A "special" review of my book "Game Design," with a twist (the book is NOT the point)

 

A special book “review” of my book 

Game Design

 

[ Note. This was submitted as a column for “Worlds of Design” on enworld.org. I’ve written more than 200 entries for that column starting in 2017. But this time things went awry, as I tried something with a “twist” halfway through.

 

It is, ostensibly, a review of my book “Game Design” (McFarland, 2012). The editor only read the first part and came back to say that guest authors needed to be paid, so this was not allowed. I asked if he’d read the whole thing. He came back again saying, oh, but the topic here (NOT the book) would be rejected by the readers, or start a flamewar!

 

My impression of enworld.org, dating from long before I started my column, is that the denizens are willing to argue at length about most anything RPG-related; in any case, flamewars are undesirable there, and the article was unusable.

 

I’ve tried not to give too much away. See what you think.]

 

(formerly “Worlds of Design”)]

 

 

 

I’m planning to offer some book reviews in “Worlds of Design”, and as part of some experiments (yeah, there’s a catch) I asked some acquaintances to write book reviews of my 2012 book Game Design: How to Create Video and Tabletop Games, Start to Finish. There’s something special about this I’ll describe after you read the review that I chose as the best of the lot.

 

The review:

Book Review: Game Design: How to Create Video and Tabletop Games, Start to Finish by Lewis Pulsipher

Lewis Pulsipher’s Game Design: How to Create Video and Tabletop Games, Start to Finish is an insightful and methodical guide aimed at aspiring game designers, whether their focus is on video games or tabletop formats. Published in 2012, the book serves as a comprehensive primer on the fundamental principles of game design, offering practical advice, theoretical frameworks, and a no-nonsense approach to the creative process. Pulsipher, a veteran in game design and education, structures his book around not just the act of designing games but also the mindset and discipline necessary to complete them.

A Practical and Structured Approach

One of the book’s strongest aspects is its structured approach to game design. Pulsipher is not interested in merely inspiring readers with grand ideas; he is focused on execution. From the outset, he makes it clear that designing games is a discipline, requiring patience, critical thinking, and iteration. He methodically outlines the process of game design in clear steps: conceptualizing an idea, creating a prototype, playtesting, refining mechanics, and finalizing the game.

He also makes a crucial distinction between designing and producing games. While many books on game design touch on development and marketing, Pulsipher stays rooted in the design process itself, ensuring that readers understand the core aspects of game mechanics, player engagement, and system interactions before delving into production concerns.

Key Themes and Insights

Pulsipher’s pragmatic approach is evident throughout the book, particularly in his discussions on common misconceptions. One of the most valuable insights he provides is the idea that a game is more than just an idea - it is a process that involves repeated testing and refinement. He challenges the common novice assumption that a great idea is enough to make a successful game, emphasizing instead that execution, playtesting, and adjustments based on feedback are what truly shape a game.

Another key theme is the importance of understanding the audience. Chapter 4, You Must Know Your Audience/Target Market, delves into the necessity of designing with a specific group in mind. He advises designers to avoid making games solely for themselves, stressing that a successful game must appeal to its intended players. This player-centric approach is crucial for both commercial success and player enjoyment.

Additionally, Pulsipher provides a detailed breakdown of different game structures. His categorization of different game elements - such as victory conditions, player interaction rules, and economic mechanics - serves as a useful reference for game designers trying to refine their ideas. His perspective on designing levels, particularly in Chapter 7, provides practical advice applicable to both video games and tabletop games, making this book a valuable cross-disciplinary resource.

Strengths and Weaknesses

One of the book’s primary strengths is its accessibility. Pulsipher writes in a straightforward, instructional style, making complex concepts easier to understand. His experience as a teacher is evident in his ability to explain game design principles clearly and concisely. Furthermore, he avoids overly technical discussions, making the book approachable for beginners while still offering valuable insights for more experienced designers.

However, one of the book’s limitations is its relative lack of depth in video game-specific content. While Pulsipher does address video games, his expertise and primary focus lean more towards tabletop game design. Readers looking for an in-depth exploration of digital game mechanics, programming, or game engines may find this book lacking in those areas. Additionally, because it was published in 2012, some discussions on technology and industry trends may feel slightly outdated, though the core principles of game design remain relevant.

Another potential drawback is the book’s tone. Pulsipher is candid and direct, often dismissing romanticized notions about game design. While this no-nonsense approach can be refreshing, some readers may find it discouraging, particularly those looking for inspiration rather than pragmatic guidance.

Final Verdict

Overall, Game Design: How to Create Video and Tabletop Games, Start to Finish is a valuable resource for anyone serious about learning the fundamentals of game design. Pulsipher’s structured methodology, emphasis on execution, and clear explanations make this book an excellent guide for beginners. While it may not be the most exhaustive resource on video game development, its core principles apply universally to both digital and tabletop game design.

For those looking for a step-by-step approach to designing games with a focus on practicality over inspiration, this book is highly recommended. However, readers seeking advanced discussions on digital game technology or industry trends may need to supplement their reading with more specialized books. Ultimately, Pulsipher succeeds in his goal: to provide a structured, reality-based guide to game design that equips readers with the tools needed to turn ideas into playable, engaging experiences.

 

End of review. If you want some reviews written near the time of publication, search for <Review of "Game Design: How to create video and tabletop games, start to finish" by Lewis Pulsipher> without the angle brackets on Google.

 

As some of you have probably guessed, my “acquaintances” were online Large Language Model (LLM) “AI’s”, specifically ChatGPT and NotebookLM. My actual prompt to the LLM was as follows: “Please write a book review of about 700 words length of the book by Lewis Pulsipher, "Game Design: How to create video and tabletop games, start to finish". As requested, I uploaded the book.

 

Why this book? It is one of few in print (since 2012) that strongly addresses tabletop game design. And crucially, I had the text for the LLMs to read.

 

I had uploaded the text of the book to NotebookLM sometime before. This specialized LLM takes your uploads as its more or less special sole source. Without prompt from me it responded to the upload by creating a 37+ minute conversation between a man and a woman (actual voices) titled “Game Design: From Concept to Prototype.” It sounded much like a typical podcast. I confess I was amazed (and that’s hard to do). I plan to post this on my YouTube channel and website (pulsiphergames.com).

 

I tried this review idea with Claude as well, a lesser-known online LLM, but it got confused and objected to the length of the upload.

 

For me, LLMs are NOT “artificial intelligence,” and the whole trend of everyone claiming that AI is making their services better is marketing. (When there is true artificial intelligence, sometimes called “the singularity,” the human race may not survive the experience. But that’s still some ways in the future.) LLMs are a useful technology tool, just as many tools of the past (such as cell phones).

 

LLMs are not going away, so we might as well take advantage of them. My friend Elmer Tucker, who is a software engineer, supervisor, D&D GM, and wannabe game designer, has used ChatGPT for a variety of related purposes. For example he asked it to create some non-player characters, giving it a few guidelines, and it did a pretty interesting and useful job. Another time he asked it to create detailed material related to a board game he has in mind. I have used it to ask for situations appropriate for a co-operative children’s game I’m designing for my grand-niece and grand-nephews. And so on.

 

Google uses a minor LLM to report search results now, so most of you have used one. Remember that these are not really artificial intelligences, they are mainly drawing from a database they have been “trained” in. And they make mistakes. Some of the review may be actual words from the book, and a lot of the conversation in the podcast is effectively quotes from the book. The NPCs may have been drawn from existing NPCs in the database of ChatGPT. Some material may be in a database without permission of the creator, hence copyright may be a concern.

 

ChatGPT and others are free to use online. Any game designer or GM who wants to offload some work to machines can use them as Elmer and I have. Google <free to use LLM>.

 

A Good Example of Simplifying Wargame Play

 

A Good Example of Simplifying Wargame Play

 

I wrote this in 2022, and put it aside thinking I might add to it, perhaps playing the solo version. I haven’t, and as the game I’m discussing is going to be reprinted (or already has) I unearthed it.

