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Written by Robert Kendzie
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Tuesday, 09 November 2010 |
What happened?
I'll begin with the apologies - sorry to have skipped out on October. I am back in the states after nearly a month traveling overseas on business. I had expected to be able to get a good deal of writing done while stuck in hotel rooms halfway around the world from my usual haunts, but alas it was not to be. This turned out to be one of those trips where it seemed like the only time not spent sleeping was spent working. There were a couple of much needed nights out for unwinding wedged in there, but lots of 12-15 hour workdays in between. Not an ideal situation for creativity to thrive in.
The holidays are always a difficult time for us, mostly because Mikolaj and I are so busy at this time of year. We've got our familiies to attend to and the load from our real jobs always increases about this time through the end of the year. Hopefully by December we'll have regained our footing and we'll be able to move ahead with greater speed once more. |
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 09 November 2010 )
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Written by Robert Kendzie
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Friday, 15 October 2010 |
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Not a lot of Americans read Marcel Proust . I have not read Proust, but maybe I should. A lot of people who haven't read his work still are familiar (at least in passing) with his idea of involuntary memory: that some commonplace experience can bring back to us, in an immediate way, some feeling or perception of the past. The famous illustration that Proust provides is a vivid cascade of memory triggered by the eating of a particular kind of cookie called a Petite Madeleine .
I've had these kinds of experiences often, as I think most people have. I've read that the strongest memories can be triggered by smells. On particularly damp, green mornings in late spring or early fall the smell that the trees give off puts me right back into my thirteen year old self: off at summer camp somewhere in northern Maine, walking back to my cabin after getting up in the early morning silence before dawn to take a stroll at the edge of the lake. However my personal favorite memory trigger is music. Hearing an old song in an unexpected moment can change my entire day's outlook and put my mind back into an old groove (for better or worse).
Today I am halfway around the world from my home. Earlier I was sitting in a restaurant, jet-lagged out of my mind desperately hungry and feeling disconnected from the world. Lo and behold a favorite song of mine from years past began playing on the establishment's stereo:
A stone's Throw from Jerusalem
I walked a lonely mile in the moonlight...
I'm a big fan of Sting - have been ever since I was in junior high school listening to the Police. I think that The Soul Cages is one of his most underrated albums, and contains some of his best lyrics. This song in particular brought back a whole torrent of images and feelings from a particular time in my life - a time of uncertainty and difficulty, but also a time of great hope for the future. Once again, I personally (and a lot of people in America, for that matter) are facing uncertainty and difficulty. It's been harder for me to find hope these days than it was in my youth, when time was more of a friend than an enemy to me. Today, however, I was permitted the luxury of hope's memory, and it helped. I doubt this is going to get me to finally read Marcel Proust. Maybe I can find a summary somewhere . |
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 16 October 2010 )
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Written by Robert Kendzie
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Wednesday, 29 September 2010 |
There has been a lot of text generated in the last couple of months about the new 8th edition of the Warhammer Fantasy Battle game . Opinions have been divided, to say the least. I've made a concerted effort to stay out of the fray myself until I could get more experience with the new rules, however after three months I am disappointed to find that I still can't bring myself to say definitively which side of the debate I favor.
I've been playing Warhammer for close to 20 years now, through 4 editions. I've collected a half-dozen armies tallying up thousands of toy soliders, not to mention model terrain, numerous tomes of errata and addenda, and all of the associated tat that grognards like myself collect over time. In short: I have bought in. Games Workshop has me hooked like a particularly masochistic wide-mouth bass who happens to enjoy the experience of an impropmtu barbed steel lip piercing. No matter what the rumors indicated, there was never any doubt that I would buy the new book or play the revised game. The same goes for many of the people I play with - we're certainly giving it the old college try. Still, despite a lot of gaming and discussion, we still find ourselves asking "Is this really an improvement, or not?"
What makes that the determination so difficult is the fact that the game mechanics have been turned on their head in a number of places. Some of the rules harken back to 5th edition, some are similar to the more recent editions, and some are wholly new to the game. Even the transition from 5th to 6th edition, widely hailed as a radical departure at the time, was not so jarring as the one happening now. Game tactics and army composition will need to change with the times, which obviously is going to upset a lot of people who have built their collections around one particular style of play or other. For myself, the change has really forced me to look at why I play this game, and indeed what is it about Warhammer that attracts me in the first place.
There has been a lot of jawing about "balance" and whether or not the game is still suited to tournament play - whether the new rules are capable of rendering a real competitive gaming experience or whether it's become too wedded to the vagaries of dice-rolling. I've heard people say "I want it to mean something when I win". I think that tying that sentiment to the competitive aspect of the game may be missing the point, however.
While some gamers see Warhammer as strictly a competitive endeavor, it is also a simulation of a fantastical, cinematic conflict. From all of the statistics and dice and play, a story evolves. That's what all of the fluff and background and the models are for. Just as historical wargames simulate history, Warhammer simulates fantasy. Achieving this simulation requires an adversarial element between two players or teams of players, just like a modern court requires a prosecutor and a defender. However, the court has a higher purpose beyond who wins or loses (seeing justice done - or at least simulated). Warhammer has a higher purpose as well: portraying mythical fantastic conflicts. So, a certain level of cooperation is required between the players, even though they are adversaries. This is what makes Warhammer different from, say, chess or darts or bocce ball.
While I certainly don't disagree that Warhammer requires vigorous competition between the players, I think it is the contextual element which defines the game. The background, the monsters, the heroes, all the fantasy claptrap and the panoply and spectacle of the models are what make the game possible and provide meaning to the competition. Without the context then the competition becomes a meaningless exercise, and the context is defined by the players working together, even as they struggle against each other to win. |
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