"What are some non-violent miniatures games?" Topic

The conversations in my earlier thread looking for the "Best rules (any era) to introduce a new player to the hobby," caused me to realize something about our hobby; Most miniatures games simulate violence, which I think is something that brings disinterest from some parties.

So what are some games that are played with miniatures that don't simulate violence?

In other words, what are some miniature non-wargames?

Trains?

I think it depends on what you mean by non-violent. Two Hour Wargames has its "Charioteer" game, there are a couple of Soccer games out there played with minis, one of those is also by THW I believe.

Its not called war gaming for nothing.

Jim

Formula De would sort of count I suppose. It's somewhere between board game and mini game IMO. It comes with boards, but it is a more detailed simulation of racing and has quite a few features that make it seem like a minis game.

edit:and there are/were pewter cast cars you could buy and paint yourself, so there were real minis.

Yeah, there are various racing games (boats, planes, cars, horses, chariots, etc.) and and sports games – but they aren't wargames, although some of them could be miniatures games.

non-violent miniatures games bring disinterest from THIS party.

As I'm a war gamer. A miniatures war gamer. I don't see your point.
I might point out, however, that rolling dice isn't all that violent. Nor is measuring.

How about taking a game like "Lost Lands" and instead of having the explorers shoot dinosaurs for sport, have their goal be to capture or tranquilize dinosaurs for research purposes. That way the players can still experience risk and possibly some action, but the purpose is not defeating an enemy, but targeted at how many animals each team could capture (or tag with a radio collar, etc) by the end of the game.

gameorpaint nails it.
Formula D is the best game I have ever played. I'm a huge fan.

I do believer THW also had a Kentucky Derby horse racing minis game…

I've used Chain Reaction 2 for games of Winnie the Pooh escaping from woozles, where the worst that can happen is a dropped pot of honey.

There are games for car racing, football, paint balling and even "violent" rule sets can be used for peaceful scenarios. Star Trek ships escorting an alien life form through an asteroid belt were the only "victims" are lumps of rock.

I'd expect a war game to involve some form of unpleasantness, clues in the title. A miniature game on the other can be anything you want.

C'mon Dudes. Little girls have been doing this kind of thing for tens of thousands of years. It's not that hard.

Dress and undress your baby doll. Change her diapers. Feed her, put her to bed, get her up and dress her again. If you have a fancy model, her eyes will open and shut, and you can feed her a bottle of water and it will soak her diaper.

Dress and undress your fashion doll. Romp her around her Dream House, let her use the doll furniture, sleep in the doll bed, shower in the doll bathroom, put on make-up. Take her for a spin in her car. Pair her up with a non-threatening dweeb like Ken, or if she likes it rough, with G I Joe, or Action Man. Send them on dates. Go dancing at clubs. Kiss passionately under the romantic moon. That's as far as it's going to go of course, they have no genitalia.

Send your My Little Ponies on adventures, seeking the Magical Apples in Rainbowland. There are high mountains to climb and wide rivers to cross, but the Care Bears will help them, because the Little Ponies are so pretty and needy, and the Care Bears like 'em like that.

The thing about these games is, they're unstructured. There are no rules, no winners or losers. They're perfect for little girls, who are being socialized to co-operate, befriend and tend, never compete or raise a violent hand. These sorts of games have pained and repelled little boys for tens of thousands of years.

Come on guys, lets get our BB guns and shoot something. Or get our baseball bats and bust something up. Cheese whiz.

You could use modern skirmish rules (something like Flying Lead) to simulate a game of paintball !

Uh…

(Looks at shelf, in cabinet, in storage boxes, etc.)

Haven't a clue.

It is curious, now that optional field mentions it. I can think of dozens and dozens, probably hundreds, of non-violent boardgames and card games. Some of them don't seem to simulate anything (Connect 4, Hex, Shut the Box, Ox Blocks, almost all classic card games), others simulate real or imagnary worlds (Formula 1, The Big Idea, Save Dr. Lucky, Story Cubes, Escape from Elba, Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne). But I can hardly think of any games played with miniatures that are not based on violence -- Subbuteo, Scalextric, that's about it.

