SPALDING WARGAMING CLUB
Club Chairman Martin Jackson was recently blessed with the safe and healthy arrival of baby daughter Sophie. That started me thinking about my own experiences as a Dad-of-Daughters. This week's blog is dedicated to my daughters and to the hapless Martin. I guess there must be fathers who want their sons to get into football. They take them to the park for a kick about, buy them mini football strips for Christmas, bring them along to matches, teach them how to swear at the referee, that sort of thing. Probably, if their boys grow up to be more into tennis or chess, those dads feel a sort of crushing disappointment, as if they've failed to pass on a legacy. But if football-dads are dads-of-daughters, what then? I guess they just pack it in. 'Ponies it is, then,' they say, and that's that. No dishonour in having football-averse daughters, right? Gamer-dads don't get a free pass like that. It might be more difficult to raise daughters to be gamers, what with social norms and lower rates of autism in females, but that's not an excuse not to try. Like a lot of people, I reached my 'gaming crisis' back in my 20s: no longer a student, holding down a career, young family. There was no place in my life for Hero Quest any more. Dune was long forgotten. I used to get a group of friends together once every couple of months for roleplaying games. Why did RPGs survive? I can credit one particular product for that: the appearance in 1991 of Vampire: the Masquerade. You see, back in those days Virgin Megastore (remember that place?) stocked games. I was browsing their games section in the Edinburgh store - I think I must have been doing my teacher training course at the time. This rules book commended itself with its arty cover and cryptic blurb: 'a storytelling game of personal horror.' This game single-handedly rejuvenated my interest in RPGs, moving the drama out of the hackneyed dungeon or medieval past and into a 'Gothic Punk' version of our world, with a hidden war between vampire immortals being fought nightly on the city streets. This game landed its creative punches before these tropes became mainstream: pre-Buffy, pre-Supernatural, pre-Twilight. White Wolf games followed up Vampire with a roster of games developing their World of Darkness: Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Mage: the Ascension, Wraith: the Oblivion and Changeling: the Dreaming. They adopted the title-colon-subtitle nomenclature before it had been picked up by every third rate horror or fantasy franchise These games, with their adult themes, grandiose philosophising and angsty settings, were great for keeping grown-ups in the gaming fold, but they were pretty hard to share with children. Instead, my daughters were treated to my had-me-down games from Christmases past. Battling Gladiators was particularly popular. This one took the spinning-tops idea and hung a board game around it. You moved round the board and spaces told you to fight the person to your left, right or opposite in some combination and you needed 10 victories before you could cross the finishing line and wine. Daughter Emily had particular skill with this: or perhaps her preferred top (Mean Marcus, green) just had the better winding cord. Travel back in time to the 1970s Games are good for families. They put adults and children on a level playing field: it means a lot for kids to beat dad. They enforce turn-taking and observing your opponents, which reins in boisterous personalities and forces the eldest to attend to the youngest. They teach losing... Ah, losing. Losing is very difficult for children and observing them struggle with the emotions losing unleashes tells us a lot about what goes into an adult personality. Cluedo, which could end very suddenly if someone stumbled on the identity of Dr Black's murderer, would often end in tears. My daughters recall similar furies over Monopoly but, since I've never owned a copy of the world's favourite board game, I think they must be recalling games with their mother or perhaps reconstructing memories (as psychologist Elizabeth Loftus says we do) from cultural schemas about the hostility that dismal game provokes. Elizabeth Loftus explains how we reconstruct memories We turned to video games instead. Tabletop gaming was in the doldrums (Pokemon never appealed for some reason) but Playstation games were everywhere and a local buy-and-sell exchange gave us a regular fix of cheap games. We toiled through the Tomb Raider franchise with me doing all the difficult manual dexterity bits and my girls looking up advice online for the difficult rooms, but the girls took over the handset for the Harry Potter games. Then, in 2001, Carcassonne came along. Actually, I didn't discover Carcassonne in 2001. That happened a few years later. But Carcassonne is an important game, the herald of the Gaming Renaissance, the game that introduced us to cute wooden meeples and Euro-style gameplay for the first time. Euro-style games actually broke out of their Germanic enclosure in 1995, with Settlers of Catan, but I totally missed that. In Euro-games, there's a focus on skill rather than luck, so dice tend not to feature. They are usually about controlling territory or collecting resources rather than a race or a knock-out. The competition is indirect, which means you're making pleasurable choices and having a nice time even if you're not winning. And they tend to be beautiful: sturdy cards, weighty boards, wooden counters and the distinctive 'meeple' design. All of which means, they're great to play with children. Older daughter Emily was experimenting with Teenage Rage at the time, but her sister Juliet played Carcassonne with me. There was something deeply satisfying about