"Why the Gap Between Fantasy and Historical?" Topic

There's overlap between fantasy and historical gaming but also a noticeable gap.

As someone who's only just dipped into fantasy (Dragon Rampant), I'm curious:

What is it that historical rules don't provide?
Clarity? Balance? Narrative? Or something more fundamental?

It would be interesting to hear from any Fantasy gamers, Historical gamers & even from those rarer birds who have a foot in both camps.

Fantasy gaming lacks the enduring tension between historical verisimilitude and playability, that and the lack true cultural preferences (or prejudices) make it more attractive gamers who just want to have some fun.

I never feel fantasy are historical even if they have a heavy basis in historical events, and I have to be in the mood for that. I play historical, scifi, and fantasy pretty equally.

"What is it that historical rules don't provide?"

No magic, and no dragons/other monsters… ;-)

I don't think it is anything to do with what rules do and don't provide, more about the game settings.

Hot take: historical games are basically fantasy games without the fantastical elements. Both are "games" and we somehow think one is more real. Case in point: Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game (fantasy) and Pillage (historical). The same game but one has Ringwraiths and one doesn't

OP, I don't agree with your premise, unless you say that historical rules don't provide dragons and orks. They are different genres that provide satisfaction through different means. I think in the 70s and 80s you saw a lot more cross over between historical, fantasy, and sci-fi gamers.

We use Sword and Spear Fantasy rules which is the same as Sword and Spear but with a magic system and new unit types overlayed over it. Fantasy table top rules tend as a group to be more skirmish based games than historical systems. I put it down to the commitment (or lack thereof) to painting figures. I think fantasy gamers, by and large, are less committed to painting figures.

Its less to do with rules and more about what you consider authentic for your game. This past weekend I hosted two games using Midgard rules. Game 1 was the Battle of Fulford, Game 2 was the same two Viking/Saxon armies but with Giants and Dragons added.

For game 1, I needed to learn about the battle. Who were the combatants, what did the terrain look like, what was the outcome of the battle (and could I come close to simulating that on the table). Army lists were created to be faithful to the armies that fought that day. Terrain was planned and created to match the field from the battle.

For game 2, army lists were balanced on points, objectives were created, a mission written to engage the players.

From what I could tell, the games were both a big success. Fun was had and dice were rolled. Two very different approaches but with similar outcomes.

Lower "effort of entry" point.
A historical battle requires the preparation of miniatures to reflect the known forces, objectives, and tactical obstacles present at that battle.
A fantasy battle can have whatever you've got in your game closet.

Also fluff and unique miniatures. If you like the Croco-shark wizard with a laser crossbow, you can have it in your battle, and most likely the rules will cover that critter (at least the rules from that mini's maker). Historical rules will look at you slack-jawed and say, "Whaaa?"

And, of course, if you like the idea of warring in Middle-Earth, or Midgard, or Barsoom, or Hell, or the "Hoary Planes of Horgoth," you can find a game that presents that setting in great detail, while historical games are still stammering over that Croco-shark thing.

I've played both historical and fantasy, as well as a few sci-fi games. I played historical games every couple of weeks, back in the 1990's. Fantasy games are far fewer in frequency, reasons don't matter.

I watched my historical gamer friends conduct post-mortem's on every historical game, lamenting how the outcome did not match history. It was as if they were dissatisfied when their 'game' did not match history. They knew every version of every tank gun/weapon, when they came out (month, day, and year!), they knew every commander, every force, how many troops were there, on each side of the combat…

I often wondered why they ever bothered to play a game at all, to be honest! They were almost never satisfied with the outcome.

IMO, if you were God, and you reset each historical battle, allowing them to run freely, allowing each person, top rank to bottom rank, pure free will, also allowing the universe to change random events, no two battles would ever turn out exactly the same -- too many random causalities!

I played for fun, I played to see what I could achieve with the units, with the battlefield and situation I was facing. I did not care one whit what anybody else achieved. It was my battle, now, not someone else's.

We played a very large German/Russian battle. I was given a Russian Recon unit on a flank position, atop a hill. I was to hold off a crack German Engineering unit advancing on my position.

I attacked, aggressively. I rolled very luckily, and I ground them to a complete halt -- everyone, including my fellow Russian players, expected me to be trampled and crushed.

The other Russian players did poorly, barely advancing up the center. They were sooo disappointed in their results.

