"'Blogged' Lace Wars Imagi-Nations: an attempt of census" Topic

To use mythical mid-18°C countries in a wargame campaign was, AFAIK, initiated by P. Young and C. Grant in their ‘Charge !' and ‘The Wargame' books in the early "70. Henry Hyde took up the public torch with his "Fictitious Wars" article, published in Miniature Wargames 47, April 1987 (he kindly posted it in the Files of the Old School Wargaming Yahoo group link ). Yet, before the Internet era each wargamer or wargaming group lived in relative isolation, and such endeavours remained known only locally.

Now that information flows on the Web, it appears that the practice is less rare, not to say ‘freak', than one could had believed ref its lack of mention in the wargaming press.
I posted on my blog
link
links to all blogs and sites I know of devoted partly or totally to fictitious Lace Wars (taken in a wide sense) countries. *53* URL at the last counting, plus the ‘Battlegames' magazine site, where Henry Hyde posts, under ‘Old School Games', tremendous photo reports of his ‘Prunkland vs Borscht' battles.
Approximatively 1.5 that number of other fictitious Lace Wars-gaming countries are mentioned, described or illustrated in the archived messages, files or photo folders of the Old School Wargaming link and SOCDAISY link Yahoo groups, or in the archived posts of the ‘Emperor vs Elector' diplomatic campaign blog emperor-elector.blogspot.com (an attempt of census of the ‘potentialities for blogging' I'm aware of was posted on jan. 16 as a comment link ).

THIS POST IS WRITTEN IN THE HOPE TO DISCOVER ADDITIONAL BLOGS /WEBPAGES AT LEAST PARTLY DEVOTED TO FICTITIOUS LACE WARS. If you know of such, please mention it here, giving a way to contact their author and learn more about them. A personal pet idea of mine is to built one day, as a group effort, an exhaustive compilation that would be ‘our' «Fictitious Armies of The Lace Wars » FUNCKEN.

Wargamers who chose to ‘play' fictitious countries do so for 1 to 3 of three major reasons; the ‘unhistoricity' of their country and army increases with the number of these reasons that motivated theit personal choice.
1-To avoid arguments about ‘national characteristics' (my troops are bettet shot, they deserve special rules, yes but mine have a more resilient morale…) and perhaps to avoid also some uneasy feeling from blasphemously altering the historical records of countries, commanders and armies. Such wargamers play totally historical countries and armies, just giving them and their characeters of note assumed names. No blog that I know is devoted to such masquerading historical games though Alte Fritz in his Journal altefritz.blogspot.com refers to the ongoing war between Hesse-Seewald (Prussia) and Gallia (France); reports of this campaign are posted in the files of the OSW group. Thus, BTW, to own only ‘historical' minis in no way prevents you from creating your own Imagi-Nation.

2-To scale down the conflict. As advocated by C. Grant, the campaign is limited to a map suiting exactly the player's wishes and taste, with no side disadvantaged from the start Your batallions have neither to count as brigades on the tabletop, nor to moonlight as other units when playing a battle on a second front. Gamers motivated by these 2 reasons create countries mythical in their name and geography, but which can field a totally historical army: C.S. Grant's Grand Duche de Lorraine (WAS French units) is a classical exemple. Currently on the Web the warring Wittenberg & Monrovia link and the Kreis of Mittleland link belong to this category.

3-To enjoy the process of *creation*. As underlined by H. Hyde, to create a totally fictitious campaign setting is to act as a novelist. Indeed, to design your own uniforms instead of faithfully reproducing historical ones (no longer a meritorious achievement, with all the information available on the Net) is exactly like writing a novel instead of ‘passively' reading published books. Such players as a rule fully develop their country in non-military matters, inventing its history, detailing the ruling family and its genealogy, the major characters in the Court, Government and High Staff, observing the plots, keeping record of love affairs and health or pecuniary difficulties… All was already part of Tony Bath's seminal Hyborian camapaign, and for the players involved there was a part of role playing involved, before the word was coined.
C. Grant's Vereinigte Freie Städte and P. Young's Empire and Electorable are venerable pioneers in this domain.
Note that the fictitious uniforms and flags are NOT designed according to whim, but reflect a deep knowledge of historical armies of the era, then modulated by personal taste: H. Hyde accurately descibed the process, ref. also link on my blog.

