zero interest in the Napoleonic period... I don't care if they're Austrians or Venusians. But having a bit of back story makes a campaign easier to organise.

[Leman]

No interest in history - Christ!   

[FierceKitty]

No interest in history - Christ!  

Well, He's omniscient, so history is probably rather dull for him (and He got into trouble when he did try it).

[Leman]

I forgot about this one. I once tried a Maurice imagi-nations campaign, set in the period of the SYW. I came up with a jolly little state called the Grand Margravate of Leftitz. the troops were pretty ho-hum, but dedicated to their Grand Margrave. I asked my opponent what he was going to call his nation. "Prussia" he replied. Two games later the campaign ended.  

[Westmarcher]

No interest in history - Christ!  

indeed!

Anyhoo. I largely agree with FK (but not so sure about the Mars issue). I have absolutely no interest in the histories of fictitious nations often featured in various imagi-nations blogs. Real history's hard enough without adding fictitious 'histories' (I've started reading Antonia Fraser's Cromwell and at page 6 I was already thinking of 'skipping ahead'). And it is just as interesting, if not more so, because it actually happened (e.g., the real story of William Wallace and Robert The Bruce vs. Braveheart being a case in point). I also have enough bothers painting up real historical armies without adding fictitious ones!

However, as an 'outsider' I can see some of the attractions set out by exponents like Nobby. It also seems to me that even imagi-nations have certain reality based conventions which I could find attractive i.e., they follow the costume and level of technology, and to a certain extent the political and social conditions, of an actual historical era. So I could see myself getting involved in such nonsense as conflict within or between pseudo 19th Century Prisoner of Zenda / The Great Race nations, 17th or 18th Century fairy tale principalities (inspired by real Holy Roman Empire type states, of course) or small Dark Age kingdoms 'long forgotten about' in a post Roman Britain. And lets face it, of all the battles we 'real history' players fight, how many are actually historical re-fights? Imagi-nations therefore appears to me to be just another step further in our inventiveness for getting the wee men on the table and having fun. Its maybe just not my kind of fun.      

[FierceKitty]

   (Prussians vs goblins)

[Westmarcher]

I forgot about this one. I once tried a Maurice imagi-nations campaign, set in the period of the SYW. I came up with a jolly little state called the Grand Margravate of Leftitz. the troops were pretty ho-hum, but dedicated to their Grand Margrave. I asked my opponent what he was going to call his nation. "Prussia" he replied. Two games later the campaign ended.  

[Chad]

Does it really matter as long as you enjoy the game ( game being the operative word)?

Even Pendraken produce items for imagination games. What is a KV-5 other than imaginary tank that never left the drawing board, was cancelled 4 years before the end of the war and never saw action?

I would go so far as to suggest that the mass of rules on Napoleonic wargaming and other periods, all supposedly offering the idea of something different (or more realistic!?), border on such games becoming imagination games.

Wargaming is just that, a game! Enjoy whatever YOU want to do in whatever way YOU  want to do it. It will not be to everyone's taste but who gives a damn.

[Wulf]

No interest in history - Christ!   

No interest in those nations. I care about 20th Century & more recent, I care about ancients, but the middle bit... meh. 

[Leman]

Re. West marcher's comment on post-Roman Britain. That is sort of imagination anyway as we know so little about it. I would even suggest that 'real imagi-nation' in this period is probably more like fantasy - Merlin really is a magician/wizard, there really were giants, wee people, dragons et al. Still not my cup of tea (yet). Saxon/Pictish/Irish hordes flowing across the cultivated lands of the Britons is monstrous enough at the moment.