 

Kevin Bertram’s wargame The Shores of Tripoli (2020 Fort Circle Games) is the example. It’s about the war between the young United States and the Barbary Pirates of North Africa, which is part of the origin of the US Marine song.

 

There are two parts to making a game simpler. One is to reduce the number of decisions and choices the player must make. The other is to reduce the number of exceptions to the rules. That’s because there are really two parts to “making a game easier”, 1) to make it easier to play and 2) to make it easier to learn. The first especially involves decisions and the second especially involves exceptions to the rules.

 

Reducing the number of decisions involves two things: getting rid of “unnecessary” or unimportant decisions, and offering fewer plausible choices for each decision.

 

In Tripoli this involves reducing the number of locations on the board, in this case to just 14. Think about that, even simple games like Chess and Checkers have 64 locations, Risk has 42 locations; on the other hand Tic-Tac-Toe has just nine and Backgammon just 24.

 

Another way to simplify is to give the player only a few assets that can be in some different state, such as in a different location. In Tripoli this amounts to not much more than a dozen on either side.

 

Moreover, a player’s pieces often move only as a group, effectively reducing the number of options. For example, armies move together, and corsairs from a city move as a group.

 

But each of the players in Tripoli has 27 cards, although not all of those cards are available to him or her at one time. The typical number is 11 or fewer. Moreover, many of the exceptions to the rules are on the cards, where a player doesn’t need to worry about it until they have that card in their hand. Cards are a fine way to reduce the number of exceptions a player needs to learn before they can play the game.

 

Combine that with simple rules that don’t have a lot of exceptions and you end up with a game that is both easy to learn and easy to play, though not necessarily easy to play well. Easy to play means the mechanics don’t get in the way and it’s easy to know what you can do and what you can’t do.

 

Easy to play well is quite different, insofar as what you need to do could be quite transparent (easy to see/figure out) or deeply buried in the game. If all the decisions you may need to make are immediately obvious the game will be easier to play than if many decisions are not revealed until you’ve made other decisions. In a nutshell that’s a difference between a shallow game and one that has a lot of depth. It’s quite possible to make a deep game that is nonetheless easy to play, although it would be more common that a game that is easy to play will be fairly shallow (the opposite of depth).

 

There’s a solo version as well as two player. The card-driven nature, and the simplicity of the game, makes it easier to make a solo version. The rules can say what to do with just about every card the non-player side may turn up.

 

This kind of simplification might work well with a game for more than two sides.

 

I’m not recommending the game one way or the other, because I haven’t actually played. I’m not into two player games these days (and I do not personally like card-driven games as games, though they can be good for learning history).

 

What “Should” Be in an RPG Design Book

 

What “Should” Be in an RPG Design Book

 

This is an unusual piece because I want to talk about what “should” be in an RPG design book. Somehow I once again have the idea of writing a 100,000 word book about role-playing game design. This is not the first time I've thought about this, last time was in 2017. Actually a great deal of it has already been written in my old articles from the 70s and 80s, in hundreds of my videos for online courses and YouTube, and in my “Worlds of Design” column, plus stuff that I've written that has not (yet) been published. This book might pair well with my 2012 book game design how to create video and tabletop games, which is still in print and not outdated, and still sells. I prefer small to medium books that people might actually read (rather than “TL;DR”) rather than a monster book, hence the limit to 100,000 words, about 250 pages in 5” by 8” format (the average novel is 90,000-100,000 words).

 

The question is, what would people expect in such a book, because I have far more material than I have space.

 

First we should ask what goes into a published RPG. An RPG can have up to three parts, but can do with just the first. The first is the RPG rules, the mechanisms that govern play. You can’t have a role-playing game without that, you can have something else but not a role-playing game. The second component that might be in the game is a description of a world or setting. Third could be sample adventures or how to GM advice, or both.

 

So why setting? Some games rely on a default setting, for example, D&D's default is late medieval Europe (stone castles come after the halfway point of the Middle Ages) plus magic and monsters. But the publisher has released many separate D&D settings. Still, everything references back to that default, which is kind of the default setting for fantasy novels and games in general. A World War II RPG would have a World War II setting, a Tolkien RPG would have the Middle-earth setting, etc.

 

There are also RPGs that are as much or more the setting as the rules. for example Dystopia Rising is very heavily focused on the rich post-cataclysm setting rather than on the rules. The rules unfortunately are not good, much too complicated for a setting that cries out for simple rules. Of course there are games everywhere between the extremes.

 

When you write a role-playing game, sometimes you expect the reader to know how to GM already, sometimes you don't. This depends on your target market. For example, if you have a heavily storytelling game, then you might want to provide advice to the reader about storytelling. At the other end of the spectrum there is at least one book, by Alex Macris who designed the Adventurer, Conqueror, King system, that's about GMing in a general sense.

 

You can include adventures with the rules, and an adventure itself might include advice about how to make stories. Or we can assume that the readers already know how to make an adventure. A sample adventure included in the rules may be a compromise.

 

 

I just described what a role-playing game can be. What should the book be? Clearly a book must discuss game design generally and role-playing game design specifically, at length. This is not a problem for me, I've written and talked a lot about this in my online video courses on Udemy and wrote a book about it. This needs to include an extensive section on rules writing, as poorly written rules can ruin a good game.

 

What about the rest of the possibilities? Worldbuilding? There are books, and many long YouTube videos (not mine) about worldbuilding. It's of great interest to some aspiring novelists. I think that is the main reason why there is so much material. But it's also quite complicated. Yet it's not directly related to the game. Too many GM's concern themselves more with their world than with actual gameplay. So their adventures are “look at what I've made” instead of actual adventures. I think less emphasis on the world may be better than more. So worldbuilding may be a matter of what space is available in the book after we take care of other elements.

 

Adventure making? Again, there are entire books about video game level creation, and innumerable books about writing stories. Perhaps an example adventure would be better than extensive advice. I recall Advanced D&D included a sample adventure as well as tables to help create adventures.

 

What about “how to GM?” That could be a problem when the space available is only 100,000 words. An entire book can be written about how to GM. This can’t take up much space.

 

How about including an actual complete role-playing game with commentary about its design? I think this might be especially useful but has to be short and simple, if only to fit in the book. I do have one that has been partially tested. I originally wrote it to accompany a boardgame, but decided that it wasn't practical because the boardgame would never have a GM and something like a deck of cards wasn’t good enough to control the opposition on its own. So I have this very simple game that makes a lot of sense in many respects.

 

There are lots of subsidiary possibilities, for example, would you expect to see lots of dice tables in a book about RPG design? I wouldn't. What about a glossary? There’s a glossary in my general game design book, but I don’t think there’s space for much of a glossary in this case.

 

 

I seek your comments. However large or small, what do you think must be in or must not be in a book about role-playing game design?

 

END

Mediterranean Convoy - a complete minimalist game

 Mediterranean Convoy

About 10 years ago I whipped up this game for a minimalist game contest. 21 pieces were the big constraint. It resulted in some really creative games, this one is Stratego-like but doesn't have the fluidity and intricacy of Pacific Convoy or Doomstar (latter published on STEAM 2015 as video game).

This is a copyrighted work. All rights reserved.

This game represents the situation in 1941 in the Mediterranean Sea, when Allies and Axis both were convoying through the same area, Allies to Malta, Axis to Africa.

Components:

5 rows by 7 columns long-rectangular grid filling a 10" by 10" surface (players sit on the "5" sides).

21 plastic pieces each 2 by 1.16 inches (fit the individual rectangles of the board):

10 pieces per side, colored blank red or blue on one side.  On the other side:

Cruiser, three Destroyers, four Merchant ships, two Submarines

One piece, "Air Strike" on both sides, red on one side, blue on other

Setup:

Flip the Air Strike piece to determine first mover.  First mover sets up first.  Partially conceal the Air Strike piece under the board.

