"Personality" and "Character" in historical miniatures games? Terrain?

[Belligerentparrot]

For me, it depends on what kind of game it is.

Playing in a shop or club against a relative stranger, I find a really nice looking table helps me get into the spirit of things.

Playing solo or with an old friend, I really don't care how the table looks, the game will be deeply narrative and my imagination will fill in the blanks. I haven't forgotten how much fun my very first tabletop wargames were, mighty struggles between 6mm Space Marines and Orks over a pile of books masquerading as a hill.

I was typing up a rather lengthy response, but then deleted it all...since far too many people consider 'being offended' a part-time career these days! 

Suffice to say, in simplest terms, nice terrain and painted miniatures IS the hobby, full-stop.

I'm not sure you're in danger of offending anyone, but you might be in danger of saying something a little bit silly. Living an itinerant lifestyle going interesting places around the world / having a wee kid bombing around the house / living in a squat venue all, in my limited experience, make it tricky to have nice terrain or a decent paint collection/space. Still thoroughly enjoyed the hobby in all of those times.

[FifteensAway]

Counter point to the felt hills = "wedding cake" hills.  They have a flat surface with a true vertical edge.  Mine, for 15 mm (mostly) have 1/2" contours.  I use the simple rule that it costs 1" of movement per contour going either up or down - or both at times.  And the 'great' benefit, to me, is that they clearly 'block line of sight' which felt hills just don't convey and some 'gamers' try repeatedly to ignore.   

A key difference, perhaps, for me is I live in a house and have - and am conversant with their safe use - appropriate power tools, table saw and jig saw, especially the latter, being most useful, along with a 3" belt sander to chamfer the edges to 'soften' that verticality.  And then paint to match the base cloth as best as possible.  Does make a difference.  Which matters because I use plywood to build my hills and, once done, are virtually 'bullet proof' which I illustrate, after checking the 'line of fire' is free of people, by throwing over my head backwards with no fear of damage to the piece of terrain (hills only, not trees or buildings!).

One thing I do abhor are 'terrain placement rules', I've ignored those from jump because they make zero sense.  Terrain flows with the forces of nature and geology, not dumb rules.

Study maps with contour lines and use that as your battlefield guide.  Or visit actual battlefields if you can.  Doing that really helps understand battlefield dynamics.  The sound distortion at one battlefield made very little sense to me until I saw the shape and size of the intervening hill which then made that sound anomaly quite clear.

And, as stated in my adding terrain to the discussion, a game can play exactly the same on bland terrain as on spectacular terrain but the discussion is focused on 'personality' and 'character' of the game and, for me, bland terrain has neither 'character' nor 'personality'.  And point of order, for those of limited financial means, bland terrain is perfectly fine to use until such time as you get to be in better circumstances, most of us started exactly that way.

Fred does make a very good point about how quality models can, to some degree, degrade playability so there is a balance that needs to be achieved.  And, yeah, 'levitating' stands in game photos look a bit strange - but they rarely make much difference in the actual game other than the occasional aside comments.  Most of us have been there, too. 

[Cat]

Hill style also depends on the demands of movement in various rules.  In DBA, units oft times wind up on a slope, and at various angles to the slope, and as part of a line of stands.

[Dolnikan]

I love me some good nice looking terrain. But people also often overestimate how much is necessary to get something half decent when I was a kid, I bought a single large pack of railroad trees and cut some packaging foam into hills. Those got painted with cheap old crafts paints and the trees went onto cardboard. It wasn't expensive but looked pretty decent to me.

Aside from that, I like to set up terrain in a way that makes for a sensible battlefield. So not a perfect grid or something too symmetrical or the like. That, and things should make sense and make for a decent battle. So I wouldn't put a whole bunch of pine forests on a desert board for instance.

[Cat]

Fancy terrain certainly isn't required for a good game.  The question at hand though was does it add "personality" and "character" to a game.  For that desired result, extra care helps considerably.

