Category: Columns

Regular columns from the GH team

01/25/16

Tracer Rounds – Writing Sucks

This is hard because…

Why is this so hard?  Seriously – why is it so hard to coordinate the ideas, thoughts, and inspirations I’ve got in my head, and why can it be so hard to herd the cats of our staff into something resembling a similar direction?  Hell, I’d settle for them heading within 180° of each other, just to keep from having to pivot to find them all!

fountain pen

This is hard because, well…  it’s hard.  And the first rule of Tautology club is the first rule of Tautology club.  As a writing column I give my students once noted, “every time you sit down to write you get another chance to demonstrate how perceptive you aren’t.”  Even with a bank of perfect ideas (and my bank is imperfect, I assure you) it still takes a lot of effort to block out everything else and just write.  I don’t know how guys like Matt Forbeck and Jonathan Pembroke do it.  It astounds me how productive they can be given everything that pulls at them.  There are few people in the world I admire more than the professional writer, even if a good many of the ones I know actually have day jobs, or pensions.  And given that I’m (a) older than Pembroke, and (b) he’s pulling in a pension, I’m pretty sure he’s got a sweeter deal than I do.  The bastard.1

Part of the problem, of course, comes from the need to set aside dedicated time to work.  In just the opening paragraphs of this column, for instance, I’ve restarted a video for my daughter twice, helped plunge a shower (long story) and fixed 2 lunches, not to mention the sideways glares I get from the family for “goofing off” when there’s more to be done around the house (like the Christmas tree I mentioned last week that’s still not down).  Finding an hour is easy when you’re stuck at the car dealership getting the brakes worked on.  Finding an hour when everyone’s home and iced in from school is not.

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01/11/16

Tracer Rounds – Uses for Wargaming

Seeing a new way to do things ~

Brant Guillory, 11 January 2016

I had a completely different plan for today’s column, and then I started writing.  Remember last week when I said I was going to do this without an editor? This week is one of those weeks where I needed that editor. My first attempt at a column was pretty lousy. I’m a revisit it and try to shine it up for later use, and see if I can salvage something for the hour of work I put in. But that didn’t solve the problem that on a Sunday night I needed something to publish on Monday. There’s nothing like a weekly column to put the abject terror of failure in you. So instead, I am pulling ahead a topic I was planning to write about much later

The professionals talk about wargaming in very different terms than the casual hobbyists do. Don’t get me wrong, the professionals know the difference between a hobby or game and their jobs. Most of them also wargame for fun, and have a huge knowledge of the hobby. But for casual wargamers the professional uses of wargames mainly seem like two cases, and an occasional third.

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01/4/16

Tracer Rounds – The Inaugural Column

A new weekly column ~

Brant Guillory, 4 January 2016

 

So it’s a new year, with an updated look in our forums, and the continuing evolution of our community overall here at GrogHeads.  And with the new year, we’re launching a few new ideas, starting with this one, a new weekly column.  I’m going to have some regular things I’ll hit each week, but first, I wanted to take a few moments and talk about where this comes from.

GHLogoTextFirst, this needs come clarifying:  I’m not “the guy that runs GrogHeads”.  There’s a partnership of several of us.  We had a few other founders who have left the team for their own personal reasons over the years, but there’s more than just me here steering the ship, and always has been.  I’m just the most visible one, because I’m the editorial content guy here, and that also translates into making sure we distribute the content through social media channels.  But anyone that thinks that les GrogHeads c’est moi is mistaken.

When we decided we wanted to include ‘front page’ content – regular columns, reviews, AARs, etc – the hope was to recapture some of the intelligent, erudite, and insightful commentary we’d previously been a part of elsewhere.  It was a high bar to shoot for, and it would be foolish to claim we’ve cleared it regularly, though not for lack of trying.  Personally, I was hoping for the front page to become the “Grantland of wargaming” which is crazy-hard to do with our budget, which consists of a handful of free games, some pocket lint, and about 11¢.  But there’s another reason why it’s so hard.

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04/16/14

The Joy of Discovery, or A Love-Letter to a Bygone Era of Gaming

Brant waxes nostalgic.  For no good reason, we might add.

16 April 2014

One of the great tragedies that the internet has brought about in the gaming world is the loss of a sense of wonder and discovery of a brand new game that no one else has heard of. One of my first tasks whenever I would get to a new town was to find a local game shop. Back then, things were all very different. There were no chain stores, unless you counted the book stores in the mall (though to be fair, there still aren’t any in the gaming world). Every game store in every town was different. They all had their own different unique games in stock that catered to the whims of the staff.

Since there was very little uniformity from store to store , and the gaming marketplace was much more fragmented, you never knew what you would find in those local game stores. Moreover, if you found something off the wall, it was almost guaranteed that no one back in your gaming group had heard of it, because there was no internet for everyone to hop on and find out about the same games all at the same time.

In my own explorations, I ran across all sorts of interesting nuggets and obscure games that would hardly be categorized as obscure today, because someone would’ve already read about them online. It’s not that they have any wider appeal than they did before, but they almost certainly have wider distribution and knowledge of that distribution thanks to the web. Continue reading →