Ethics in
wargaming isn’t a new topic. I’m old enough to remember the
arguments in the 1970s and 1980s in the hex and counter community about games
such as Squad Leader fetishizing the SS with black counters and special
“super-soldier” abilities. So while it covered well-trodden
ground, there were three things that made Jay
Arnold’s Wargaming Ethics Roundtable podcast and panel discussion interesting
and refreshing.
First, the
podcast was a conversation rather than a debate. Rather than framing
it as an argument with those who might say “this is all a game, why are you
ruining our fun by taking it so seriously and being so judgey?”, a conversation
that Annie Norman of Bad Squiddo Games said she has had her fill of, the tone
was thoughtful and respectful. All the participants agreed
that this tone should be the quality we take around our gaming
tables. Admittedly there might be some people who reveal their
true colours (eg, wearing a “Adolf Hitler European Tour, 1939-45” concert style
shirt) and who thus might be best avoided, there are issues that we could raise
in friendly, conversational, and non-accusatory fashion, so thanks to the participants
for modelling that tone in their discourse.
Second, the
participants addressed the question of the representation of suffering which
can be the elephant in the room for wargamers, so I was grateful for their
honesty. William Tecumseh Sherman wrote to a
friend that “ I am tired & sick of war. Its glory is all
moonshine. Even success, the most brilliant is over dead and mangled
bodies”. Like Jay Arnold I served in the military, and as a chaplain
I’ve tried to help others with moral, physical, and psychological
wounds. I’m an avid student of military history. I
have, or should have, no illusions. Yet here I am, with painted and
cardboard armies of many periods in my house. My collections include
casualty figures, which Jay’s guests confessed some discomfort
with. So what’s my excuse for persisting in this hobby?
Dr. Samuel
Johnson once said that "Every man thinks meanly of himself for not
having been a soldier, or not having been at sea." He was, I
think, pointing at the mystique of the profession of arms, its celebration of
heroism, gallantry, and self-sacrifice, the glamour of the dress uniform, that
encourages many today into the phenomenon of “stolen valour”. That
mystique has waxed and waned over the centuries, but it persists. I
grew up in an Army family, with a decorated veteran father who was sparing with
his love but still inspired me and some of my brothers to become soldiers. The
paintings of a Lady Butler or Don Troiani, like our favourite war movies,
capture the aesthetic of war, even while antiwar movies (Paths of Glory),
novels (The Good Soldier Schweik) and art (Dali, Dix) are difficult to ignore. I
think it’s fair to say that wargamers are under the spell of the aesthetic of
war, even while knowing at some conscious level that it is a species of
enchantment.
For example,
I can look at a photo of a dreadnought of the Great War, at speed and guns
blazing, and find it inspiring, even beautiful, while knowing something of what
a fourteen inch shell could do when bursting in a confined space, or how the
money spent on these behemoths could have benefitted millions of
slum-dwellers. Every glamorous image has its shadow
side. All this to say that I would happily play a dreadnought game,
knowing (in order of active cognition at the time) first that it is a game,
second that it might teach me something about history, and thirdly knowing
something of the reality underlying the game. That’s the best I can
do with the issue of the representation of suffering.
Third, I’m
grateful to the participants for their focus on who we
represent. Their conversation touched on issues of race, gender, and
how history is far more complex than it is in our
representations. For example, a Crusader army would have included
soldiers from what we would today call the Middle Eastern countries, so why
paint all Crusaders as Caucasians? We might do so because if
you’re like me, your default flesh tone is Citadel’s Cadian flesh, but that
doesn’t have to be the case. Why is representation important,
and not just a kneejerk response to trendy diversity
requirements? Because many of our games lend themselves to
narratives of race war with an overlay of civilization versus
barbarism. My blonde elves and Rohirrim resisting tides of dark
skinned monsters may just be an innocent fantasy trope, but it too has its
shadow side.
I will never
forgot trying to get my wife to watch the “Men of Harlech” scene from Zulu, a
film beloved of wargamers. To my horror, all she saw was white
soldiers mowing down black men. “I could have lived the rest of my
life without ever watching that”, was all she said. That was a
shock, but it reminded me that what to us are gallant episodes from Queen
Victoria’s Little Wars just look like colonial massacres to
others. Jay’s guests didn’t have a solution to this, and
certainly didn’t advocate the cancellation of colonial
gaming. However, they did suggest that we at least think about
the common practice of recycling native figures to sustain the game, and what
it represents, or to educate ourselves and others about the complexity of
indigenous cultures in order to tamp down the “civilization vs barbarism”
narrative. These battles are more imbalances of technology than they
are of civilization. As Hillaire Belloc mordantly noted, “Whatever
happens, we have got / the Maxim gun, and they have not”. A little
more self-awareness along these lines is all that the panelists were asking of
us.
A final
thought about who we represent. When I was an American Civil War
reenactor, I belonged to a group that usually portrayed Federal infantry, and I
was okay with that, because they were the good guys. When I
went down south to American events, the Confederate reenactors grew more and
more numerous and were often very political. You would see bumper
stickers in the event parking lots with slogans such as “North 1, South 0: Half
Time”. I didn’t want any part of that, but once, I was persuaded to
don gray and go to an event as a Rebel. I’ll never forget passing
by a group of African American reenactors portraying US Coloured Troops, and
how I felt a moment of visceral shame to be marching under the Confederate
battle flag. I couldn’t divorce the politics and history of the
present from the history we were supposedly bringing to life. That
being said, the Civil War is a passion of mine, and I have a large and growing
collection of figures, including numerous CSA regiments, because I game solo
usually, and for that you need both sides. If I was at an event,
where I met a fellow with a tooled up Confederate army, wearing a grey kepi and
a Robert E Lee t-shirt, I would at the very least want to have a respectful
conversation with him about who he was representing and
why. Hopefully it would be educational, and not confrontational.
As I bring
this to a close, I am aware that I have just laid out a game about RAF night
bombers flying over the Third Reich, and I’m also aware that the anniversary of
the bombing of Dresden occurred quite recently. There is a
terrible paradox there, and as I write these lines, I realize that I don’t want
to solve the paradox one way or another. I acknowledge the
incredible bravery of those young men who flew for Bomber Command, as well as
the reality of what their actions did to those living in or near their
targets. I love the lines of a Lancaster bomber while I’m
haunted by the photos of gutted German cities. Perhaps all I can do
as a wargamer is to live with that tension.
Thanks for
reading. I'd love to read your own thoughts.
MP+
