History of Miniature Wargaming Rules

A while ago I got curious about War Gaming, in particular it’s history. Having been an irregular war gamer for the last *many* years and cut my teeth on Battletech. Then expanding into Warhammer 40K, Necurmunda, Space Crusade & Space Hulk. I’d like to try my hand at making a board game or war game of a similar nature. So I was wondering did they all come from? How did they evolve to what we know now, and what influenced that process?

The wikipedia page on Wargaming, giving some insight about hobby and how it started. With the a set of rules been publishing in the early 20th century,  with H. G. Wells’ Little Wars and Jane‘s naval war rules in 1913. It’s also worth noting that Jane also publish All the World’s Aircraft, which is a great research for aircraft of types and is regularly updated.

Little Wars is a set of rules for playing with toy soldiers, written by H. G. Wells in 1913.
Little Wars by H. G. Wells.

John Curry the editor of The History of Wargaming Project has a few videos outlining the project (See part 1 & part 2), and an interesting presentation of the Fletcher Pratt Naval Wargame, which at it’s peak had huge games of 60+ players and did not look like the hobby as I know it now. This was a more social game with people playing on a Friday or Thursday night in large dance halls.

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmpUwvQ70v8 [/embedyt]

RPGs Split off

In 1971 Gary Gygax & Jeff Perren published the miniature wargame Chainmail, which lead to Dungeons & Dragons and the RPG explosion of today. However, it is worth remembering that most RPGs model themselves after D&D and as a result have a strong tactical basis for their game play. It’s only later, in early 1990, that more narrative-based RPGs emerged with games such as Whitewolf’s Vampire.

Chainmail is a medieval miniature wargame created by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren.
Chainmail

Computer based Wargames

A decade later saw the adaption og Turned-based War Games (See Turn-based strategy (TBS)Turn-based tactics (TBT)) on the computer, with Blue Bytes Battle isles a personal favorite. These in turn led to Real Time Stratagy (RTS) Games, like Dune 2000 and Command & Conquer.

 

Command & Conquer is a 1995 real-time strategy video game developed by Westwood Studios
Command & Conquer

So going back to the start of all this has given me a better idea of these style of games. Along the way I’ve found some cool projects and some great ideas for my own games, and should aid me in writing one.

Print on Demand Services, Melbourne

The costs with the local printer for the printing of a single book proved to be too expensive. So I did bit of research into Print on Demand services in and around Melbourne, Victoria. Although I have not looked into it, most books seam to be printed in China at the moment and companies there should provide a cheaper service, but you would need to be certain of the end product as there are many things that could go wrong.

Print on Demand

Print on Demand or PoD,  is a useful adaption by printers to everyone’s need for a one off books, or a very short run of books. There have been improvements in software used to produce books, for example Adobe’s InDesign or the open source Scribus. Websites have also improved in that they can provide an image that looks close to the final document, removing some of the need for the converting from digital to print. This has resulted in less risks and associated costs with following this path.

The Process

Generally speaking, once the document or book has been written. The text is laid-out on the page, with images & diagrams added. There are a number of check that should happen at this stage, the pre-flight document before being sent to the printer. Looking at things like the colour gamuts of the text and images, the bleed, the placement of the gutters, margins and slugs. It really opens another world of possibility when converting an idea into a physical really.

PoD Services

So here’s a quick list;

3D Bridges built!

About a month ago I created a 3D model of a sandstone bridge, put it up on shapeways. The printed model only took a week & half to arrive (from the other side of the planet). Now that I’ve proofed the physical copy, it’s up for sale on shapeways.

Overall, I’m happy with this model. Some of the colours are a little darker than expected, but not insanely so. The topology needed some correcting. You can see the line of bricks in the center of the bridge.

set for scale, these 3 miniatures give an idea of the size of the bridge
set for scale, these 3 miniatures give an idea of the size of the bridge
Goblin on the birdge
Goblin on the birdge
Soldier defends the bridge
Soldier defends the bridge

 

 

The Bridge
The Bridge

This render of the finished bridge shows the corrected brick tiling. the terrain fearture is available in sandstone and grey stone

 

 

The Bradbury Challenge

Someone once told me about the challenge that Ray Bradbury set for himself, which was to write a short story each week. The whole idea of setting a definite time frame to complete a challenging yet achievable task is a good way to start writing.  Over on Dieselpunks, they have an 8-sentence Sunday, which is the same idea, but cut down to a more digestible size. However, what about other artist mediums other than creative writing?

Music

The 25 Project run by Cath & Nick, a few years back aimed to produce 25 songs in the course of one year, about one each fortnight. So the first week would be spent writing the lyrics and melody, while the second was spent recording with local bands and producing the final track. So for a musical challenge try a 2 week cycle to finalise something, with the 2 stages of writing and production.

Visual Art & Animation

The critical thing is to have the deadline to produce something, anything really. Last year I worked on background animations for a musical, Beach Blanket Tempest. Just think Shakespeare’s The Tempest set in the 1960s. However, there was a tight deadline to get the work done, even though I was not completely happy with the quality.

The ‘Bradbury’ Challenge

Named after the Sci-Fi author, the challenge is simple. Create something. It does not matter what medium it is in, but the trick is to create, then rinse and repeat. Through this process, the quality of your art should improve.

So animation is my focus and that is where I’ll be starting. I realise that 3D work requires a lot of time. So I’ll need to break it down to make it easier to work through, much like the music example (above) and the individual stages will change depending on your individual focus.  For example;

  • For 3D Printing; Research, Modelling, Printing.
  • For Animation; Storyboarding, Animation.

Pixar’s RenderMan is free

Pixar have made RenderMan free for Non-Commerical use and have dropped the prices on their amazing render engine. NoFilmSchool have a good overview of the opportunity, to Hone Your VFX Skills for Free. The thing I find interesting is that it’s not really free, since you are investing time in their render engine as apposed to other renders. However, it does provide the opportunity to access RenderMan and build up a demo reel.