"Colours wargame show" Topic

Attended Colours 2017 today (16th September)
Access very good. Help very good. Trade space good and game space good.

A splendid show and thanks to the organisers and club members for the help. Best part was meeting all those players that we seem to meet just once a year. we set the world to rights and played games too. Rob did a greet job running the Vietnam game. Nigel worked jolly hard on the trade stand. I did very little but for me that is a tough day!

So thanks to the show folks who run colours and to those who came along and enjoyed the show

martin

Yes i agree.

What did Martin think about it?

He is a bit shy , but apparently he is all for it!

Why did the Royal Marine, wonder what Martin thought about it, why did the Royal Marine cross the road, why oh why?!!!

Tally Ho!

May I ask why did the Vietnam game have a sign saying something along the lines of it wasn't suitable for persons under the age of 14 due to things that happened in the Vietnam conflict? I can't remember the exact wording because the picture of it that was on facebook last night seems to have disappeared If we take that view then surely no one under 14 should be gaming WW2, Ancients, WW1, etc etc. Or is it that the person demonstrating the game just doesn't like young adults and children? Was it the same person as at Vapnartak, because he came across as being that way inclined.

Well Simon. Good questions. Hope i can give you an acceptable and comprehensive answer here?

I am sure others might chime in with their experiences of running games at shows. Assumedly we would agree that some games are suitable for youngsters and some less so (maybe all games are suitable for all ages?/). We do run games for the local Cubs each year and they are only about 7 or so.
Having run games for 40 years at shows I make some open to youngsters if i feel the subject matter and mechanism would work well for them. Some games are intended for older chaps.
Of course older players often have different abilities to younger players. i would suspect that when you go down to the local club there are some games that the youngsters get a lot from and some games they might find a bit worrisome. i assume you have a child as do I. What games does your young chap really enjoy /play and against whom at the local club.

At historicon (US) they categorise all the games as either more adult friendly or more child friendly.

This seasons game from Peter Pig is Vietnam. Because it includes civilians being killed and booby traps I judge those matters to be beyond youngsters to deal with in moral terms. It is i no way the same as giant bears fighting with armoured dwarves type games. of course some children are not affected at all by such things because they are mentally resilient. but what would a proud dad say if his child asked why civilians were being killed and men blown up by booby traps. You must remember that children are children and need age in order to interact with adults with ease.
I hope you would accept that a child's outlook upon a game may well be different from an older player's. I personally don't usually enjoy the same music,food or games which small children do. I would not expect my young child to invite adults around to my house for a one on one game. You may do that often, which is great, for you.
The next thing to bear in mind is that the players who join in only have a short time to play. We tend to give players one, maybe two turns to play so that they can get an idea of how the rules work and ask questions they night have.
I hope you would not expect a full 2.5 hour game? that would be too much to ask players to take out of their convention touring time? Also it would only allow 2 games in a day which might get about 4 people jn total involved.
The game is there to "test drive" new rules by allowing players to take part without asking for a 2.5 hour commitment.

We did meet a chap at York with his son, who both seemed very nice and bright. I played a couple of turns with them to show how the game worked and thought it had gone very well. If that was you and your small son then I am sorry you were upset. Did you arrive in time for the 2.5 hour game?

I would accept that you may well have run plenty of games at shows for children, but our game, as stated above was not there just for small children . It was aimed at players who wanted to play Vietnam with all its small unit horrors. Please give some notes on which games you have put on at shows suitable for small children so we can see what criteria you have used in order to make it a great game for all ages including small children.
Maybe readers of this long tract (sorry for length but it seems appropriate) might say how they choose games to put on at shows which do not stray on to gruesome matters for small children. Examples would be great! Maybe some of the Historicon organisers might say why children cannot play in all of the games??

Possibly you were just a bit grumpy because it was near the end of the show and you had ben touring the games all day. If so, not problem at all.

martin

Hi Martin,

Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed response.
I'll try and answer your questions in the order they appear above.
We don't belong to a club per se. My child is actually my future stepson. He lives with his mother and we have been trying to finally get moved in together for the past 5 years, something we hope to finally achieve next Spring all being well. I've known Josh since he was 5, he's just turned 10, and introduced him to the joys of wargaming 4 years ago.
He plays when he comes over to visit once a fortnight, either at my house or at friends. We have a group of 4 adults and we game every week. We also go to shows, always to Hammerhead and usually to both Partizans, Derby and sometimes Fiasco. During the past 4 years Josh has played Flames of War mid war and late war v3, FOW Team Team Yankee, Hammerin' Iron, Blood,Bilge and Iron Balls (1/1200 Napoleonic Naval) Bolt Action, To the Strongest, Wings of Glory, Lion Rampant, Hail Caesar,Dux Bellorum, Black Powder in various periods, Fire & Fury, and I think 5 men in Normandy as well. He picks rules up very quickly, faster than I do most of the time. He also played your Vietnam game at Vapnartak, yes that was us. He thoroughly enjoyed it, he'd been pestering me to wargame Vietnam for months and I did start collecting Battlefront and Skytrex items for a while. He had been reading up on the subject and was aware of what happened during the conflict. He has watched the World at War series so he is cognisant with all the horrors of WW2 as well. I watched the series at the same age when it was first broadcast on TV and it had no ill effects on me, so I reasoned it would be okay for him as well. Children can see images in colour on the evening news these days which are almost as bad, if not as bad as those filmed in b/w 75 years ago. I remember that I harangued my mother into taking me to see Waterloo at the cinema in 1970 when I was only 7 and it didn't cause me any anxiety, in fact, it only spurred me on to collect even more Airfix Napoleonic figures and start painting them. I've seen Josh playing with his toy farm when he was a lot younger, and there were civilians involved in battles that were also going on around the farm, where farmers were fighting each other and troops were intervening to protect one side or the other in I guess a UN type of way. Presumably,the other side was trying to shoot them. Neither I nor his mother raised any objection to this.
Whilst I can see where you are coming from with your age limit I think you are taking the decision on whether their child is suitable to play this game out of parents hands by doing so, and by making it a blanket ban on anyone under 14 you risk (and please don't be offended here)coming across as either being PC, or, and I can't think of a better phrase here, something akin to the Nanny State.
We enjoyed playing your game at York, we were both very disappointed that we only got to play 2 turns, we'd have loved to have played the whole game, or certainly a lot longer. I know it was about 2pm I think when we sat down. We discussed the game afterwards and it went down on the shopping list for the future.
Because we only get to see each other once a fortnight we try to make the most of the time we have together and if we go to shows we try to get in participation games that last as long as possible, up to 2 hours normally. Josh isn't the slightest bit interested in Sci-Fi or Fantasy gaming which helps to narrow the field down somewhat. He views the figures on the table as ornaments rather than toys and treats them with respect since they belong to someone else. He can also separate what we do on the wargames table from present-day reality, because we are using toys.What they depict is after all war, but it's not in his mind the same real life 3D technicolor war that adults see when they watch the news. I can't remember if we got to the point in your game where civilians became involved, I think they might have because we carried out a search and destroy mission in one 'ville', but to him at his age its just a game.It's all about rolling dice, moving toy soldiers, planning his strategy, and beating his opponent. If there were any moral aspects then he would have asked me about them afterwards, but there weren't any discussions in the car on the way home along those lines IIRC. I think the games he was playing on his phone and Nintendo in the car were probably as bloody if not more so than the game involving some painted figures and some scenery, and even more interactive and immersive.

Simon

Thanks for the reply Simon

all good

martin