10-25-2013, 11:56 PM
Havard Wrote:Overall, it is really interesting to hear about how things worked back in those days. Sounds like you had alot of fun!
-Havard
We did, I think. I had a lot of fun building things for games, like the huge room-sized model of Mos Eisley for 'The Great Mos Eisley Spaceport Raid' - Fred Funk played the Imperial Stormtroopers, and Dave Arneson played Jabba the Hutt. No typecasting here, nosireebob!
For many of us, back in those days, there wasn't a clear distinction between 'wargames' and 'role playing'; we played our generals' figures as individuals, with terrible accents and mangled misquotations: "Zut alors! Ze accursed English! Fire le cannon de boom-boom, mon frere!" and so on. Games were supposed to be fun, first and foremost; they were a time when friends got together over the game table and laughed a lot.
When you ask about how a 'wargame' could be run as a role-playing game, may I suggest something that Dave Arneson did? Try Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Brigadier Gerard" series of tales about a fictional French hussar; to add spice to the fun, many of the real historical personages of the period were just as colorful - see the life of Baron de Marbot, and his wonderful "Memoirs"; you couldn't make this stuff up! - and this kind of "Action! Adventure! Romance!" set in any historical period just cries out for some role-playing. I think that a strong element of Hollywood-style 'swashbuckling' and 'derring-do' pervaded our games, no matter what the specific period of type of game; I think that can be developed in games these days, with players and GMs who are willing to spend some time reading and exploring the lesser-known by-ways of history.
I still try to have this in my games; I encourage this kind of behavior, and I quite often have to remind players that this is supposed to be fun and that they can 'loosen up' and be just as eccentric as their ancestors were. (Napoleon's Marshals often refused to support each other, due to prolonged fits of sulking and pouting...)
Actual example of 'player character behavior' in history: The crew of the CSS Virginia threatening to board USS Monitor during the battle at Hampton Roads, since cannon weren't working against either ship's armor, and having it out at cutlass point; they also were going to throw blankets over Monitor's pilot house to impede navigation. That'll fix those Yankees! :lol:
Does this help at all?
yours, chirine