No Crisis this year

This past weekend, I should have been at CRISIS 2020, but of course, due to the Corona Pandemic, there's no CRISIS this year.

The first time I attended Crisis was in 1996. In 1997, our small gaming group was present with a participation game. Since then, we've been present with a game at CRISIS every single year (you can see a lot of our games linked in the column on the right).

Over the years, our participaton efforts varied in intensity. Some years, we buil an entire new game. Other years, we re-used what we had done before. We managed to win 4 game trophies: Best of Show in 1999 with an Arthurian Mons Badonicus game (alas, no surviving pictures); Best Participation Game 2005 with a Kriegsspiel-like Arnhem game; Most Original Game in 2011 with paper miniatures; and Most Original Game again in 2013 with our real-time, mass-participation game Red vs Blue. There used to be a time where we specifically aimed for these trophies. But not anymore. We're usually happy to be present with a game and chat with friends.

 

When you search around on this blog you'll find a lot of Crisis reports. The question that inevitably pops up is whether Crisis has changed over the years. The answer is simple: of course it has changed. Not only because of a bigger venue, and better organisation throughout, but it also changed because the wargaming hobby itself has changed. Wargaming has changed from being largely a DIY hobby with wargamers building their own games, to a consumerist hobby, with wargamers consuming commercially produced games. There's a lot of discussion about this topic on various wargaming forums. I have no axe to grind here or be nostalgic about the old times. The hobby changes because hobbyists change. It's a simple as that.

So, will be there be a Crisis in 2021? Hopefully, yes. But we still have to see what game we might run there. Our original idea for Crisis 2020 would have been an expanded version of our Toy Soldiers in 42mm we ran at Warcon last February. But we still have 12 months to make up our minds :-)