Back-to-School Estimation

 “I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.”

— Winston Churchill

My son returned to public school today, a constant gripe given the swampy weather and the lack of adequate environmental air handling in his school. So I offer apologies to regular readers; this piece is a bit more self-centered, having been pulled together late, after several false starts on other topics, and having dealt with several days of frantic back-to-school activities. Part of my deep mental programming still views the start of the academic year in the “autumn” as a time of new beginnings, new routines, and new goals, unlike my ever-growing disdain for personal re-evaluation and re-dedication to often unattainable ideals during the New Year’s holiday in mid-winter. In trying to organize my adventure gaming efforts, I look to projects foremost in my mind develop toward more refined forms worthy of sharing.

Considering ACW Fog of War

 “Throw forward your cavalry, as soon as you approach your new position, to Culpeper Court-House, and carefully watch the whole country toward Richmond and Gordonsville.”

— Union Major General John Pope

Battle of Cedar Mountain, Aug. 9, 1862,
engraving from a sketch by Alfred R. Waud.

My feature on “Watch, Read, Play: Battle ofMidway” and one of the games noted, Sebastian Bae’s Find, Fix, and Finish, started me thinking about how two opposing forces come together on the battlefield. At Midway the battle came about through a confluence of intelligence analysis and aerial reconnaissance, with each carrier fleet probing for the other before deploying attack forces. The guessing game of Battleship came to mind as a very basic, extremely abstracted representation of this process, but Bae’s game refines it into a fast-playing micro-game modeling modern naval operations. I’ve long wanted to design an easy game around the American Civil War Battle of Cedar Mountain (not far from where I live in Virginia) simulating the fog of war as two armies move toward each other, probing with cavalry and infantry, maneuvering with limited information about enemy location and strength, and screening forces with cavalry. And I found some inspiration for game mechanics in Bae’s game, a starting point from which I began tinkering with ideas on how such a game might work.

Designer’s Cards-or-Tables Dilemma

 “Random chance plays a huge part in everybody’s life.”

— Gary Gygax

To use cards or not to use cards? That’s a question some designers might consider when developing mechanics for a particular game. Cards can deliver a similar infusion of effects we get from rolling dice on random tables. Differences exist in the two systems, but the result — generating a randomized element from a thematic list — remains the same. I’m debating whether to use cards or tables for a game I’m in the early stages of developing, a solitaire simulation focusing on supplying the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. As a player I love cards: the tactile nature, the space for illustrations, blurbs of lore, and stylized icons for values and functions. But at this early stage, and from a designer’s perspective, I’m leaning toward random tables as an expedient to focus more on concepts and system rather than give in to my urge to obsess over physical components.

Gaming Great Bridge IV: Playtesting Insights

 “Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals.”

— T. E. Lawrence

I’ve been spending time writing down the rules for processes discussed earlier, with an eye to producing both a rulebook for a board wargame and a streamlined player aid format of rules for the event where I expect to run the Battle of Great Bridge game demo. Once I had some firm rules down as a baseline for game play, I devised a gridded map, found some generic pieces to use, and started some self-play testing (with me taking turns running both sides), given my general lack of local players. I made a few adjustments, but overall it seems to deliver the experience I’d hoped to offer: basic rules with player choices, short play time, and all taking into account some historical considerations.

Nouns & Scenario Design

 “It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

I’m enjoying a spate of adventure design and writing as I prepare a Pulp Egypt scenario for an upcoming convention game. I haven’t run a roleplaying game session in a while; it’s been a few years since I penned one (and that’s still not seen publication). But I’ve wanted to run a new Pulp Egypt adventure for a while and this idea had been percolating in the back of my head for a while. I’d thought of writing it as a D6 System solitaire adventure (much like Trapped in the Museum, but a bit longer), with the character pursuing a mystery around notable locations in Cairo, but I wasn’t ready for another fully involved programmed adventure. So when friends asked me to run something at this upcoming convention, I started putting ideas on the page. It all proved an opportunity to try something different with my scenario design and writing process.

