Model-less Rules

(This is a Friday afternoon post, examining feelings. It may not be your cup-of-tea. I get a little new-agey in the middle, and then a little religious at the end.)

 

I’m sitting on a couple different rulesets of games that I want to play, but all of which have no models to be found. Deadzone Beta, Dreadball Season 3 teams, Malifaux 2E Beta, Drake: The Dragon.

I count myself as a prolific gamer. I’ll read the rules for a board game just because I have them. I’ve bought countless RP books for systems that I’ll never convince anyone to play. I love rules, I love figuring out how they mesh together to create a system. I love stuffing them into my brain.

There are a ton of people around the world playing Deadzone and giving feedback to the designer. That sounds great…but for some reason, I won’t do it. I’ve already purchased a Teraton Dreadball team, surely I should want to play them? No, I don’t have the models. People whom I know are playing M2E, I’ve picked a crew that I want to learn, let’s do this! No, I won’t play until I’ve got my little Mei Fang and Friends assembled.

It occurred to me to ask a question – why do I I find it so hard to play games for which I have perfectly good rules, but no models?

At first, I thought I was just waiting for the game to be released – the correct models are part of the game, and I can’t play the game until I have the models. Then I started to build a Daemons of Chaos army, with a couple models from a different manufacturer. If the models from that company are part of the game, why is this ok?

The daemons I think can be explained away with intention – my intention is to use those models as Beasts of Nurgle (you’ll see), so that makes it ok. Whereas using Orks as Gen1 Plague models for DZ is “cheating”. The former is a plan with a lot of hobby behind it, the latter is one step removed from cutting up cereal boxes and writing “Ork unit” on one side.

But the rest of it, I’m thinking has to do with talismans.

Our world is increasingly technologized (I made that word up). Smartphones, tablets, computer games, Facebook, this blog post. So when we play with cards and dice and models, we’re breaking free of the screens that we use all day, every day. We’re choosing to interact with a person, and objects, instead of a display and text. If a game is a miniature abstract reflection of reality, with a system of rules trying to mirror our world, then the tools we use to manipulate that system are important. These objects have power, they are talismans.

Have you ever opened up a brand new game and held the pieces of it? Run your thumb over the smooth plastic of the tokens? Savored popping the little card tokens out of the cardboard? It’s a bit like popping bubble-wrap! Board games are rated by the quality of their components, wargames by the design of their sculpts and the technique the painter used to apply pigment to the models – why does any of this matter?

Another side of that idea – why do gamers buy specially inscribed dice? Templates with designs on them? Dice towers? None of these things have anything to do with the game. I believe that it is a similar reason, that we fetishize the physical objects that go into the game.

Taking that to the idea of model-less rules – playing these games without their appropriate models would be sacrilege! Enough to warrant excommunication from the Holy Ordo of the Emperor, or which ever gaming God you pray to.

Thanks for reading. Amen.