watching the attractive landscape of roads and churches and city walls spread across the table. Somebody had to win, or course, but that seemed less important than the dad-and-daughter bonding experience of placing tiles and meeples, often helping each other out with suggestions about the best placement. The crucial ingredient game along in (I think) 2011. I was amusing myself at a giant car boot sale (which is my partner Christine's hobby and passion) when I came across a glum looking couple selling a copy of Touch of Evil. The lurid art and fantasy/horror themes appealed and they were giving it away for pennies ('Too difficult to understand,' they complained). Here was something new: the CO-OPERATIVE game experience. Actually, ToE can be played competitively, but its real strength is in teaming up to find and defeat the Vampire, Werewolf, Headless Horseman or Scarecrow that's stalking the Sleepy Hollow-inspired lanes of Shadowbrook. Also present were delightful miniatures. I wish now that I'd come across these games earlier. Euro-games with their indirect competition and tactile pleasures, co-operative games that pull the family together as a team - we could have been playing Ticket to Ride back in 2004 or Pandemic in 2008. We'll never get those wasted years back! But I must have done something right, since both daughters are now enthusiastic gamers. So, Martin, my friend, you've no excuse now, not in a world that offers My Little Scythe. But enough about me. I've asked my daughters to speak for themselves.
My Dad's old games from his childhood came out again for mine As I hit my teens and my interests steered more towards parties and my mobile phone, I only ever gamed when begrudgingly dragged into one of my Dad’s Sunday gaming sessions. My scowl often mistaken for a poker face by his friends.
Gloomhaven We went on holiday to the Lake District – now an annual tradition - and spent every night playing Gloomhaven for hours. We were thrilled with the detail and concept of the game, and still plan monthly sessions in advance to push through scenarios. When I moved to Newcastle for my PhD, board games became an easy way to bring new friends together. Sure, some people came for the social side of it – more interested in drinking and chatting than focusing for too long on any game. But a few committed gamers emerged. They introduced me to new games like Small World and Munchkin, and even brought old classics like the Buffy the Vampire Slayer board game. I began to look for more conversational and co-operative games like Mysterium that might appeal to the more distractible of the group. We meet weekly at my flat or the pub next door, always eager to invite new members to join us. Games are now a regular part of Christmas wishlists and payday treats. My Dad is certainly happy with my renewed interest in gaming, and now Christmas in Edinburgh is often spent as it was when I was a child. The games are newer and more complicated, but still played over the dining room table as the rest of the family naps.
I started gaming myself once my Dad bought me and my sister a PS2. We were introduced to a lot of fantastic games. This included Drakan: The Ancient’s Gates, a sort of fantasy Tomb Raider-esque game, with a powerful female lead called Rynn and her annoying (but amusing) pet dragon, Arokh. Drakan: still the best! Out of the many games I have played, Drakan stood out in its originality, creativeness and how much we all enjoyed playing it, both me, my sister and Dad played it. An Xbox 360 was then bought but my interest in gaming sank down due to the games being less creative and yet more Assassin Creeds were released instead. One day, when I was a young teenager, my Dad was sitting at the dining room table and putting together Carcassonne, a tile placement game. I joined him, putting farm and city pieces together, We actually did not play the game the first time, just put the tiles together and this was fun in itself. Carcassonne: so pretty This was the start of the board game era of my life; less overpriced Xbox games were bought and instead I was playing board games with my Dad. It was like we had gone back to my childhood of watching him play PS1 games but now I was playing the game too! More games were bought at car boot sales including the fantastic Touch of Evil, which included a great soundtrack to play along with the game. I then went to University and visited my Dad less. I played less board games. However, it is always very special to me when I visit my Dad and play old and new games. There is always a new board game on the table when I visit. Now I have moved back to Cambridge and I have just started my first proper roleplaying campaign. I had done some D&D a few years ago with my Dad and his friends. I started playing Vampire: The Masquerade with a work connection I made whose friends were interested in starting a campaign. I was nervous to start as I knew it would be difficult to get into the game to start with. I created an Egyptian vampire named Mahar, who has now managed to kill lots of bad people but still hasn’t lost any humanity! Somehow Mahar has justified these kills (and got lucky dice rolls!). I think I am now in 'my RPG era'. My Cambridge RPG crew and their Vampire characters: Rory, Daryl, Mitch and Duncan I am unsure if I will ever fully commit back to video games, as roleplaying and board gaming fill your social needs as well as being more enjoyable! I have a lot of fond memories gaming growing up and, even writing this, I am wanting to turn on my dusty PS2 and fly Arokh around in Drakan. I miss having so much free time to waste days away playing these brilliant games, but I guess, when I do get to play, it makes it more and more fun every time.
