Grognards Wanted

Welcome wargamers.

If you can spare a few moments of your time, I’d like to request your help in learning more about the thought processes behind your passion for wargaming.

The first thing that I want to make clear here is the term Grognard. Grognards are wargamers. Grognards are not, by definition, roleplayers.

The term ‘grognard’ was first coined back in the early 1970′s by John Young. He was, at that time, an employee for [the board] wargame publisher SPI, and the use of the term around the office (and among the local play testers) soon led to ‘grognards’ being mentioned in one of SPI’s magazines (Strategy & Tactics). Several hundred thousand board wargamers picked up the term from that publication and it spread to computer wargamers, as the the board wargamers (the ones with PCs, of course) were the first people to snap up computer wargames when they appeared. The only other proper usage of the word is:

a soldier of Napoleons’ Old Guard; a veteran soldier; grumbler (French) – Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed

I’m tired of seeing the term bandied about by roleplayers. Sure, I am a roleplayer – but that doesn’t make me a grognard, regardless of how long I’ve been doing it. Roleplayers – you need to find your own term. If you use it because you’ve been playing RPGs since 1980 – you’re wrong. It’s like me saying I’m Jewish because I’m circumcised.

With that said, I’d like to examine what exactly is it about us and our hobby which keeps it locked in relative obscurity.

I’d like to try to analyze the people who play wargames and try to discover if there is anything inherently “unique” about the personality types of those most drawn to them. Is there such thing as an “archetypal wargamer?

First, we need to clearly define what a wargame is.

A wargame is an attempt to get a jump on the future by obtaining a better understanding of the past. A wargame is a combination of “game,” history and science. In essence, it’s glorified chess. If you’ve never encountered a wargame before, it’s easiest to just think of it as chess with a more complicated playing board and a more complex way of moving your pieces and taking your opponents.

A wargame usually combines a map (or terrain representative of a map), playing pieces representing personages or military units and a set of rules telling you what you can or cannot do with them. The object of any wargame (historical or otherwise) is to enable the player to create / recreate a specific event and, more importantly in the case of recreation, to be able to explore what might have been if the player decides to do things differently.

Wargames are often referred to as “conflict simulations.” Most wargames are attempting to simulate some conflict, which is usually a military one. For this reason, many gamers attempt to use military experience to play the games most effectively.

At this point, I ought to state some basic assumptions, the first being that most people will play these games to “win.” This is not always the case. Many gamers simply play for the experience, to “experience” the information. But if one is to play to win, one must understand the limitations of the games.

The major limitation of the typical wargame is that it appears to be a very accurate representation of actual conflict. The problem is that while the games are somewhat accurate, they do have their limitations in the realism department.

Whether you are fighting for the Imperium of Man in the year 40,000 or Robert E. Lee in 1862, wargames lack the realism of stress under fire, pain, the smell of blood… you get the idea. And while I am not suggesting that people shoot at one another across the table while playing Warmachine – it is a simple fact that no matter how good the rules are, it isn’t like being in a combat situation.

So why play?

By far the most common reason for playing wargames is to experience something. This experience consists of the gamer being able to massage information in order to see what different shapes the information is capable of taking.

The essence of a simulation game is that it allows, within well defined limits, a great deal of variety in an otherwise strictly predetermined. historical event. This is the popular “what if?” element in the games. For example, take the fact that General Custer was at the Little Big Horn in 1876. What if he had, at the last minute, taken along his Gatling guns (primitive machineguns) after all? He could have taken the Gatling guns; thus, this is a reasonable what if. He couldn’t have taken any flamethrowers simply because he didn’t have them. As a final note in this area note that what makes a fantasy game a fantasy game is that it is a game in which General Custer does go to the Little Big Horn with flamethrowers, and maybe even a death ray.

So who are we?

I’d like to believe that wargaming has at least 3 inherent factors. These factors help determine what kind of person ends up playing a wargame… and may help explain our demographic in a more concise manner.