One of the German players pointed out that I had achieved a completely unexpected upset. My German Engineer opponent was gobsmacked that he was unable to steamroll over my troops -- he couldn't believe he had failed to destroy my measly Recon units with his crack, veteran Engineers!

I played well, I achieved a personal victory against steep odds, but the fact that almost no one cared, really took the wind out of my sails.

In a Red Baron, WW I airplane game, I ran the German Blimp. The other players were salivating, because it was a giant, s-l-o-w moving, whale, and they swarmed on it with their fighters, eager to light it up with incendiary rounds!

We all plotted our movements on paper, then we executed simultaneously. I applied my brakes, slowing my big, hyrdogen-filled, balloon, until it stopped (max. movement of 3", minimum movement of 0", hovering)…

Their airplanes moved from 8"-12". They expected I would keep moving my maximum speed of 3", and they plotted their movements accordingly. Two of their airplanes crashed into my tail section, killing their pilots! The tail section was h-u-g-e, their damage to my blimp was negligible… They said, "You can't stop!"

I replied, "Yes, I can. It says so in the rules, right here. I can hover, motionless, drifting in the wind, if I choose to."

"WHAT!?!?!"

Honestly, I expected their airplanes to fly by me, overshooting their intended end-point in their flight path. I never expected them to crash into my tail section. LOL!

Hey, I play employing every option available to me -- if it will work in my favor, I will play it. I don't care what happened in history, I care what I can come up with. When I play, I play my tactics, not someone else's. It is my challenge to run. The guy in history had his chance, this is MY chance.

I do not understand the mindset of my historical gaming friends. Apparently, they do not understand my mindset either. Cheers!

I'm with you, Sgt.! I don't play to reproduce expected results. If anything, I play to counter those results in any way I can. It doesn't always work, but it's a heck of a lot more fun.

One of my historical/fantasy gamer friends bought some weird Mech models. He wanted to game with them at least once to justify his investment.

He approached me because I had shared my interest in an old game article in Dragon Magazine, in the 1970's: a guy had two gamer groups, one fantasy, and one historical, but neither group would cross genres!

He told each respective group he had a game for them. When they arrived, the German players ran half-tracks, trucks, and troops, approaching a castle -- pretty standard European historical game setup.

The other players were running a Wizard, and his Ogres, defending the castle!

The German veteran troops got hit with Lightning Bolt spells and Fireball spells! The Germans unleashed a Panzerfaust rocket at the Wizard atop the tower!

Everyone was shocked, but everyone had great fun with the cross-genre game!

My friend told me that I would be running Aliens, in the two Mechs, as well as Alien Infantrymen, with Light Sabers! "COOL!", I said.

It was a Russian/German conflict in a town's factory district. My Mechs were invisible…

The battle unfolded normally -- at first! All of a sudden, some German tanks got brewed up out of nowhere! Then some Russian tanks got brewed up out of nowhere!

"I don't get it, but… OK."

They continued to battle each other. Something happened, and my Mechs became visible.

I had my Alien Infantry standing at the windows of a 2nd story factory, while German Infantry were sneaking along the wall, outside, just below my windows…

I dropped percussion grenades on top of them! They were stunned, so I ran my Infantry outside, slaughtering all of them with my Light Sabers! The GM decided that that was too much, so he backed me off -- he never anticipated I would be so successful at slaughtering the Germans…

Long story short, the Russians and the Germans both concentrated their fire at my Alien Mechs and my Alien Infantrymen, wiping my forces off the table. Then, they happily went back to killing each other for a "normal" victory.

They did not really enjoy the game, until my Aliens were gone. ROFL! Cheers!

My interest in wargaming comes from an interest in miniatures

There are so many cool Fantasy and Sci Fi (another form of Fantasy?) that I could not possibly remain a historical wargamer

+1 on historical games being more imagination than most of the players will admit

The day that someone comes out with the perfect set of Napoleonic rules, I will be happy to change my opinions

Dragon Rampant is a great set of rules. The author states that part of the purpose is to bring out old miniatures that haven't seen a game in years. The rules are very flexible in basing, number of figures in a unit and capabilities of a unit

John

Maybe marketing and age groups. We are old geezers that would try anything back then, and there were few options.
Oh, and fewer players as well. You were happy to eat anything you could find on your plate. A boxed game usually was a board game. Fantasy games took off after the runaway success of D&D. Glossy rule books and bubble packed 25mms were everywhere and tailored specifically to D&D rules.

Soon we had other rules and the respective bubble packs such as Battletech. Now we have whatever we can imagine such as rules, figures and markers in one (EXPENSIVE) box.
These we call starter sets.

