Looks like approximately 32 chapters, of which 8 will be humorous stories.

Not a bad ratio to my mind.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;937927In TRACTICS there is ALWAYS a referee.  He either marks movement on the map or puts the minis on and takes them off again until spotted.  Only once a miniature is spotted is it left on the table for the other team to see.

Shit, this brings back a memory of not paying close attention to just how many cavalry formations moved out of sight behind a hill in a Napoleonics battle - I thought it was a screening force, and when they appeared on the edge of the battlefield in something like brigade strength, there wasn't a gawdamn thing I could go except watch them roll up my flank like an old newspaper and beat me over the head with it.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;937927I haven't revised this chapter yet, and you're the second person to ask.

In TRACTICS there is ALWAYS a referee.  He either marks movement on the map or puts the minis on and takes them off again until spotted.  Only once a miniature is spotted is it left on the table for the other team to see.

Fiddly, yes, but EXTREMELY effective.

I knew it was something along those lines. Perhaps when this sees print, a two-sentence description of Tractics could go in a little box at the beginning of the chapter to head off these questions.

Looking forward to seeing more.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;938357Shit, this brings back a memory of not paying close attention to just how many cavalry formations moved out of sight behind a hill in a Napoleonics battle - I thought it was a screening force, and when they appeared on the edge of the battlefield in something like brigade strength, there wasn't a gawdamn thing I could go except watch them roll up my flank like an old newspaper and beat me over the head with it.

It's a pisser, innit?

Seems more and more modern wargamers are unaware that older wargames had referees.

Quote from: Omega;938458Seems more and more modern wargamers are unaware that older wargames had referees.

This. A million fucking times. The historical ignorance in gaming about gaming is astounding.

This tempts me to write a revisionist history of wargaming that explains how Games Workshop invented table top wargaming and miniatures and Wizards of the Coast created D&D from whole cloth and Lord of the Rings was a derivative of Warhammer which ripped off Warcraft.

Quote from: David Johansen;938465This tempts me to write a revisionist history of wargaming that explains how Games Workshop invented table top wargaming and miniatures and Wizards of the Coast created D&D from whole cloth and Lord of the Rings was a derivative of Warhammer which ripped off Warcraft.

Reminds me of the appalling moment where someone on the Buck Rogers serial forum accused Buck Rogers of ripping off Star Wars opening narrative crawl... Someone else was accusing Micro Man of ripping off Transformers... (insert your god/goddess/Great-Old-One here) wept.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;938402It's a pisser, innit?

It was a lesson learned, to be sure.

Quote from: Omega;938458Seems more and more modern wargamers are unaware that older wargames had referees.

How much "older" are you talking?  I got into Avalon Hill and SPI hex-and-chit games in the late 70s and very few of those had referees.  I remember refereed play as being an optional rule in a few of them, but it was never presented as the standard method in any of the ones I saw.

Meant the idea in general. Not that it was prevalent or the norm. Though used to see it fairly often at conventions way back.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;938462This. A million fucking times. The historical ignorance in gaming about gaming is astounding.

It's hardly surprising. Not being a wargamer, I'm not a good example, but I only knew it happened (not for Tractics specifically) from Playing at the World, which is a wargaming history only as it pertains to its' main subject. Baring having someone familiar with the 'way things were' in their FLGS telling them, I don't know where the avenue of learning would be.

History of Wargaming

On a more serious note look up books by Tony Bath or Donald Featherstone.

HG Well Little Wars, and Fletcher Pratt's Naval Wargaming are also recommended.

Sure, but what is the incentive structure to do so?
Let's say I am a 14 year old who just started wargaming. For the sake of argument, I didn't learn from a parent who might know this stuff, but instead picked it up because my friends played. Now I'm rolling dice at my FLGS playing some modern wargame (probably Warhammer). What leads me to say, "I wonder what this game evolved from?"

I know how it happens for RPGs (or at least how I got interested). There's a large online community which compares older and newer games (both editions of the 'same game' and between games). That got me interested in pre-BECMI D&D and the history of how the game developed. Is there (and I'm honestly asking, because I don't know) any similar cultural structure that would make a newer wargamer want to investigate what came before, such that they would discover things like whether there were refereed wargames at a given time?

Quote from: Willie the Duck;938515Sure, but what is the incentive structure to do so?

The incentive to not be this asshat, maybe?



The curious will follow path of the true mongoose, and the incurious will wallow in their ignorance like the pigs in shit they are.