"In Defense, or not ... of a Historical Period" Topic

Is there a completely indefensible period, either a sub period or a period that is set out as "different" and shouldn't be, or some period that should be eliminated entirely (if you could do it).

If asked generally: no. There are however certain periods that cause various people stress. Think for instance of some Vietnam veterans, or veterans of a more modern conflict. Although I am interested in everything I would of course respect a refusal on grounds like that.

I have no interest in warfare during my own lifetime but that doesn't mean that others can't have.

I would think that gaming Einsatzgruppen would be in bad taste, but we have had some s here on TMP who would disagree. Hopefully they have all been banned.

Personally, there are things I don't game because I either have little interest (most pre-gunpowder stuff or periods with too many funny hats) or feel uncomfortable with for various reasons (usually scenarios with strong power imbalances, like colonials or some "first world soldiers vs third world insurgents" games)

Others can game whatever they want and my personal interests shouldn't dictate what someone else wants to play of course :)
I know people have used my rules for games that I wouldn't personally ever have run, and I am glad they had a great time.

That being said:
If people run games about Nazi's rounding up partisans or law men shooting down rioters, I'd probably think that person has problems and avoid them in general.

Seems a bit too much like a kid burning ants or something.

Pretty much anything past WW2 and parts of WW2 as well I would have trouble gaming and would gladly use my magic powers to eradicate the periods in question.

Like Weasel, uneven power struggles are problematic. Victorian colonialism. Though i would not have a problem gaming the Boer Wars.

During all of my research for articles about different eras and wars, I have found interesting stuff about each era. So in my opinion, no era should be ignored outright. Study a historical era for a time before deciding to game it or not. By the way historical era does not include fantasy, sciFi or near future. There is some debate about alternative timelines of the past such as the Victorian SciFi era.

'Indefensible period'? I don't think there is such a thing.

There are, however, specific ASPECTS of a period, or specific conflicts within that period, which people may object to.

For example: people may well decline to take part in an Einsatztruppen-themed game.
That doesn't make WWII an 'indefensible period'.

There are those who aren't comfortable gaming the Vietnam War.
But… during the timeframe of that conflict (1955-1975) Wikipedia lists 76 different wars or conflicts around the world.
(And as well as the historical conflicts, there's the whole range of 'Cold War Turned Hot' what-if's.)
Even if you were dead set against gaming the Vietnam war, there'd surely be something in that period you wouldn't have an objection to.

I would pretty much game anything. I think I game about 27 different periods now. If I had to do the figures for it, I probably wouldn't do land Napoleonics just because I paint so many of them already.

I can see where some periods might be indefensible. Beyond those that transgress the bounds of good taste, or propriety. Such as the aforementioned Auschwitz, or the sack of a town by soldiers in the 30 years war or by a Midwest village by a biker gang, but others might call under this as well. For example, of a period which limits the Renaissance to ONLY battles in Italy, or "The Battle of Kursk" as a period, not as part of a larger panel of the Second World War. That is, that there were significant and landmark differences about that "period" that set it apart from all others. This would be especially true in the Ancient world which encompasses so much more time.

NOTE! This does not apply to a specific set of RULES for the Battle of Kurskor any others. That's simply a scenario or a choice of preference.

Kittens in a Blender. Go figure. I can't get my wife to play.

link

Nuclear War/Nuclear Escalation/Nuclear Proliferation. link

The box says ages 10 and up. It's an adult game…only. Not a lesson you want to send to a 10 year old. So, I guess what I am saying is that most topics, especially extreme ones, maybe/should be banned from kids.

Auschwitz – indefensible as a scenario? Yes. (As far as I'm concerned, anyway.)

Indefensible as a period? What does that even mean?
Auschwitz wasn't a historical 'period'.

What, you wouldn't game Rommel's Gazala offensive, or the Thousand Bomber Raid, because they took place at the same time large-scale gassing operations began at Auschwitz, and hence in the 'Auschwitz Period'?

