A fantasy wargame is a wargame that involves a fantastical setting, and employs rules for items such as magic and non-human intelligent creatures. The rise in popularity in wargaming of the 1950s through to the 1970s largely coincided with the rise in popularity of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings novel. While wargaming was initially focused on historical subjects, other subjects also emerged. In the late 1960s, linguist M. A. R. Barker began to use wargame-like sessions to develop his fantasy creation Tékumel. In 1970, the New England Wargamers Association demonstrated a fantasy wargame called Middle Earth at a convention of the Military Figure Collectors Association. The fantasy supplement to Chainmail (1971) led to the development of the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. Fantasy writer Greg Stafford created the board wargame White Bear and Red Moon to explore conflicts in his fantasy world Glorantha, though it did not see publication until 1974.
The Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargamers (SFSFW) is an international body established in the early 1990s to promote the fantasy and science fiction genre within the table top wargaming hobby and also to promote the hobby in general. The society distributes the Ragnarok magazine and formerly the Nastrond newsletter; and it hosted the Bifrost convention until 2006.
To know more: http://www.sfsfw.org/
List board games at Grognard:
- Science fiction: http://grognard.com/sub17.html
- Fantasy: http://grognard.com/sub18.html
The Australian Wargamer 