I'm going to guess that the reason for this is that some element of competition or conflict is pretty much indispensable to make a game. In those cases of very abstract games, such as card games, there is nothing really for miniatures to represent (there is no point using minaatures for poker chips). In other cases, the competiton or conflict is probably expressible in terms of accumulating money or other resources less amnenable to sculptured representation than are toy soldiers. Race games are the obvious exception, but in these case it is probably less desirable to have an accurate and prettily-painted dimensional representation than to have a working model -- hence model cars, trains, boats or planes that really drive, sail or fly.

All the best,

John.

Der Alte Fritz plays games with his daughter using Teddy Bear armies with popguns. "Casualties" take nap IIRC. So not exactly violent.

The short story The Toys of Peace by Saki addresses this very issue.

How about taking a game like "Lost Lands" and instead of having the explorers shoot dinosaurs for sport, have their goal be to capture or tranquilize dinosaurs for research purposes. That way the players can still experience risk and possibly some action, but the purpose is not defeating an enemy, but targeted at how many animals each team could capture (or tag with a radio collar, etc) by the end of the game.

Yes, but characters being eaten by dinosaurs is still violence. The nice people wouldn't want anything to do with that sort of … thing.

Play Agricola (not the general!) with miniatures instead of wooden pieces?

New rules NFL football with miniatures?

At little wars there was an airplane racing game. But can't recall the name of the rules now. Several people played it and said it was fun.

I have long had an interest in non-interpersonal conflict historical miniatures games. Not sports games, races or hunts. None are finished but I am working on them. Smoke jumpers, miniatures game based on board game. Chicago fire, base on the London Blitz game. The really nice new Italian truck by Company B gave me the idea of doing a Wages of Fear game. These are all sorta games against nature. Player vs umpire.

Non-military type games, but still violent might be prison break, based on Brute Force.

I've always thought that a Great Fire Of London game would be fun, using ECW figures. The fire would spread from house to house and your job would be to pull them down for a firebreak and to rescue the helpless.

smoke jumpers game would be neat.

" I've used Chain Reaction 2 for games of Winnie the Pooh escaping from woozles, where the worst that can happen is a dropped pot of honey."

Big Jim, you are officially my hero.

Wish I had thought of that.

Bob

I've yet to attend a violent wargame.

Oh sorry, do you mean 'representation' of violence?

Well, I could recommend a table top simulation of the work of a Medecin Sans Frontier Medical team working in West Africa – that do?

Of course they would be 'combating' disease – a bit too near the knuckle? Would that be 'promoting' disease?

But perhaps your sensitive friends don't 'believe' in disease just as they don't 'believe' in war….

But both these monsters are out there, believe me!

If it was me, I would invite your friends to examine the fundamental illogic of their objections to 'war toys'…If they really gave a damn, rather than just pontificating and attention seeking, perhaps they could go to Russia, Iran or North Korea and loudly object to the production and stockpiling of real war toys – WMDs – that could provide a bit of excitement….

Hell I'd even contribute to a whip round for a one way ticket…

Escape From Colditz looks very pretty converted from boardgame to minis and is not overtly violent.

You just need to cast your net a bit wider. Have you taken a look at some of Eureka's rules? Teddy Bears of the Caribbean link or A Fistful of Honey link fit the bill. Or there's their Cardigan & Clockwork rules. link

Or 7TV? link

As mentioned by…uh, everyone, there really isn't one.
The suggestions for teddy bears, paintball, etc. are all just using regular wargames, they simply change the name of what is being represented by it.

How about changing everything by saying; This is a game.

There, now you can play anything you want.

Also, Eureka's Pig Tickler isn't extremely violent -- lancers on unicycles scoring points by stabbing a clockwork pig.

I look forward to your posts Sparker….can't imagine why you get stifled hahaha…hope to catch up at MOAB for some genuine simulated table top violence btw.
As far as the OP is concerned I don't know the answer as we are playing war games here…….maybe stick with checkers?… but then that could seen as violent as well. Actually…. if you want the worst to come out in people try playing Monopoly I've seen lifetime friendships laid to waste.

Definitely not chess, since so many lowly pawns are sacrificed to support the ruling class, who by a stroke of luck at birth, get to rule the land, and oppress the masses through unjust taxation.

Couldn't find the Monty Python and the Holy Grail rant, which is much better, so the above will have to suffice.