*SOLO* WARGAMERS, fictitious campaigns give you an opportunity to be part of a collective effort:
link
TMP link
link

Wargaming fictitious wars is of course possible in other eras, yet it is not my mere chance that most are set in the mid-18°C.
°Firstly, players gaming in this time are (generally) a bunch of gentlemanly, friendly, relaxed, open-minded people (there was a lot of humor in Grants and Young battle reports). More so, on the average, than in other wargaming circles, as argumented here by Der Alte Fritz last June TMP link ; indeed all Ancient and Napoleonic gamers I knew were overserious historical integrists (though they hope to change History when refighting a battle ‘their' army lost!) link .

°Then, with its some 300 independant countries the Holly Empire sets a reassuring precedent. No one would feel sacrilegious to add a pair of enbattled mini-countries to this already overcrowded background. Yet you are in no way restricted to Europe: link .

°Thirdly, the cut of european uniforms was, precisely, extremely uniform, at least at the level of minis seen en masse on a tabletop. By the 19°C almost each and every nation had its own specific cut of clothes, its peculiar shako, kasket or helmet. Thus your fictitious troops will immediatly be identified as British, French or Prussian minis painted in odd colors. This could be an advantage if you want to use them as proxies of historical majors powers in a fictitious mini-campaign, but generally their credibility will suffer.

And of course, the ‘ballet-like' manœuvres of two initially symmetric battle lines marching up to one another in a sort of minuet of combat, the chess-like tactics, even the fact that war seems so much more civilized (if there is such thing) give a somehow ‘artificial', ‘theatrical', almost ‘oniric' feeling specially propitious to the addition of a fictitious element to the setting.

I wrote of *existing* blogs devoted to fictitious Lace Wars armies, but I can't refrain to hope this post, and other by people more knowledgeable than me (and with English as their native language!) will prompt NEW GAMERS TO TAKE THE PLUNGE!

Jean-Louis

Why not just have a Yahoo Group for this

Gray Ghost,

My preference for BLOGS reflects some 40 years of teaching:
forme one of a teacher's duty is to make information easily accessibleto the 'youngsters'; *specially* 'additional information' that may either be helpful if they already have a special field of interest, or else have a chance to awaken their curiosity.
Hence my taste for well-set stored information, arranged by topic and easily retrievable.

While fully enjoying the easier give and take of the discussion groups, the free, because transitory, nature of their post social conversation, I remember thas as a newcomer in several fields I greatly appreciated the 'bibliographical reviews' and 'technical abstracted updates' written (on paper, then) by older people. It may well be insanely self-delusional arrogance *and* presumptuousness, but I blog partly in the hope that someday one or two newcomers to (Lace Wars) battlegaming will find of some use the compilated 'bank of references and links' -even perhaps a few comments born from my personnal experience.
Motivated by the ego boost from putting my stuff up in a blog? Likely, of course; but *also* by the pleasure I feel to discover imaginary countries, characters, armies and uniforms on others' specialized blogs.

Yahoo GROUPS, and FORUMS such as this one, differ totally from blogs by their very aims.
*Discussion Groups* are marvelous and IRREPLACEABLE for the
*INSTANTANEOUS* exchange of information between hundreds of kindred people. BUT we are drowned under an overflow of information on the web, messages posted on Discussion Groups pass by and are soon forgotten. Thus, Discussion Groups are far from ideal when it comes to perusing their Archives (so much the more as none I know allows to search by date, and posts cannot be 'labelled')). Within a few days it becomes difficult to associate pictures to the corresponding text (painting or modelling hints, background, battle report…) –unless the poster cared to quote in the legend of the illo. the # of the corresponding message, or to archive the 'written part' in a 'File' folder with the same name as his 'Photos' one (on-line Albums such as Photobucket are not really better, unless you post a link to each album *not* within a message, but among the links listed at blog level -again we come to blogs for a linkage between photos and text).
Additionally access to Groups is restricted to members, so to post a direct link to photos or files archived in a Group is almost useless for the general reader (newcomer to the hobby e.g.).