Gaming Great Bridge III: Interaction Factors

 “Principles and rules are intended to provide a thinking man with a frame of reference.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

Painting by Glenn Moore depicting
the British attack on the American
breastworks at the Battle of Great Bridge.

Now I’ve transposed the historical battle to the game board, the real challenge begins: determining how players interact with pieces and the map to simulate the engagement. All while keeping my original parameters in mind. In my past talks about historical strategy games I summarized core game processes as “Move, Attack, Morale.” Relying on my earlier research, I set out to define when and how players would command their forces within the framework of a turn sequence...my first design choice challenge.

Revisiting the Battle of Ridgefield

 “On the 27th in the morning the troops quitted Danbury, and met with little opposition until they came near to Ridgefield, which was occupied by Gen. Arnold.”

— General William Howe

James Sharp's "A Skirmish
in America" (1780).

It’s summertime, which means I give myself a little indulgence to miss a week’s posting or two, or three (as evidenced by my blog archive in the sidebar). Sometimes I just need time to recharge, as many of us do in the summer months. Other times we’re so busy with various activities I don’t have time for thoughtful reflection and writing about adventure game hobby issues. Yet I still manage to find some inspiration, whether through rest or exploration, I can channel into Hobby Games Recce. We recently returned from a trip visiting family and friends in New England, including a stop at my favorite independent bookshop, Books on the Common in Ridgefield, CT, where I picked up the most recent book about my hometown’s RevolutionaryWar battle; inspiration for my wargaming exploration of this small yet influential engagement.

Gaming Great Bridge II: Battle into Game

 “History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.”

— Johan Huizinga

My whiteboard notes on the battle.

With some key considerations to bear in mind I started thinking how to abstract the battle’s historical elements into familiar game forms to simulate the engagement: a board representing the terrain; pieces for military units; and dice, with relevant rules, to adjudicate attack success. I made some general assumptions to make the experience easier for players to understand and enjoy. To do this, however, requires a large degree of abstraction that, with some framing for participants, can help immerse them in commanding forces in the historical battle.

Sources

I have a basic understanding of the Battle of Great Bridge, having lived in Culpeper some 20 years and seen (and read) material about the Culpeper Minutemen. But in designing a streamlined game about it, I needed to ask some questions to adapt the history into a game framework. Most pertain to nearly any battle one seeks to simulate. What did the terrain and troop deployment look like? (Useful for determining the board arrangement.) What forces were involved and how did they compare proportionately in size, number, and capabilities? (Necessary in figuring how many unit pieces to include and ruling how they move and attack.) What ranges and accuracy did Revolutionary war muskets and rifled muskets have? (At the battle the Culpeper Minutemen sent flanking fire into the British from beyond musket range because, as essentially frontier fighters, they used more accurate rifled muskets.)

Gaming Great Bridge

 “I set little value upon my health, when put in competition with my duty to my country, and the glorious cause we are engaged in.”

— Lt. Colonel Charles Scott

I am developing a game about the Battle of Great Bridge from the American War of Independence (AWI) and decided I’d keep a design journal, both for my own reference and for others interested in the process I follow in researching and creating a game with specific parameters in mind. I have volunteered to design and run a short participation game at an event this October commemorating the 250th anniversary of the mustering of the Culpeper Minutemen. I’m working under several parameters for this activity as well as bearing in mind a few key issues in the Patriots’ success in the engagement. Although I plan on running the event using a small, wargaming-style diorama map with paper miniatures, I expect I’ll playtest it as a board wargame...and later make it more easily available in that format as a PDF.

Design Choice: Rumors

 “Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.”

– Joseph Conrad

I’m working in fits and starts developing my Mage-Blight Hills fantasy roleplaying game setting (system-neutral) and making various design decisions in both what I develop and how. I’ve decided, for a number of reasons, to write to the page, working within the layout to keep my writing on each setting element concise. It also helps me manage my own perception of how much I’ve completed. Compartmentalizing my work helps me focus. Nothing seems so discouraging as looking at the existing page count and realizing how far one has to go; but when I finish a one-, two-, or even four-page section on a particular location, person, or concept, I gain some small sense of accomplishment. It forces me to work to make sure every aspect of the setting I write about has the most important and useful information. This work/design choice caused me to re-think how I present and use an important element of many settings: rumors.