The last decade or so, many of these competing titles are
merging into historical, sci-fi and fantasy mash ups. Weird war 1,2,3 games can have demonic forces, zombies, mechs etc.
Steampunk game blend history, sci-fi as well as fantasy and pulp elements. Most of these are now drawing in larger crowd of younger gamers that were initially attracted by GW.

I would opine that there is no gap at all. Basically, a game doesn't have to be traditional historical battles or a
re-creation of a popular fantasy milieu. During the last convention I went to, I was drafted into an Aliens vs Predator vs Colonial Marines conflict. Talk about shameless
media exploitation! Best gaming experience in years!!!!

I really don't see the point of historical games that aim to achieve the same outcome of a historical battle. What's the point of that? If that's all you are going for, then just read the book. Why bother with all the cleaning, priming, painting, basing, etc.? Gamers whining about the game not matching the historical outcome is ridiculous IMHO. All games have an element of fantasy to them. I don't personally have Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, Goblins, Mechs, Clones, or any Fantasy or Sci Fi miniatures in my collection, but every "historical" battle that I have ever played or hosted has an element of fantasy to it. Even re-fighting battles like Gettysburg or Antietam only begin based on historical reports. As for rules, I have never found a perfectly satisfactory set of rules for any historical period or genre that I have tried.

Historical gaming accepts a degree of constraint in that the weapons, tactics and to a large degree the opponents create limits around which the game has to flow. Ramses II cannot use machine guns and Nelson has to consider the wind whereas if magic is involved the eldritch equivalents might allow for Ramses to gun down vast numbers of foes or Nelson to magically move against the wind at will. That is not per se bad for enjoyment but probably deviates so far from history as to be fantasy.

"What is it that historical rules don't provide?"

Perhape we could ask what fantasy rules don't provide?

Anyway, apart from historical insight, writing historical rules are more of a challenge. F&SF can be fun, but for me more on the skirmish/RPG end.

What is just one history book that gives the details of the orcs in battles back in real history? Which real counties were involved? Go ahead…..I'll wait.(Tolkien is NOT history recording.)

I should think the answer to the original question is obvious…what historical rules lack is…fantasy!

It is interesting that you mention Dragon Rampant, which is a variation of Lion Rampant, only with fantasy added.

As someone who loves both, I don't understand the consternation. Both are enjoyable pursuits in their own right and for their own reasons. I play and enjoy both and don't ever have an issue.

I once saw a game between the Wehrmacht and Smurfs, it looked like a hoot. This past weekend I played Lion Rampant in a historical pair of scenarios, a Pulp Action game, a historical Vietnam air scenario, a sci fi game and a World,War,Two counter factual game- having a blast in each for,different reasons.

Vive le difference!

" I don't understand the consternation"

Is there any in this thread? TBH, I know there can be but those who've responded have been polite, rational & quite insightful (your good self included).

I say I'm not a fantasy gamer, but I play a naval battles between European ironclads built in the 1870s and 1880s that never fired a gun in anger, using heavily researched rules to simulate untested weapons, armor, and locomotion systems as accurately as possible without the benefit of any real-world data to back up published contemporary claims…

I mean, I call it historical miniatures, but it's more like fantasy sports. The games are grudge matches between fighting machines with reams of published stats that were designed to fight each other but never fought anything at all. There are literally zero historical battles to simulate. All the scenarios are completely "what-if"-ed to the hilt just to get squadrons of these smoking iron beasts into range with an excuse to shoot at each other.

- Ix

That is 'Alternate History" isn't it, Ix?
Surely that's a type of Fantasy?

Of course Louis XIV's post (above) that says so-called Historical Games are really fantasy is true IMO.

Isn't it more like hard sci fi? Old tech now, but bleeding edge at the time, and definitely scientific in approach.

A "what if" is certainly a fantasy, but lower case, not "Fantasy". There is an entire genre of gaming and literature which deserves the capital F, full of tropes, memes, traditions, works, standards, jargons, worlds, languages, cultures, biologies, etc.

Alternate history is still an attempt at sticking to enough of the historical record to suspend disbelief that it could really have happened. The standard premise of historical or contemporary wargaming is the "what if" situation, which must needs include as much historical context and physics as practical, to be valued. If I said "WHAT IF THESE IRONCLADS HAD LASERS?!?!" I'd end up with an entirely different group of players who don't actually care about ironclads or their peculiar engineering problems.

