There and Back Again: A Hobgit’s Tale

To celebrate my new Blog, I figured I’d start by launching a new series of articles: The Hobgit. These articles are about a 20something git, and his relationship with the hobby. I hope it will offer much advice, important lessons, and useful ideas. At the very least, I hope it provides amusing reading. This is a new article format for me, as I’m planning to restrict each article to a set word length of 1000 words. There will also be a mix of articles, as well as Top X lists, most likely various miniatures from different systems. Obviously by “the hobby”, I mean wargaming, and all its attached baggage…

Wargaming isn’t exactly the worst hobby in the world.  It has its bonuses: it’s slightly better than meeting strangers in pubs; it can fool you into thinking you’re being creative, even if you haven’t got a creative bone in your body; it offers an opportunity to realise how utterly impossible it is to take losing well; and it shows you the value of money, although not necessarily value for money. Wargaming also teaches you valuable lessons in life: such as you’ll never have enough money; your socks stink from all the standing around; you’re more boring than you imagined but at least you know people more boring than you are; and pointless, useless information about something made up (or that is embedded in history) is definitely more interesting and indeed more worth falling out over than that [insert important thing] you should be doing.

My relationship with the hobby could be described as tumultuous. It has been a part of my life for nearly 20 years. There have been countless ups, downs, falling outs, nerdrages, system swaps, threats to quit, and rolls of dice. Certain parts of the hobby can feel like an actual job, one that you pay someone else for the pleasure of getting stressed out about it. When I started, I actually only wanted some miniatures so that I could make a board game. However, I quickly got sucked into the wider world of wargaming, and I’ve been stuck in that maelstrom ever since.

For the large part of my gaming life, I have mostly played Warhammer 40,000 by Games Workshop. However, in later years I have moved away from it, and indeed GW, due to, in a large part, the replacement of the writing talent that worked for them with a bunch of semi-literate morons with the writing capacity of egotistical fan-fiction writers; stuck in literary ruts created by overuse of marty stu’s, clichés, and an attitude to balance akin to an elephant on a unicycle. As I have always prided myself upon being honest (and pride is definitely the important word there), I have lived my views on my sleeves, and so much of the crappy writing (which as a writer myself makes my skin boil) has increasingly affected my enjoyment of the hobby.

My overt (some would say constant) criticism of GW hasn’t exactly done me many favours. Whilst I have trouble with the idea of putting down my critic hat, I certainly have learned that some people find my critical attitude damages my credibility. I find it rather silly, but I cannot deny that the barrage of criticism makes me look like a total hater. Arguing contrary using logic doesn’t really seem to shift this. Trying to convince people that moaning about something means you care deeply about it and thus want it to improve is more fraught with danger than going on CMON and making an argument that using inks is for pussies.

I suppose the wider problem is that I’ve always had a hard time striking a balance. It’s tough when the good things about the hobby are so easy to take for granted. Why would I use up valuable discussion time talking about something that everybody already agrees with? Why discuss the reasons why we are all there in the first place? Besides, there are larger concerns, such as spending money on a luxury to such a blind, and impulsive extent, that it removes any impetus for improvement on the part of those who supply it. Doth the cynic protest too much? Perhaps. But the worry is that too many people are satisfied when the cynic protests too little.

How to influence people into action, however, is not through moaning. If there’s one thing that is important, is that it is more worthy to show what you know, than what you think. Experience, action, and knowledge are far better motivators. If you’re going to knock at a foundation, you need to show you know how to build one yourself. But ultimately, it’s worth giving up on trying to prove a point. If you’re motivated by the need to show others what for, rather than doing it for your own sake, then the likelihood is you’re doing it for all the wrong reasons.

It’s a hard act to break out of, being a cynic. In fact, personal change is a difficult thing in general. But recently I have been trying to do just that. Besides, I didn’t get to where I was without picking up a lot of advice and learning hard lessons. That’s more worth sharing than how much of a total prick Matt Ward is, even though he is a total prick. I’ve actually realised that I’ve been piecing my hobby back together. For a few years, I had lost it, lost what it was, what I loved about it. I had made myself numb to its charms. I can’t say my outlook has changed overly, but I’m certainly enjoying it again.

The biggest problem with any outlook is the knowing. When you know how something ticks, it kind of loses some of the magic. But it makes you so much better at helping others, that it’s usually a good idea to lose a bit of that self-centredness and make yourself useful. Hopefully through the course of this series, I can do just that.