Set up with seven ships in the row closest to you, three anywhere in next row, all face down (owning player can look whenever desired).

Game End, and Winning:

A player wins when one of his/her Merchant ships is in the row furthest away.

If all Merchant ships of one player are destroyed, the player who still has at least one Merchant ship wins.

If a position on the board is repeated three times consecutively (same as Chess rule), the game ends and pieces are all revealed.  The player with a Merchant closer to their goal wins; if same, then the one with more surviving Merchants wins; if same, the game is a draw.

Sequence of Play:

Move one piece at a time, players alternate.  A piece can move one orthogonally (up, down, and sideways), not diagonally.  Only one piece may be in a rectangle except when one player attacks the other.  A player must move a piece (except when using Air Strike).

When a ship moves into the same rectangle as an enemy ship (attacks), both are revealed and stay revealed remainder of game.

• When the moving ship (attacker) cannot destroy the target, the attacker bounces back to where it started the turn.

• When ships are same type, both are destroyed, except when both are Merchants, then the moving ship bounces back to where it started the turn.

• A Cruiser eliminates anything when attacking anything except a Submarine.

• A Destroyer eliminates a Merchant or Submarine.

• A Submarine eliminates a Merchant or Cruiser.

• A Merchant eliminates nothing.

Air Strike:

Instead of moving a piece, a player may call in an Air Strike, only once per game per player.  Choose one rectangle in any of the two rows farthest from you.  The Air Strike destroys whatever ship is there!

Also, reveal the Air Strike piece and turn it face up for the player who hasn't used his/her Air Strike.  When that one is also used, put the piece underneath the board.

Optional Rules (can be used together or separately):

1. Flip the Air Strike piece (like flipping a coin) when both ships are the same type (other than Merchants, which still bounce), color shows winner, other ship is eliminated.

2. Flip when Air Strike is called in, Strike succeeds only when calling player's color results.

3. Treat the board's center square as land, impassable to any ship.

4. (Radical change).  When the attacker can be destroyed by the target, then it is eliminated rather than bouncing.

5.  Play with three Merchants and three Submarines per side.  One Merchant piece is marked so that it can be a Submarine for this option.  This piece can be used for other combinations, for example as a second Cruiser or fourth Destroyer along with three Merchants.

6. A ship cannot move backwards (toward its player)!

7.  When a Merchant attacks another Merchant, both are eliminated.

8.  When a Destroyer attacks a Submarine, flip the Air Strike piece.  If the color of the Submarine comes up, the Sub survives and Destroyer bounces.

Further playtesting should solidify rules, and may show that one or more of the Optionals must be used in the standard.

Play Balance in Britannia and Duel Britannia

Play balance - that is, ensuring that each player has an equal chance of succeeding - is an ideal in games that it can be difficult to achieve when the game is asymmetric, that is each player starts with a different situation.

If I had a dime for every time somebody had said that Britannia is poorly balanced I’d be in good shape. But 34 years of experience has allowed us to come up with a game that is well-balanced for those who really understand it. World Board gaming championships tournaments show this over and over. One color may dominate for a while or even for an entire tournament, but then other colors displace it the next years.

Play balance is even more difficult to achieve in a two player game. In the game for more than two, what I call the “Invisible Hand” helps maintain the balance. This is the efforts of the most skillful players who recognize weaknesses of other colors and don’t allow yet other players to take advantage of those weaknesses. They also recognize when one player has done poorly, and tend to “lay off” that player. It’s like an invisible hand helping to arrange where the pieces are on the board. When there are only two players, there are no additional players available to provide the effects of the Invisible Hand.

Playing style has a lot to do with game balance as well. Some groups just don’t figure out the best strategy, or the strategy that prevents one color or side from dominating. Some groups accidentally don’t play the game quite according to the rules, and that can make quite a difference. So right out of the box a game may appear to be unbalanced when it’s not. Britannia has 34 years of play behind it, and the current version was first published in 2006. Duel Britannia on the other hand existed for one year before I had to turn it in to the publisher.

I am including here some rule tweaks you can make if you think that either of these games is not perfectly balanced.

Britannia

 
If you feel a Britannia color is too weak, try the following.

Blue: Pict leader Brude mac Bili in Round IX. (reigned 672-93)

Green: Welsh Leader Cadwallon in Round VIII. (r. 625-34)
OR
Welsh Leader Rhodri Mawr in Round XI (or could be Round XII). (r. 844-877)

Red: Give the Saxons double increase points in Round XII (this represents another effect of Alfred, a monarch who truly deserved the name "The Great").
OR
In Round XII let the Saxons build up to eight Burhs regardless of how many areas they possess (but still only one Burh per area).

Yellow: Scots Leader Kenneth McAlpin in Round XI. (r. 840-58)

If you feel that one Britannia color is too strong, try the following:

Blue: The Angles do not get their leader Ida in Round VII.

Green: Danes do not get their leader Ivar/Halfdan in Round XII.

Red: the Irish get no reinforcing army at sea in Round IX.
OR
Saxons do not get their leader Egbert in Round XI.

You also have the opportunity to use the Saxon-Jute move order as a small balancing factor in four-player games: if green tends to do better than red in your games, have the Jutes play before the Saxons; if red tends to do better than green, the Jutes should move after the Saxons.

Yellow: Reduce the Roman invasion strength to 15 instead of 16.
OR
Dubliners do not get their leader Olaf Guthfrithson in Round XIII.

Duel Britannia
There are many different strategies in this game, more than you might think at first, and you might not achieve a balance until you’ve tried all of them. But if you think one side is at a disadvantage, try one or more of these:

Anglo-Saxons weak?
Give the Saxons a leader, Egbert, in round five.
Take away the Ostman army appearing in round six.
Give the Danish Raiders in round five, five armies instead of six.

Brythons weak?
Give the initial Norse appearance in round four, three armies instead of two.
Give the Danish Raiders in round five, seven armies instead of six.
Reduce the number of armies with Saxon Athelstan from two to one.

Review of book The Scythian Empire: Central Eurasia and the Birth of the Classical Age from Persia to China

 I recently read Christopher I. Beckwith The Scythian Empire: Central Eurasia and the Birth of the Classical Age from Persia to China, Princeton University Press 2023

 

Summary: Christopher I. Beckwith, relying heavily on an astonishing knowledge of linguistics and ancient languages, shows in his latest book that the Scythians were a single people speaking a single language, with a monotheistic religion, who created an actual empire that strongly influenced the Near East, China, and everywhere in between. This contradicts traditional scholarship.

 

 

 

This is a brilliant book, a monograph, as much linguistic as historical, very heavy going in some parts. It is very scholarly. Beckwith has studied these topics his entire life.

 

His thesis is that there was at one time a united Scythian empire that contributed a great deal, especially ideas, to ancient civilization both in the Middle East and in China. He approaches this partly on linguistic grounds but using archaeology, history, and any other disciplines he can draw from.

 

From my point of view, I have often wondered how the Medes seemed to come out of nowhere to destroy Assyria and then rapidly form their own empire, only to be overthrown by the Persians, who also seemed to come more or less out of nowhere. Beckwith says that the Medes learned much of what they knew from the Scythians, who controlled Media for 28 years (according to Herodotus); even the Medes’ common language was Scythian, but also modes of dress and warfare. Mede and Scythian bows and arrowheads, for example, are indistinguishable.

 

The Medes took over from the Scythians after those 28 years and within decades had destroyed Assyria perhaps with some help from the Scythians and Babylonians. Then the Persians (Cyrus the Great) took over the Scytho-Mede empire, and Darius took over Cyrus' empire, not so much war as coup.