Nazi's rounding up partisans

I play lots of those, but the partisans get decent odds. Also, I am not a fan of all-out attrition (or attrition until morale breaks) scenarios; ya gotta have objectives. One very simple objective for unbalanced forces is "the partisans have to cross from the SE to the NW corner of the board without having the one who memorized the Nazi codes captured or killed."

Like the scenarios I run about the Black Hawk War (and many other asymmetric conflicts), it isn't interesting to run the massacre encounters (they happened, no need to whitewash that, but also no need to play it) but it is engaging to play the ones where there was an actual combat dynamic.

law men shooting down rioters

I agree that a shooting gallery is not a fun wargame, but having to balance the use of force, the threat of force, projection of power, presence, and surveillance can make a law enforcement/civilian scenario intriguing to play for both sides.

I ran a really fun Luddite Rebellion game at a con a few years back.

You CAN turn most anything into a playable scenario, there's just ones I'd rather avoid personally.

I've known guys who were in Vietnam. Some didn't want to game that (or even moderns at all), others loved it.
I knew a guy who only played the VC/NVA too.

etotheipi – your point about The Black Hawk War applies equally to numerous other geographic regions, such as the American Indian Wars in general, the late 19th century Congo (shortly to be the subject of a new skirmish game from Studio Tomahawk), and the colonial Australian frontier.

Some of you might have noticed that the latter in particular has in the past excited the passions of some Aussie TMPers. The core reason for this is that, unlike other asymmetric colonial conflicts, Australia's frontier experience has barely been touched by researchers and writers taking a military historical approach to the subject (three exceptions: Jeffrey Grey, John Connor and Raymond Kerkhove). The vast majority of published material is by journalists, popular writers, and social historians and ethnohistorians with no interest in uncovering the extent and form of frontier skirmishes. They're usually also ignorant about firearms technology and matters military in general. They invariably focus entirely on massacres (often their agenda is specifically to emphasise them), using a broad definition of that term that takes in most of the incidents that military historians would class as fights. The result is the likes of the book 'The Secret War', which despite its title, barely mentions combat and instead almost exclusively discusses massacres.

In addition you have the problem of a dearth of accounts of skirmishes because of 'the code of the frontier', by which most frontier fights went unreported and undocumented at the time of their occurrence. When you do find such a record, unlike those from other conflicts, if collected close to the time of the encounter the names of the participants will have been deleted or only epithets used. Names only appear when a private diary or journal is the source, or when the account is published long after the events described have passed, such as in a memoir. Because of these factors researching the subject is a lot like researching ancient warfare: there aren't many detailed records, but they're a vital foundation, and the complete picture can only be constructed through a long, slow process of accumulating supporting snippets of information and extrapolating the big picture from the assembled pieces.

An example: two different sources separated by decades and hundreds of miles mention the ineffectiveness of revolvers against Aboriginal warriors. One says that when used against them in a fight they ignored them, and another that they considered them mere toys. Does this mean just that they couldn't be deterred by a near miss/graze from a revolver, or that the low velocity bullets had little effect even when they were hit – or both? (the latter is borne out by a documented case in which a warrior initiated a hand-to-hand fight with a settler and continued fighting despite having received three bullets in the stomach). A decision has to be made when formulating rules, but the point is that I would consider this sufficient evidence for building this effect into the rules because the probability of chancing upon further corroborating evidence is negligible.

My central point of relevance here…? A heavy bias in the published literature can give the appearance that a colonial conflict was more one-sided than it actually was, and thereby reduce its appeal as a gaming subject.

I don't game anything where people who were actually there are still alive, I don't want them to think that I am making a "game" out of what they went through.
I understand there are actual people gaming conflicts they may have been involved in, and I have complete and total respect for their service and sacrifice.
So for me gaming anything from WW2 to the present is off limits.
It may sound silly, but it is what it is.