1. Wargaming requires an interest in history – particularly that of military history.

Wargames from the Ancient Period (3100 B.C. to A.D. 600) to World War II (1930 to 1945) and Games of the Contemporary Era (1945 to sometime in the near future) can be summed up in one word: simulation.

Simulation is nothing more than is the imitation of some real thing, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviors of a selected physical or abstract system. The key issue in simulation includes the acquisition of valid source information about the relevant selection of key characteristics and behaviors. In this case, there are millions of assorted reference materials available.

The plots and general frameworks of almost all fantasy and science fiction wargames are derived from ancient and medieval topics. Much science fiction postulates an era of exploration, discovery and facing the unknown. Gamers I know who have a strong interest in fantasy and science fiction had an equally strong interest in the medieval period. Fantasy is often little more than the past the way we would have liked it to be. Science Fiction is the future the way we want it to be.

2. Wargaming, no matter how much physical material that lies in front of us, takes place predominantly in the mind.

Once the rules are given a thorough read-through, the player then obtains what he is really looking for, which is the dynamic potential of the game: where the game might go, and what it might do. No matter what battle you are fighting – no matter the forces that you are fielding – and no matter how well you know the system – there are uncountable variables that require a sharp tactical mind in order to gain victory.

3. Wargaming requires severe attention to detail.

A wargamer must be thorough in accomplishing a task with concern for all the areas involved, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant they are. This could mean the exact tone of paint on a Panzer, having army lists down to exacting detail, or not allowing special characters to act in ways that they would never do.

Who we seem to be

Grognard Expert James Dunnigan, winner of the Charles S. Roberts Award in 1975, wrote in 1997 that

Wargamers are an interesting group. They were relatively young ten years ago, when 52% were under age 22. Today, only a few percent are that young, although more people are getting into wargames at an older age, typically in their twenties. Wargamers are predominantly male, situation which, oddly enough, changed somewhat when computer wargames appeared. While paper wargamers are about one percent female, computer wargamers are two to three percent female.

When gaming was a relatively new phenomenon, most players were quite young. The fact that most of them were in school, where other students could easily find out about wargaming, certainly helped the spread of the hobby. When role playing games (RPGs) became available, the social networking of students worked against wargamers. The kids who played wargames were generally the brightest, if not always at the head of their class. RPGs are easier to get into and a much larger number of students were able to participate. Many of the wargamers became gamemasters, the one participant in an RPG who has to keep track of a lot of things simultaneously. Wargamers have a lot of skill and experience at that. Moreover, the average age of getting into wargames was twelve or thirteen years old. Wargames are, intellectually, an adult exercise and younger kids really can’t hack it. RPGs, however, can be used and enjoyed by children several years younger than that. It’s no wonder a lot of guys in their twenties, having seen nothing but RPGs for the past ten or fifteen years, were thrilled to eventually discover wargames, kept in the shadows by the greater popularity of RPGs. In many ways, the enthusiasm for wargames is similar to an enthusiasm for books. It tends to stay with you.

Gamers read a lot. Over half percent belong to book clubs. An even greater proportion belong to, as one would expect, Military Book Club. A smaller percentage belong to a Science Fiction Book Club. Wargamers are way above average in book buying, and reading, habits.

In terms of games owned, players tend to be collectors, much like book readers. The average gamer (somebody who’s been playing five or six years) owns about 50 games. This usually includes a dozen or so games received in magazine format (at an average cost of $10) while the remaining games range in price from $10 to $100. This means an investment of between several thousand dollars. The average gamer spends about several hundred dollars a year on his hobby. On average a gamer will buy about a dozen games a year. Hobbyists tend to buy most of their games in stores. Even though many of the publishers go out of their way to make the games available by direct mail at more favorable prices, there is still a lot of impulse buying.

By almost all definitions, wargamers are a select group. But I’d like to find out where modern grognards are today – and where the next crop of grognards are coming from.

Talk to me.