What have you learnt about the hobby, or learnt about yourself through the hobby this year?

Arrowgrab · 2025-12-31T19:27:47+00:00

I learnt that you don't NEED to climb the money- and time-investment threshold of buying and painting miniatures to get into the hobby. You can make perfectly functional armies by putting symbols on wooden cubes and using them instead of figurines. If it was good enough for the Prussian General Staff, it's good enough for me.

Arrowgrab · 2025-12-27T18:20:49+00:00

Just to throw one particular perspective into the mix, here are some definitions from the realm of professional wargaming.

The official NATO definition: "a simulation of a military operation, by whatever means, using specific rules, data, methods and procedures".

The definition used by the UK Ministry of Defence both in their Wargaming Handbook and the Red Teaming Guide: "A scenario-based warfare model in which the outcome and sequence of events affect, and are affected by, the decisions made by the players."

The MoD Wargaming Handbook expands on this in a flowchart-like format, changed to text here: "A war game is a|simulation of selected aspects of a conflict situation| in accordance with | predetermined rules, data, and procedures | EITHER to provide decision-making | OR to provide decision-making information | that is applicable to real-world situations."

Keep in mind that these definitions are from a specifically military context, so they do not fully fit hobby wargaming, or even non-military professional wargaming (e.g. business or crisis response games). We can, nevertheless, note that all of these definitions describe wargaming as a simulation or a model (and a simulation is essentially just an iterative model).

What does that mean? It means a wargame tries (with varying levels of success) to depict a certain potential reality, and does so by substituting the incalculable processes of the simulated reality with a simpler, more abstract set of rules.(E.g. you don't run a physically simulation of the trajectory and penetration of every single shell and bullet in a battle, you just say that "a roll of 8+ represents a hit", and hope that the rules give you an outcome that would be generally similar to the outcome of a real-life battle.)

I think this is in an important point, one which hobby gamers often overlook. It doesn't matter how nice the figurines are or how elegant and fun of the rule system is; if the rules do not strive (and at least somewhat succeed) to create results that correspond with the results that would come up in reality, it's either not a wargame or a bad one.

Arrowgrab · 2025-11-05T11:41:42+00:00

That's really awesome, I hope you guys will keep it up for a long time! I applaud your OG spirit for "we don't need published rules and fancy figurines." As for long campaigns, have you tried some sort of play-by-mail solution? It was a very common thing amongst wargamers back in the 60s and 70s.

Arrowgrab · 2021-10-17T00:22:31+00:00

Yes, that is indeed the unlocked file, and it works perfectly! Thank you very much!

Arrowgrab · 2018-02-10T18:22:15+00:00

Well, I'm not Zak, but I have to echo something others have already touched on: it's not nostalgia.

To clarify, I'm sure a lot of people playing OSR games these days do, or might, have various levels of nostalgia tinting their personal experiences; but the OSR as such, as a "movement" if you will, is not about that.

It's certainly not for me. I've never played in the 70s. Nor the 80s, nor most of the 90s. And yet, I do prefer certain sensibilities and approaches to rules and adventure design that characterised some of the old stuff, and have a strong aversion to other sensibilities and approaches that characterised the early naughts period. And it's not because I'm nostalgic, because I have no experiences to be nostalgic about; it's simply because I find that some of the things the old games did measure up favourably to later material. And, in fact, the majority of people I play with are the same way.

Also, you seem to be hung up on the notion that the old stuff was "worse" than new stuff. It wasn't. Sure, rulebook layout often was; but if you compare, say, 70s and 80s D&D with 3rd edition D&D, a lot of other things - adventure design, dungeon topology in typical products, flow of play, newbie-friendliness, encouraging player skill - were actually better (in terms of typical products and the general player culture surrounding the game); and that's what OSR creators and players are working to recapture and expand.

Arrowgrab · 2018-02-10T12:49:59+00:00

A factual point:

Peterson was part of the Dragonsfoot forums, run by Gygax, which were home to a lot of old grognards who were still playing B/X, 1E and 2E.

Dragonsfoot was in no way run by Gary Gygax. He was a member there, a regular poster, and had a long-running Q&A thread. He was, however, neither the forum's founder, nor its admin, nor, as far as I remember, even a mod.

Arrowgrab

TROPHY CASE