"Free Wargames Rules - The Future" Topic

When I started this site back in 1997 there were very few wargames sites, Google did not exists and there were no blogs where people could share whatever they wanted instantly. BAck in '97 I made it my mission to catalogue and collate all the available free wargames rules on the Internet.

Back in those days as there was so little new content being added it didn't take much time to add content. In 1997 only 1.7% (70,000,000) of the Worlds population had internet access fast forward to 2014 and it is now 40.7% (2,937,000,000 users).

After 17 years of trying to keep up and having recently retired from a 30 year Government job I have lost the enthusiasm to continue as I have. I have gone from daily updates to weekly updates then to monthly updates and I am struggling to catch up.

Many people have offered to kindly take this site on, but without knowing them or their commitment longterm I cannot guarantee that in another 5, 10 or 20 years all the hard work is lost for ever.

I am aware what a valuable resource it is and am unwilling for it to die a slow and painful death.

I have seen the power of social media and collective collaboration, therefore, I have a radical proposal to ensure the continuation of resource:

I propose that we have a "wikipedia style" resource of Free Wargames Rules where the whole community maintains it, adds new content, amends incorrect data and removes obsolete information. I will continue as overall Administrator.

This way everyone can contribute and the resource survives. This is a mammoth task to convert this data to a wiki and it will need a great deal of work. I do not want to start this if there is support across the community so please comment below on my blog or contact me via the website at: freewargamesrules.co.uk

I think that (Community effort) is a great idea. I don't know if you could have a handful of moderators to keep out spam and needless junk.

I love the site, I use the site and I too, would hate to see the site die.
I do believe that there would be enough people willing to keep an eye on a wiki site!
Go for it!

It's much too useful a resource to just let it fade away. This is a good plan.

I think this is a really good way forward.

I think that's a wonderful idea.

That is a brilliant idea.

+1

A Wiki sounds good.

Great idea. I have some rules (probably of interest to no one but me unfortunately) that I would like to post. I haven't done it yet because I haven't figured out Google Docs. I would definitely post them to a wiki.

I think is is a great idea to continue with such a great resource.

I am in a similar situation with Starship Combat News. It was started in 1999 and I got to the point 14 years later that I did not have the drive to keep it up at he same level. I have looked at a wiki format along with a blog format but neither has worked out. Good luck.

Ten years ago I started "The Society of Daisy a site dedicated to promoting humor and whimsy in the hobby of war games. Eight years ago I began publishing (in print, not electronically) a newsletter of the Society called "Saxe N' Violets." Been going strong for 8 years now and I show no sign of stopping it. Gets printed four times a year, March, June, September, and December and sometimes has a bonus issue. Sometimes we put out whole games in the newsletter. It has a small circulation, but that's not the point, it's very good if I do say so myself.

The point of this post is that the real treasures of our hobby are in these small "fanzines" and projects people put their heart and soul into to keep going. Unfortunately our hobby is littered with the bones can carcasses of many such exciting and dedicated efforts, and we only have a few issues here and there stuck into someone's files. So much is lost with these, so many great ideas, games, battle reports etc. I always try and get the papers of wargamers who pass on to try and recreate these things and always purchase what I can at flea-markets and dealer areas.

The real yeomen work of games is one in these "'zines" and sites, It's where the newest, brightest, most innovative and imaginative ORIGINAL stuff is done.

I have to tell you I have no faith in electronic media, that's why I print Saxe N' Violets only. Electronic Media is too perishable. We had the example of one such electronic archiving service going kerpow a few years ago and so much was lost.

OTTO

Printing only sounds like you are really unecessarilly limiting who can enjoy the product of your work. What extra effort is involved in pushing the "save as PDF" button after the work you have put into the layout and then physically printing it? I don't think it has to be an either or situation. People can then print out their own hard copy. I've enjoyed your posts and think your newsletter might be really interesting. Just saying'
:)

WikiRoolz? – I like it!

Dear Daler 240D

To answer your question, 1) Copyright infringement, and 2. Personal animus against e anything which I see on the one hand as simply a well conceived and attractive cover to the dumpster, and a great way to short-circuit responsibility, 3) history.

What I mean by history is this. Go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY and you can see in the Near East section a little clay tablet from Sumer that has survived for 5,000 years or so. It has been through fire, flood, wars, pestilence, murder, mayhem, uproar, government corruption, the heartbreak of Psoriasis and drops that spot.

It's a list of items in a warehouse and about as interesting as day old dishwater, but it survived.

Mankind is obsessed with putting its most valuable items on increasingly more and more perishable media. The problem was best exemplified by a cartoon (as so many things are when reduced to humor which is why S&V is dedicated to humor in games) In the cartoon, a man held out an electronic reader and extolled all the virtues of his device over the big, huge clunky book his wife was hauling around. He did this through two frames. In the last frame, the wife took the reader and put it on the table and smashed it to smithereens with the book.

