Prim Pontificates - This is a DIY hobby.

[Primarch]

This shouldn't come as a shock to anyone, but this hobby of ours involves a lot of hard work between buying a box of models and actually playing a game with them. Assembly, priming, painting, basing, it all adds up time wise. Of course, many players skip some of those steps and just go from assembly to playing, and that is cool as well*.
But it doesn't just end there. I'm sure most of us create our own little narratives behind our minis. Which unit, squad, company or force do they represent? Why is this model posed this way? What great deeds have our champions achieved? During a game, we continue this with 'Why are these armies fighting? What is the objective?' and so forth, sometimes mini narratives crop up during a game that stick with us. No-one is expected to write a novel, but we can definitely indulge our creative storytelling side of we want to.
And what of the terrain? Sure, you can buy kits if you want, or you can cobble together hills, buildings or entire battlefields from styrofoam and PVA glue.
Want to try sculpting your own minis or components? That is an option too.
My previous Pontification discussed the option of making your own scenarios for games. You might need to have a few tries at it, but it can be a lot more fun than 'Line up and shoot each other'.
Finally you can take the ultimate step and try making your own rules. This can just be a small house rule for a problem with a published game, or you can go the whole hog and make your own game. Granted, most people will never go this far, but it is probably safe to say that no games designer has a university degree in wargames design. They just put a lot of effort into making something themselves.

From my own experience, I have tried all of the above. Some of it was fun and rewarding, some of it was very hard work, and some of it is definitely not for me. (Sculpting ).

So how about you? What is your level of creativity and effort when it comes to games? Do you want stuff straight out of the box and onto the table, or do you want to handcraft every single part of your gaming experience?

*It isn't really, painted models are the best models.

[Jye Nicolson]

Well I had a Crusade force centred around an Inquisitor trying to apply an idiosyncratic understanding of Vasubandu to the universe with help from a particularly unhinged group of Space Wolves mantling the (probably nonexistent) Daughters of Russ, and another centred around "What if Sei Shonagon was a loyalist Emperor's Children Techmarine, and what if Empress Teishi was a dreadnought?". So I definitely cover the bad fanfic about my armies angle.

I've always enjoyed making my own stuff up for tabletop RPGs and never really clicked with running pre-written adventures. I've been up and down the ladder of how much I'd make myself and how much I'd use a system but ultimately preferred having a solid, fit-for purpose system where I could go wild with the top layer - encounter design, campaign meta mechanics and the extemporised events of the game - with the core taking care of the baseline. Smaller indie games would do this well for one shots, bigger games I somehow made it work for Exalted through sheer bloody mindedness, D&D 4E was Actually Good for it, and FFG Star Wars is my favourite vaguely contemporary game just because I clicked so well with the dice that it's other issues were trivial details.

The main challenge of course was play testing - you tend not to do it running a game.and if actually designing you can't get enough of it. Lots of bespoke scenarios and systems for the good old Melbourne roleplaying cons (Arcanacon and Conquest in particular) turned out quite different in actual play than play tests with the usual group!

Wargames is a bit different because you have to produce a physical thing and that is not for me. I do like assembly but I don't find kitbashing super rewarding - some bitswapping or extra greeblies are fine but I get enough pleasure out of following the instructions and having a cool mini come together while I'm listening to a podcast. Likewise not much desire to scratchbuild terrain. Painting would be right out but it is kind of necessary, and I do have to grudgingly admit having everything on the table painted is pretty nice.

(I will note though that David and I got surprisingly equal compliments at Kaijucon despite his models being orders of magnitude better. Part of that is just roleplayers being polite but it's also a subdued, detailed scheme next to Big Bugs Slathered In Magmadroth Flame. So my tip for getting the impact of good painting with minimal effort is just dayglow orange, as much as you can arrange)

Design I'd be more inclined to do. While I expect there's some very good ones out there, most narrative missions I've seen look a bit sketchy in terms of design and likely amount of playtest, so it's not hard to suspect you could do better. I think designing a set of linked missions for campaign or event play (maybe we can parasitise Kaijucon to some extent!) would be super fun. A lot of the 40K Crusade rules are super flavoursome but only suited to a long campaign so again designing something more targeted would be cool. I mentioned the solo modes Goonhammer has put out for 40K - wouldn't be that hard to extend that sort of thing to more forces, more campaigns or different games.

But I only really want to do the fun 80% of that sort of thing and not the hard work of playtest and iteration. So my version probably wouldn't actually be better

And the main thing is these days I'm too tired. I don't want to complain about my job - some early meetings with US colleagues aside I don't have to work much overtime or anything. But a lot of it is in zoom and it takes it out of you, so I don't tackle my evenings and weekends with even the energy I had in the heady days of my late 30s! I'm increasingly looking for safe bets and projects that work in more fungible time - painting and assembly at my level actually are a good fit for that, with Matched Play 40K/Underworlds with Rivals/Spearhead being reliable good times on the day.

But when the robots turf me out of the software industry and I get to retire I might have to subject you all to an over engineered map campaign

[kojibear]

I am heavily invested in the narrative of games - as many of you know.

Whether it be a narrative I am trying to emulate and give life to, or a narrative I have invented myself, I feel the most motivated when I am emotionally invested in the game at hand.

This emotional connection has been achieved by collecting, building, and painting miniatures based on books and characters I’ve enjoyed reading about - my Companions of the Hall team that I put together for OpEn for example, or creating a cavern and tunnels for a narrative focused Nagoya Hammer we had a while back, a deep space nine themed card deck for Star Trek the card game, or making sure to make my own sanguinary guard including Azkaellon when none existed for my Horus Hersey Blood Angels, and of course creating and entirely converted Eldar Exodite army for the very same reason as was just mentioned.

In all of these things, the narrative motivated me. Why? Because escapism to the imagination was how I enjoyed my youth and it has continued into adulthood for the better of worse. Likewise in my DnD and role playing games, my dungeon masters know that I always love to delve into the back stories of characters and be immersed equally in role play and action. The same is true for the wargaming. I love hearing about the narratives that inspire other players and their favorite characters from a setting whether they be cannon or player-created.

With regards to systems and rules, I respect and admire those that create them and thank them for the amazing structure they provide. But true to my heart, I am always willing to put the narrative first when given the opportunity, and adjust the rules to ensure that both myself and my opponent, or players, feel immersed in a game and are rewarded both mentally and emotionally.

I’m not sure why, but Queen’s, It’s a Kind of Magic, just came into my head.

[Primarch]

Since the topic of RPGs came up, I have been more focused on using pre-written scenarios for the games I play, rather than making my own story. As a GM/DM, it takes a lot of time to build a story, and the players will invariably miss the parts you spend the most time on anyway. I've found that by (selectively) using pre-written campaigns and missions, I can focus my creativity more on the various encounters and the consequences of the party's actions.
As an example, in one campaign the scenario assumes that one of the main villain's lieutenants is killed when the party first encounters him. My party decided to capture him instead. He later escaped and has become a recurring thorn in the party's side.

On the subject of kitbashing and model assembly, I saw a YouTube video discussing this last night. The gist of it was that way back in the days of yore, there weren't many options available, so you were largely responsible for making everything for yourself. These days, there are so many kits, stls and sets available that you can just buy what you need and be done with it. Plus the quality of model kits (not just GW, but in general) has gotten so good now that most people are very happy with the stock miniatures and don't feel much need to improve on them. Of course, some games just want you to build exactly what is in the box with a minimum of customisation, (again, not just GW, and for some games, not even GW). I feel that this has pushed people away from some of the creative parts of the hobby, though you can still do it if you want to.