As Sundance mentioned, there are various racing games out there that might suit your needs, e.g. car, airplanes, hydroplanes, grav bikes, etc., which can all be played with miniatures.

I'm rather taken aback by the number of responses to the original post that consist of variants of the classic "but I don't like to play that way, and you're foolish for wanting to play a different game than me."

I do appreciate the genuine suggestions that have been offered.

I think the idea of using CR 2.0 for Winnie the Pooh is brilliant, and I'll look into doing something like that.

I'll look into the Two-Hour Wargames sports rules, link the Wire to Wire racing game and the Beautiful Game look especially promising, and their Chariot racing rules also look good link .

I also appreciate the suggestions from Eureka's website. A Fistful of Honey looks simple, but fun, and if a large number of figures are wanted their Cast of Thousands link looks quite good.

I think optional field asked a fair question seeing as this is 'The Miniatures Page' and not 'The Wargaming Page', but as usual the 'that's not how you do it' brigade appear…

I always thought that computer games such as SimCity or ZooTycoon could make excellent miniature games. Some years ago, I started to design one to run as a demo at a game convention, but it never materiialized.

I hereby present Loud Argument, the miniatures conflict game. Just use your favorite rules but take away the physical violence.
Offensive actions vary between factions. Examples include Taunt, Point And Laugh, Bad Poetry, Religion, Street Mime, Philosophy, and of course Argument. Modifiers for strength, range etc are applied through prefixes like Loud, Confusing, Sneaky. Prefixes can be stacked.
Space grunts use Harsh Language.

The worst that can happen anyone is to be forced to Stand In A Corner And Sulk, or in extreme cases, Storm Of In A Huff.

Star Trek combat with phasers set to stun, instead of kill…..

You can do swordfighting the same way, with strikes being of the non-lethal variety, as in The Three Musketeers, who seek to embarrass their opponents, rather than finish them off. Use the Eureka rules for those, called "And One for All", or something like that, IIRC.

Same applies to jousting games as well, excepting the errant broken lance shard through the visor slot…..

Chef de Bataillon – spend hours just trying to get your chaps to move or even change formation and by the time they get close enough to do some actual fighting, you run out of time/the will to live.

hope to catch up at MOAB for some genuine simulated table top violence btw.

It would be great to catch up at MOAB mate, but alas the Long Haired Brigadier has decreed that we have to go and be sociable that weekend…I could have sworn we've already done something sociable once this year but apparently thats not good enough…

Maybe catch up at the Hall of Heroes sometime soon – Leipzig 200th game on the 20th October if you'd care to swing by….

Rather than roll our eyeballs at the idea, I think it would be good to think of a game that used painted miniatures, terrain, some of the die rolling conventions we use and then do something that doesn't involve fighting. A challenge!

The racing game we've been running at shows does let players zap each other with missiles and lasers, but they're all non-lethal; at worst, the target is spun out of control and slowed until reaching the pits. If we wanted to, we could rename them. In effect, they're the same effects as the shells and banana skins from Mario Kart.

There's various sports games, although most of the scifi and fantasy ones let you punch the opposition. There was someone doing miniatures of soccer players; don't know if there were any rules to go with them. There was also a short-lived Baseball clix game from Wizkids.

There's probably a few boardgames; Sparker's comment about "MDC – the miniatures game" does remind me of Pandemic, where the players cooperate to combat various world-wide disease outbreaks. Settlers of Catan only features "conflict" in the person of the robber, and IIRC Caracssone is entirely violence-free.

To some extent, it depends how one defines 'violence'. I have an older edition of Cluedo with rather nice plastic figures of Colonel Plum, Miss Scarlett and the rest. Since the 'murder' has already been committed, the game is about bringing the murderer to justice by deduction – surely even the most ardent pacifist could not object to that?

Games of contact sports, like rugby, American football &c., apart from being less fun to play than playing or watching the real thing IMHO, are 'violent' because they portray activities in which real people do get hurt – sometimes intentionally…

I think John D Salt analysed the situation very well.

I can think of games where the players cooperate and are not in conflict with each other, though the theme itself is still violent— D&D and some dungeon crawls. But that's still violence.

