In the Grand Scheme of Things

 “The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.”

— Cicero

Several weeks ago I was reminded how minuscule our adventure gaming hobby appears in the face of the many other seemingly far more important subjects society prioritizes. Prolific Games Workshop fantasy illustrator John Blanche died on June 1, 2026. And French-Iranian author, activist, and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi died on June 4, 2026. Someone somewhere in my social media feed commented how John Blanche’s passing received little notice when compared to Satrapi’s. I experienced some of their work, Blanche’s in my formative gaming years and Satrapi’s only recently. They each had a profound impact on the way I viewed various aspects of my world. Yet the treatment of their passing was telling. Many in the adventure gaming hobby remembered Blanche. Satrapi enjoyed greater fame from her graphic novels about her youth in Iran, Yet for a majority of people, especially in America, neither name held any significance. It’s a sad reminder how extremely niche entertainment like graphic novels and adventure games garner very little attention compared to far more popular and lucrative forms like sports, movies, and television (or their lamentable 21st century equivalents). Yet their work and presence affect the lives of a small portion of us...and for that we celebrate them.

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.

Watch, Read, Play: Battle of Midway

“The plump silhouettes of the American Dauntless dive-bombers quickly grew larger, and then a number of black objects suddenly floated eerily from their wings.”

— Captain Mitsuo Fuchida

SBD Dauntless squadron seeks the Japanese fleet.

Many argue the Battle of Midway, June 4–7, 1942, was the turning point in the Pacific War. The engagement epitomizes the role of carriers and aircraft in naval operations as strategies relied less on massive battleships (though they’d still have a final significant moment at the Battle of Surigao Strait). Numerous factors played a role in its outcome: interception and interpretation of intelligence; preemptive deployment of American carriers; and Japanese indecision reacting to emerging threats during the engagement (among many others). All these considerations — as in depicting any historical event — prove challenging to interpret on the screen and the gaming tabletop. Given the battle’s importance, an abundance of Midway media offers many opportunities to engage with history by watching films, reading books, and playing games, all with varying degrees of quality.

The Context of Form

“The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.”

— Lao Tzu

I admire discourse that challenges me to think more deeply about tabletop games, whether new perspectives or ones investigating (and sometimes affirming) concepts I advocate. I often wish the adventure gaming hobby had more such discussion geared toward the kind of hobbyists and informed generalists who wander the borderlands between more steadfastly ensconced professional and scholarly game circles. Secondary education offers some promising opportunities as young people, not yet established in our staunch intellectual silos, explore and develop their own ideas on gaming subjects. Dr. Jeremiah McCall, himself an innovator in the field of games for learning, recently mentored one of his students at the Cincinnati Country Day School through a senior independent study project examining how different media — literature, film, and video games — presents the same historical event in different ways...and to different ends. It encourages us to more closely analyze how we interact with the various media we consume and how the context of form shapes its messages.