Nuclear War/Nuclear Escalation/Nuclear Proliferation. link

The box says ages 10 and up. It's an adult game…only. Not a lesson you want to send to a 10 year old. So, I guess what I am saying is that most topics, especially extreme ones, maybe/should be banned from kids.

Why? because it may make the subject seem "fun"? If that's the case then I strong urge ABSOLUTELY NO gamers under the age of 15 play ANY games dealing with war and violence. Chutes and Ladders only. No Chess, Checkers, etc.

Seriously, if the idea is that the Nuclear War series trivializes war then I think we really need to keep kids away from the WH40K genre as well. I don't see a problem with kids playing either, they need to be reminded and have it explained to them the heavy costs associated with real war. Have the kids play NW after having seen Threads or The War Game (not Wargames mind you) or the Day After if you want something lighter.

Anything a has as his pet project, LOL it makes them Maaad that I find their point of view (and games) indefensible.

History is history and I believe it should be viewed unvarnished.
Cheers and +1 morale to the partisans who brewed up my SS Commander in his armoured car with a Molotov, Dang :)

You CAN turn most anything into a playable scenario, there's just ones I'd rather avoid personally.

Maybe, maybe not. There are certain scenarios, like the massacres, the I couldn't turn into a playable scenario. I was illustrating the distinction between a scenario and a "historical period" (I prefer the term genre) per the OP. There are scenarios I wouldn't play (though not for sensitivty reasons), but not whole historical periods I would count out.

your point about The Black Hawk War applies equally to numerous other geographic regions

I quite agree. Tons. I just happen to be gaming the Black Hawk War right now … well, as mentioned, parts of it.

My central point of relevance here…? A heavy bias in the published literature can give the appearance that a colonial conflict was more one-sided than it actually was, and thereby reduce its appeal as a gaming subject.

I quite agree again. There is a lot of literature and other scholarly-type stuff, and even wargame rules encoding of it, about the relative advantages of the Springfield and Endfield rifles in the ACW (or WNA, if you prefer). A couple years ago, I read an excellent article (from the standpoint of a military systems tester) comparing the two in Guns and Ammo. They had an expert marksman use both in relatively well controlled conditions. The result? Machts nichts!

That's why I like to identify the important dynamics (from my viewpoint) of a conflict I am going to game. You know what you're in for, at least.

I wonder if one of the important distinctions might be that we tend to use "period" in a very specific way:

Colonial games and Franco-Prussian war are in the same era of time, but many people play only one of the two.

Yeah, I have never been a fan of that usage. Period proper really means a time frame, and really should refer to a cyclic one rather than a bounded linear segment (the Greek components actually mean "the way/path around something").

That's part of why I like to use the word genre as it only means a group of things with a similar style. So, as opposed to period, which tells us the similarity is time related, genre kind of leads the audience to ask, "OK, they're similar in some way. Tell me how."

I play a lot of games from the ACW period, but not in the ACW genre.

Genre is good, I like that.

I tend to use "setting" but maybe that's coming off an RPG background.

One very simple objective for unbalanced forces is "the partisans have to cross from the SE to the NW corner of the board without having the one who memorized the Nazi codes captured or killed."

Or have the larger Nazi group split into two columns, and the partisans' objective is to destroy the smaller one and escape before the larger one passes down the road at an unknown time.

I make the distinction between ACW and modern, and won't game either. But I wouldn't eliminate them for others. I wouldn't eliminate any period or genre for others… well, accept maybe Amish rake fights, and cop raids on FLDS, Branch Davidians, and other politicized pogroms upon religious sects. That is something I would seriously frown upon (not the Amish rake fights, just kidding about that)….