Fantasy and historical gaming are definitionally distinct. I don't think too many of us would feel comfortable telling a training group of young officers playing a conflict simulation that what they're doing is a "type of Fantasy", any more than you'd call a jet ground attack plane a "type of Nazgul", or enemy soldiers "a type of orcs". This is a serious simulation, sir, please leave the room.

- Ix

Alternate history isn't "Fantasy" in the genre sense but it is structured speculation. As Niall Ferguson argues, counterfactuals are a legitimate historical tool. Once you ask "what if?", you're testing causation.

That's exactly what we do on the tabletop. The moment players make different decisions—or the dice fall differently, we've left history and entered a constrained "what if" space. We're not recreating the past; we're exploring plausible alternatives within known limits.

The "hard sci-fi" comparison isn't far off either. Like Isaac Asimov, we're working within rules—just historical ones instead of invented physics.

So the distinction isn't absolute. It's about constraint:
Fantasy: invented worlds
Alternate history: plausible divergence
Historical wargaming: changing history with rules and dice

It's not Fantasy but not pure history either.

Oh, can I tell air cadets in training to watch out for gremlins?

You could tell them to watch out for UFOs. (Or UAPs.)

Let's just say they're all acts of imagination, some more imaginative than others.

I like history thus historically based games. I read sci fi and fantasy but don't enjoy games based in those genres.

Painting has long been my focus for playing historical rather than fantasy. The advantage to fantasy was the lead way in deciding which uniform colors to use. That is until certain rules began demanding certain color schemes.
Even when I painted Battletech my patterns were based on modern or WW2 schemes.

TimePortal. Painting! Yes!!

In my recent first foray into Fantasy (Dragon Rampant) I was taken aback in that there weren't any uniform guides. What colours to use???

Essentially, I went to the internet & borrowed ideas from others.

I am a historical gamer because I love history. It was my career for many years, and I have always seen historical gaming as another tool for studying and understanding the past.

I have grown tired of the myth that historical gamers are grim, overly serious people who spend their time counting buttons and demanding that every battle produce the exact same result as it did in history. In my experience, the opposite is true. When most historical gamers talk about a "historical outcome," they usually mean a plausible outcome. The real question is: does it make sense within the historical circumstances?

When historical gamers try a different approach to a battle, they are not trying to distort history. They are exploring what might have happened and what the consequences might have been. That kind of "what if" thinking can be a serious and useful way to better understand the choices, limitations, and possibilities faced by the people involved.

Even when historical gamers play a battle that never happened, or simply set up a pick-up game, we still want the game to feel period-correct. It is not fantasy. The armies, weapons, tactics, terrain, and command problems should all belong to the world being represented.

For me, the heart of the hobby is research and immersion. A country's military is often a mirror of its society and culture, and studying it can reveal a great deal about the people, politics, values, and pressures of the time. Historical gaming can teach you a lot, while also being tremendous fun. I have always considered it a related but distinct hobby from other forms of gaming.

link

Hang on a second there, Robert.
Fantasy and science fiction gamers can be just as concerned with plausibility of outcome and period-correct feel as historical gamers.
When I run The Battle of Five Armies I don't have giant sandworms appearing, nor triceratop-drawn steam-powered battle wagons. Fantasy allows you to have such things in a general sense, just as historical battles might allow for the appearance of forces that in history never saw any battle, but these things are not the basis of the genres.

In most fantasy and science fiction games there is an established background and an established and often very detailed concept of what capabilities the forces have, with some intent for these either to be fairly balanced or to reflect differences in scenario with different victory objectives (a rather common approach in historical gaming when dealing with often very lop-sided battles of history). Depending on the game and setting there can be a great deal of restrictions and expectations placed on the forces being chosen. It's almost never a free-for-all (not that such can't be entertaining).

So indeed in fantasy and science fiction "the armies, weapons, tactics, terrain, and command problems should all belong to the world being represented." A Star Wars game is not a Star Trek game or a Buck Rogers game or a Barsoom game or a Starship Troopers game or a 40K game, etc., etc.. Nor is a Lord of the Rings game a Moorcock game or a Narnia game or a GoT game or a Warhammer "Olde World" game, etc., etc.. Each of these settings are very different, with very different and understood "look and feel" expectations. Orks don't fight the Rebel Alliance, and Starfleet doesn't go up against Ming the Merciless. Yes, they could, but that's a decision by the players to do something deliberately against expectations— no different from having Imperial Roman Legions fight the armies of the Han dynasty.