H.G. WELLS LITTLE WARS

Every hobby has its Genesis story. Model railways have earnest Victorians with an alarming amount of disposable income. Roleplaying games have a group of Tolkien enthusiasts asking the perfectly reasonable question, "What if Gandalf but maths?" Wargaming’s modern history may have started in 1811 history with Baron Leopold Georg von Reisswitz’s Kriegsspiel, but it took the most British evolution imaginable . Wherein two middle-aged men knocking over toy soldiers after dinner because somebody had found a toy cannon.

Of course H. G. Wells was involved.

The man who created The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine to ensure his permanent residence upon English Literature syllabuses was simply another enthusiast with a room full of toy soldiers and the increasingly dangerous thought that perhaps there ought to be rules for all this. According to Wells himself, the spark came during an evening with Jerome K. Jerome, the celebrated humourist behind Three Men in a Boat. Faced with a toy 4.7-inch naval gun and an army of W. Britain lead soldiers, the pair did what any sensible Edwardian gentlemen would have done. They started shooting at one another's armies across the drawing room floor. Somewhere between the first toppled infantryman and the inevitable argument over whether that shot really counted, modern tabletop wargaming quietly came into existence. Published in 1913, Little Wars proudly described itself as "a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books." Like much of Wells' writing, the sentence carries just enough wit that it still raises a smile today. It is playful, gently provocative and entirely aware that it is describing something delightfully ridiculous. Here was one of Britain's foremost authors inviting adults to crawl around on the carpet pushing toy soldiers. One suspects the literary establishment wasn't entirely sure what to make of him. Fortunately, Wells cared very little what the literary establishment thought about almost anything.

Reading Little Wars today is a strangely comforting experience because it immediately dismantles one of the great myths surrounding tabletop gaming: namely, that games have become more complicated over time. Modern wargamers often behave as though complexity is somehow inevitable, as though every ruleset naturally evolves towards a three-volume hardback encyclopaedia accompanied by seventeen FAQs, six errata documents and a legal definition of line of sight. Wells would likely have found this faintly absurd. His rules fit comfortably into a slim volume because they were never intended to simulate reality. They were intended to facilitate fun. Infantry marched a sensible distance. Cavalry moved rather faster. Cannons fired little wooden dowels across the battlefield, physically knocking enemy soldiers over. If your artilleryman could actually hit something, then congratulations, you deserved the kill. There was no abstraction required. Newton had already written the relevant rulebook.

There is something wonderfully reassuring about that. Our hobby often likes to present itself as endlessly innovative. Every new edition promises revolution. Every ruleset claims to reinvent tabletop gaming. Yet at its heart, remarkably little has changed since 1913. We still gather around tables with painted miniatures. We still invent imaginary worlds. We still celebrate impossible victories and complain bitterly about improbable dice rolls. We still argue over measurements with an enthusiasm that would concern professional surveyors. Above all, we still experience that peculiar mixture of childlike excitement and adult craftsmanship that Wells understood so instinctively.

Perhaps that is the true legacy of Little Wars. It was never simply the first tabletop wargame. It was permission. Permission for adults to play without embarrassment. Permission to treat imagination as something worthy of serious attention. Permission to discover that toy soldiers, when approached with sufficient enthusiasm, could become gateways to history, literature, friendship and creativity.

Not bad for a game invented because two men found a toy cannon after dinner.*

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*History suggests that very few sensible ideas have ever begun with the phrase, "I wonder what happens if we fire this indoors?"