This little book is a fantastic resource for putting together a plan for writing your own Imagi-Nation Campaign Diary. Written in the 1880s, and first published in Scriber’s Magazine in 1898, it is an excellent snapshot that matches almost exactly what we do today. Sadly, no rules from this system survive, but the description of how these little soldiers “require all the pocket-money from my publishing ventures” is little changed in today’s hobby!
The book describes several battles and intermediate actions, including some instances of what we might call “role play”, where the off-battlefield actions of individual characters are described. As Bath and Featherstone would later write, the leaders of the various armies and regiments had distinct personalities, and a few jokes are made at their expense by their fictional contemporaries.
It even has three lovely poems. One of my favorite bits, excerpted from Block City:
Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea,
there I’ll establish a city for me:
A kirk and a mill and a palace beside,
And a harbour as well where my vessels may ride.
A Map on the Attic Floor
“Upon the attic floor a map was drawn in chalks of different colors, with mountains, rivers, towns, bridges, and roads of two classes.”
The description of the battles fought upon this floor reveal a game just as sophisticated as any we might play today.
A few individual models of soldiers were used to represent a regiment.
Shots were made in proportion to the number of men in the units.
Ammunition was tracked, with 20 “shots” worth carried in each wagon.
Hidden movement was managed with small numbered cards “representing a whole army with supports, another a solitary horseman dragging some ammunition.” Even ‘dummy’ cards were employed. Discovering the actual nature of the units represented by the cards was the job of Scouts, “whose movements were governed by an elaborate and most vexatious set of rules.”
Stevenson and his nephew knew the game lacked a set of Morale rules, but when they devised some and played them, they found their troops failed far too often, to the detriment of fun.
Likewise, rules for disease and death were devised and then cast aside.
In any case, even without the exact text of the rules, I believe we can discern the game was complex, with many moving parts, and that it was fun, entertaining and educational.
Dispatches from the Front
Written in the form of a journalist’s reports from the front lines, or sometimes further back, the “AARs” tell of the gains and losses of a large and detailed map campaign. As the Tactical map covers the entire floor, it is practically a Strategic map at the same time.
There is no picture or drawing of the complete map, to make it easy for us to discern the movements of the various forces, but we can tell from the descriptions that some of the regiments are quite dispersed, and separated by difficult terrain.
“Yesterday it was a whole regiment cut off between the Garrard Road and the Sandusky River…”
“That force has been 10 days at least turning the east of the Mar Mountains, a week at least on our own side of the frontier.”
The dispatches make reference to morale, to supply and ammunition situations, and to the skill and personal characteristics of the commanders and political leaders. It is really remarkable that this wargaming tradition goes back so far.
The Imagi-Nation Campaign that I will be starting soon is definitely going to be recorded via dispatches like these!
You can order a copy of the book Stevenson at Play here (aff. link)
Next up in teh reading queue is Tales of Glass Town (aff link), by the Brontes. Yes, the Brontes. Man of Tin shared this bit of history with us:
Charlotte Bronte as Gamer #1 - a blog post you have to see to believe!
Stay tuned, and get reading! (There will likely be a test!)