If you'll indulge me once again for a moment, this is just an additional point about my example above: I have come across other references to the relative ineffectiveness of revolvers (usually warnings from experienced frontiersmen to 'new chums' not to rely on them, but to take rifles with them when heading to the frontier), but in those cases it's made very clear that the issue is their poor range as compared to woomera-assisted spears, which according to some sources can be thrown up to 200 yards. Of course, effective range is less – perhaps 100 yards (an estimate supported by Major O'Halloran's instruction in his standing orders for the 1841 Rufus River expedition: 'The men engaged never to suffer the Blacks to come within 100 yards of them.').

Or have the larger Nazi group split into two columns, and the partisans' objective is to destroy the smaller one and escape before the larger one passes down the road at an unknown time

This is a good one, too. One way to do this that is intriguing is to use playing cards for the Nazi forces. Each card indicates the number of Nazis in that "patrol". If you use stuff like 2, 2, 3, 8 against, say 5 partisans (or some similar unbalanced ratio). You can easily distinguish the target patrol by size (they're the only 3) or by suit (they're the only spade). We usually make the target patrol the one carrying the "field radio" or the "payroll" -- a reasonable partisan target.

If you use four cards, and each is a different suit, you can randomize which suit the target is (partisans draw an ace before start), so the Nazi's don't know what the specific target is, either. This combines well with the Nazis being given a total force size (15) and allowing them to pick the allocation of forces.

Generally, in this game we give the partisans a move and cover advantage. Home turf and not kitted out.

It all depends on what the motivation for the game is.

If the motivation is: "I wanna blow stuff up and kill'm all", yes, then there are indefensible conflicts or settings that better are not being played. However, disguising the period might suddenly make it more acceptable. Riot police shooting down protesting civilians is probably not a good setting. That same riot police shooting down masses of zombies is FUN FUN FUN!

The motivation could also be to confront players with certain moral choices, as opposed to choices in military planning. You also see this in certain independent computer games.
E.g. you start as a border guard asking people for their documents. As the game progresses, and you get more efficient, halfway through the game you are suddenly locking people up, shooting down others etc. All to get some meaningless numerical indicator as close to 100% as possible. Such games are designed to confront players with moral issues, and that certain choices are "justifiable" in order to achieve some "goal".

In that sense, a game about the concentration camps can make sense, perhaps disguised. E.g. run a camp in Middle Earth, with Elves putting Orcs in camps or something like that. Slowly increase the tension in the game, until sooner or later the players realize they are no better than the guys who are running extermination camps.

Dear Phil

A friend of mine, Walt O'Hara did just that with a sci-fi game. When it dawned on the players what they were doing (with non-human aliens) they happily went along killing them even though the aliens were attempting to befriend them and make contact.

Otto

Another fun aspect of a partisan vs. Occupying force would be the "whoops" factor. Have a couple of cards or a table of "complications" to the situation. One that comes to mind is that the alerting message sent to the partisans was garbled or mistranslated: "the pellet with the poison's in the flagon with the dragon. The chalice with the palace has the brew that is true. No, wait, the flagon with the dragon broke; the pellet with the poison's now in the chalice with the palace: the vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true." (whew, say _that_ five times real fast!) Or, as in the actual case of the liberation of Paris, a pre-recorded message alerting the partisans to action was broadcast by mistake too soon, provoking a major change in plans for everybody!

I came very close to trying to recreate the later campaigns of the Cayuse War, fought in Washington state in the early 1850's. I have several of the primary sources, have visited the sites. The battles were small and manageable on the tabletop, and the forces were interesting and colorful, including regular army troops, volunteer units, and a plethora of Indian tribes, including the Nez Pearce, who were scouting for the army at the time.

For a while, I felt like it was a good way to learn the history, present it to others (such as my middle school students), and honor the combatants of both sides.

In the end, I decided against it. I couldn't bring myself to mount a gaming campaign in which the local tribes were treated so unjustly. I've met many people from those tribes, and felt that, if asked, I could never admit to them that I was making a game of their tragedies.

I don't know whether that was the right thing or not. I still, sometimes, want to do that project. On a personal level, all war is obscene.