Messages on Groups and Forums are soon buried under layers and layers of new messages; Blogs (and sites, of course) STAY, a single recorder URL and you'll find it still there, faithfully waiting for your next visit. On BLOGS (and sites) illustrations and text stay together, and searching their archives is far easier (specially if the blogger cares to label his posts). Thus blogs are reader-friendly and convenient when it comes to explore and retrieve *ARCHIVED* information. And blogging is NEITHER more difficult NOR more time-consuming than posting files or images on a Group…

Since BLOGS & GROUPS are *complementary*, what about a Yahoo group serving as 'meeting place' / 'coordinator' between blogs? Given the very limited audience the group would be pointless -and largely*redundant* with 'Eve'.
In Discussion Groups, the return depends on the people involved. And a part of that is what the people associated with the 'EMPEROR vs ELECTOR' collective blog are in it for. The 18th Century Imagi-Nations bloggers are a bit like a geographically separated wargames club of gentlemen engaged in sharing the joy of their hobby via the 'virtual' meeting room provided by 'Eve'. There's as much *opportunity* for interaction with blogs as with messages on a Group, it's whether anyone makes a use of it.
As the support of a fictional campaign, the 'Emperor vs Elector' blog functions as a sort of odd interactive novel, where each writes a little, and somewhere between us a whole new world comes into being. So 'Emperor vs Elector' already offers most of the services of a Yahoo Group, and far, far more.

Hope you'll join the feast!
Best regards,
Jean-Louis

Independantly of this thread, a new discovery:
TMP link
Cheers!

and one more! TMP link

complementary messga:
TMP link

One more in transition:
link

Now 57 'Fict' links on my blog
link

Join the feast!
JL

60! Sixty!
59 ‘Fict' links on my blog, thus 60 sites or blogs at least partly devoted to a Lace Wars Imagi-Nation.

46 of them are part of the ‘Emperor vs Elector' diplomatic and wargaming collective blog
emperor-elector.blogspot.com . Together its 44 members ‘rule' 60+ Lace Wars Imagi-Nations: most are solo wargamers. Some created a fictitious country to add a personal note to their historical armies (Austria vs Prussia, Russia vs Turkey…), others at first designed their own army, its background country and are now building ‘the opposition'; most created a pair of embattled nations from the start, and are adding satellite mini-statelets or a ‘third party'.
Two people, to fully enjoy the ‘role playing' of a Country ruler, devoted an ‘individualized' blog to eavh of their warring Imagi-Nations.
Many members of the ‘EvE' group joigned to break their isolation: playing battles as ‘proxies' offers them a higher level of integration: TMP link

The name of the blog refers to the fictitious bitter enemies in P. Young's ‘Charge! Or how to play Wargames' book; his Electorate was also mentioned in the other ‘founding book' of fictitious Lace Wargaming, C. Grant's ‘The Wargame':
TMP link

If you know of a site or blog that *should* be added to my banks of links, please post its url!
Thanks in advance.

Wow, you're hardcore :-\

Just discovered a 18th possible / potential fictitious Lace Wars blogger: nsolomon99 for his Grand Duchy of NordMark (TMP): TMP link .

Henry Hyde's seminal article "Fictitious Wars" that was printed in issue 47 of Miniature Wargames (april 1987) can be downloaded as a .pdf at:
link

A visit to Henry's OLD SCHOOL WARGAMING page is recommended!