Over the last few months I have been chatting on and off (through the comments pages of my Man of TIN blog) to Jen Burdoo, a librarian and gamer in the USA.
Jen has been interested, like other library staff around the world, in bringing historical figure gaming or wargaming or miniatures gaming into the library.
I know that this happens in Australia having read of such things in Kaptain Kobold’s The Stronghold Rebuilt blog.
I knew somewhere that I had filed away an old teaching or education newspaper article somewhere about something similar being done with fantasy gaming in libraries in Britain, partly to encourage boy’s literacy.
In the interests of this discussion and for those interested in the general history of fantasy gaming, I have scanned this Times Education Supplement (TES) article of February 23 2001, entitled War of Words by Elaine Williams.
I am not a fantasy gamer. I am not really interested in the ups and downs, ‘love them or loathe them’ relationship with Games Workshop that many fantasy gamers seem to have.
I know that children playing with the ‘scary’ or ‘supernatural’ warlock and wizardry, demons and dragons, sorcery and spells side of fantasy games raises some concerns for some people.
Interestingly about the same timesavers the TES article, there was a brief correspondence in 2002 about a similar project linked to the Lord of the Rings films and a letter regarding comments in the article on a Christian or religious angle on Tolkien and fantasy games.
Please note that I, Man of TIN, does not wish to get into any religious arguments over reprinting this article on my blog and respects other people’s rights to their beliefs. Thank you.
I hope that these couple of articles are of interest to (fantasy) gamers and those involved with library gaming.
As someone who spent much time in branch libraries researching uniforms, battles, history and borrowing Wargames books, it must have done much for my literacy.
I hope that reading this article is of historical or current interest to some gamers.
Blogposted by Mark Man of TIN 20 January 2019.
Pound Store Plastic Warriors 
Impressive few articles there. I find it particularly interesting that Dan Abnett chimed in. He’s an extremely-well-known author among 40K fans who’s had enormous impact on building the background storyline of the games – which these days I’m more interested in than the games themselves. And he’s right about how gaming can draw kids into reading. He just published his fifty-some novel last week – the fifteenth in a rather gutwrenching 40K series all about a single human regiment in one war in one sector of the galaxy. The Horus Heresy series, recently up to 54 books, is a regular New York Times bestseller but also boosts sales of miniatures as players try to recreate the units, characters and battles from the novels.
There are a couple librarians on the League of Librarian Gamers Facebook group who’ve been using paper soldiers like these:
https://www.amazon.com/War-Spanish-Succession-Marlboroughs-Campaigns/dp/1912390922/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1548431146&sr=8-3&keywords=paper+soldiers
A very interesting series of books which I’d love to get hold of.
I recently had a conversation with a supervisor at work:
“I’d like to try running a historical wargame with the kids.”
“Too violent. Why not Dungeons and Dragons? That’s fantasy, right?”
LikeLike
Probably interesting to Abnett fans to travel back to 2001/2 … can’t understand how the Brontes missed out on possible merchandising deals. What were they thinking?The Twelves, the warring states of Angria, Gondal and Glasstown, all excellent figure merchandising opportunities. The extended back story books. The list is endless …
The paperboys series deserve to do well, the versions with Peter Dennis figures and Andy Callan simple rules should be interesting. Excellent inexpensive gaming starter material, to develop the Junior General side of things.
Dungeons and Dragons is obviously “non violent” to some as only adventurer, orc or goblin etc. blood gets spilt.
LikeLike