 

I am not a linguist and could not follow all the details of the linguistic arguments down to the level of Chinese script and even pictographs, but Beckwith tries to show that several ancient languages (such as the language of the Avesta religious tracts) were in fact Scythian. He shows that many loan words in old Persian were Scythian. He tries to show that the organization of the Persian Empire is derived from how the Scythians organized their empire. He tries to show that four great philosophies/philosophers of the ancient world are derived from Scythia (Anacharsis, Buddha, Taoism, Zorastrianism). The Scythians, he says, had a single god, not a pantheon, and the monotheism that appeared in the ancient Near East derives from that point of view.

 

He also shows that the West Scythians had similar effects on China, including that the First Emperor of China was brought up in a Scythian culture.

 

I don’t know how experts in the field will react to this, although the tendency is to stick with what you know rather than accept the new way of looking at things. Prior to now the Scythians have been regarded as mere “barbarians,” not founders of a great empire.

 

He convinced me, but it’s easy to be convinced when there is no one else presenting counter arguments. Beckwith himself tries to present counter arguments and has very detailed notes and discussions of scholarship and different possibilities. The book seems to be very, very, thorough, perhaps Beckwith’s masterpiece.

 

How did I get this book? I actually wanted Beckwith’s earlier book Empires of the Silk Road: a History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present but my local library did not have it, and this one sounded like it might be as interesting. I suspect the Silk Road book is written for a broader audience but I don’t know.

 

GrogCon 2023 Report (Old School D&D Convention)

(Photos below) 

Most of what I have to say about games goes into videos on my YouTube “Game Design” channel [http://youtube.com/LewGameDesign ], but this time I’ll put it in writing.

 

This is a discussion of my attendance at GrogCon 23 Sep 30-Aug 1 in Orlando, FL. I’d been at the con for three days last year as well. GrogCon is an “old School” RPG convention, playing AD&D and Basic versions of D&D from around the same time. It’s attached to larger conventions.

 

Grogcon is attached to Crucible. This year Crucible merged with QuestCon. Crucible is primarily a fantasy and science fiction miniatures convention while QuestCon is an RPG convention. The miniatures took place in one of the largest rooms I have ever seen, one of the hotel’s ballrooms, that was filled with tables and terrain for miniatures play (War Hammer and War Machine). And on Saturday there was a vast number of people there playing (didn’t try to estimate).

 

QuestCon also brought with it a large number of vendors. The vendor area was much larger than for WBC in Pennsylvania or PrezCon in Charlottesville, though very small compared to GenCon. Many of the vendors were selling dice and dice paraphernalia such as fancy boxes to roll dice in, 3-D printed dice towers in wild configurations such as a dragon head, and lots of what might be called RPG related art. These are not the kinds of things that I typically purchase but were certainly interesting to look at. I realize now that I didn’t see much in the way of 3-D printed character pieces, I’m a little surprised.

 

When I arrived Saturday before noon (con started Friday morning) the GrogTalk podcast/YouTube video was being recorded. After five years every week, as much as three hours per show, one of the two principals has bowed out but the show will continue. As I came in they were showing a beautifully built “Wand of Orcus” (about three feet long) that was to be auctioned with the proceeds going to charity. (Orcus was the theme of this year’s convention.)

 

Dungeons & Dragons is possibly the greatest cooperative game in the world, quite the opposite of a competitive environment. But people try to run tournaments at conventions, and the “traditional” tournament at GrogCon pits various randomly generated groups against one another, all playing the same adventure with different GMs. In this case there were three tables with 6 to 8 players per table for a maximum four hour adventure. The adventure was primarily detective work. At the end of the time the GMs and the convention organizers/writers of the adventure got together and decided which table won the tournament, and each player from that table got a prize, which appeared to be a 3-D printed kind-of paperweight of a Buddha like figure.

 

A “tradition” of the con is a Holmes Basic D&D adventure using 3D terrain. In Holmes rules a character species is the equivalent of a character class. In this case the favorite is fourth level dwarves, 12 of them. There may be some clerical capability but no magic users. Last year the dwarves entered the Lonely Mountain and finally encountered Smaug the Dragon. This year the biggest terrain object was an Aztec-style step pyramid, with each level removable so that you could place the miniatures as necessary within the pyramid. The other major terrain was a Tudor style inn several stories tall.

 

I don’t usually play games at conventions, unless it’s necessary for playtesting one of my games, because I don’t want to get tied up for many hours in one activity. Also I’m not a big fan of one-shot as opposed to campaign D&D. The more I watch one-shots, the more I realize how vastly different they are from campaigns. I’ll be writing about that for “Worlds of Design” on ENWorld.org, likely next year.

 

David (missed his last name) ran an interesting adventure Sunday afternoon. The adventuring party was five high-level (ninth?) paladins with holy swords and one high level cleric with a mace of disruption. They had gone to a demi-plane and were up against some really hefty monsters, beginning with a 64 hit point black dragon.

 

The dragon breathed on two characters, one failing her save and surviving with 3 hit points. At my urging (the GM approved of my intervention) all the paladins charged the dragon. In that situation (especially with no magic to speak of), either you all flee or all charge and try to kill the dragon before it breathes too many times. Someone had a Wish, and Wished for everyone to have five times as many hit points as their normal maximum, permanently, as well as something else. Many of us shook our heads at this, far too powerful; in the end the GM allowed half-again his points for a period determined in rounds.

 

Here I encountered an interpretation I hadn’t heard before, but turns out to be from the Moldvay Basic D&D version. The dragon’s second breath did only as much damage as the dragon had hits remaining. That actually makes a lot of sense. I’m familiar with Holmes Basic, but never read Moldvay.

 

The players did away with the dragon (a Vorpal Blade cut off its head), and soon after a couple demons. David had a dilemma because he had underestimated how powerful the party would be despite missing two clerics for lack of players. But since it was a one-shot, and being played for the first time, I suggested to him during a break in the action that he just put in more monsters. He was already setting the monsters to maximum hit points, I don’t know if he put in more monsters or not and I had to leave before the adventure ended.

 

It was a new hotel this year, a Doubletree within walking distance of Universal Orlando. The rooms were $139, but the parking was officially $29 a day (con attendees got a discount). Two of the three elevators for the 18 story tower that I stayed in did not work much of the time I was there, and evidently on Friday none of them worked. At check-in time I counted five people behind the desk, but only one was actually checking people in (and no famous cookie!). I did not see a map anywhere at any time, which meant I had to ask several questions about where various restaurants were. The room was very nice. But the restaurants were expensive for a convention, as in $20 for a Cobb salad and $26 for fish and chips, with a 16% gratuity added on automatically. There was only one (Korean) restaurant nearby. You may have gathered I was Not Impressed.

 

On Sunday I had an hour and a half lecture/conversation with James Garoutsos, organizer of the con and of GrogTalk, recorded for GrogTalk, about strategy and tactics in AD&D. When it is posted I’ll try to remember to provide the URLs below. I’m thinking of expanding the 23,000 words I gathered for this, and a lot more including my never-finished D&D Army rules, into a small book.

 

Attendance. Last year a hurricane swept through Orlando the day before the convention started. The result was that the attendance at GrogCon was much less than the registration because people couldn’t fly in or chose not to come, especially from the northeast where the hurricane headed. This year the weather was fine but the attendance was not much more than the actual attendance last year. Furthermore, last year there had been many mostly younger people playing in organized D&D sessions as part of Crucible. This year QuestCon was supposed to be bringing more RPGs, but I hardly saw anybody playing RPGs as part of Crucible/Quest. I walked past the three rooms reserved for that several times, and I don’t think there was anywhere else where RPGs were supposed to be taking place but I’m not sure. On Friday when the con was already in session but I was still at home, I had checked the event list which showed how many people had signed up for various RPG events. I noticed that several had been canceled and many had few or no sign-ups.

