Monday, January 25, 2021

A Father of Miniatures Wargaming?

I continue to work my way – slowly – through the works of Tony Bath, with particular emphasis on his Setting Up a Wargames Campaign. Yesterday, I came across a passage in which Bath is talking about the introduction of a "campaign newspaper" as a way to keep players abreast of recent events. Bath states that
Robert Louis Stevenson was probably the first to produce one of these in the campaigns he waged. His was a very one-sided paper, which continually vilified his opponent, making light of his successes, emphasizing defeats and criticising his personal habits etc. This annoyed the chap so much that he made desperate efforts to capture the town in which the newspaper was situated – after which he hung the Editor with great jubilation and took over the paper, which immediately changed its policy! 
There's a lot to comment upon in this short paragraph and perhaps I'll return to it in a future post, but what struck me yesterday, when I first read it, was the reference to Robert Louis Stevenson and "the campaigns he waged." 

Though I cannot by any means be called a wargamer of any sort, I nevertheless knew that H.G. Wells had been an avid player of miniatures wargames. His Little Wars, first appearing in 1913, is perhaps the earliest published rules for fighting miniatures battles with the use of toy soldiers. Consequently, Wells's role in the history of wargames is widely acknowledged and celebrated. But Stevenson? I'd never before heard that he was in any way involved in wargaming, let alone being one of the first people recorded to have participated in the hobby.

Some cursory digging online led me to an article from the December 1898 issue of Scribner's Magazine entitled "Stevenson at Play" that included an introduction by Stevenson's stepson Lloyd Osbourne. The article indicates that Stevenson began his wargaming around 1881, well before the appearance of Little Wars. Of course, Stevenson never published the rules he used, which were primarily for his own amusement, though, as the linked article makes clear, they were fairly sophisticated. 

The older I get, the clearer my ignorance becomes. I'm always happy to discover new rabbit holes to explore and this is no exception. Looks like I have even more reading to do!

14 comments:

  1. How I wish Stevenson had published a book about his hobby!

    Thank you for linking the article. It was a splendid little read, especially the poem that R.L.S. wrote concerning his play.

    I did notice several aspects of their gaming, the fact that it was an Imagi-nations campaign, using blinds and dummy cards to hide troop strengths, apparent characteristics or backstory to the leaders.

    What fun it must have been for them to play together at what appears to be great frequency.

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  2. If you want to read more about early wargaming, you should get a copy of The Wargaming Pioneers, published by the History of Wargaming project: http://www.wargaming.co/recreation/details/ewvol1.htm

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  3. Also, check out Goerland: http://georland.blogspot.com/p/the-antiques-roadshow.html

    It's about a toy soldier collection that surfaced in the British Antiques Roadshow, and had toy soldiers and campaign journals dating back to the 1870s.

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  4. And a last link: very recently (as in the past couple of weeks or daus), the blog Man of TIn Blog has published quite some articles about HGWells' Little Wars and its development: https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/

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  5. Stevenson's games, as well Wells and the entire history of wargames, are covered in Playing at the World.

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    1. I read the book when it was first released. I suppose I simply forgot about Stevenson. I must re-read it.

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  6. What I've been finding more and more (in recent months) is how much of our human history is directly tied to warfare. Not just in the way that current events are changed by war and strife (or the old chestnut about conflict and violence is somehow "inherent" to human nature) but, quite literally, the way it's shaped the development of cultures, language, politics, religion, etc. When it comes to imaginative "world building" (something a part of most DMs' game) the lessons of warfare in human history...especially with regard to logistics and troop movement and the limitations of such...is highly illustrative.

    [a good web site for starting down this particular rabbit hole can be found here: https://acoup.blog/ ]

    As such, I have started to come to the conclusion that any author (Stevenson, Wells, Howard, Tolkien, whoever) concerned with the creation of imaginary worlds...and the study of human history for inspiration...cannot help but get drawn into a study of warfare (and, consequently, the possibility of gaming out alternate results of battle to consider how history might have changed). It's not that humans are a terribly violent species by nature, but the nature of survival (in the absence of other means of getting along) drives us to violence, which in turn has a dramatic impact on our civilizations. It's a fascinating branch of study for how many different things it touches up, and it's no wonder you find so many of these folks dabbled in "wargaming" as a pastime.

    Because of this

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  7. When my dad and I and his friends used to play Samurai (Avalon Hill) semi-regularly, we would often keep (incredibly biased) records of the game turns and constantly slander each other "in character" as the game went on ... It strikes me that perhaps this play was close to what used to occur during a lot of wargames/D&D, and that perhaps I've been closer to the "source" of this kind of game than I ever realized.

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    1. I also did this when we were kids. We played self-invented wargames and then wrote newspaper articles about the battles ;-) I think it's a strand of creativity that often disappears when wargaming becomes "more serious".

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  8. You’re catching up, James. We’re so proud of you. Next you’ll be reading Featherstone and pouring your own flats!

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