We’ve been enjoying the Conan board game by games company Monolith and publishers Asmodee. The game contains a vast horde of miniatures, attractive boards and imaginatively asymmetric scenarios. In each mission, the players get to be Conan the Barbarian, Shevatus the Rogue, Hadrathus the Mage or Belit the Pirate Queen. Somebody else gets to be the evil Overlord commanding the antagonists (pirates and Picts, mostly, with the odd necromancer and demon thrown in).
Conan is a fantasy of White male power. A fantasy in which White male power dominates and holds moral authority. And as Conan, you are the biggest, strongest embodiment of that White male power, able to ruthlessly cut down all your non-White enemies, surrounded by the lamentations of their women and by White women falling at your feet Hornbeck argues that the attitudes the game embodies are the reason Donald Trump got elected and if you like this game then you are colluding in the sexual abuse of women. Hornbeck’s article is worth reading, but the TL:DR is that she is either (1) a well-intentioned person making salient points about some sadly regressive attitudes towards women and minorities in the gaming industry, or (2) an idiot. Take your pick and let yourself be defined by it. Some things can be stated as facts. The base game set contains 72 miniatures – of which 2 are women and both are half-undressed. One of these is pirate queen Belit and her character board and miniature look like this. Belit's character board (left) and miniature (right, sculpted by Stéphane Simon, painted by Martin Grandbarbe) How unlike the dress code of our own dear queen. But wait, you say, isn’t this just being faithful to Robert E. Howard’s pulp stories? Isn’t that just how women in the Conan stories are supposed to look? Designers Asmodee/Monolith take this view: they pride themselves on authenticity and employ ‘Conan historians’ as consultants. In the original stories, Belit flounces around naked as a sort of radical fashion choice and lusts after young Conan in a very sex-positive way. Isn’t she just taking ownership of her alabaster body? American artist Frank Frazetta cemented the 'look' of Conan and his clingy/helpless and nearly-naked women (left) . In my youth, all fantasy novels had covers like this. So, is the game's pervy art (right) a faithful hommage or a mindless pastiche? To untangle this, it’s helpful to look back at the life of Conan's creator, Robert Ervin Howard (1906-1936). A bookish Texan, Howard’s childhood was shaped by his mother, who inculcated in him a love of poetry and an ambition to write, but who contracted tuberculosis from her constant caring for sick relatives. Howard acquired an obsession with youth and physical health and took up boxing and bodybuilding in his teens. His adventure stories reflect his own fascination with physical beauty and vitality and his fear of ageing. Howard wrote his Conan stories over a short 3-year period in the mid Thirties. His previous work had been Lovecraftian weird tales and historical adventures which reflected his fascination with his own Irish ancestry. Picts feature in many of these stories as Celtic heroes and anti-heroes – not as Native American Iroquois, as Hornbeck contends. Conan’s exploits in the ‘Hyborian Age’ before the last Ice Age also feature Howard’s beloved Picts, but this time as villains. After tiring of Conan, Howard moved on to writing Westerns in the years before his death. In fact, his last (and best) published Conan story, Beyond the Black River, features battles with the Picts in a setting clearly inspired by the American frontier, reflecting Howard’s new interests and explaining the confusion about Picts being based on Native Americans. Asmodee/Monolith certainly base their Picts on Native Americans rather than Celts - but also make them rather like Neanderthals rather than humans Howard supported feminism and tried to write strong female characters. He hated the pulp conventions that forced him to insert unnecessary erotica into his stories and tried to subvert them whenever possible – as he did in Beyond the Black River, which contains no love interest or sex scenes. Howard was delighted that he got such a story into print. So, yes, Belit goes around naked, but she’s a commander of men. In the game, contrary to Hornbeck's claim that "all she does is follow Conan around and boost his abilities," her character directs a team of warriors as well as engaging in battle directly. Expansions to the game feature other female characters, some semi-nude and provocative, but others (like the warrior woman Valeria) more sensibly dressed for action. The rather righteous miniature and art for Valeria (left) - and Sandahl Bergman's portrayal in John Milius' 1982 film Conan the Barbarian, which combines the roles of Belit and Valeria into one character Howard also created the more famous female warrior Red Sonya (sic). But before you crack wise about chainmail bikinis, Howard’s Red Sonya of Rogatino is a Ukrainian female