 

The upshot of this is that I wondered if, post pandemic, people are less likely to go to conventions (at least, to play RPGs) than in the past, especially as there’s been an uptick in Covid cases recently. You can’t really judge from such a small sample space, but it is interesting. I’m puzzled if we can draw any conclusions from this. Is it a genuine lack of interest in face-to-face RPGs, or is it something else?

 

I believe I heard there is an Old School RPG convention in Minnesota, otherwise I don’t know of anything like GrogCon. It is nearly unique.

Recently in my (free) "Game Design" YouTube channel:

 Align the way to succeed with the "fun" way to play in a game design    https://youtu.be/LGk16bENW5I  3:02
    Some players will do whatever it takes to succeed in a game, even if it's "no fun". Winning is more important than fun, to some. Help these folks out by insuring that the "fun" way to play leads to success in the game.

Puzzles are not necessarily abstract (or short).  https://youtu.be/SG0u2ulDg5w  3:16
    Puzzles are not necessarily abstract, or short, but the circumstances that encourage puzzles (no hidden information, no randomness) tend to be associated with abstract, or short, "games".

"Games are about people" does not equate with games of negotiation. https://youtu.be/WabjOLKQ8qc     4:47
    Two major ways of looking at games, "Games are about people," OR "Games are all math." But people-games are not the same as games of negotiation.

"Inventions" that make life easier in games, part 1    https://youtu.be/qisEo_BOHFI      8:32
    Thinking about inventions that make life easier in general (such as air conditioning in the South USA), I made a list of inventions that have made game design easier. Part 1 is about tabletop games, part 2 about video games.

Inventions that make life easier in games, part 2 - video games    https://youtu.be/oYywmdtfNRE     5:25
    More about "inventions" - techniques, mechanisms - that have made game design easier. Video games this time, part 1 was about tabletop games.

 A while ago, Sam Bennett wrote to me about my Barroom Brawl convention scenario for D&D that appeared long ago in White Dwarf. He has compiled a lot of information about this kind of quite unusual form of D&D. The ensuing interview was originally published at https://tales-of-the-lunar-lands.blogspot.com/2022/06/an-interview-with-lew-pulsih.html. It's formatted more attractively than it is below. If you go to Sam's blog you'll be able to find his discussion of this kind of adventure at https://tales-of-the-lunar-lands.blogspot.com/2022/06/a-bar-brawl-addendum.html

Friday, June 10, 2022

An Interview with Lew Pulsipher

 

In researching my post from yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking with Lew Pulsipher, a big name in the early days of White Dwarf and Dragon, as well as the creator of the original bar brawl scenario in White Dwarf issue 11. See here for my initial writings on the subject. With his permission, I've chosen to publish our discussion here.

Lunar Lands: As far as my research has led me to believe, it was you who wrote the first [bar brawl] - assuming, of course, that's the same Lew Pulsipher. I was excited to see that you still had an active presence online, and I felt like it might be of use to gaming historians like me. If it is you, and if you can recall the details, I would like to ask you a few questions on the subject, if you don't mind.

Lew Pulsipher: Yes, that was me, and as far as I know it was the first such for FRPG, though you'll notice from the article that I saw a non-FRPG version of a br brawl and went from there. I tried to turn it into a stand-alone game, but didn't get far enough to playtest it. Now how much I'm going to remember otherwise, 40+ years after, is doubtful. But ask away.

LL: It's nice to be able to hear from someone who was around in shaping the hobby in its early days. Yes, I did see in the article that you had adapted this from a Wild West scenario - which helps point, to me, that this truly is the earliest example of bar brawl scenarios being developed for fantasy RPGs. In that regard, having you as an asset is a valuable one to us historians. This is my first time hearing about you having worked on a standalone game, too! That's quite an interesting what-if. I don't suppose you remember anything about it?

LP: The game was called Troll Tavern. IIRC, Games Workshop asked me to adapt the brawl as a separate game, but they lost interest in it later. It was old-fashioned/clumsy from today’s perspective, I’d do a much better job if I tried it today. Big square grid board depicting a tavern. Like other boardgames, no GameMaster, which made it much more difficult to achieve.

I had to devise parts of a standalone RPG, in effect, to govern movement and combat in the game. Nowadays I have a very basic/minimalist RPG that I’ve tested a few times, that probably derives from all that. It may turn up in a book of reprints of my old articles, if I ever get around to finishing it (both game and book).

LL: As I've discussed, in my research I've found that these articles were published extensively in White Dwarf, and by contrast there doesn't seem to be nearly as many examples in the American gaming sphere at the time - which is why I was surprised to discover, in looking up more information on you, that you're from Detroit! What made you want to publish in White Dwarf, as opposed to The Dragon or another domestic publication? Were you living in Britain at the time, or was there greater cross-pollination across the Atlantic during the 70s?

LP: Born in Detroit but grew up in Ohio, and later in Battle Creek Michigan.

I was researching my doctoral dissertation (“Aircraft and the Royal Navy, 1908-1919”), lived in England three years, married someone I met there in a D&D game. Met Albie Fiore, wrote for Games magazine; and met the GW guys Steve and Ian. It was a natural to submit to White Dwarf.

At one point, GW had the D&D license, and I was writing a supplement for them (similar to the early D&D supplements in booklet form), but then they lost the license.

I did have many articles in Dragon, and other magazines, actually, perhaps tending to be later after I came back to the USA.

LL: Do you know how your article was received? I imagine it must have been quite popular if it spawned so many similar scenarios, and Graeme Davis cites it specifically in his retrospective on Rough Night at the Three Feathers. When subsequent bar brawl scenarios were published, did anyone reach out to you, or get your thoughts on their work? Or was this just something people did without asking any questions? Do you have any experience playing any of the other bar brawl scenarios?

LP: How was it received? Often, authors don’t know, especially when there are no online forums. Some people played some variation at conventions (that I wasn’t involved with), so that’s good. I don’t recall seeing the other versions you mention, certainly haven’t played them. No, no one reached out to me about them - not unusual. Even people who have published Britannia-like boardgames have not reached out to me, not a single one; most don’t even mention Brit in those games.

LL: When I was reading your article in White Dwarf, I was struck by how, despite using D&D rules, it seems much more reminiscent of a wargame, what with having multiple players controlling different sides and giving their orders to the DM independently on pieces of paper. The evolution of D&D from Chainmail is well-documented, but at this point in time, would you say that competitive player-vs-player scenarios like this were still fairly common? Or was this supposed to be more of a minigame built on a D&D chassis, going off of you working on your own game on the subject?

LP: My own game came later. The original D&Ders were from wargame fandom. Some people, including me, always used a square grid to govern movement in encounters. I’ve never been a “theater of the mind” guy, too loosey-goosey. And if you play it as a game, rather than as a storytelling mechanism, it naturally feels like a wargame at times.

I don’t keep track, but I cannot think of many player-vs.-player D&D or RPG scenarios, period. I think that I saw the Wild West scenario, thought it would be interesting to do similar for D&D, and did it, without thought of competitiveness. Not that it’s so much competitive as it is amusing.

LL: I feel like the separation between RPGs and wargames happened later in Britain than it did in the US - Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Fantasy Battle are at least theoretically compatible between each other, for instance, and the first edition of 40k had heavy RPG elements. I don't know if you would know or not, but would you say that there was any sort of regional divide going on? If so, why do you think that the wargaming aspects persisted so much longer in Britain?

LP: Britain has always seemed, to me, to be more interested in miniatures battles than the USA. If you say “wargame” to a Brit, often they’ll think miniatures battles. Say the same to an American, and they’ll think board game battles. The kind of books Don Featherstone wrote were rare in the USA. Perhaps because minis often involve more than two people, while board wargames involve just two, they prospered more in Britain where population density is much higher? Nah, I don’t buy that.

Perhaps because we had Avalon Hill in the USA from an early date, we became wargame oriented? It was a Baby Boomer hobby, here, and didn’t transfer to later generations. Keep in mind, Baby Boomers heard a LOT about World War II (I certainly did, though born six years after it ended).

