The Gaming Den

Welcome welcome, fair denizens. To this, what I should expect to be the first ROSSR, what does the R stand for, well that r stand for really, because today, we're going back, way, way back. How far back is way back, well, allow me set the stage for you.

The year is 1913, and H.G. Wells was having lunch with his friend "in a room littered with the irrepressible debris of a small boy’s pleasures" (I will be quoting directly a lot because this book is in the public domain, and the prose is- just amazing), and he and his friend decided to amuse themselves by playing with a toy gun, firing at toy soldiers and attempting to knock them down. It was at this point that he began to think of a new, more complex and engaging sort of game, one where you would move your soldiers around and fight battles. And so, did H.G. Wells set out to invent the table top war game.
Yes, that H.G. Wells That's right humble denizens, today we will be taking a look at the game that started it all, the oldest, surviving, table top wargame to be codified and written down. This should be a real fun one, and fairly relaxed, too, it's not an exceptionally long volume, and it reads nothing like the dry legalistic works of modern game manuals.

So, join me, as I explore; Little Wars: A Game for Boys From Twelve Years of Age to One Hundred and Fifty and For That More Intelligent Sort of Girl Who Likes Boys’ Games and Books This is actually the full title, damn Mr. Wells. Shots fired. First up: the history of little wars.

darkmaster wrote:. And so, did H.G. Wells set out to invent the table top war game.

To be precise, Little Wars was NOT the first tabletop wargame -von Reiswitz had developed Kreigspiel 101 years earlier. Little Wars was however the first such game to be published as a book.

Kreigspiel was a wargame, and it does a lot of things modern wargames, rpgs, and board games do today. However, I make the distinction that Kreigspiel was a wargame in the literal sense, and was a teaching tool for officers. Where as Little Wars was intended as an actual game for people to play and have fun. I know it's semantic and your point is valid, in fact Wells himself would agree with you and says as much in the book (though he also says his game is better). But for my money, this is where wargames as we think of them start.

I loved reading both Little Wars, and about Kriegespiele; but I've never been able to see a copy of the rules for the latter. While the former's rules are fairly loose guidelines by comparison.

Looking forward to this.

I found the rules to Little Wars to be pretty bland, but there was a certain novelty value to reading them.