I’m completely biased of course, but I wouldn’t say our medieval rulebook Never Mind the Billhooks is ‘style over substance’. As a publication, it looks pretty, but it’s much more about the substance of the rules. Our Napoleonic rules: Valour & Fortitude, could even be accused of lacking in style, but again, it has bags of substance. But how about other games from other publishers? Can they perhaps be propelled by style alone? Two things recently made me consider this point with sage-like curiosity 1) Having read A War Transformed by Osprey and thinking “Now there’s a great idea for a game… with rules that don’t entice me to play”. 2) Having a conversation with a fellow gamer who waxed lyrical about Dracula’s America (another Osprey game) and how great the figures were, what a marvellous backstory it had, how he had built specific terrain etc. Only for me to ask what he thought of playing the game, and he replied with “Oh I don’t know, I’ve never played it. Not sure I ever will”. This last point certainly proves that commercially you can sell a game on style alone. How many games I don’t know, but probably enough to make it worthwhile. I’m not making the point that style over substance is a bad thing, outside of our hobby there are whole industries based on it. For example, I didn’t buy these shoes because of their substance. In fact, it’s just another facet of our hobby if someone can buy a book, collect some figures and make terrain, without even playing the game they all pertain to, then good on ’em, and good on the people who make the game too, there’s enough room for fans of style in our hobby, as well as everyone else.
