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Would have loved to take part in this - will keep an eye out for the promised dakka link next year

Praefectusclassis wrote:
I'd read "I started painting miniatures and then got curious about playing with them" being number two as at least some justification for the collectable side of the GW model (and Wargames Foundry, and ...). But that was, by some marging, the second reason.

That is how I got into it.

As a boy I naturally played with toy soldiers in a narrative way, not using any proper rules. About the age of 11 to 12, I started playing hex map board wargames from SPI and Avalon Hill. One of them was the excellent "Star Soldier" science fiction skirmish game.

I quickly realised most of my friends found the counters boring to use, so I went to buy some SF figures from Minifigs -- unfortunately they only had a very small range -- but they had a shop in London at that time and it was easier to go there than to do mail order without a bank account and so on.

Once in the Minifigs shop I also bought some Lord of the Rings style models because they appealed visually and I was into LoTR. RPGs were beginning to come along and I had some figures and could set up little skirmishes.

When I went to university I joined the RPG and Wargames club, where I was introduced to mass battle tabletop wargames in the form of WRG 5th edition. Here I am over 30 years later, with a collection of games and armies in many genres, to which I am still adding. (Except for 40K.)

I got introduced to wargaming in parochial school - by one of the priests.

He involved me in in roleplaying games, wargaming, and the Roneograph machine - I made my first 'zine back in 1976. (And it was terrible! I wish that I still had a copy - I mimeographed about a dozen. I wrote most of the articles, and did all of the illustrations... badly. )

Heading on towards forty years, come 2015.

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* It was Minifigs for me as well.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
I made my first 'zine back in 1976. (And it was terrible! I wish that I still had a copy - I mimeographed about a dozen. I wrote most of the articles, and did all of the illustrations... badly. )

Couldnt have been that bad. You should see some of the stuff that actually was printed from companies like Judges Guild from the same period.

I think The Auld Grump and I most likely saw a fair bit of that kind of stuff.

If you didn't live through the digital revolution it is difficult to imagine how much easier it is to publish stuff these days than in the 1970s.

Part of my first job was running a Gestetner machine to make actual blueprints of technical drawings that had been done by hand.

True enough - but sometimes, we block out the bad and only remember the good. Much of that early artwork in magazines and even some of the books was...awful.

Line drawings that really look like they were done on the back of a napkin. Occasionally you will find a sketch done on regular notebook paper where you can still see the underlying lines.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
True enough - but sometimes, we block out the bad and only remember the good. Much of that early artwork in magazines and even some of the books was...awful.

Line drawings that really look like they were done on the back of a napkin. Occasionally you will find a sketch done on regular notebook paper where you can still see the underlying lines.

Early magazines? Heck, it's still around today. Did you ever see the initial kickstarter attempt for Gates of Antares? Or the ice age mammal kickstarter?

I am in the HHobby for about 25 years, i was mostly collector, i met a guy (now friend) who was really a wargamer and we started to play 40K because there weren't many wargamers around (no internet then).

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
True enough - but sometimes, we block out the bad and only remember the good. Much of that early artwork in magazines and even some of the books was...awful.

Line drawings that really look like they were done on the back of a napkin. Occasionally you will find a sketch done on regular notebook paper where you can still see the underlying lines.

It was cheap and fun, though. At least the UK books were often very cheap. For example my copy of Laser Burn still has the price sticker £1.95 on the cover. Bought in about 1985? That is about £3 in today's prices. Makes you think, when the latest GW rules cost £50. Smaller, cheaper books are more portable and you can be less precious about them, muck them up with notes, lend them to people and so on.

And some more results for your delectation and perusal (or mockery and disdain, whichever you prefer )!

Praefectusclassis wrote:
And some more results for your delectation and perusal (or mockery and disdain, whichever you prefer )!

For what it is worth, (and this is purely speculation on my part) I think you might have been getting some bias in the responses to the 'which aspect is most important' question. The "researching military history" response might have a higher response rate because compared to the other responses it could seem 'practical,' 'mature,' or 'academic'. In other words, respondents might have been motivated to rate this aspect as more important than it really is because of its positive connotations.

For example, when asked to indicate personal or household income, most respondents will exaggerate their income. The anonymity of the questionnaire is largely irrelevant, and income level is pretty irrelevant too. Whether you are making less than 10K per year or more than 100K per year, you have probably artificially inflated your income on a questionnaire.

It would have been interesting to see the response rates to not-so-wargame-related options with similarly positive connotations mixed into that question. Things like:

"Improving my reading comprehension"

or "learning about statistics and probabilities"

or even "Winning games"

I think you might find that responses are somewhat biased towards how an activity is perceived within the community. If "Winning games" were on that list, I would expect to see a rather low importance attached to it, due to how a respondent might imagine being perceived by others if he or she rated "Winning games" as a very important aspect of the hobby.

This reminds me of some toxic tort research we did some years back. We put in a question asking respondents to rate the danger of various chemicals. We included several real chemicals (including the chemical relevant to the case) and also included a bunch of completely fictitious chemical compounds.

What we found was rather interesting. Peoples' perceptions of chemical danger were very closely tied to certain elements of a chemical name, real or fictitious. For example, any chemical with the suffix 'ene' was perceived to be more dangerous. These results have held up over multiple research projects over the years.

We could have simply asked respondents to rate the danger of the chemical at issue. But this would not have given us very much insight into why respondents felt the chemical was dangerous. By putting in both real and fictitious chemicals we were able to get a more interesting range of data to work with.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
I made my first 'zine back in 1976. (And it was terrible! I wish that I still had a copy - I mimeographed about a dozen. I wrote most of the articles, and did all of the illustrations... badly. )

Couldn't have been that bad. You should see some of the stuff that actually was printed from companies like Judges Guild from the same period.

I had a subscription to The Dungeoneer/Judges Guild Journal/Pegasus (that magazine went through a number of title changes). I loved that magazine more than The Dragon.

I had a subscription to Different Worlds too.

I also got published, once, in that great 'zine Alarums & Excursions... the 'zine that all others aspired to.

One of the things that I loved about the OGL/D20 market was the return of the amateurs - people forget that the root of 'amateur' is 'amator' - 'lover'. An amateur work is a work of love.

The Auld Grump

We've got some more results, about what's popular and what's not: http://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/cms/karwansaray/ws-s/about/readmore-wss/24-ws-s/ws-s-news/438-the-popular-kids.html

Interesting.

Game Size
Small skirmish with less than 25 miniatures (e.g. Gladiator games, Operation Squad, RPG-esque games, air and naval combat games)
Skirmish or platoon level games with about 25 to 75 miniatures (e.g. Bolt Action, Sharp Practice, SAGA)
Small army level games with 75 to 250 miniatures (e.g. FoW, WAB, 40K)
Large army level games with more than 250 miniatures

IMO 40K should belong in the platoon level games. Even playing Tyranids I rarely have more than about 50 models on the table, playing at 1,000 to 1,500 points. I suppose 3,000+ games could easily reach over 75 for a lot of armies though. Perhaps that is what most people play in 40K.