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.

So Much Star Wars

 “What if we could go anywhere we want in the whole galaxy?”

— Wim, Skeleton Crew

Despite detesting many indignities the 21st century has thus far forced upon us, I revel in the resurgence of Star Wars media. Where once fans had just three films — viewed repeatedly on VHS — now we have entire constellations of streaming content, live-action and cartoon, episodic television and movies. And that doesn’t even touch the subsidiary media of novels, comics, and games. Geek media in general has flourished as a result of greater societal acceptance and more methods for disseminating both professional and non-professional work. But Star Wars — with its long provenance and years of fans grasping at any content to satisfy their dearth of official film releases — has not only filled the market again but pushed the boundaries of the franchise into new directions, expanding the scope and emotional power of our favorite galaxy far, far away. Star Wars media found new life embracing an adage pioneered by West End Games’ Star Wars Roleplaying Game, where players didn’t simply focus on the core heroes from the films, but sought new adventures “just off screen,” exploring different characters, ordinary people caught up in the Rebellion, folks from other worlds and cultures, each with their own story to tell. And it made the Star Wars galaxy richer.

Attack Wing & Armada

 “Size matters not.”

— Yoda

My son and I have been playing some Star Trek: Attack Wing scenarios recently, part of his exploration of the wide-ranging Star Trek franchise. In our past gaming endeavors we’ve indulged in Star Wars gaming, too (yet another franchise we love), including the X-wing Miniatures Game and Star Wars: Armada. Over the years we’ve managed to acquire fleets for those games to play engagements that catered to our interests as fans. While X-wing deals with fighter squadrons, Attack Wing and Armada feature massive capital ships. Although based on the foundations of the “FligthPath” system used in X-wing (and licensed for Attack Wing), the capital ships games play very differently from each other. While Attack Wing sticks closer to X-wing, Armada makes many adaptations to accommodate the larger ships, becoming a different game with similarities to its forebear. They’re both enjoyable games with solid systems for commanding capital ships in their respective fictional universes. After playing each for a while — and more recently enjoying our exploits with Attack Wing — I find, in the long term, I like Attack Wing more.

WEG Memoirs: Rejection Letters

 “Correction does much, but encouragement does more.”

— Goethe

West End Games headquarters, a warehouse
in the middle of nowhere, around 1993.

These days I’m thinking more about my time as the Star Wars Adventure Journal editor at West End Games back in the mid 1990s, before the company went bankrupt in the summer of 1998. Right now I’m still stumbling through a job search in various fields, rather unsuccessfully, and managing the discouragement one feels in today’s impersonal job market dominated by algorithms and artificial intelligence reviewing applicant qualifications. Maybe I’m too sensitive, having applied a more personal touch in my former editorial duties and having focused on customer service in various part-time, face-to-face office support jobs since. I’m sure many folks seeking jobs could have benefited from having an actual human offering guidance, advice, and encouragement. Personal interaction seems secondary to displacing whatever tasks we can onto computers...a trajectory I don’t see improving as we careen carelessly further into the 21st century. But I take some small solace remembering some of the care I took back at West End Games, working with potential authors, reviewing and critiquing their work, all with the ultimate goal of publishing good Star Wars Roleplaying Game source material.