A big thanks to Dr. Pulsipher for his help in my research on this genre! You can find his own blog here.

What were the real World Wars?

 Wars are sometimes name for odd reasons. What we call World War I was called the Great War before World War II occurred. Yet some people would tell you that the Seven Years War (1756 – 1763) was the first war that occurred over much of the world. But it didn’t have the intensity, the national armies (conscripts), of a world war. Perhaps the American Civil War or the Russo- Japanese war or the Franco-Prussian war had that intensity, but certainly the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic wars ending in 1815 had that intensity. Those were the wars of the universal draft and of national armies, and of enormous casualties.

So it would make sense to call the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars World War I, and what we call World War I to be World War II, and what we call World War II to be World War III.

On the other hand, in terms of participating nations and major fighting, World War I was almost entirely confined to Europe, so in that sense World War II was the first real world war.

Just a rumination . . .

Compendium of Britannia-like Games, Published and Unpublished

 

Compendium of Britannia-like Games, Published and Unpublished

A listing and description

 This is edited and revised from the transcript of a video. I offer free videos on the “Game Design” channel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/LewGameDesign

 

There aren’t many games that have spawned a group of games using similar systems by different designers, but my game Britannia is one. I haven't even laid hands on some of these games. I've only played Britannia, Duel Britannia, and (once) Italia.

 

I include both published and unpublished games, the ones that I've been able to find. The objective here is to talk briefly about each one.

 

Maybe I should characterize Britannia first. Britannia is about migrations and organized invasions in the Dark and Mediaeval ages, using a large area map of Britain. It covers a very long time scale, about a thousand years. It equates population with armies, which is a Dark Age characteristic. It has an economy, that is, you don't just have units appearing at given times and places, though that also happens. You can build/raise more units, according to your economy, which depends on what lands you occupy, using the old mantra that Land Equals Wealth.

 

Point scoring is by nation and a player controls several nations (usually four) during the course of the game. The player’s nations cannot cooperatively attack or defend their separate nations; if they happen to be in the same place they have to fight. There are no event cards, and the game uses dice combat. There are about 200 armies with no numbers on them, just an identifier. Four players is the norm, three is sometimes a variation.

 

Many of the following games deviate in one or more ways from this summary, even some of my games from this list. So we have many games of similar complexity. There are also games that are more complex and there are a few published games that are less complex - well, actually just one that's been published so far.

 

I'm not listing the designers because I may not know or may not remember. Since I moved house I don't know where many of these games are in my house. Sorry about that, but most of them are on boardgamegeek, the published ones anyway.

 

The first here is Ancient Conquest I and II. I list these first because Ancient Conquest I predates Britannia. I saw that game being played, and read the rules, somewhere, sometime in the 70s, probably the late 70s. I borrowed the notion of several nations per player, but I don't let those nations cooperate. In Ancient Conquest, the player moves all his/her nations at once, and they can cooperate closely, even occupying the same city.

 

Ancient Conquest is a hex and counter wargame with numbers on the counters. The map has a hexagonal grid. It uses a combat table. As far as I can recall it only had an order of battle, not an economy. In other words, you got pieces when you got them and that was it. What you did on the board didn't make any difference generally to how many pieces you could acquire, making it, in my taxonomy, a Battle game rather than a War game.

 

Ancient Conquest I and II share similar maps. They depict the early and later history of the ancient Near/Middle East/Eastern Europe, so it includes Greece for example.

 

Maharajah is the first game that followed Britannia. This was done by Avalon Hill some years after they published Britannia. It's a slavish imitation in some ways, for example, the identical number of nations and the same number of land areas as Britannia. It has the problem of Indian history, that all the invasions come from the northwest instead of from all around. One of the great advantages of Britannia is the invasions come from all around. Now if you get into gunpowder days and the Europeans then you've got invasions from the sea, but I think that's a big mistake. Nonetheless, it was done here, so late in the game you have the Europeans. I've read that the designer died during the process and maybe that had some affect on it. People say it's a good three player game but not a good four player game

 

Chariot Lords is the ancient Near and Middle East. There is no economy, you get back a portion of your dead. It has random player turn order, you roll for the player order every turn, and that's horrible to me, it just makes a hash out of the whole business, but that's a matter of preference. Moreover it has possibly the most confused and unclear set of rules I have ever read.

 

Peninsula Italica (1993), is ancient Italy from 2000 to 200 BC. All I know is what I read on Boardgamegeek. That Sicily is four areas gives an idea of the scale. About 250 cardboard pieces. Evidently Italian language rules only.

 

The Dragon and the Pearl covers pre-gunpowder Chinese history. It was published by a United Kingdom game shop with a plasticized map, plastic disc pieces with stickers, coming in a cardboard tube. It's a pretty straightforward adaptation of the Britannia game system. While I’ve not played, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the best of the Brit-like games other than Britannia itself.

 

Hispania is the history of the Iberian Peninsula. The problem here is that at times the entire area was ruled by one government, for decades or centuries. The Romans, the Visigoths, the Muslims except for Asturias, which didn't amount to much at that point, all controlled the peninsula. How does a game cope with this? This game is much more complex than Britannia. It has something like 500 pieces and several additional piece types, using 10 sided dice to help differentiate the types.

 

Rus is a game of Russia in early days, self published long before Kickstarter. I've read some criticism of how it plays, I haven't tried it myself. It's a difficult subject, not one that I've even tried, and I try a lot. There's so much difference between the steppe and the forest  areas of Russia. The area of the board extends well beyond Russia, not surprisingly. The name is a reference to the Vikings who came to Russia and established the early principalities.

 

 

Hegemonia (2004) is about ancient Greece and Western Persia, and some of Italy. I've never seen the game, only images of the map and rules (in German). It was offered privately in Germany in a limited form, could be print and play, I don't know. In fact I'm not sure I know anybody who's ever seen it, let alone played it.

 

China: the Middle Kingdom. This is Chinese history from ancient times, extending through the Chinese Civil War post-World War II, and my view is the Britannia system doesn't model the gunpowder era, let alone World War II; the system was made for gradual migrations, slow movement and communication, with a population that was more or less synonymous with the army, none of which is true in gunpowder times.

 

The game also suffers from what I can only call an egregious error. The playable board doesn't extend beyond China's modern boundaries. So Mongolia, for example, is not part of the playable board. Korea is not playable. Vietnam is not playable. Those are areas that at times the Chinese dominated or actually controlled, but you can't play there. Think about that. Why would you do that?

 

It introduces an idea with rebellions where in order for one dynasty to be followed by another you roll a lot of dice for individual areas to determine whether they go over to the new dynasty. It's also interesting in that the attackers have a permanent advantage over the defenders: attackers hit on a 4, 5 or 6, defenders on a 5 or 6.

 

Italia is by the same designer as Hispania. It's also similarly complex. It covers Italy, a bit of North Africa, and some of the border land around northern Italy. The game uses a “campaigns” rule involving big groups of units making repeated attacks as they move through areas, so that a campaign can conquer a large area at once. This is sort of a super-major invasion.

 

Given Italian history, there are two game segments separated by the period of Roman domination and the Empire. One of the main scenarios is for three players rather than four.

 

Invasions I and II are all of Europe and North Africa post Rome. Invasions I covers earlier history and the second will cover later history. There are vastly more areas than Britannia. I counted once (from images, have not seen the game itself), and it seems like there were around 150, and vastly more pieces and piece types than Brit. So it's in the vein of Hispania and Italia, but even bigger. It's also one of the few (only?) Britannia-like games that uses event cards. The designer is also designer of Europa Universalis I in both the tabletop and video versions, which may help explain the level of complexity. Other than Duel Britannia, this is the most recently published Brit-like game I know of.

