The Personal View of Sweeping Events

 “There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.”

— John Stuart Mill

What's it like to lead the advance at
the Battle of Great Bridge?

Too often I see history education in America focusing on broad events and key figures, the sweeping view of events, with little if any time spent on a more personal perspective of those average people living that history. I fear this has become a greater issue in the age of Standards of Learning (SOL) tests (“No Standardized Test Left Behind…”), which emphasize educators “teach to the test,” covering the basics every student should know with limited time for developing critical thinking skills about that material. (Though I’ll freely admit my own education in the latter quarter of the 20th century bore hallmarks of simply hitting the marks, with a few notable exceptions.) Certainly some exceptional teachers inspire students to take a closer look at historical topics, especially zooming in from the macro view of great events to the micro perspective of individuals who lived through history. A personal view can engage our empathy, give us a more relatable impression of history beyond names, events, and dates, and challenge us to ask questions, investigate further, and reflect on relevant issues...important to better inform our current situation and our inevitable slog into the future. Games can help us relate to that personal perspective, though we cannot appreciate it without at least a general knowledge of history to provide context.

Scenarios & the “General Idea”

 “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.”

— Seneca

Everyone holds an opinion about roleplaying game adventure design, some quite vehemently, some quite inflexibly, some by ease of writing or preference for play outcomes at their own tables. Certain games encourage a particular format to which, understandably, writers try to adhere whether writing for the publisher or simply creating something familiar for fans. In the 50-year history of roleplaying games many adventure formats have emerged and evolved, sometimes tied to the ever-changing style of such games. Designing adventures can offer a somewhat displaced challenge; one essentially writes a kind of instruction manual for someone else to run themed action at the game table, a kind of toolkit to enabling a gamemaster to evoke a particular experience with players and their characters. Some prefer a step-by-step approach through encounters, others like a more free-form “sandbox” arrangement. Adventures require some degree of preparation from a gamemaster, even if it’s simply familiarizing themselves with a published game world...or jotting down notes of their own. I’ve done my share of designing and writing adventures, some for publication, others just for friends; lately I’ve been toying with different techniques, as I’ve mentioned before. Sometimes for games — as in other aspects of life — it helps to look at history, to see how others approached challenges, for insight on issues we face. I looked to roleplaying games’ pre-history, back in the days when wargaming slowly emerged from a Europe ravaged by Napoleon’s armies. And the idea of the scenario tied to a “General idea” seems core to designing an adventure serving as gamemaster resource for greater player agency.

Packing A Battle in A Small Box

 “Though she be but little, she is fierce.”

— William Shakespeare

A package recently arrived with a wonderful little game in a small tin: Battle Box: Napoleonic Wars from Feral Wizard in Manchester, UK. It’s the size of a mint tin (do they still put mints in those?), a compact 4 x 2.5 inches, easy enough to fit into a large pocket, a purse, go bag, or backpack. I’ve occasionally dabbled in Napoleonic gaming, though it’s by no means one of my core wargaming interests. But it promised a compact yet entertaining experience with a far smaller tabletop presence than many such games, either board wargames or miniature wargames. I was curious how the combination of wooden bits, map tiles, and rules for, essentially, a Portable Wargame-style game, would deliver. I was not disappointed. It offers a complete Napoleonic wargame in conveniently extreme miniature, with optional rules and solo play rules, that satisfied a number of my criteria for an enjoyable game.

Roleplaying the Dog

 “You cannot share your life with a dog, as I had done in Bournemouth, or a cat, and not know perfectly well that animals have personalities and minds and feelings.”

— Jane Goodall

Someone in my social media recently mentioned my Heroes of Rura-Tonga sourcebook as a resource for pulp roleplaying in the style of the early 1980s television show Tales of the Gold Monkey. The short-lived series (lasting only one season, a whopping 22 episodes) followed a band of characters flying around the South Pacific in 1938, with all the international tension and intrigue that implies. No doubt fans had their favorite characters among the regulars, guest stars, and the secondary inhabitants of the home base island, “Bora Gora.” Among my favorites were the spunky one-eyed dog Jake and the Grumman G-21 Goose enabling everyone to fly off on various adventures and rescue them from tight spots every week. The show, along with my interest in World War II, inspired me to develop Heroes of Rura-Tonga as a more historically based pulp setting with a host of adventures to demonstrate the genre. I started writing it after completing my other period piece, Pulp Egypt. But my first dabblings with it came as a few convention events I ran using West End Games’ adaptable and cinematic D6 System. As I do for convention games, I created a group of appropriate pre-generated characters, many of whom emulated roles seen in Tales of the Gold Monkey...including the dog. And inevitably, even when I still (rarely) run Heroes of Rura-Tonga games today, someone, if not several people, enthusiastically want to play the dog.

Bibliography Validation

 “The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.”

— Rene Descartes

Every so often I feel inspired (compelled?) to revisit topics I’ve explored in the past. My latest? Bibliographies, which I last featured in July 2024 in “Inspiring Citations.” That piece mostly focused on sources listed in bibliographies sending readers off to learn more about a game subject, whether for their own edification or incorporation in their hobby activities...a process that perpetuates itself as readers look at the bibliographies in those subsequent resources. And I’ll touch on that again here. But lately I’ve been finding bibliographies also give my frail self-esteem a sense that my past intellectual explorations have merit when I find sources I’ve read in the past listed in more current, relevant work. Bibliographies can send us off in new, exciting directions of personal and professional research as well as validate our past readings to remind us we’re on the right course.

The Language of Games

“Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.”

— Genesis 11:9

Language is a very dodgy code, even among those who purportedly understand the same one. Each word is paired with a corresponding meaning...often more than one nuanced meaning, depending on context. Humans “fluent” in a particular language don’t always have the same or a very precise sense of meaning for some words; dialects further confuse our understanding of the language code. I love hearing British slang terms, variations on the English language that only prove the adage “Two peoples separated by a common language.” We constantly use words that don’t mean what we think they mean. We garble our communications using words that impart imprecise concepts and attitude, whether on the phone, in texts and e-mails, even in person. The speaker and recipient frequently have different concepts of how words carry meaning and tone, especially in rushed, spontaneous conversations we fire off in our impatient, relentlessly rapid-paced society. Specialized fields often create and use their own jargon within the common language, further complicating communication, especially with outsiders. This frequently leads to a great deal of misunderstanding and emotional friction. I can only speak for those “fluent” in English, but the way we talk about the myriad diversions under the heading of “games” leads us to struggle as we constantly adapt to new perspectives and developments in the vast, ever-expanding universe of adventure gaming.

Choose Your Own History Path

 “Historical game design is the ultimate historical research project for non-specialists!”

— Dr. Jeremiah McCall

I love interactive fiction, both narrative programmed stories like the Choose Your Own Adventure and Endless Quest series and similar fare incorporating basic game rules, like the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. I enjoy exploring numerous historical periods. And I’m an advocate for using games for learning with various age groups in different environments. What better way to learn about history than explore a specific topic and incorporate it into a game activity. Dr. Jeremiah McCall has developed a history assignment for his high school students integrating all these interests. His Student-Designed Histories are a model educational tool for exploring historical topics and sharing that knowledge in an engaging interactive format.