Summer Star Wars Games

During the summer I spend a lot of effort keeping my son busy (i.e., off his tablet in Roblox land), much to the detriment of my own writing and game design projects. Amid our usual goals and diversions – more frequent walks in the park, a short vacation, the admonitions to read actual books, weekly day trips – we’ve been attempting to game more often. Not as much as I’d like, of course, but I’ll take one or two after-lunch gaming sessions a week if I can get them. He’s getting to the age where he can comprehend the rules without me having to streamline them into a kid-friendly format; but his interest in various historical periods or media properties primarily drive his engagement in related games. This influenced our choice of games. It also encouraged me to take a brief respite from designing my current roleplaying game project (The Mage-Blight Hills) to revisit some basic skirmish rules I set aside a while ago.

Journey to the Mage-Blight Hills

 “We are not monsters; we simply are. We are creatures with unrealized potential.”

– From “A Testament of Completion”

The paths down which imagination leads us sometimes don’t make sense, might bring us to strange places, but offer us opportunities to grow. I’m stumbling down one such path with my latest fantasy roleplaying game project, The Mage-Blight Hills, a setting sourcebook without any game stats, enabling gamemasters to port it to whatever system they prefer. It grew from a simple idea, a lark, really, for an adventure I might run for my son should I ever introduce him to pen-and-paper roleplaying (as opposed to the diversions he finds in the seemingly infinite electronic worlds of Roblox). As I thrashed about trying to develop and write another setting – the perpetually postponed Infinite Cathedral – I let my imagination run a bit wild on this other scenario...until it took on a life of its own and demanded I follow the path it set before me. Although it’s still quite a ways from any sense of completion, it’s providing both a chance to find some solace in an escapist fantasy world and an opportunity to try out some concepts in setting design.

A Plethora of Projects

I’m slowly nearing completion on my latest project (though still a few months out from publication) and I’m already looking ahead to my next game-related endeavor. My writing schedule, such as it is, must accommodate my other roles in life. I manage to regularly work on projects despite the constant guilt that such activity neglects my household duties, innumerable homeowner projects, and the responsibilities of a father to an inquisitively sharp third grader. The start of a new year has me recovering from a month of preparatory activities for the yuletide holidays and an occasional pilgrimage to visit distant family. My productivity wasn’t helped by recovering from sickness both after the holidays and late January’s inadvertently “plague-themed” birthday party for an acquaintance, in which most guests fell ill in the following week. Yet the days are getting longer, my schedule’s returning to some semblance of order (as much as the Lords of Chaos will allow), and my gaze turns once again to game-writing projects at hand an in the near future.

Returning to the Solo Adventure Format

I’m wrapping up one project – finalizing layout and waiting on artwork for a system-neutral, medieval fantasy setting – so I’m starting to look toward the next concept to bring to publication. I have a long, oft-revised list of gaming ideas for development. I prioritize these on a number of qualifications, including their level of development and completion, size of expected complications, ease of acquiring artwork and other graphic elements, and suitability for various gaming markets. But I’m easily diverted from what might seem the next logical project, preferring to channel my immediate enthusiasm for an unexpected, exciting idea rather than slog away at something that doesn’t quite engage me at the moment. Right now I really should be reviewing and polishing material for an Infinite Cathedral Patreon (something I’ve considered for quite some time). So I’m naturally disappearing down the rabbit hole of an entirely unrelated project to capitalize on my immediate interest: a science fiction D6 solo adventure. Where the heck did that come from?

Five Years of Game Blogging

Five years ago this month I began blogging here at Hobby Games Recce. I did it primarily to stay active as a writer and a gamer, maintaining some degree of online presence in a field in which I hadn’t published much in recent years – either through established publishers or my own imprint – due to family and work obligations. I found myself a full-time Stay-at-Home Dad (SaHD) with irregular tidbits of time, not really enough to slowly work away on voluminous game sourcebooks, but enough to offer rambling opinions on various aspects of the adventure gaming hobby. Five years and more than 250 entries later I’m still at it, mostly satisfied with my work and happy with the engagement it’s generated and friends I’ve made.