mercenary in Istanbul in 1626 who fights with flintlock pistols. The sword-wielding barbarian heroine Red Sonja (with a J) was developed by Marvel Comics in 1973, porting the character into Conan’s Hyborian Age for their comic book adaptation of Howard’s stories. The chainmail bikini is Marvel's distinctive contribution to the character. Red Sonya/Sonja: 17th century mercenary (left), under-dressed Marvel heroine (centre) and Brigitte Nielsen in the 1985 film Which goes to show that Howard’s legacy is a complicated one: you've got Howard's original conception, compromised by commercial pressure; then there's later artists and writers (notably Marvel) focusing on elements in the stories Howard himself disliked. To their credit, Monolith/Asmodee try to honour Howard’s stories in their game, rather than the comics or movies. Red Sonja does not appear in the game. But the general vibe of adolescent sexuality definitely does. Certainly, some design choices are ... unfortunate. Making nude Belit the only playable heroine in the base game instead of armoured (and better-known) Valeria is a weird choice. The first scenario tasks Conan & Co. with rescuing a drugged princess from the Picts: she is literally an object that must be carried across the board. Conan faces off against a big snake while the princess takes a nap (left) - which I'm sure Cynthia Hornbeck LOVES in comparison to the strategy board game Age of Conan (right) in which there are three rewards for Conan to earn: treasure (fine, really), monsters (trophies, I guess) and actual women! All of this in a context where the gaming industry increasingly offer gender variants for playable characters and goes out of its way to represent women as capable and autonomous. Sometimes this works beautifully, such as Mistfall’s non-objectified heroines (one a lesbian by the way). Others are more controversial, such as EA Games' decision with Battlefield V to depict a woman combatant on the cover, leading to accusations of political correctness gone mad by people who failed GCSE History (women certainly did fight in WWII in small but not insignificant numbers). Mistfall's Elatha the Misthuntress (left) and Valkea the Myrmidon (centre) offer positive representations, as does the troll-baiting cover for Battlefield V (right) This leads us back to Cynthia Hornbeck, who makes two impassioned pleas: the first ill-conceived but the second important for a number of reasons: As a gamer, start refusing to purchase or even play a game that objectifies women, excludes women, excludes non-White people, makes non-White people the enemy, etc This is ill-conceived. People don't play or refuse to play games to make political or moral statements - or rather, those that do are jackasses. Many gamers want to explore conflicts set in the world as it is (or was), not the world as we'd like it to be. Fantasy and SF gamers want to explore dystopian rather than idealised settings. An ancient-world setting will include features like slavery, for example. But Hornbeck follows this with a better point: As a designer, start making very deliberate choices about what themes you work with and how you represent people of other gender, races, and sexualities than your own ... Conan has gained lots of acclaim for its mechanic innovations and the thorough realization of its theme and setting. But why can’t those innovative mechanics and immersive gameplay be matched with a setting that treats women as something other than sexual objects and minorities as something other than enemies? She is right about this. Monolith/Asmodee missed a trick with Conan. Any adaptation of a literary product is also an interpretation of that product and the designers failed to avail themselves of the chance to interpret Howard’s female characters more positively in this game. It's a mistake on an artistic as well as a political level. I’m sure Howard himself would have approved of revisionism. He hated the limiting conventions of the adventure genre of his time and would not have wished to see those conventions still being mindlessly perpetuated 80 years later, still less justified for being in the 'spirit' of his stories. The 'spirit' was a concession to what magazine editors demanded of pulp fiction in the '30s - and it was a spirit that Howard resented and delighted in subverting whenever he could. Now don't get me started on whether they should be banning Baby, It's Cold Outside... ...
Oh all right then. The 1949 original (left) isn't as depraved as you think, because it pairs Ricardo Montalban seducing Esther Williams with a foil where Betty Garret (rather more successfully) seduces Red Skelton. Meanwhile, the 2016 version by Idina Menzel and Michael Buble (right) cleverly uses child actors and defuses some of the more troubling lines (like "Say, what's in this drink?" and substituting soda pop for alcohol) - now that's how you interpret something rather than just recycling it. Merry Christmas.
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