"Current rules writers - who will be "the greats"?" Topic

I wonder if Otto would feel the same way, if his name had been mentioned?

No, not at all. I do not consider myself a game designer any more than any war gamer is. Jack Scruby said in 1957 in "All About War Games" – "I am constantly asked where can I get the rules for war games and I am at a loss for each table top general makes his own rules."

Pure onomatopoeia suffices for boys to play with their toy soldiers quite contentedly and excitedly. They seem to have quite satisfactory games with simple bang-bang, boom-booms.
They have this fun spontaneously and as far as I see, with far less arguments. It is in the JOY of the denizens of the sand box that the reward and value of the game is to be found. It is in the spirit of play, the spirit of make-believe that the JOY of the hobby is to be found.

The "greatness" of "the greats" in our hobby, Scruby, Bath, Featherstone, Grant, Young, and a few others is in the joy they brought to it. You cannot read of the battle of Trimsos, or Sittangbad, or Hyperborea and Huyrcania, or the chronicles of "Dave the Slave" from Scruby's table top talk without the joy oozing and excitement oozing out of every line.

Most rules churned out today seem particularly joyless. In their hundred pages plus they hammer all the joy into routine drudgery. Like history text books today (from which they seem to take their inspiration) they turn the glamor and sweep of history, the passions, the triumphs and the tragedies into well homogenized mush.

I doubt that any of the current designers will be regarded as anything special.

In comparison, the early writers were creating a new hobby. Their writings included books, rules, new ideas and methods, journal publishing, figure painting and conversion, campaigns, battles, skirmish gaming etc. And most had full-time jobs.

Stack that up against the consumer driven hobby of today. Many of the rules of today arguably have more in common with fashion industry products than historical wargaming.

Some sets can trace their origin back to commercial toy products where the emphasis was on marketability. They were meant to sell toys. Even when turned into "historical" wargaming rules, the language used to describe the rules was still one from marketing. Tags, glittering generalities, weasel words and branding. The intention is to sell product and corner the market.

Other sets have been published because the authors could. Unlike the grognards, rules will be all that they publish.

And there will be some real gems. These will largely go unknown because the newsletters, magazines, podcasts, utube reviews etc are all about commenting on commercial product. I'll repeat that – they focus on commercial products.

I remember a video from a show where the interviewer asked some guys playing WW2 what game they were playing. When told they were playing their own rules the interviewer looked at them as if they had been given a day pass from the asylum.

So identifying the names of current rules writers to be elevated to "Hall Of Grognards" status is dumb.

We need to name the BRANDS that should receive grognard status. Something along the lines of platinum, gold, bronze records.

Read this and substitute "wargaming" for "fashion".
link

If I could predict the future accurately enough to identify which of today's wargame rule writers would be regarded as 'greats', I'd be entering and winning the lottery!

The simple answer is that it is too early to say!

However, I would nominate the Grant family as the first wargame dynasty: Charles Grant, author of The War Game; his son, Charles S Grant, creator of numerous Table Top Teasers and author of many books and articles, and his son, Charlie Grant, who looks set to follow in his father's footsteps…

I think that Fletcher Pratt is deserving of mention as one of the greats.