Horror Show: Fantasy Wargaming

When I work on this blog, I try to write about things I find exciting or fun, or interesting, at the very least. Not everyone will enjoy the same things I do, but I want to be positive, for the most part. However, sometimes you come across things that you can't stay upbeat about. Today, I'm going to start a new series called Horror Shows where I'm going to talk about the things that don't excite me. The things that make me want to run away screaming.

To kick this off, let's begin with a book I recently picked up called “Fantasy Wargaming.” Published in the shadow of the wild success of the original Dungeons and Dragons, it's... A shitshow No other way to put it. But, let's go into why it's a train wreck.

Jesus Fucking Christ, just look at this cover!

If you're new to gaming, or fairly young, you probably think that RPGs were created and then war games were. Wrong. Other way around. Miniature war games have a very long history, starting in Prussia in 1780. So, that's a damn long time. In entered the English speaking world, resembling what we see now, in the 1800's. That's a lot of history.

In the early days, miniature war games (or just minis games) were purely historical. You would recreate the battles of Medieval Europe, the Napoleonic era, and so on. In America, things revolving around the American Civil War are very popular. For obvious reasons.

But, in the mid 20^th century, things began to change. With the mild popularity of The Lord of the Rings, the fantasy genre started to slowly invade the mini game community. Before long, Warhammer Fantasy (or just Warhammer, as it was in those days) and others started to turn up. Eventually, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson cooked up a little game called Dungeons and Dragons and the world changed. At first, just the nerd world, but then the Satanic Panic happened... Anyway, back to the point.

When Fantasy Wargaming was published in 1982, the Role Playing Game was a relatively new concept. As I mentioned, Dungeons and Dragons popularized this concept, but some people didn't think it was “realistic” (as you'll see below). It appears that they wrote some stuff out and it became this book. It's very focused on the “real” history of Europe... Based on the knowledge of the 1970's. Which, as I'm sure we can all appreciate, is different than what we understand now. Doing just a tiny bit of research (watching some documentaries on YouTube and some quick searches on Wikipedia), I've discovered that what I learned in school was incorrect. Because knowledge evolves as we find more and more out. This is why I generally avoid historical stuff...

The first 75 pages are a history lesson and pretentious critique of the fantasy genre. The authors don't seem to be able to accept that FANTASY isn't realistic. A true crime that must be corrected! You can't see it, but I'm rolling my eyes.

I'm not the biggest fan of the fantasy genre. When I was younger, I read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. When I was playing D&D regularly, I would read some of the Forgotten Realms novels, and even read some Dark Sun and Dragonlance. Hell, I even read all six Spelljammer books! But, the genre grew stale for me. I don't even enjoy playing D&D anymore. Sure, I like some “Swords and Sorcery” stuff. But, it's always the weirder, mostly out there stuff. That said, I do appreciate the genre and don't see anything wrong with having people fighting creatures that have only a passing resemblance to the monsters of myth. I don't mind having wizards being powerful enough to change the fundamentals of the universe to heat up their tea in the morning. I'm not bothered by people worshiping a whole pantheon of gods that regularly muck around with the mortal world. None of that bothers me. It's NOT realistic. Which is why I don't have a problem with it. I can suspend my disbelief enough to put whatever problems I do have with that sort of stuff (which I do have a few minor ones) aside to enough that it is: Escapism. That's why we play these games. And to have fun. Clearly, these people don't think it's very fun to explore the fantastical in the fantasy.

Now, I'm going to go on a tangent here and I'm going to apologize for it now.... I'm sorry. You've been warned.

One of the things I see tossed around online is people complaining that non-white people, gay/bi/trans persons shouldn't exist in the fantasy genre because it's not “realistic.” To that, I can only roll my eyes. Because I can't slap the living shit out of them. You're pretending to be an elf in someone's basement. Realistic checked out some time ago. Stop being a bigot and using “realism” as an excuse. Just because most fantasy stuff is based on Western European history doesn't mean that it can't depart from that source as much as people want it to. Also, you're clearly looking through a lens of White European Christian history. The real history of our planet is much more complex.

But, I do have good news for these nerd bags! You can buy this book and run a game in it. Because it's REALISTIC! And you can't play anything else. Because this is the steaming pile of shit that you wanted. So, find yourself a copy, put on your MAGA cap, and shut the fuck up. You play this and only this and then go fuck yourself with a rusty chainsaw.

Ahem. My apologies for that rant, but I'm sure you can understand where I'm coming from...

Moving on. I'd love to discuss the rules of this game, but I'm not sure what they are. When you create your character, you have to roll for their astrological sign, because it has effects on your stats. To use my sign as an example, Pisces, I would get -2 Physique, -2 Endurance, +1 Selflessness, -2 Lust, -1 Bravery, +3 Faith, and -1 Social Class. Mechanically, I have no idea what any of this means. I don't know what die to use for these, I don't know when to roll them, and I don't really know what effect this has on the game. I can figure out some of it, like the Social Class part, but I really wonder why being a Pisces effects my standing in society (as you can just lie about it if you leave your home town). After looking through the book more, I was able to find what some of these do, but it's laid out in such a weird order and not very well labeled so you have to do a lot of searching and reading. It's not laid out in a way to make quick reference possible, making it all the harder to read. I have to admit right now that I haven't finished reading the book as I just couldn't take it anymore. After those first 75 pages, my desire to keep reading was pretty low.

To continue, there's a table you can roll on called the Bogey Table. The VERY FIRST RESULT is “homosexuality” so you know this is high class. Not far below it is “Sexual Fetish” which includes the following note of “Leather, transvestism, etc” further proving how classy these people are. Towards the end, there's three in a row of “Jewish, Heretic, Atheist” and the note “You will be persecuted and shunned by all right-minded Christians.” I swear to sweet zombie Jesus I'm not making that up...

Eventually, this book does delve into magic and creatures. Because those are SO REALISTIC! I'm tempted to burn the damn thing at this point...

But, they are based more on the original myths of Old World cultures, rather than being adapted to be more enjoyable and fun like in D&D. To cast a spell, it appears that you have to call upon the Christian God, the Norse Gods, or demons... Wait, what? Yeah, okay, this actually does make sense from a historical perspective. I've recently done some research on occultism for something else, and there were a fair number of Christians who got demons to do their bidding because of some stuff with Solomon. If you want to know more about it, you can look it up yourself. In this book, it looks more like you're more a demon worshiper, but I'm not going to really look it up...

Okay, okay, I really need to wrap this up. I'm tired of even thinking about this monstrosity. I actually wrote part of this review several months ago and am only now forcing myself to finish it. I think it's starting to stain my hard drive...

To bring this to some sort of conclusion, Fantasy Wargaming is vile. It's part of what caused the Satanic Panic, with it's provocative cover and mentions of demons and monsters. And all the while, it tries to present itself as “historically accurate” which is a terrible idea. To add to the pain, it does nothing but insult its origins, namely Dungeons and Dragons and the fantasy genre as a whole. I bought this knowing it was probably a train wreck, but thought it might have something interesting or useful in it. There's nothing here for me but hatred and rage. I HATE this book with the burning passion of a thousand vengeful suns. If you ever see this book on someone's self, walk away. Quickly.