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.
It was the summer of 1978, the nation was retro-rocking to Grease and I was visiting my mate Simon in Welwyn Garden City. Simon had been my friend at Junior School and was much cooler than me, as evidenced by his musical tastes (2-tone, ska) and the fact that his parents had divorced and remarried (mind-boggling in 1978). Anyway, when I arrived to spend the weekend with him, he revealed his new hobby: fantasy Role Playing Games (RPGs), namely Dungeons & Dragons. The ground had been laid for this already. I'd read The Lord of the Rings and was a huge fantasy/SF fan, a massive Greek/Norse mythology nerd and board games player (such as they were back then: I'm talking Waddingtons, not Avalon Hill). Earlier that year, my mother had showed me a newspaper article about D&D which sounded intriguing, but the concept of a game without a board or a winner surpassed my understanding. So Simon produced these rulebooks: the Players Handbook and the Monster Manual and the old blue 'Holmes' Basic Set (you see, the Dungeon Masters Guide had not yet been published so people had to cobble the game together as best they could). I created a character - Tristan, the Elf - and Simon was Dungeon Master and in search of the unknown we went, venturing into the now-classic introductory dungeon. I was instantly, utterly and compulsively hooked. On and on, into the night we played. Then I lay awake, scouring the books by torchlight, poring over the black-and-white illustrations that held rich and unnerving fascinations for me: flesh golems ... green slime (it drops on you!) ... trolls ("loathsome and rubbery") ... demonesses with actual breasts. Yes, I was Sandy and D&D was my Danny Zuko and I was Hopelessly Devoted from that moment on. Tell me more, you say? Well, I dashed home and told my parents I wanted D&D for Christmas (5 achingly slow months away). To Welwyn Garden City we must go, to the department store that sold this odd and (to my father's mind) hugely overpriced game. I think it cost £10, which was a big deal for a Christmas present then, and the box was unprepossessing. But Christmas finally came and I unpacked the slim rulebook, the oddly-shaped dice, the venerated dungeon module (so replete with secrets, but not, I discovered, any actual green slime or breasty demonesses) and subjected my hapless parents to the game (they played along, mystified), then recruited likelier gaming buddies: fellow 12-year-old boys. From now on, D&D owned my imagination and my very soul. The following Christmas brought the long-awaited Dungeon Master's Guide, which was a monumental piece of reading material with some vocabulary-expanding prose in it. White Dwarf subscriptions ensued and, when I moved to Scotland at the age of 13, I made new friends by seeking out the only kids in the school who played D&D. Puberty, romantic love, sexual angst and moodiness came and went - or I presume they did, because I was too busy drawing dungeons to notice. A lot of ink could be spilled on the subject of why D&D grips adolescent boys so compulsively. It's an escape, obviously. It's a fantasy alternative where problems can be solved with magic or brute power. There's world-building, problem-solving and narcissism. Those demonesses aren't wearing any clothes. And so on. But I don't want to knock it because it was a pretty constructive hobby. I was DM in an ongoing campaign with schoolfriends Andrew, Chris, Gareth and Douglas - or Micdor the Mighty, By-Tor Madrigal, Bron-Y-Aur the Gnome and Riethor Thalion the Ranger. You guys, your characters names are still as familiar to me as Frodo and Bilbo and your adventures were, frankly, just as worthy of big cinema adaptations. Who can forget when you stormed the assassin's guild? or the vampires of Wizard Street? or the land of the Frost Barbarians with its comedy berserkers? True friendship, epic tales and my mum bringing us a tray of tea and sandwiches as the Sunday afternoons slipped away, away, far away and long ago. If there's a heaven (and how can there not be?) then surely we will all meet there, unwearied by age and uncondemned by the years, and play our D&D campaign again. And my beloved mother will bring us tea. But I digress (and am making myself tearful). A long interval must be dispensed with: university, career, marriage; important things but the turning of the wheel was waiting for me when I started teaching schoolkids to play D&D again, running little clubs, presiding over a new generation of heroes, watching the spark kindle a fire of obsession in some eyes, but not others. Why some and not others? It's an interesting question. I've probably introduced a hundred people to D&D in my life and I've never yet met someone who didn't "get it" - who couldn't, after a few moments of following along, realise that you were playing a character, imagining a story and who wouldn't immediately start making their own contributions to the narrative: "I'll hit him!", "I'm going to open the chest", "I'll search for secret doors", "I'll hit him!", "Can I jump over it?", ""I take the treasure", "I'll hit him!" and so on. Nobody is too clever for this to appeal to them or too stupid to grasp the basics. It's so immediate and so accessible that it feels eerily as if storytelling like this is some sort of innate human potential, like singing or playing with babies or cheering at sports, something that we all do naturally and would do a lot more often if our culture didn't direct us away from such activities. Perhaps that's true - perhaps our culture teaches us to think of imagination and storytelling as activities assigned only to experts and people employed by Disney, encouraging us to be passive consumers of other people's stories when really it's our human inheritance to create our own. But even though everyone 'gets it', not everyone likes it. I've introduced D&D to people who've said afterwards (or half way through), "Yeah, it's OK, it just goes on a bit - I'm going to wander over there for a while and watch bugs hit the window." And I've got to say, I play RPGs much less now than I used to. They're tiring, imaginatively and socially. Board games feel much more like relaxation, especially if you're not super-jazzed about winning But then time passes and I get the old itch. I want to get a bunch of people to the table and deliver a round unvarnished tale, then sit back while they squabble and scheme, twit each other and have dazzling insights, crack the funniest jokes ever, draw more creativity out of me than I knew I had, rush to each other's rescue, piece the clues together and screw everything up on a final calamitous dice roll. Yes. Yes I think it's time to play D&D again. Fresh faces very welcome.
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