[I was chatting to a friend who often visits this site and he was telling me that he used to be a member of a historical society here in Johannesburg and they used to meet monthly.

He mentioned that there used to be several wargaming societies.

I’m curious… have any people on this site been a member of such societies, especially in S.Africa?

I had been toying, a while ago, with the idea of producing a board wargame of the Boer war. It was something I toyed with… But the problem with any wars… any South African wars… is the limited interest… plus its not PC to talk about the past battles, etc.

But I was sitting back, and thinking about the Youth, and wondering if such games could help teach them history and make them aware of the past.

For example, two pretty well documented wars come to mind:-
The Anglo-Boer War and the Zulu war of 1879.

But there could be others… the many military campaigns of Chaka… (documentation would be hard to come by…)

I wondered about whether producing such games, for fun and learning could be of interest? (I’m talking board wargames). I doubt it.

But since I always enjoyed wargaming as a pastime, I had wondered if there was anything more one could do with it.

I was thinking in terms of strategy, tactics, history and playing the old “What if…” aspect of history…

I’ve pretty much written off the idea as having no commercial value, but I did wonder if it would be a good learning tool. For example, all the wargames I bought in the past, also had pamphlets explaining events, etc. And often, for me, just learning the “detail” about history was as much fun as playing the game.

History, normally, is DEAD… you can’t “do” anything with history, except to learn lessons from it… but with games, you can make history come alive, and you can also teach people things. Many times, just reading alone… doesn’t give you the real sense of what happened and why. But gaming changes that. It brings out the logic behind people’s actions. Jan]