What Kind of Gamer Am I?

 I've been playing wargames since the early 70's ... 71? I worked my way through many of the early Avalon Hill and SPI designs in my youth. In the 80s I gravitated toward operational games from GDW and SPI. In the latter 90s and early 2000s I began playing numerous "theater wide" WW2 games online using ADC2, Cyberboard and eventually Vassal. Since then, I have increasingly been more drawn toward games from the gunpowder and ancient periods of warfare and history. Well over a decade ago I started playing face to face again, something not too easy in Denver Colorado.  I find myself gravitating toward the earlier designs again. First this was in search of games that can be played in a single sitting, also, I have found that many of these older games still play very well. In fact, I increasingly prefer them even over most games of the twenty-first century. So much can be done well if done simply. I have always been fond of magazine games too. Their blemishes, incompleteness and imperfections of varying magnitude are, like past lovers, the thing you hold dear as time goes on and the encounter begins to fade. So many disastrously inventive, ingeniously incomplete obras I have pondered. And I find that my fascination is unending for this craft of cramming so much into a few pages, one paper map and a couple hundred cardboard counters. In short, I love our odd little hobby. That it may not go on much beyond us makes me sad.  As sensibilities change and our hobby morphs its beginning forms fade from view. I would do my part to memorialize these loves of mine, so one day in the far future some automata will look back on us and smile.

The table is set these days for the following guests. Some are new, many are old.

Al Nofi's Imperium Romanum II, Joseph Meranda's Ancient Wars, The Seven Years War, Austro Prussian War, Risorgimento. Richard Berg's Triumph and Glory and by extension, Bey's Jours de Gloire.
AH 1776, Berg's "13" and Sideshow, John Young's La Grande Armee and Strategy I, John Dunnigan's Leipzig, USN, Civil War and Lost Battles.
Rob Beyma's War for the Union and Struggle for Europe, Chadwick's White Death, Avalanche and Citadel. Early GMT - ONLY! Invasion Norway and Britain Stands Alone. Early Simonitch, The Legend Begins, Campaign to Stalingrad, Decision in France. I also enjoy his redesign into US Civil War.

There are so many more, of course! But I try to play these games every chance I get, and I have yet to hit a wall with any of them (something that happens far too often with newer designs, their simulacra too forced, or too vague, and often to no good end). Many of these older wargames, inspired our most well known and designers of the past couple of decades. There is greatness to be found in the craft of game design, and, in the craft of game development. No game is perfect, but many of these older games are tantalizing in their brevity; and more by what has not made its way into the design rather than the missing chrome that could easily have diluted the effort. 

Of course, my short list above has numerous titles that contradict much of what I have said. What can I say, we love what we love! I am an enthusiastic player and collector of Richard R Jordeson's Fact and Fantasy Games, of the old Chaosium boardgames, for the space odysseys of GDW, SPI, and Microgame Design Group to name a few. Yes, I love chrome like the next wargamer, but I can tell the difference. I am fascinated by the Napoleonic battlefield, the empire of Rome, the operational simulation of WW2, and in all, the problems of logistics and the unforeseen consequences of action. I love that magazine games are like essays making a stab at history or military theory or game design. I have a great interest in game design and in the history of wargames. I seek elegance in simpler designs and a sort of natural and unforced onomatopoeia within mechanics. I have come to crave these attributes in a game. There is true art to be found when this is pulled off.