School clubs, wargames vs roleplaying

While playing Carcassonne with my daughter and partner last night I was talking them about how I got into roleplaying and my daughter mentioned there was a Warhammer club at school. I think it’s a something of a shame that wargaming has taken back it’s position within schools as the major hobby game.

Now I like Warhammer and I play W40K a great deal, as well as involving and enjoying myself in modelling side of the hobby but I think it serves children and young adults far less than roleplaying. When I was a school, when perhaps Dungeons & Dragons was at its peak in the UK, there were 4-5 active groups in the afterschool club and the one I joined meant I made some life long friends. I’m sure this is true of wargamers too, but roleplaying helped teach me how to co-operate with a group of people with differing needs and desires and achieve those goals together, which is fundamentally what cooperative adventure gaming is. This is an ability that has helped me in my career and private life far more than being a strong competitive and tactical thinker. Co-operating with people with different goals to mine in a way that makes everyone happy happens every single day and I think it’s a shame that more schools, parents and games companies can’t come together in the same way that Games Workshop manages to do to bring roleplay gaming to children.

If I lived closer to her school I think I’d get a great deal out of running a roleplaying club there, although I’m not convinced she’d stay playing for long, but she would be more interested in it that the Warhammer club, at which there are no girls I believe.