Wargaming Small Wars (merged thread)

[Rex Brynen]

Thanks for sharing the links. I'm of the general opinion that context determines everything, and so my focus is on developing a strategic-policy level game. I have not thought much about the audience, though it's definitely not the way families are going to want to spend their Friday nights.

Brant is the one with the commercial wargame experience here, but my advice would be start with the audience--everything else flows from that. Who is going to play it? Hobbyists/boardgamers? Professionals/policy types?

[Steve Blair]

Brant is the one with the commercial wargame experience here, but my advice would be start with the audience--everything else flows from that. Who is going to play it? Hobbyists/boardgamers? Professionals/policy types?

I've dabbled some (not to Brant's degree to be sure) and can only strongly second this comment. Audience is everything. A game intended for a casual audience can have much less detail than one intended for a professional audience. Context is important, don't get me wrong, but your audience determines the amount of detail you put into that context.

[BayonetBrant]

I've started a page at GrogNews to collect info on COIN wargaming

I've love input from folks on articles / links that should be there.

Thanks!

http://grognews.blogspot.com/p/coin-wargaming.html

[AmericanPride]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I started the game design with what I would consider enjoyable; so I assume a professional/academic audience. I intend to let the play-test phase determine the level of detail.

[Rex Brynen]

These two forthcoming wargaming talks at the Center for Applied Strategic Learning (http://casl.dodlive.mil/), National Defense University may be of interest to some folks (although neither is about "small wars"):

2 May 2012: "Nuclear Wargaming," Dr. Tim Moench (Air Force Global Strike Command Wargaming and Strategic Studies), Dr. Chris Yeaw (Air Force Global Strike Command Chief Scientist), and John Harris (Air Force Concepts, Strategy, and Wargaming Division)

More details here.

9 May 2012: "The Continuing Merits of Manual Wargaming," Professor Philip Sabin (Kings College London)

More details here.


If (like me) you're not in the DC area, the presentations will also be streamed online.

[BayonetBrant]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I started the game design with what I would consider enjoyable; so I assume a professional/academic audience. I intend to let the play-test phase determine the level of detail.

Check out the developer diaries over at GrogHeads

http://grogheads.com/dev-longwar1.html

http://grogheads.com/dev-longwar2.html

[SWJ Blog]

Wargaming Courses of Action During Other-Than-Major Combat Operations

Entry Excerpt:



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Read the full post and make any comments at the SWJ Blog.
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.

[Rex Brynen]

What more could you ask for? Volko Ruhnke (who designed the terrorism/counterterrorism board game Labyrinth) AND Brian Train (whose Algeria wargame is the basis for game designs used at DoD, CIA, and elsewhere) are collaborating on a wargame of contemporary insurgency and counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. I'm certainly looking forward to this...

COIN in Afghanistan: A Distant Plain.

The game is in early development and play test at the moment--hopefully it will be out next year.

[Rex Brynen]

An update on the Connections 2012 interdisciplinary wargaming conference at PAXsims, with celebrity endorsements from Napoleon Bonaparte and Winston Churchill.

[BayonetBrant]

discussion of an ongoing project for rapid-prototyping and development of scenarios for current events

warning: a lot of wargame assumptions made of the reader

http://grognews.blogspot.com/2012/07...ting-c2e2.html

excerpt

How will the overall model work together? We need some way of tracking the local civilian 'mood' and support for the different sides, through political organized, governance, levels of I/O, etc. We also need a way to keep track of the body count, and what thresholds of dead units start to trigger counter-actions from the dead units' families. How do you know what true effects you have on the local areas, and how do you assess it, and how do you establish the longevity of the effects?

When military forces deploy to a tsunami zone, what are they bringing with them in terms on N-K factors, and how well does that play in affecting the local perception of them? How does training units in certain aspects change what their performance can be on the ground? If you plus up an infantry brigade with a variety of N-K assets and training, are they really more effective on the ground in N-K roles, or have you just degraded their KIN capabilities instead?

comments welcome!

[Rex Brynen]

The annual Connections 2012 interdisciplinary wargaming conference wrapped up yesterday at NDU, with more than one hundred professional wargamers, government and commercial wargame designers, scholars, and other analysts in attendance.

Various AARs on the event are linked via the Wargaming Connection blog.

[BayonetBrant]

What more could you ask for? Volko Ruhnke (who designed the terrorism/counterterrorism board game Labyrinth) AND Brian Train (whose Algeria wargame is the basis for game designs used at DoD, CIA, and elsewhere) are collaborating on a wargame of contemporary insurgency and counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. I'm certainly looking forward to this...

COIN in Afghanistan: A Distant Plain.

The game is in early development and play test at the moment--hopefully it will be out next year.

Interviews with the designers here
part 1: http://grogheads.com/int-adp1.html
part 2: http://grogheads.com/int-adp2.html

some great background info from the guys on how the game has developed.

[Rex Brynen]

Recently I gave one of my McGill University political science classes the option of writing an interactive story (written using Inklewriter) rather than submitting a conventional research paper. Since the course in question examines peacebuilding and civil conflict, not surprisingly all four "adventures" are set amongst civil wars: in the first you must negotiate humanitarian access with armed groups; in the second you have demobilize ex-combatants, in the third you must survive the Syrian civil war, and in the forth you need to maintain the security of a camp for the internally displaced in northern DR Congo.

All four games are described, and can be played, via PAXsims:

http://paxsims.wordpress.com/2013/05...tical-science/

If you have any words of encouragement for the students concerned, feel free to post a comment on the blog

[jcustis]

I vaguely remember a similar discussion about student projects like this a couple years or more ago. If this was you Rex, good on ya for trying to work the practical into the theoretical. This recent venture is a rad idea as well.

[Rex Brynen]

GMT Games is bringing out a series of COIN-themed games. The first, Andean Abyss (2012), explores insurgency and counterinsurgency in Columbia. You'll find my review of it at PAXsims.

Two others—A Distant Plain (on contemporary Afghanistan) and Cuba Libre (on the Cuban revolution)—will be out later this year, and a game on the Vietnam War, A Fire in the Lake, is also in development. A Distant Plain is codesigned by sometimes SWC contributor Brian Train.

[BayonetBrant]

and see the links above for the interview with the guys about A Distant Plain

[Rex Brynen]

A brief AAR on the recent Connections 2013 interdisciplinary wargaming conference has been posted at PAXsims.

[davidbfpo]

A rather unusual angle, more nostalgia IMHO from the BBC magazine:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22777029

[Rex Brynen]

An interesting piece by Lisa Lynch (Concordia University) on using a conflict simulation to teach international journalism students:

Foreign correspondents in a simulated civil war

Full disclosure: it is my simulated civil war at McGill University that she uses.

[BayonetBrant]

GrogHeads.com is looking for papers that folks might have written for varying research projects on games/gaming. I'm sure some of our FA57s in the audience have something floating around somewhere

Anyway, we're starting a new monthly series on these sorts of academic-focused articles and would love to have y'all submit anything you've got floating around out there that's not necessarily fit for SWJ or other traditional outlets.

announcement text here: http://grogheads.com/?p=2160