"V.I.P." Topic

Besides yourself, who would be your most important person in gaming and or miniatures? Family, an inspiration from afar, a buddy?

In 45+ years of gaming there are too many buddies to possibly sort out to one or two or even a dozen. I suppose Charles S. Grant is up there. His campaign books have helped create a locale of Imagi-Nation gamers. Scotty Bowden gave me decades of enjoyable Napoleonic play.

Has to be the Vietmeyers, father and son. Fred was the Benevolent Despot of my first gaming group and apart from being responsible for decades of games--taught me about converting historical order of battle into miniature organization and historical tactics into rules. I don't plot out a new period yet without thinking of some of the things he taught me, and he's been dead better than 20 years.
And the game his son Rick and I fought Tuesday is the latest in a series dating back almost 50 years. Sometimes I even win.

Ditto Robert's comments, and I only interacted with Fred Vietmeyer through the mail.

Rick

Donald Featherstone, who needs no introduction, and Larry Brom, author of The Sword And The Flame (1979) and many other rules and a tremendously positive force in all aspects of our hobby for more than half-a-century… and from a bit more recent time-frame, the brothers Perry, whose work as miniature figure sculptors and business owners has brought a lot of joy to myself and many of our fellow wargamers.

Mine, I would pick my Father although he never really wargamed. He love HO scale trains. My Father also got me the electric racetracks the everyone had in the 70s. One summer he was laid off. We put down Trains, the race track. All my 1-72 army men. I would say this had a profound effect on me. Without my Father understanding what I liked. I would not be a gamer today. So many adventurers fighting USA vs the world. All eras fighting together only as a child could. My Dad made the best we could in a cold, wet, dank, cellar that was once a coal scuttle. My Dad died when I was twenty. I often wonder if he would like my game room at home. He would be in his mid-seventies now. I like to think a few nights of his retirement could be devoted to this. My Dad is the next important person in gaming to me. I have two sons, but I am not driven by them.