"What Fantasy Gets Right About Warfare" Topic

Fantasy games sometimes get dismissed by historical gamers—obviously unfairly.

What do fantasy rules actually get right about warfare?

Things like:
Clear battlefield roles (line troops, shock, skirmishers)
Readable unit distinctions
Decisive moments (charges, breakthroughs, morale shocks)

In some ways, they arguably model battlefield function more cleanly than many historical systems.

So—what does fantasy do better than historical gaming?

Way too broad a proposition.

Fantasy is a lot of things, implemented in different ways.

"Getting things right" is a specific, contextual criterion.

And ultimately, the milieu is not as important as the intent in rules, stats, and scenarios.

Fantasy does fantasy better than most historical syatems. It does not have to try to reflect any historical realities, yet it borrows heavily from historical examples: lines, columns, wedges, armored knights, pikes, archery, ad nauseum.

I'd have said it was easier to devise a simple, balanced, "fun" game devising a battle from the beginning, and not having to worry about real life ranges or odd troop types. HOTT hasn't been subject to the constant stream of revisions, new troop types and revised army lists which keep hitting DBA.

It's SF rather than fantasy, but OGRE/GEV has outlasted a lot of moderns rules.

Fantasy games handle elves, orcs, and dragons much better than historical games.😜

+1 Col Durnford

SF is basically fantasy anyway. It's all made up too. I don't see how Fantasy rules can do better doing historical battles. But one can do massive fantasy battles very well with historical rules. Any Game of Thrones battle can use ordinary medieval or ancients rules. Without dragons, of course. The Blackfyre Rebellion battles had no dragons.
Helm's Deep? Pelennor Fields?

Fantasy can "get things right" because gamers can make up anything they want and not be wrong. That does not mean that they have done a better job of modeling warfare.

Fantasy can "get things right" because gamers can make up anything they want and not be wrong.

Completely agree:

Balrog – AC:10, HP: 2, THACO: 35, Fire Whip: 1d4 DG
Hobbit – AC:-10, HP: 25,476, THACO: -1, Finger Flick: 10d20 DG

Yes, it's true you can make up anything you want in fantasy, but OTOH I think most fantasy wargamers would want their forces to behave more or less as they do in the novels and films.

That is, if you think about it, not much different from what historical gamers do when basing games on the historical accounts.

Of course that makes life interesting when for example, the latest research indicates that there was not actually any battle at Wakefield in 1460. So all those historical gamers who have been refighting the Battle of Wakefield on the table top have in fact been indulging in fantasy …

On that one I draw the line. MajorB. I was a History grad student, wore Intel brass for 15 years and contracted beyond that. There's a serious difference between "best current analysis" however wrong it may prove to be later, and "we just flat made it up." The latter involves a lot fewer long nights and work with frustrating sources--and, as noted, can never actually be proved wrong.