Warhammer miniatures have the distinction of being able to transcend from mere objects to meaningful “things” by their multifaceted nature. Supported by their rich contextual background, they are objects of meticulous craft, enablers of complex gameplay, and manifestations of rich intangible characters and enduring identities.
As physical artefacts, they are products of effort and expressions of creativity. As gameplay pieces they represent contextual capabilities enabling interactions between them and creating emergent storytelling. As semiotic artefacts they represent concepts and characters from the expansive background and convey meaning through their form.
These facets enable directed and reflective storytelling. Dioramas can tell a whole story. Gameplay can create unexpected sagas of heroic last stands. Miniatures can manifest bespoke or established characters at multiple points in their fictional lives.
This presentation reports on longitudinal ethnographic and empirical study into the complex narrative-making practices of the Warhammer community. Grounded in the concepts of Accountable Artefacts and Trajectory Theory, the research has drawn from philosophical insights into the transition of objects to meaningful things, and the technological approaches of the Internet of Things to track artefacts and their activities over their lifetime.
Driven by questions of how wargamers could theoretically take advantage of being able to track every aspect of the lifetime of the miniatures in their collections, the study revealed evocative community practices. Maintaining a balance between tensions of creative intent, contextual alignment, gameplay capabilities and real-life practicalities, wargamers adopt practices such as considering single and groups of miniatures as either ephemeral or persistent, individual or collective identities, with varying granularities, depending on their narrative storytelling needs and intent.
We present a series of vignettes from our study, which exemplifies the richness of the practices and introduces a conceptual framework aiming to support community practices and help the design of meaningful artefacts.
Author bio
Dr Dimitrios Darzentas is a lecturer in the School of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment (SCEBE) at Edinburgh Napier University and formerly a multidisciplinary Research Fellow at the Mixed Reality Lab of the University of Nottingham. His work is situated at an intersection of Human-Computer Interaction and Design.
Dr Hanne Wagner is a lecturer for Informatics at the School of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment (SCEBE) at Edinburgh Napier University. Her interdisciplinary research spans the areas of Human-Computer Interaction, Games as well as Health and Well-Being.