 

Finally we have Duel Britannia. This is packaged with the 2020 reissue of Britannia, two games in one box. It's for two players, up to 90 minutes, seven turns, many fewer land areas on a new board, so it's considerably simpler than Britannia, especially in the immensely simpler scoring. It is a two player game, although perhaps someone will make a three player game out of it someday. But that three-player is not in the box because I only had a year to design it, and the two player was a pain in the butt to try to get balanced, so I didn't get to the three player game.

This and the reissue of Britannia are the only Britannia-like games using plastic figure armies. They’re 18 mm tall, which is much larger, for example, than the soldier pieces in Risk, and I've seen photos of the figures as painted by gamers - painted individually and in detail.

 

Then we have “B3" as I call it, the third edition of Britannia, which actually is three separate games: Epic Britannia, Rule Britannia, and Conquer Britannia.

 

Epic is what I call a better teaching tool, some may suggest “more realistic”. It has more constraints on the players, otherwise a full Britannia. There’s also a free-form mode that works well with two through five players, and is much quicker and simpler than older Brit. The scoring of the free-form uses the simple method that I've used in some of the small games (such as Duel Brit).

 

Armies cannot vacate areas (as in Risk). There are land raids or forays. Armies are not allowed to make suicide attacks when faced with starvation, instead their entire group must attack. The Romans have to work at it to succeed, which they don't really in second edition Britannia. This had lots of solo testing but not much by others, but it has “lain fallow” for years.

 

Rule Britannia is nine turns, four players, diceless. It uses combat cards, and includes Ireland. It's been tested a little by others a long time ago. The diceless method has been tested a lot in other games.

 

Much of Duel Britannia methods derive from Conquer Britannia. Conquer Britannia is an up to 120 minute game for four players, the shortest play so far is 84 minutes. It begins after the Roman withdrawal, just as Duel Brit does. It's been playtested by others a lot. I intend to make a three player version for before the Romans appear. It has six turns, 18 land areas, 11 nations.

 

 

 

I've designed quite a few other games to various stages. “Mega Brit” had 55 land areas, 24 nations, 24 turns, and included Ireland. I played this, maybe three times solo a long time ago.

 

Dark Ages Europe, from about 400 CE to 1250, is for five players quite big, played once by others, some by me. A different, huge Europe game that didn't have a name was played once by several people in 1980. 12 hours, and I had a note on it that if Britannia got published, maybe this could be published. But now it's long abandoned.

 

Then we have for three or four players, Adventus Saxonum or Arthuria, including only England and Wales with 20 nations. It starts when the Romans are gone and ends before the Vikings.

 

Caledonia is the early history of Scotland. It's simpler and shorter than Britannia.

 

Normannia is Britain, France, and the Vikings only.

 

Barbaria is all of Europe 400CE to 1250 in six turns. It is simpler and much shorter than Britannia, and unlike most of these it has been submitted to publishers (unsuccessful so far).

 

Frankia: the early history of France and Germany is diceless and uses the card combat system. It has three scenarios, one for three players, the others for four. This has been submitted, not yet accepted anywhere.

 

Hellenia is not complex, but it's a large map because it's all the Mediterranean, and the Near East, so you have a very long but fairly narrow map. Rome, Carthage, and the Diadochi, five players, I think.

 

Hibernia is more like a block game, but it has many Britannia-like characteristics. It's the early history of Ireland for three players, not four.

 

 

The most recent one, Minimalist Britannia as I call it so far, has only 13 land areas, three players, diceless, and it plays solo in an hour. Whether I can balance it, who knows? Fortunately, three player games can be self-balancing.

 

I started on a all-of-Third Age J.R.R. Tolkien game, which I’ve played once. But a license is expensive. Also, I have since realized it should be a co-op game as well (competitive version and co-op version).

 

This list excludes games I have mapped out or set up reinforcement schedules for but haven't played: India, Iberia, Graecia, Central Asia, China, Babylonia, the Balkans, Wales, Columbia (the Americas), Byzantium, Sicily even. Who knows where else that I've forgotten over the years - most of these were a long time ago. It is of course a drawback of Britannia-like games that they tend to be long and that's not what people want these days.

 

Unpublished by Other Designers

Now for unpublished games by other designers. There was one called Mandate of Heaven (China) that I ran across in an online playtest years ago, and I haven't heard of it since. It was huge.

 

There's one called Corsica, about a relatively small island in the Mediterranean southeast of France. It's where Napoleon Bonaparte grew up. I have a print n play copy, and there may be an electronic form ultimately. It is as big as Britannia despite the smallness of the island.

 

An unpublished game called Conquest of Europe by Roger Heywood, who was the uncredited developer of the original Britannia for HP Gibsons, has an entry in boardgamegeek.

 

There may be more but the unpublished ones are hard to ferret out.

 

Not Brit-like

You may have heard of my game Germania (nearly published twice) and might have thought from the title that it's Britannia-like. It is not, although it is of similar scale.

 

Then we have History of the World, which is a “sweep of history” game but not Britannia-like, though I have to say, it might benefit from being more like Britannia. It certainly loses sight of history.

 

 

This turned out to be a lot more than I expected, and now I should get some more of mine published.

 

Deconstructing Diplomacy

(Originally appeared in Diplomacy World #154, the free flagship magazine of the Diplomacy-playing hobby)

The following is edited and modified from a transcription of a video I made for an audiovisual class I’m creating for Udemy.com. It was created for aspiring game designers, not for hobby Diplomacy players. But you may learn something from it.

I think this one of the greatest games ever made so as you might expect I’ll talk a lot about it. 

What's a deconstruction? We’re trying to discern the inner workings of a game. What makes the game work or not work from a design point of view? The purpose is to help designers understand how the game works and why it is successful or not, so they can apply those lessons to their own games. 

I've a lot history with this game. It was my favorite game from 1970 to 1975. I played a lot by mail, and as there was no email the games took several years to complete. I was quite successful as a player, and I published two Diplomacy fanzines. These were the days of printed fanzines, mimeo or ditto printed. I also wrote quite a few articles about the game. 

My series of articles about playing the game well was on the Avalon Hill website for decades, and was cited on the boardgamegeek page for Diplomacy until their recent redesign stopped citing articles. I also designed a lot of Diplomacy variants, and to this day I'm probably the most prolific designer of published Diplomacy variants, though I gave it up when I started to design standalone games in the late 70s. 

What is It?

So what is Diplomacy? Diplomacy was originally published in 1959, the same year as Risk in the United States. It requires exactly seven players, a very unusual requirement. It roughly represents World War I and the era before it. It's a very long game when played to a conclusion, which is often a draw, 4 to 8 hours. Almost all the activity is interaction amongst the players, especially via secret negotiation, and it is the secret negotiation that “makes the game” while also making it such a long game. 

Moreover, it's a zero-sum game. The only way to gain something is to take it from someone else, and that's part of what makes it such an aggressive game. There's no way to progress without “regressing” somebody else. It's a heavily psychological game because much of it goes on in the players’ minds, though there is a tactical system and strategic system. 

This is something that struck me only recently: it's actually a co-operative game. Diplomacy is known as a cutthroat boardgame full of lies and deceit, but it is one of the most co-operative games in existence that can still produce a single winner, though often it doesn't. It's not like a standard co-op game where all the players win or none of them win. Also, you’re not playing against the game, not playing against programmed instructions. Nonetheless, it's very co-operative, because you can't go it alone. You have to work with other players to succeed because you're outnumbered six to one, at least at first. 

Even more important, one of the fundamental mechanics of the game is a support order that lets you directly assist another player, or be assisted, and that's a rarity in games. That's possible because we have simultaneous movement adjudication in Diplomacy, which is also quite rare in tabletop games.