I began blogging on Nov. 11, 2010, with two posts: one about sighting games at the now-extinct Borders bookstores (at the time a rarity, though today Barnes & Noble carries an expansive array of popular hobby games), and the other about Wizards of the Coast/Avalon Hill reissuing Richard Borg’s Battle Cry Civil War battle game. Now you can find board game staples like Pandemic, Forbidden Island, Settlers of Catan, and Ticket to Ride – as well as other fare like Rory’s Story Cubes and Zombie Dice – in such venues as Walmart and Target, with remaining big-box bookstore Barnes & Noble carrying those and more diverse board and card game fare. How the game-scape has changed during five years.

Schweig’s Project List, Oct. 2015

In preparing to attend Nuke-Con Oct. 2-4 in Omaha, NE, I’m assembling a host of materials: signs for my numerous events, adventure components (scenario, character sheets, tent cards, handouts), rulebooks, compact miniature wargaming bits (tanks, terrain, reference cards). I managed to order two portrait-oriented Lion Flip-N-Tell Display Book-N-Easels to compliment the stand-up landscape portfolio I’ve had for years. These work really well as double-sided sign holders, with the portfolio format allowing me to easily change signs as needed. They also fold flat for easy packing and transport.

Nuke-Con provides me with a guest table where I can hang out and chat with con-goers when I’m not running games. I’ll have two of these portfolios set up on the guest table with information about my con schedule and products, while the third serves at my gaming tables to identify the event and display any in-game reference materials.

In trying to devise interesting information for signage to inspire guest-table conversation I thought I’d offer a brief outline of some of the projects on my immediate “to do” list. I regret many of these have languished for years, set aside when real-life jobs consumed my energy and then when my full-time parental duties took over my life; but with the Little Guy in kindergarten full time now, I have a little more time to focus on developing and completing game projects for publication.

Repurposing A Project

My recent missive on chit-and-board wargames caused me to look back on a forlorn, abandoned project and find new life in a different form. In the blog post I looked at current efforts in this “traditional” wargames sector and noted several factors I’d find appealing in new games, particularly more streamlined rules with fewer (and larger) pieces. I posted the article, then sat back and wondered, how could I create a traditional wargame that would satisfy my own criteria? In my mind I ran through the various historical periods that engage my interest, recalling particular battles with which I have some degree of familiarity or a good stock of research material in my personal library. I put the idea aside for a day or two, and then an idea dawned; I could repurpose an unpublished article on miniature wargaming the Battle of Ridgefield (April 27, 1777) into a chit-and-board wargame.

A few years ago I volunteered to help produce a regional wargaming club’s newsletter. It had languished for a while after having a good run with informative articles, news about club activities, and a listing of local resources for gaming. I thought I’d bring my years of publishing experience, both editorial and layout, and try giving the newsletter new life. The club representative told me they’d received another offer for a volunteer editor, so they asked us to work together. My grandiose vision for resurrecting the periodical and infusing it with engaging material and new life fell afoul of the co-editor syndrome (a good author friend once told me that co-authoring was twice as much work for half the pay...and in this case, my half of the “pay” was nothing in exchange for lots of work and some friction with my co-editor about what made a good wargaming newsletter). Although I was pleased with the final product, my experience was less than rewarding, so I just walked away. The club hasn’t published a newsletter since.

One of the articles I intended to contribute covered the Battle of Ridgefield during the American War of Independence, a subject dear to me since I grew up in that small, Connecticut town, was steeped in its history, and had seen a 200th anniversary reenactment of the skirmish as a kid. I relied on a very well-researched history of the event – Farmers Against the Crown by Keith Marshall Jones III – and drafted a summary history of the event, with a focus on the forces engaged, the terrain, deployment, and how miniature wargamers might stage the skirmish. I submitted it to the co-editor for comments, some of which helped focus my writing; however, I allowed my general dissatisfaction with the direction the newsletter was taking to temper my enthusiasm, and I shelved the article for a “future issue” which, of course, never materialized.