Someone did mention chariot games, but these can be violent, too. (I played in one where you had the option of whipping an adjacent opponent's horses— or even whipping the adjacent opponent! Great fun, but decidedly violent.)

Part of the problem is that tabletop miniatures games are generally two person affairs, which implies a game played as a direct conflict, one winner, one loser. This lends itself to violence as the theme, even if just silly violence.

Of course, sports games are a possibility, but again these often incorporate violence in the mix: Blood Bowl, Dreadball, Battle Ball are all "over the top" games with inherent violence (the latter is softened by making the violence result in either a temporary benching or a "severe injury" that sends the figure "to the locker room").

Not that it can't be done; something playing off The Adventurers, which is a race through a collapsing temple, or a "collect and build" game might be possible— like a "loot and scoot" scenario, where the players have to choose the best route and character actions to grab objects and return to a goal. But I can't think of a specific game that does that without also including violent conflict as at least an option.

Beyond that, you're probably looking at boardgames, where the options broaden: Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan, various "eurogames," etc.. I like the recently republished Survive, which pits the players against each other as they try to move their "meeple" off a sinking island. Not completely non-violent— the game includes sharks and sea serpents that eat the meeple (and whales that knock them in the water to be eaten by sharks and sea serpents), and you can take actions to set these beasties on your opponents, but it's not a "war" game. A similar, completely cooperative game is Forbidden Island, where the players move about a sinking island, trying to collect four treasures and escape before the island goes completely Atlantis. But again, those are all boardgames.

Breaking things down, I would say that you have the following classes of non-wargames:

- Hunting games – this depends on the individual's definition of violence, but removes the issue of human against human violence

- Emergency games – where the players are facing some sort of dangerous but not human threat, such as fire, flood, earthquake etc. Also could include Indiana-jones style players vs. temple games.

- Sport games – where miniatures represent people in a sporting situation

- Abstract/Economic games – miniatures could be used for more abstract games – I've always thought the wonderful 2mm buildings from Brigade Games would be wonderful replacing the chits in some industrial-age economic games

The three miniature games that come to mind are…

CORNER KICK – a soccer(football) game that is run at pretty much every HMGS East convention, and also being run at Hurricon this year. For sale from The Virtual Armchair General.

Snowball fight – seen this run at COLD WARS and FALL-IN. Kids throw snowballs at each other, so it is in a manner violent. It does teach running, throwing and crying (movement, shooting and morale), but as I remember only mean kids can throw snowballs at other kids who are crying.

And of course the racing games and demolition derby style games.

I've played a dogsled racing game where you'd get surprised by numerous animals or people popping up along the track.

Investigation boardgames seem rich with introducing miniatures…Clue, Pandemic, and the Jack the Ripper game come to mind.

Dreadball is a very good game. (Robot teams?)

I have been slowly collecting for a Roman street scene around a market and arena. Factions of slaves, gladiators, soldiers, senators, etc. all with different non-violent objectives. Mine will be very labor-intensive compared to most simple combat games.

A battle of the bands game might be fun. Each player gets a band. Takes place at some sort of multi-stage convention and extensive backstage area. Sign record deals, play shows, use substances to enhance creativity, trash hotel rooms, etc. to score points.

Racing games are a good idea. Pod racing and chariots feature nice figures.

Ghostbusters. Figures and the car exist.

Campy kung-fu or giant monster games might stylize the violence enough for some non-gamers. If I was going to allow some violence, Arkham Horror with miniatures works well.

I think building sims, economic games and settling games are fun with enhanced 3D terrain and swag, but don't seem like a gateway to miniature gaming.

Scooby Doo. Van and figures exist.

We mostly use miniatures to play wargames, but we also have 28mm painted miniatures for a great rugby game called "Kahmate". link

We have played a lot over the years and it is still a great favourite of my daughter's (she started playing it when she was 6).

I am planning some "playfight" games for her and her friends using the Eureka teddy bears link along the lines of the Winnie the Pooh games mentioned earlier.

Miniatures for our horse racing games are also planned for the future.

We also often "port" miniatures into our boardgames in place of the counters supplied – eg Forbidden Island

Somewhere on-line is the rules for a game of firefighting during the Blitz. The idea is to control the fire/put it out before it completely destroys the building and spreads to surrounding buildings, IIRC.