So we have a game where strategy, in the sense of military grand strategy, is very important. It's a game of negotiation, but you need to negotiate with the right objectives in mind, so understanding the strategy of the entire game is vital. A good strategist will beat a good tactician, again because you're outnumbered 6-1. At the game start there are seven players, but you only have three or four neighbors at that juncture. Yet you have to see and try to influence the entire board for the entire game to maximize your chances to win. It is an epitome of strategy, both of military strategy and of “strategy games” more generally, as you have to use your mind to succeed. 

While many play the game with the short term in mind (owing to the possibilities for surprise and betrayal), those who think in the long term are more likely to succeed.

Part of the fascination with the game is a fascination with maps and with the shapes of geography with geopolitics, so it’s unsurprising that there are hundreds of Diplomacy variants, frequently with a new map, sometimes not. 

There is is a conference map which the players take with them when they go away from the board to secret negotiations. It shows the map of the game and the 75 areas on the board. There are just two kinds of units, armies and fleets. The fleets can move in coastal areas, and only 8 of 34 supply centers (23.5%) are landlocked. Armies and fleets are about equally useful, especially given the geography of Europe and some of the Mediterranean littoral depicted on the board.

The tactical system uses simultaneous movement/adjudication. There cannot be more than 34 pieces, but players have to write orders for each of their pieces, something that wouldn’t work today except for niche markets. (In 2006 Fantasy Flight Games published the second edition of my game Britannia; they refused to include a scoresheet, feeling that writing down scores was unacceptable to the market! They included scoring chits instead.) It's possible to help another player in the tactical phase of the game as well as to hinder others. There's no overt chance in resolution of conflicts, no cards, no dice. But because of simultaneous movement sometimes there is guesswork. Sometimes there's Yomi involved, reading the enemy's intentions. You can play a Game Theory minimax style most of the time tactically, but as in real warfare, the best generals are successful via Yomi.

In the larger sense Yomi is very important to the strategy of the game, because if somebody's going to stab you in the back, or someone is lying to you, you’ve got to figure that out in time to do something about it. 

My Ten Subsystems of Games

I'm going to go through my 10 subsystems of all games and describe what we see in Diplomacy. These subsystems are a framework designers can use to help them conceive new designs.

For the first one, model-theme-atmosphere-image and so on. The game loosely represents World War I. Loosely. The seven players are roughly equal in strength. We have 75 areas on the board and only armies and fleets. The technology is more 1900 than 1914, though the map is from 1914.

Player interaction rules. This is a game of very strong player interaction via negotiation. Lying and even cheating is encouraged in the rules. Surprise is common owing to simultaneous movement.

Objective/victory conditions. Players need to control a majority of the 34 supply centers, so usually there is player elimination. But at the end of the game, there may be three to four or even more players, and often nobody can achieve a majority of supply centers and you end up with a draw. One of the fascinations of play is that some players value second place over most draws, while others value any draw over second place (partial win versus outright loss). There is nothing in the rules to require or force a draw, so theoretically the game could go on forever.

Number four is data storage. There's an area board. Armies and fleets of seven colors are supplied, and players use a paper and pen for writing orders. Everything else is in the player’s minds.

Sequencing is a negotiation session followed by order writing and then simultaneous adjudication. 

Movement/Placement is one unit per area. Units move one area maximum in a turn. Fleets can occupy coastal provinces. The sea areas and the areas along the edges of the board are larger so that you can move just as quickly around the board as across the center of the board to get to the other side. 

Information availability. Only the player's intentions and his orders are hidden from the other players, until the simultaneous adjudication.

Conflict resolution is simultaneous and deterministic, a majority wins, ties to defender, no loss in combat unless a unit cannot retreat. For a wargame, deterministic combat with no loss is rare.

The economy is zero-sum. 34 centers; to gain a unit you must take the center from somebody else. Players at start occupy 22 of 34 supply centers (65%).

The user interface is a boardgame. Players talk with other players frequently in secret, leaving the table. They write orders for their units.

Some Evaluation Questions

I also have some evaluation questions I try to use with a deconstruction. 

What is the essence or vision of the game? Negotiation, followed by strategic and tactical action in a very rough representational World War I, that's diceless and uses simultaneous adjudication. (“Gunboat” Diplomacy, while a popular variant, makes nonsense of the game’s essence.)

Who is it marketed to? Hard-core psychological game players. It's kind of the opposite of Chess in many ways. It can also be seen as a strange combination of poker and chess. It's poker psychologically but retaining the determinism of chess. 

Players’ primary activity is negotiating. If you don’t negotiate, you lose. 

What are the major challenges? Reading opponents’ intentions while disguising yours is a great deal of it, and military grand strategy. 

The actions the players can take to overcome the challenges. They can negotiate offensive oriented alliances, negotiate nonaggression agreements, make war, make peace, expand, capturing supply centers with superior force or guile, and outthink the other players. As I said, there are lots and lots of variations of Diplomacy. 

What about the play balance? The inner three powers (Austria, Germany, Italy) are at a clear positional disadvantage, and as far as I know this translates to a disadvantage in results compared with England, France, Russia, and Turkey. Keep in mind, the actual strengths of nations in this time period have nothing to do with their strength in Diplomacy.

What is and isn’t a variation?

(I am repeating some of the following from Diplomacy World #100)

This brings me to the question, what characterizes Dip, what makes someone look at a game and say "that's a variant of Diplomacy"?

I have made two lists at various times.  The first is very short:

• Simultaneous movement

• Units directly related to territory controlled [zero-sum]

• The support mechanism

• No overt chance mechanism in combat resolution

But this leaves out negotiation! But it allows Gunboat to qualify.

Another try is less terse:

• Secret Negotiation 

• Always, simultaneous movement (but some people call Game of Thrones: the Boardgame a Dipvariant, and it isn't exactly simultaneous movement; it uses a mechanism to avoid the need to write orders).

• Always, the support mechanism.

• Always, no overt chance mechanism in combat.

• Usually, centers maintain units in a zero-sum fashion--and while some games give economic points to spend in various ways, players still must pay maintenance for existing units.

• Usually, no-holds-barred negotiation.

• Usually, an area board and one unit per area.

Most of these elements appear in other games - I'm using the support mechanism in a couple prototypes - but the appearance of most or all of these is likely to be in a Dipvariant.  One could try to use the same list and make a game that doesn't derive from Diplomacy, of course.

If Released Today?

A final question. If Diplomacy and its variants did not exist, and it was released today, what would be the result?

It would probably fall flat on its face - like most older games, it must be admitted - not because they're not good but because tastes and players have changed drastically to favor puzzles and shorter experiences. Even Chess wouldn't amount to much if similarly treated.

Briefly in Diplomacy's case:

• way too long

• you don't know how long it's going to take (unpredictable length)

• player elimination (frowened upon nowadays)

• requires exactly seven players (inflexible)

• requires a very large number of players (often impractical)

• very direct-conflict driven in a tabletop game world that values lack of conflict

• it makes people write things down

• there are far too many draws

Any commercial variant that aims at a market outside current Diplomacy players must address those problems. I have designed one, "Scramble for Africa", that addresses those problems (except direct conflict and writing things down), and when we get back to a situation where we can playtest games in person, we'll see what happens.

My apprenticeship in game design was partly with Diplomacy variants.The game is a niche taste, but it's the epitome of this kind of game. Because of the nature of the game those whose feelings are easily hurt should not play. It's an extreme example of a game where you have to earn what you get, and that's out of fashion these days. I regard it as one of the great games in the world, and I rarely call a game great. It's instructive in how a psychological game can be so different from poker, which is very much a psychological game, and also how a chess-like game can be so different from Chess.

Nowadays the game is often played by email, with software judges, and some variants are played by email as well. There are Diplomacy conventions. But it's not that easy to get seven people together to play the game, especially because it takes so long. There have been commercial Diplomacy playing video games, but they have been a disaster, just horrible. Video games are rarely (never?) good at grand strategy.

It's a game at an extreme, more than 60 years after publication. It doesn't suit most modern tastes, but still has lots of fans.