Revising the Any-System Key for OSR

Years ago I designed a simple, system-neutral framework enabling me to describe game stats for characters and creatures – as well as difficulty levels for various tasks – without committing myself to a single game engine. I called it the Any-System Key. It fit it on two pages, one for the basic concepts and the other a kind of worksheet for listing relevant skills and translating difficulty numbers (a third page added later offered some sample stats across genres). The system focused on using basic skill descriptions and three levels of adversaries (henchmen, boss, and mastermind) to give gamemasters some guidance adapting these notes to their preferred game system. The Any-System Key worked fine for the game material I was writing at the time, primarily pulp content like Heroes of Rura-Tonga and Pulp Egypt, using game engines like the D6 System that relied heavily on skills and difficulty levels to define play parameters.

But now I’m considering designing some supplements in the medieval fantasy genre, something more compatible with the class/level system of Dungeons & Dragons and the numerous retro-clones made popular over the last few years by the Old School Renaissance movement (OSR).

Like the Any-System Key, the OSR version seeks to describe characters, creatures, and other difficulties (such as those corresponding to saving throws, thief skills, and turning undead for clerics) in broad terms, providing enough material so gamemasters could port such setting concepts into their preferred OSR-style game engine.

Valley of the Ape “After Action” Report

Several weeks have passed since I ran Valley of the Ape at Williamsburg Muster, a small, regional miniature wargaming convention with a good selection of board games on the side. For miniature wargamers the “after action report” serves to document their experience and share with others the scenario components and outcomes. I offer my observations on my Valley of the Ape sessions more to illustrate the variety of strategies players brought to the table and what to me seems changing aspects of game conventions in general.

Positive experiences in actual play, especially at large public events like conventions, can not only validate a creator’s work but provide constructive criticism and encourage further work to bring the project to publication. I had a very positive experience running Valley of the Ape for its intended audience.

Scheduling convention games isn’t easy. One can’t usually coordinate with other events to ensure, for instance, your kid-friendly game isn’t running opposite another event specifically geared toward children. Instead I scheduled based on my own preferences, relying on my capacities as the referee and my perceptions of ideal times. I decided I’d run two, two-hour sessions. The short time span meant I’d only run one or two full games each session. With two sessions I could spread them across what I considered two times I felt would work for con attendees with kids, Friday night at 7 p.m. and Saturday morning at 10 a.m. The Saturday time seemed the riskiest for me, since game conventions sometimes get off to a slow start in the mornings. Both times filled up, though Saturday morning’s session started a bit late more from participants coming out of a kid-friendly Wooden Warriors game than anything else. I ran two full games Friday night and one long and late-starting game Saturday.

Game Material by Subscription

In the early days of roleplaying games – the mid-1970s to early 1980s – new releases of official rulebooks, supplements, and adventures seemed few and far between. Magazines served to provide a steady stream of new material to inspire gamers: insight and direction from designers, rules questions and clarifications, debates on game issues, gamemaster tips, and a host of new scenarios, settings, classes, equipment, monsters, and spells. While the pillars of print magazines that supported early roleplaying games have crumbled in the face of advances into the Internet Age, their descendents still provide inspiration for gamers across the globe and offer an different outlet for designers to bring their work to publication.

Reading Shannon Appelcline’s Designers & Dragons 1970s history of roleplaying game companies (and the trials that beset and often vanquished them) reveals an interesting trend: in the earliest days of roleplaying magazines provided the most regular flow of new content for most game lines, including TSR’s Dungeons & Dragons. Some focused exclusively on the publisher’s own games (“house organs”) while others provided news and material for a range of roleplaying games. But reading Judges Guild’s history offers yet another interesting perspective: releasing supplemental game material in a subscription format. While not technically a magazine, the subscription provided a collection of setting information and adventures to fill in the dearth of such material from official Dungeons & Dragons publisher TSR, whose executives, according to Designers & Dragons, apparently laughed at the idea of producing such material; they expected players to create their own worlds and scenarios, feeling the publisher’s role was to produce rules (at the time TSR was focusing its efforts on revising D&D rules into the classic trilogy of rulebooks, ultimately released in hardcover format one each year).