Gladiators - Wargaming? Really!?

[Bronshtein]

I have/had(?) a friend who used to run gladiatorial contest games for all-comers, but for school kids in particular to introduce them to some concepts of classical history. He is a really nice, charming bloke who has a genuine passion for classical education but I always wondered about this way of encouraging interest - for reasons which will become apparent.

Nick NorthStar is peddling a new set of Gladiator Rules today on TMP http://theminiaturespage.com/news/?id=1492881706 and the genre seems to be a hardy perennial of 'skirmish' gaming.

Why?

Most 'games' in Roman arenas weren't 'noble' warriors (the pitch presumably in the intro to kids) in a brutal but heroic version of UFC matches. They were ritualised, barbaric, judicial murders for the entertainment of the mob and to let people know what to expect if they, the plebs, challenged the patricians.

Sadistic snuff theatre with actual rape and dismemberment, animal slaughter and casual human butchery was the order of the day rather than noble warrior bollocks.

How would we feel about having our kids gaming captured barbarians being raped to death by trained animals? I can imagine a few difficult discussions with the board of Governors at best.

Why is this worse than gaming warfare? I don't know, but it is.
Would we feel comfortable making a game of organising executions in 18th century England? Or if you prefer a bit of Hanging Drawing and Quartering or Burning at the Stake, 16th century England?

Concentration or death camps? - now funnily enough I have seen a very subtle and immensely clever and quite sensitive game based on that subject under 'disguised scenario' conditions - brilliant and insightful with genuine shivery Hannah Arendt type moments.

But 'Roll up! Roll up! Come and watch the brave Iceni! See the beautiful maidens get it! Can a Celt beat a bear?! All the fun of the Games!'...no ta.

[Mary Whitehouse]

Would you care to give us a list of approved periods that are acceptable to game then?
Oh, and while you're at it, could you let us all have your email address so we can drop you a line to approve any games we may fancy playing?

You pompous cunt, trying to tell people what they should and shouldn't be doing and passing judgement on them for it.

Get the fuck over yourself. Seriously, look back over what you've written and ask why anyone should be polite and take you seriously. You judgemental piece of shit.

[Bronshtein]

Would you care to give us a list of approved periods that are acceptable to game then?
Oh, and while you're at it, could you let us all have your email address so we can drop you a line to approve any games we may fancy playing?

You pompous cunt, trying to tell people what they should and shouldn't be doing and passing judgement on them for it.

Get the fuck over yourself. Seriously, look back over what you've written and ask why anyone should be polite and take you seriously. You judgemental piece of shit.

Mary dear heart, how twee of you to channel every social or moral thought through your own repressed Christian sadness.

In answer to your questions:
No.
No.
Tempting, but...No.
I wasn't - I said I thought you had to be a child molesting freak to enjoy games about organising death rape - you obviously feel differently.
No. (again)
No - I know what I wrote.
Because it is an interesting moral question at the heart of a game about types of killing.

There - bit of a boring quiz, but easy to complete.

What a juvenile little rant.
Do awkward questions about your favourite masturbatory fantasies always make you so upset?

Gladiators were not nice! There I've said it! How pompous of me! I feel just awful.

[Guest]

But what you've either conveniently not realised, or in your haste To Make A Point not thought about, is that gladiatorial games have as much to do with actual gladiatorial combat as any wargame does with the period it is trying to recreate.

In a WW2 game (for example) how often do you game soldiers finishing off a wounded opponent in the heat of battle? Or doing the same in any game? It undoubtedly happened/s.

Gladiatorial games do not feature the rape and execution of unnarmed prisoners like you suggest. Yeah, sure, it actually happened. But a gladiatorial game is more a romanticised version and focusses exclusively on the armed and armoured characters - it's fantasy. Just like that game of Waterloo.

Suggesting it glamorises the reality of what happened is no more relevant than any wargames and the rotten shit that takes place in warfare and is conveniently glossed over in any wargame.

Then you use that shoddy technique, like you often do, by suggesting that if a person likes X then they must like Y as well.
Tell me, what gaming periods do you play? I'd genuinely like to know because I'm wondering what is so pure and honourable about the periods you play. It really is a genuine question - tell us what you play. Because I bet, sure as shit, that there was some wicked and immoral things done then and I bet you somehow manage to airbrush over them.

[Guest]

But I see elsewhere, Bron, that you are happy to urge others to game activities including extra-judicial murder, bushwhacking, murder of innocent civilians, and mob lynching:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=53806

And with your children as well. Well done you.

What's next from you, eh? I suppose if you are happy with all those things then you'd also support gaming terrorist actions in Chechnya, IRA bombing missions, or shoot outs between drug cartels in busy city centres.

Yeah, that sloppy and sanctimonious moral equivalency thing's dead easy and fun, eh? I can see why you do it so often now.

[Bronshtein]

Gosh so many questions!
But I suppose that's your game.
Not playing.

No there is no equivalence between gaming combat and gaming Gladiators.

One is a game about war (bad enough and one I harbour doubts about), the other is about gaming a conveyor belt of death to judicial torture and murder.

Chechnya -not done it. Happy to do it. You know I'd be Russian right?
IRA - Yes -from several sides.
Drug Cartels? - Hmm - no. Not really combat - unless we are looking at some of the Colombian shenanigans. Fuck knows who the good guys are though!
Westerns - guilty as charged. Still not a conveyor belt to death.

Sad ending - twice you've poked at that imaginary button. Ain't there squire.
If you wanted a proper conversation - I'd be very interested - you're a time wasting tosser who wants an argument.
Silly boy.

[Guest]

Except you don't come across as someone who wants to have a conversation.
You come across as someone who just wants to have a pompous opinion.

Look at how you started - anyone playing gladiator games wants to glamorise and game rape, torture, and murder.
In the same way, then, anyone who plays WW2 games is endorsing mass execution, genocide, lining up women and children and shooting them, etc.

Except they're not, are they?

So are you telling us that a gladiator game will be about depicting the tying up of slaves and throwing them to wild animals? Do you really think that's what it would be? Or do you think it might, perhaps, just focus on two armed combatants. Oh yeah, it's still dirty and sordid all right. But then, so were the Normandy beach landings. Is it a real and honest depiction of what happened? No, it's not. But then what wargame is? They're all fantasy.

Your problem is that you have spent so much time on that thread that you think the only way you can post here is to be outspoken, provocative and arrogant (and no, that's not what Frothers always was. That's your lack of experience. It could be, but it wasn't always).

You've become a parody of yourself.

Because I bet that if you start all conversations with people, face-to-face, the same way then it's a wonder you have any teeth left.
If you want a conversation piece then try being conversational.
If you want to be provocative and judgemental then don't be surprised when you get it back.

It's up to you.

[Bronshtein]

Nah fam!
Crap try.
Next.

[Goldwyrm]

"Conveyor Belt to Death"

I like that. It breaks the War-Somethings, Something-Wars, Something of War, and similar rules title formulas.

Mind if I grab that for the title or tag line of my next set of edgy wargame rules that I haven't started yet?

[Bronshtein]

Be my guest (free up till $20,000 sales, 10% of gross after that!)