"Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin." - Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871) The 12th February marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, the man credited with the theory of evolution by natural selection. Despite Empedocles the Greek suggesting natural selection in the C.5th BC, and the idea of the struggle for existence formulated by Muslim theologian and resident of Basra, al-Jahiz, in 776AD, to say nothing of the work of Scots William Charles Wells and Patrick Matthew in the early C.19th , it has been Darwin who has won the plaudits (and brickbats) as the father of evolutionary theory. It occurred to me that the principles of evolution by natural selection can apply just as well to the wargaming world as to the natural kingdom. Don’t we try new mechanisms with rules to see which best fits our purposes? Rules which aren’t fit for purpose wither and die, whilst those cunning mechanisms that enhance our gameplay survive and are replicated in other sets? Look at the growth and development of the DBx series, and the move away from single figure to multi-figure bases, at least for scales below 25/28mm, for example. However the comparison with the natural world could go deeper still. The late evolutional biologist Stephen Jay Gould made clear that evolution isn’t going anywhere. That is, it’s not moving along some pathway to “better” creatures. Today’s animals are not better or worse than the dinosaurs which preceded them, they are merely fit for this environment, and have thus far avoided an unpleasant encounter with an asteroid. Are wargames heading towards a specific goal, a “perfect” set of rules? I wonder whether we gamers are under the illusion that that is what new sets offer. Well, if not a perfect set, then at least a move towards it. In fact all we are getting is a set that (hopefully) is better suited to the type of game we want to play at a given point in time subject to the environment created by the fads and fashions of the hobby. Enjoy your new games by all means, but remember, we aren’t going anywhere. My own efforts to entertain, amuse, and part you from your cash continue with further work on Astronef, the VSF Ether game and sister set to Aeronef and Land Ironclads. Like all the sets in the series, the rules draw heavily upon period fiction from the C.19th and early C.20th. I’m currently grappling with a cunning mechanism for replicating the effects of Cavorite, an anti-gravity material from HG Wells’ The First Men in the Moon. Cavorite generates a force rather like magnetic repulsion when near a large object like a planet and can be used to power ether craft by using shielding to block the material from the large object. Unworked it can be a bit troublesome as the fictional account of it's discovery shows: "The chimneys jerked heavenward, smashing into a string of bricks as they rose, and the roof and a miscellany of furniture followed. Then overtaking them came a huge white flame. The trees about the building swayed and whirled and tore themselves to pieces, that sprang towards the flare. My ears were smitten with a clap of thunder that left me deaf on one side for life, and all about me windows smashed, unheeded. I took three steps from the verandah towards Cavor's house, and even as I did so came the wind. Instantly my coat tails were over my head, and I was progressing in great leaps and bounds, and quite against my will, towards him. In the same moment the discoverer was seized, whirled about, and flew through the screaming air. I saw one of my chimney pots hit the ground within six yards of me, leap a score of feet, and so hurry in great strides towards the focus of the disturbance. Cavor, kicking and flapping, came down again, rolled over and over on the ground for a space, struggled up and was lifted and borne forward at an enormous velocity, vanishing at last among the labouring, lashing trees that writhed about his house. A mass of smoke and ashes, and a square of bluish shining substance rushed up towards the zenith. A large fragment of fencing came sailing past me, dropped edgeways, hit the ground and fell flat, and then the worst was over." The level of detail and description in Well's text is one of the ways in which working with original source material can be a challenge, but ultimately I have found that the game gains a unique flavour from remaining true to its sources. Matthew Hartley
February 2009 |
