Wargames as Realistic Tabletop Simulations of Fictional Events: The Case of Warhammer Games

Abstract

For the past twenty years, games studies and research in literacy theory have discussed the connections between games and fiction, and have tried to better grasp how games build fictional worlds and the mechanisms which allow players to be immersed in such universes. In particular, this academic conversation has engaged with the ontology of games, with the objective of understanding what exactly is at stake in games and how fictional elements and real or virtual elements interact in such context. Yet most of these analyses mainly focused on videogames, both due to their recent emergence, and because they could supposedly provide richer and more detailed fictional worlds in which players could interact. In this paper, I instead expand the reflection on the ontology of games by looking at some specific non‑digital games, and more specifically wargames, through the case of the Warhammer games franchise. To do so, I address how exactly such games give players the opportunity to simulate fictional events, or in other words how they allow for a realistic representation of fictional battles depicted by Warhammer novels. To answer this question, I argue that the entanglement between fictional elements, rules, and miniatures in wargames allows players to create a realistic simulation of a military conflict, and that this relation provides a fruitful avenue to consider how fiction and reality can be bridged through games.