Point-Game-and Match goes to the book.

Even if a book is burned or partly destroyed you have the fragment as a remaineder. Enough books will leave enough fragments so that eventually you could reconstruct it.

People put stuff on e-readers and promptly forget about it, eventually clearing it out for say O-- a list of inventory in their warehouse…

I do the newsletter because the theory is this. It's an artifact. You can't forget it, it lays on your desk for days weeks, maybe they'll throw it out. Maybe they'll burn it. Most likely they'll just toss it into a pile of stuff and shove it into a file or their drawer, or a box in the attic. There's still a chance someday they'll open it up and re-read it. With an e-reader there's no chance whatsoever. People put things on e-format in their computer and content themselves that they HAVE it. It doesn't mean they've READ IT.

History has shown this time after time. We have the writings of the ancient world in our libraries from fragments here and fragments there, and now and then a complete manuscript is found. So much has been lost with the fire and famine, plague pestilence etc., of human knowledge because there are remnants- quotes from other sources, fragments etc.

Finally I not to everyone the demise of MAGWEB a company that was archiving all the old magazines and papers of the hobby They all sorts of old wargame zines on file and you could look them up. Their discs crashed and it was all lost. The patient efforts of years gone and all those magazines people had tossed from their files because they said "why keep it! MAGWEB" has it.

Well apparently Magweb wasn't able to keep it.

Oh you can say that it's their fault they didn't have backups or firewalls, or security code or good procedures or the like, but that's all cryin in your beer after the horse has gone. The company I work for now has all that and last week we sat around with our thumbs up our buts because three of the four discs on the computer crashed and it took a week for all the kings horses and all the kings men to put humpty dumpty back together again at a cost of a mere $100,000. USD

Apparently the E landscape has more destructive forces than the centuries could muster against that little bit of pottery in the Museum of Art.

That's why I don't even bother with PDF. No one will read it, no one will use it, and eventually they'll throw it out for disk space so they can store their porn vids.

Otto

Dear Daler 240D

To answer your question, 1) Copyright infringement, and 2. Personal animus against e anything which I see on the one hand as simply a well conceived and attractive cover to the dumpster, and a great way to short-circuit responsibility, 3) history.

What I mean by history is this. Go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY and you can see in the Near East section a little clay tablet from Sumer that has survived for 5,000 years or so. It has been through fire, flood, wars, pestilence, murder, mayhem, uproar, government corruption, the heartbreak of Psoriasis and drops that spot.

It's a list of items in a warehouse and about as interesting as day old dishwater, but it survived.

Mankind is obsessed with putting its most valuable items on increasingly more and more perishable media. The problem was best exemplified by a cartoon (as so many things are when reduced to humor which is why S&V is dedicated to humor in games) In the cartoon, a man held out an electronic reader and extolled all the virtues of his device over the big, huge clunky book his wife was hauling around. He did this through two frames. In the last frame, the wife took the reader and put it on the table and smashed it to smithereens with the book.

Point-Game-and Match goes to the book.

Even if a book is burned or partly destroyed you have the fragment as a remaineder. Enough books will leave enough fragments so that eventually you could reconstruct it.

People put stuff on e-readers and promptly forget about it, eventually clearing it out for say O-- a list of inventory in their warehouse…

I do the newsletter because the theory is this. It's an artifact. You can't forget it, it lays on your desk for days weeks, maybe they'll throw it out. Maybe they'll burn it. Most likely they'll just toss it into a pile of stuff and shove it into a file or their drawer, or a box in the attic. There's still a chance someday they'll open it up and re-read it. With an e-reader there's no chance whatsoever. People put things on e-format in their computer and content themselves that they HAVE it. It doesn't mean they've READ IT.

History has shown this time after time. We have the writings of the ancient world in our libraries from fragments here and fragments there, and now and then a complete manuscript is found. So much has been lost with the fire and famine, plague pestilence etc., of human knowledge because there are remnants- quotes from other sources, fragments etc.

Finally I not to everyone the demise of MAGWEB a company that was archiving all the old magazines and papers of the hobby They all sorts of old wargame zines on file and you could look them up. Their discs crashed and it was all lost. The patient efforts of years gone and all those magazines people had tossed from their files because they said "why keep it! MAGWEB" has it.

Well apparently Magweb wasn't able to keep it.

Oh you can say that it's their fault they didn't have backups or firewalls, or security code or good procedures or the like, but that's all cryin in your beer after the horse has gone. The company I work for now has all that and last week we sat around with our thumbs up our buts because three of the four discs on the computer crashed and it took a week for all the kings horses and all the kings men to put humpty dumpty back together again at a cost of a mere $100,000. USD

Apparently the E landscape has more destructive forces than the centuries could muster against that little bit of pottery in the Museum of Art.

That's why I don't even bother with PDF. No one will read it, no one will use it, and eventually they'll throw it out for disk space so they can store their porn vids.

Otto