"War Games for Boy Scouts (ca. 1910)" Topic

Hi all,

It was tough to find a copy of this book from the really early days of the hobby, so I had it sent to me digitally from my university's library and decided it'd be worthwhile to also share it through my blog:

link

My apologies if I'm violating any rules by posting this here; I'll be glad to alter the post (or have it altered) as necessary.

If you check out the book, I hope you enjoy it!

Jonathan

If the original truly dates to 1910, it is long out of copyright.

Oh yeah, I'm sure you're right on that. I suppose there's a chance I violated something by posting Oxford's microform copy of it, though…and I don't know if there are rules here that I've missed regarding "promoting" something like a blog post.

As for its public domain status, that at least ensures that if the file itself is improper somehow, I should be able to put the words up in some form.

In the US, at least, format makes no difference. Oxford would only have a claim if they added new material, and then only for that material. It is interesting that no copyright is asserted in the book. Not sure about British law but a US court would probably rule that such failure put the work in the public domain anyway.

And thanks for sharing.

Wow, this is really great. Thanks for sharing. I'm going to dig into this this weekend.

a US court would probably rule that such failure put the work in the public domain anyway.

Nope. Created works (nowadays) always have copyright. The US ratified the Berne Convention in 1988. Part of the Berne convention is: Protection must not be conditional upon compliance with any formality (principle of "automatic" protection)

link

That was a great read. Thanks!

Hmmm Thanks for the posting. Now I shall begin the search for a copy of my own, though it looks very familiar some how.

Very glad others are having some fun with this one! For anyone looking to learn more about the release, I did find this excellent post with a bit more info (and some great pics) on its sale with a set of toy soldiers as "The Great War Game":

link

The book was fascinating. I read it avidly. it is another example that wargames had an origin far more diverse thanwe imagined. I was especially intrigued by the advertisements in the book.

Roderick that is indeed the case now, with new works. But a work published early in the last century would be judged under the law as it existed at that time.

Also in this book:

link

(History of Wargaming PRoject – Wargaming Pioneers)

Dear Phil

I have many of them in the original. What is interesting to me is that these war games are all very light. barely a dozen pages of rules at most, some only one or two.

My question is what happened? If they can do it with only a few pages why do we have to have rulebooks of over 100 pages in length and $100 USD in cost.

@Phil: That looks like a great resource; thanks for the link!

@Ottoathome: I'm definitely no expert in wargames, but I think there are a lot of parallels in RPGs (also no expert, but I have more experience than with wargames), and I have a couple of thoughts on that.

I'm assuming that a lot of the early rulesets were only intended to be basic frameworks for games. Every specific scenario didn't have to be covered because (1) those who play the game can probably figure stuff out as they go along, especially if there's a referee, and (2) maybe more importantly, there's no evidence yet that people actually want to pay money for all of those little details. I would guess that someone who played an early, minimalist wargame long enough could probably fill up dozens of pages with obscure rules they had to think of on the fly, but with a hobby in its infancy, who knew others would actually want to see those rules?

I would guess that many of today's games could have their essences distilled into a small percentage of what we end up getting in complete rulebooks, and in some cases, we're able to see what that looks like (e.g. the quickstart editions of various games). It's probably not commercially viable to stop there, though. After all, between freely availale rules and just making stuff up on our own, we could all play tabletop games for many lifetimes without ever spending another dime on rules.

In short (and maybe more to the point), I think the commercial value of early rulesets was inherent in their very existence, while later efforts depend more on sales models that involve player investment in the "official" approach to all sorts of details.

(And there are also probably many players who, at this point in the history of the hobby, expect to have all possible scenarios covered in a rulebook. I guess that's a parallel reason that's also worth considering…)

Dear Linneman

I think you are right. The late great John Hill (author of Johnny Reb) said that if you put something in the rules, it will show up at EVERY battle, like 11" columbiad cannon. I also notice that the rules for Boy Scouts for example used an umpire, something all games back then used to do. Wells, Shambattle, and many others .

By the way I found the cover art on the book interesting. The two tykes I get, the older guy as umpire I get, but the woman dead center… hmmmm I wonder….

@Ottoathome: Y'know, I read your comment back when you posted it, but it wasn't until a friend of mine mentioned it to me today that I realized how right you are about that woman/girl on the cover. I guess it's the old guy's daughter…? It's a little creepy nonetheless. (Maybe it made more sense back in 1910.)

(Sorry about reviving the thread; just wanted to mention this after it was brought up to me today…)

I know I am late, but I thought it could be worth saying a few words about copyright and libraries, for others who are also interested in old scanned (wargame) books. A book from 1910 unfortunately can be very well still copyrighted in many countries.

The US has that special weird thing about works from 1923 or older being in the public domain. Most places do not. EU has (possibly with some exception) always "70 years after the death of creator", no matter how old the thing is. Theoretically if someone died very old, and created something when very young, books from a fair bit back into the 19th century can still be copyrighted.

This is not only a theoretical thing. I tried to order a scan of a Swedish miniature wargame rulebook from the Royal Library in Stockholm about a month ago. It was denied because even if the book was from 1913 the author only died in 1950, so they are not allowed to give away scans of the book for another 4 years. :( (However by Swedish copyright law you are always allowed to copy a few chapters from a book, even if copyrighted, so they actually offered to scan a few chapters for me, but I have no idea what chapters are in the book so I wait instead.)

Also I have ordered scanned old wargame rulebooks from four different libraries in four different countries, and two of them had restrictions on how I could use their scans even if the books were from the early 19th century. A library in Germany want a "publication fee" to be paid for each image published (and the amount depends on if the images was printed or on a web site). I asked specifically about posting to a web forum, and they said I needed to pay them even for that. The other library were a bit more liberal (hey, they were in the Netherlands) so it was more something like "sure, as long as you credit us" or something like that. Remaining two libraries explicitly said "there is no copyright on this stuff, so do whatever you want with it".

I know there is a debate among real lawyers (not me) if it is even legal to put restrictions like that on scanned materials, but it happens a lot, and that includes from US web sites. It is very possible that you have the right to share works even when a library say you can't, but you might have to be prepared to pay a good lawyer to explain that to a judge.

Sorry for the rant. Great find!

While you may be correct on some of the technical merits, I think the risk for an out of print book from 1910 is pretty slim. Any and all cases in this area are driven by the movie and music industry and are won on the ability to show actual damages caused, which is easier to establish with current releases. The 7 people that may have downloaded this is not going to appear on anyone's (lawyers' ability to actually make money) radar screen.

You are absolutely correct, of course.

But it has some impact on things like what I mentioned about a library refusing to scan a book from that era, so I thought it was worth pointing out that the posts above about something that old not being copyrighted was wrong, even if mostly in theory.

Thanks for posting!