Wargame_[space]
Archive for May, 2014
The adventures of Blnt and Hesiod
I start the game by distributing the crew around the ship. Captain Neema Strof starts on “C” Deck in Pod 3 near the risor. Science Officer L.J. Gepidus is on “B” Deck, as is Maintenance Officer Najeb Kelly, although he’s all the way down the hall at the other end. Ground Survey Officer Blnt Skraaling […]
Accident or incident?
The history of gaming is distinct, I think, from the history of gaming ideas. Gaming has been such a fragmented hobby that very often people weren’t aware of their peers’ ideas, leading to a lot of reinventing of the wheel. This struck me the other day when I was reading an excerpt from “Designing Modern […]
Space crewin’
This is Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone … Mayday, Mayday … we are under attack … main drive is gone … turret number one not responding … Mayday … losing cabin pressure fast … calling anyone … please help … this is Free Trader Beowulf … Mayday … –cover of the original Traveller game box […]
To stop a Titan
There’s one last element to the scenario — a huge Titan bearing down on a space colony — I didn’t mention yesterday, and that is that the space lords have sent us a relief force! Roll one die at the beginning of the End/Repair Phase and record a running total. When the total is equal […]
The terror out of space
Sci-fi? Sure, I like it, but only the trashy stuff. Not so much trashy as phony. The kind I can dip into between shifts, read a few pages at a time, and then drop. Oh, I read good books, too, but only Earthside. Why that is, I don’t really know. Never stopped to analyze it. […]
Confessions of a Dominions manual writer
[I wrote the manuals for two games in the Dominions series (Dominions 3 and Dominions 4). Both games are available on Steam. The manual for Dominions 4 is available for free as a .pdf, or for cost-of-printing as a hardcopy. I have a long and complicated relationship with this series of amazing games, which I […]
Erpro bungs what the?
There’s a particular genre of book, military history book specifically, called the “unit history”. It may have a desultory title like “The History of the 1st Infantry Division in World War II” or a slightly jazzier name like “The Big Red One: Crusade in Europe”. It’s usually a catalog of where a unit was on […]
Aces high, part II
I think at some point in this series I promised you some role-playing. Strategy role-playing, to be exact. Not by me, of course, because I don’t do that kind of stuff. But from a game design perspective, you can’t help but appreciate the possibilities. Because the best games tell the best stories, the chance to […]
Aces high, part I
Everyone knows that strategic games with tactical battle engines are better than strategic games without them. Any game which tries to abstract out combat in the name of tighter, more thematic game design is eventually going to get crushed by complaints from gamers who want to fight out the battles turn by turn, or for […]
Ground control to Major Tom
So many storylines run through the Battle of Britain that it’s hard to decide where to start. The evolution of airpower theory in the 1920′s and 1930′s. The secretive growth of the Luftwaffe after the Treaty of Versailles. The design and development of the main mechanical protagonists: the Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire, and Messerschmidt 109, […]
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