[Kuropatkin]

I wargame large battles (corps or army level) and generally 18th and 19th Centuries, so I look at figures and terrain that are functional for that scale. The glorious 28mm figures members post are a joy to look at but wouldn’t work for my style of wargaming.

I moved to 6mm figures two years ago and have been quite happy. The fact that most armies still had national color schemes, flags,  and a variety of distinct units helps makes the forces appear distinguishable on the battlefield.

The terrain is appropriate for its impact on the movement/tactical effects on regiments or larger. A critical factor is that the terrain  must be reusable for multiple battles and easy storage. I have seen and appreciate beautiful table-top terrain but understand it doesn’t meet my wargaming needs. 

Two issues about terrain have been mentioned in this thread: bases on slopes and bases in forests. I handle slopes by stating that if a unit lacks enough movement to clear the slope in a single turn, it stops at the edge of the slope. It then can clear the slope in the next turn.

For forest, I use unit markers rather than trying to place the figures in those locations. This allows me to base multiple trees on a single base for easy placement/storage so I am not handling individual trees. These bases are of various sizes/shape that allow creating different forest areas. Give the scale of battles, I believe these give a historical feel to what commanders would actual see/know at the time.  An example is attached.

[Mikai]

That's a really clever solution. Will try to think of that when we got some dense forest/bushes problem at our games.

[Belligerentparrot]

Unit markers in forests - what a great idea! You, sir, are a genius 

[DaveCrow]

The visual spectacle is definitely a part of the appeal of miniature wargaming. Map and counter wargames can have good visuals, especially as regards the maps, but they miss out on the three dimensional quality of miniatures. Miniatures will always involve compromise. Figures on rigid bases simply do not interact with model terrain in the way that real troops interact with real terrain.

I tend to go with a compromise for area terrain features. I will place a template for teh area then place model trees, building, etc as appropriate on top. When needed I can left off or move aside these models to place troops on the base template.  My favorite table cloth has a bit of a pattern to it, giving a slightly irregular look. Much better than plain, even green.

As far as distinctive qualities of troops and leaders the larger the battle scale the less these seem to matter. A trained regiment is a trained regiment. As far as the leaders go I will never have the genius of Hannibal or Napoleon. Trying to write rules to give tactical command advantage to one general over the other will not overcome a player with superior or inferior tactics.

I have seen a good amount of "personality" show up in games from player psychology. I used to have a regular opponent I could routinely manipulate with one of my elite units. For some reason he had an exaggerated view of their capabilities and I could use this to my advantage to control his actions and reactions on the table. The actual game mechanics played little role in this.

[Hammers]

Simple question, or variation of the question perhaps, but how do you add "personality" and "character" to historical miniatures games that are not low level (1:1 or so) games?  And avoid role playing per se?  Or is that an "element" too far?

Common method is to give character figs enhanced attributes  like "quick draw", "ambidexteority" etc

[ChrisBBB]

You might take a look at The "Altar of Freedom" ACW rules. Generals' personalities and character are at the core of this ruleset - multiple different possible attributes that interact with the rest of the rules in multiple different ways.

On terrain: I find playing historical battles tends to throw up distinctive and characterful terrain. This may be individual features (shipmills, embrasured levees, etc) or whole battlefields of a distinctive character (great swathes of forest or swamp, rugged mountain ranges, etc). Historical scenarios have far more personality and character than I could ever invent.

As for the aesthetic: not crucial, but certainly one of the half-dozen elements in the HQGE.
https://bloodybigbattles.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-quest-for-high-quality-gaming.html

[Easy E]

What first got me into wargaming was the spectacle.  That means nice terrain and cool looking figures. 

However, early in my career I knew I could not match the level I saw in publication and the early internet.  Therefore, I had to become comfortable with the level I could create at.

That left a lot more abstraction in my table designs and even painting to "Arm's Length" standards.

This helped me realized that I was really interested in the storylines and figuring out "what happens if?" rather than the spectacle alone.  However, I will never turn down a good spectacle!