I've been thinking about this a lot since I saw it yesterday, and I might end up writing more but I wanted to get some of my thoughts down.
Wargaming, for me, is so, so many things. It's easily my main social activity, its my escapism from a life that could be better, it's a way for me to flex my creative muscles and fill the 'collecting' gap in my brain. (Books also fit in there but sadly they take up way more space and can still be just as expensive)
I do a lot of things with it. I'd say I'm primarily a gamer and fluff writer really. I get models more based on what I like the look of and what would be a fun fluff addition, as opposed to painting, building or even make my army better. I've written easily hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of fluff. Everything from unit and hero backstories, to mini essays on the world they live in, political treaties on the kingdoms and factions, etc. That's even just for my own homebrew "main" setting. If I add in all the stuff for the various games I get involved in through the hobby it's easily more. All those store campaigns, the online games (Shout out to places like Old Grey Beards, Wartales, and the Empire of Wolves campaign we had here.), and it was warhammer that eventually got me more into D&D and roleplay in general.
That said, forums like this where I can see other peoples AMAZINGLY painted miniatures are such good motivation and inspiration. I'm the kind of person who's generally always very disappointed and dismissive of my own painting skills, no matter what other people say. Being on a forum and actually having a reason to take pictures and showcase my own stuff has helped get rid of that. I can actually see, in pictures, just how much my painting has improved even over a year or two.
I think I'm very much like Padre. For me, most of my fun comes from populating my world/kingdom and making it believable. Or maybe livable would be better. I particularly liked this bit from you Padre;
The reasons I was always, and still am, in the hobby, are to create and tell the story of a rich and believable world; to mesh wargaming and roleplaying together to allow the events of the world to unfold, and to have several big battle get-togethers per year with glorious armies on the field; to do all this with friends, who then I get to stay in touch with much better than old friends I can't believe I no longer see; to have a
motivational reason for painting and modelling, which I enjoy as a wind down nearly every second night.
I absolutely agree with this. I have a wide variety of friends, all of us into different things normally, who can bond and talk over warhammer and wargaming. Heck I'd say most of my text messaging between friends is random chat about
something warhammer related.
This is going to be a bit disjointed, but I'm going in a different direction as well. In my group I'm the one who knows the rules to every game, knows how things work, what's a good option, etc. Anytime ANYONE in the group gets a new board game, I'm the one they hand the rules to and say "So how does this work". I LIKE getting rulebooks and reading mechanics, and especially the lore for a whole new world. Even if it's for a game I'm never going to play.
A couple of years ago it was through this that I realized just what an effect I had on new players. I'm the guy who sets up and runs tutorials. I go out of my way to make it fun, and interesting, and educate them on how to play. It's resulted in some very close connections with friends, and also has shown me how much I like teaching people and even just dealing with people. No matter how difficult or tedious it can be going over the same rule for the billionth time.
(My personal favorite right now is a buddy who's just gotten into 40k. Every week I excitedly explain a new rule, or strategy, or
thing and how fun it can be. A week later he finally tries it out and I'll be bombarded with texts along the lines of "I Just tried that thing you told me about! It worked so well! IT's awesome.)
I love seeing people enjoy themselves. I think it's one of the reasons I took Warhammer's ending, and Age of Sigmar's rather poor reception from players, rough. So many people who loved their hobby suddenly getting so negative about it. Once that negativity died down, then there was still negativity towards what had replaced their love. It really pains me to see people ripping apart other peoples hobbies. I just want everyone to have fun, playing whatever lets them have fun.
Honestly I think a lot of this has greatly influenced what I want to get into career wise. It's not exactly connected, but I'm looking into something like counseling or teaching. Something where I can deal with people having problems, and help them work through it and understand it.
Wargaming is so, so many things to me.